Hellobee Boards

No, but I really wish I spoke Spanish because most of my students are Spanish speakers who are learning English (very low English skills.) The two years I took in high school was not nearly enough.

French and English, I went through French immersion in school and live in a bilingual community. I should probably do a better job of speaking French around my girls but they will be in immersion when they start school, too.

I am fluent in Spanish and English. So is DH. We are both Caucasian and Spanish is a second language but one we both use professionally. We want LOs to learn but have been terrible about following through on this!

I studied French all through high school and college, but sadly, I've let it lapse.

I think the definition of bilingual is a bit loose, depending on who you ask. To me, being bilingual means not only having a written an oral command of two languages, but understanding nuance and cultural implications of the language. I consider myself to be beyond fluent in French, especially spoken French, but I'm not quite bilingual since there are still cultural usages of the language that I may not be aware of or, for example, Canadian French can be quite different from the French in France and I may not understand vocabulary or usage in specific contexts. That said, most French are surprised to find out I'm American when they hear me speaking French. With my job I work with language all day long, so I am constantly learning that there is so much more to learn!

Both DH and I are bilingual - English and French - as required by our jobs. We're retested every 5 years in reading, writing and spoken interaction. I've bought a few French board books for LO, but we haven't done much more for him yet.

Yea! Korean and English! Proficient in Spanish!

Yes. English and Russian.

@lamariniere: I agree with your assessment. My husband is fluent in three languages (German, English, French) and is conversant in Italian.

Beyond English, I am conversant in Italian and German.

@looch: yes. I think being bilingual and being fluent are two very different things! I think it's hard to be truly bilingual unless you are born/raised using the two (or more) languages effortlessly. I always say my children are trilingual, but they are probably bilingual in 2 languages and fluent in a 3rd since they probably don't get all of the cultural nuance of the 3rd language, especially since we don't speak it at home.

@looch: the cultural references are always funny. My DH and I watched Zoolander (the 1st one) a few weeks ago and he had some "ah ha" moments when he finally connected some English things he hears to their origins in the film. Another good one is trying to explain "douche bag" to anyone that isn't American.

@lamariniere: OMG...I tried to explain douchebag to my husband once (native Spanish speaker)...it did not go well. I just told him to never say it, lol.

Apart from English (native language) I speak Spanish fluently. If we're getting more specific, I guess I would say Andean Spanish, which has a lot of native Quechua/Kichwa vocabulary mixed in....so instead of saying "hermano/a" for brother/sister or "niño/a" for child, you would say "ñaño/a" or "guagua"...lots of little changes like that. My husband is from an Andean country, I spent nearly four years living there, and we speak Spanish at home.

However, put me in front of a Dominican or Puerto Rican and I have a hard time understanding them even though it's the same language!! But between the accent and the different vocabularies it can be hard to follow along