Can You Speak Your Foreign SO's Native Language?

[Marilyn. 340]

I am not the USC ..

my native language is English and so is my hubby's.. although he can speak and understand some Spanish..

[merijan 0]

Well my hubby speaks six languages and I wish I could be like that and learn other languages. I have not tried to learn Urdu its hard for me to remember.

but I tried to get him to teach my kids , they learn fast. Maybe he will.

[Dave and Helena 0]

I really don't want Dave to learn Swedish, then I couldn't call home and talk about him in front of him. It's so funny to watch him cringe every time I look at him and laugh while I am talking to someone back home. He has been threatening to learn Swedish secretly so he can listen in to all my conversations while pretending he doesn't understand. It would be nice if he and my mom could talk to each other without me having to translate all the time though.

The only word Dave really knows is "Tack", Swedish for "Thank you". He gets so used to saying it that he keeps on doing it even once we're back in the U.S. Last time he said "Tack" was to say thanks to the Mexican waiter at our local Mexican joint.

[~ameriptian~ 54]

I really don't want Dave to learn Swedish, then I couldn't call home and talk about him in front of him. It's so funny to watch him cringe every time I look at him and laugh while I am talking to someone back home. He has been threatening to learn Swedish secretly so he can listen in to all my conversations while pretending he doesn't understand. It would be nice if he and my mom could talk to each other without me having to translate all the time though.

The only word Dave really knows is "Tack", Swedish for "Thank you". He gets so used to saying it that he keeps on doing it even once we're back in the U.S. Last time he said "Tack" was to say thanks to the Mexican waiter at our local Mexican joint.

Edited January 22, 2010 by Aya&John

[trillium13 84]

I'm the USC. I ask my husband how to say things in German all the time but I seem to forget most of it because I don't use it.

I can say, "Ich habe eine katze". For some reason I remember that one.

[christeen 966]

I now am fluent in Italian... Which is funny because when I first started going to Italy my husband would translate everything for me, now I realize that his translation skills are not very good and he will sometimes automatically translate something to me and I will say "no, thats not what they said"... But we only spoke English when we met so it is difficult for him to talk with me in Italian... We also both speak Spanish (he is much better) and I speak OK German.

[GabiandVi 34]

In the case of many Africans, their native languages are not necessarily their official languages. My husband speaks several African languages, but French is the official language of his country and the language he was educated in. It's the language we spoke together for the first 6 or 8 months of our relationship.

I would like to learn the African language he speaks with his family, but I don't think I can. It seems to have no consonants, and I know it has five tones. How can you hear tones when a word is multi-syllabic and made up entirely of vowels and semi-vowels? (only a slight exaggeration)

I would like our daughter to learn French, but he equates the language with colonialism and would prefer her to learn Fongbe which is the language he spoke almost exclusively until he started school. But there is no literature in Fongbe and no use for it outside of her African family, which sadly it seems less and less likely we will have the opportunity to visit regularly.

[GabiandVi 34]

I really don't want Dave to learn Swedish, then I couldn't call home and talk about him in front of him. It's so funny to watch him cringe every time I look at him and laugh while I am talking to someone back home. He has been threatening to learn Swedish secretly so he can listen in to all my conversations while pretending he doesn't understand. It would be nice if he and my mom could talk to each other without me having to translate all the time though.

The only word Dave really knows is "Tack", Swedish for "Thank you". He gets so used to saying it that he keeps on doing it even once we're back in the U.S. Last time he said "Tack" was to say thanks to the Mexican waiter at our local Mexican joint.

My husband told me he didn't really speak English when we first met, so we spoke French exclusively for the first half a year of our relationship. Then I started to realize that he was understanding everything I was saying to my friends. What a sh*t! Now we speak English almost exclusively because we were around English speakers more than we were around French speakers. I regret that we switched.

[Dr. Obvious 49]

Yep. I have a bad accent though.

[Pooky 3,343]

I have been in this country now for a little over 4 years and I can speak and understand American fluently.

For those with the mistaken belief that Americans speak English, I can assure you that as an Englishman, working with a Scot, a South African and someone from Boston, if you think we're all speaking the same language, you have got to be f***ing kidding me!

[attaya_girl 1]

I speak French fluently, and speak a little of two other Senegalese languages. I'm learning, though. He's learning English right now, but for now our conversations are mostly French with smatterings of Wolof and Manding. He speaks five languages (not including English) so he doesn't think it's too much to ask for our kids to speak four languages. We'll see. I hope that it works out, but I think to really grasp the languages, they would have to grow up in Senegal.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

I learned enough Tagalog to understand what is being said, at least the topic of the conversation, and who they are talking about, before I went to see my future wife. I was already functional in Spanish, and many of the words are the same. The official languages of the RP are Tagalog and English, but few speak either language without some difficulty. Most Filipinos first language is the local dialect spoken at home, and they learn both Tagalog and English in school. So get two Filipinos together from the same region, and chances are you will have difficulty understanding them, even if you speak the "official" languages. Most of the time, they speak Taglish (English, with a Tagalog grammar), so most Americans will hear a few words they know.

The wife wants our kids to learn the language, but it's their choice as far as I am concerned. I would rather they learn Spanish first.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

I am the USC.. I can speak fluently and I haven't thought about the kids thing.

[Jasman0717 8]

I have enough trouble with English to say nothing of learning Tagalog/Visayan. I was married to a Mexican for 10 years and it took her two years to teach me how to say lettuce - lechuga

[Angel and Gendy 1]

The only things I can say in Visayan are "naughty"..... as the SO puts it....