How people handle multiple languages at the same time

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Buondì.

With the slightly cooler weather, and Bug’s petting zoo open for business again, I’ve resolved to restart daily morning walks.

While I’m walking, I have my Bluetooth earbuds in (if you don’t have any, get some) so can listen to the news highlights on Swedish public radio. That lasts about twenty minutes, after which I listen to France.info until I get home.

So, this morning, after making the switch from Swedish to French, and noticing as always that French is easier, I got to thinking about how people handle multiple languages at the same time.

French is easier for me than Swedish, despite the fact that I’ve been learning (not studying, just learning) Swedish for maybe seven or eight years, because it’s similar to Italian, which I speak every day with Bug, his friends in the park, and their carers.

And obviously, I live in Italy, so there are supermarkets to shop in, neighbours to chat with, and all the day-to-day interactions that life throws at me.

At home I always used to speak English, but now it’s English with Stefi and Italian with Bug, who needs that language more. We’re prepping him for release into the wild, and it’s a fair bet they won’t speak English there…

E poi this week I’ve been working on the other clubs, which still get virtually no traffic as I’ve neglected them for a decade: OnlineFrenchClub.com, OnlineSpanishClub.com and OnlineGermanClub.com.

Ideally I’d like to do all the French listenings, just for the fun of it (I don’t care much about the grammar…) Everything in the Spanish club is of interest, even the grammar, as while I can read the language more or less, my listening skills and basic grammar/vocabulary are weak.

And as regards German, well I’m often embarassed that I know virtually nothing of that language. I’m hopeful that – given the similarities with Swedish – it should be feasible to fix that, without too much effort. Time is – of course – the enemy there.

But back to the point: English and Italian at home, radio in Swedish and French, aspirations to improve Spanish and learn some German, how do people handle multiple languages at the same time?

Well, strictly speaking, it’s not at the same time, is it? Each language has a time and a place of its own, as I’ve described.

If you know any bilingual people (everyone in my immediate family is bilingual except me) you’ll have noticed that they find it hard to switch languages. If they always speak one language at home, it’s very hard to do otherwise. My son Tom (voice of EasyItalianNews.com) speaks lovely Italian, but never with me. He just can’t. My Italian wife is the same – we’ve been together for twenty-eight years and she’s spoken English to me that whole time!

Basically the default setting in our brains is to use whichever language is required (and available) in a given context. If you’re, say, a Malaysian student of Chinese origin, you might speak Malay and English with your college friends but Chinese with your parents and community.

If you then decided to come do an Italian course at our school in Bologna, well, you’d be very welcome! But we’d discourage you from speaking English in class (most Italian schools in Italy offer only Italian-medium teaching), and neither Chinese or Malay would be of much use to you.

Then perhaps you’d fall in love with someone from your class (remember being young??) If this happened early on in your course, you’d end up speaking English to them, neither of you having enough Italian yet. But if your ‘amore’ didn’t know any English (or Chinese or Malay), well it’d have to be Italian, like it our lump it.

Last time I went to the UK, I was queueing for the security checks at the airport for my return flight to Italy when I found myself in the middle of a Turkish family – mum, dad, and maybe three adult kids, who were having a noisy conversation. Someone had done something or said something to upset someone else, mum and dad were trying to sort it out, you know how families are.

I didn’t include Turkish in the description of which languages I use day-to-day, but I spent three years in the country when I was a youth and – just like my fictional, love-struck Malay – ended up with a girl who didn’t speak English. For several years we only spoke Turkish, even after moving to Britain, then to Poland (for my job).

She and I divorced nearly three decades ago and – apart from some online lessons during the pandemic – I’ve barely used the language since.

But CONTEXT!

Time & place!

Mixed up with that family at the airport, their arguments were clear as a bell, their accents just like my ex-wife’s. It was like being involved in a row at home. Weird feeling!

How do people handle multiple languages at the same time?

It’s programed in. Each language has a time and a place, and once it’s established which language goes with which (person) time and place, it just happens.

How to take advantage of your brain’s natural ability to learn and use foreign languages?

Simple! Work on creating a time and a place for the language or languages that interest you.

If your aim is to improve your Italian, which I suppose is why you’re reading this, but you aren’t already regularly listening to Italian, reading Italian, and speaking Italian, then it should be pretty obvious where to begin…

Whatever you do, don’t think of the listening/reading/speaking as ‘studying’, but as establishing a regular time/place when you naturally use the foreign language.

The rest then follows.

When I exercise I listen to Swedish. Always. And on Wednesdays, so in an hour or two from now, perhaps as you’re reading this article, I chat in Swedish online with a pensioner, who’s also a client of our language school and a much better linguist than me.

The pensioner – like a lot of Swedes – speaks excellent English. He studies Italian at C1/advanced level, and told me that years back he reached a similar level in German.

But with me, at this time and in this virtual place – Wednesdays at noon on Zoom – he speaks Swedish.

Sometimes I’ll ask him, what’s this (English) word in Swedish, and he can help. But I rarely, if ever, ask him to translate a Swedish word or phrase into English, as that would intrude on the ‘speak Swedish with Daniel’ routine.

It’s just a matter of getting used to which language goes with which context/person/function, then doing the best you can.

And if you aren’t used to having to switch languages depending on the time/place, you could be if you tried.

It just takes a little time.

Alla prossima settimana!

P.S.

And – as always – here’s a reminder to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com.

EasyItalianNews.com is FREE to read/listen to.

Time and place, remember? Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Be there or be square.

Reading/listening practice will help you consolidate the Italian you’re studying, expand your vocabulary, and build vital comprehension skills.

Subscribing, and so receiving all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news via email each week -on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays – is also FREE.

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