Re: Quadrilingual

From: Miguel Carrasquer (mcv_at_wxs.nl)
Date: 09/21/04 

Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 00:29:04 +0200

On 21 Sep 2004 10:36:09 -0700, tor826@yahoo.com (Tor) wrote:

>The main point of my posting was to describe the hurdles that I
>encountered in a truly multilingual environment, and to describe how I
>managed to overcome most of those hurdles. (I forgot to mention that
>my brother and sister had very similar, if not identical problems.)
>But I welcome the testimony of Miguel and mb, who did not experience
>the same frustration and lack of fluency that I experienced as a
>child. Miguel is obviously more gifted than I, and mb may be too.
>(I'm amazed at the breadth and depth of Miguel's knowledge, but I
>don't always agree with his arguments.)

Needless to say, I won't deny that I have an above average
interest in, and talent for languages. I'd say my brothers
and sister are about average in that respect. Also, being
younger than me, they were exposed to Dutch earlier than I
was (especially my youngest brother, who is 4 years younger,
i.e. started to speak when I was already fluent in Dutch).
I don't think any of them ever had much problems with the
multilingual environment, certainly not with respect to
fluency in Dutch (which is the language we still speak among
ourselves). Fluency in Spanish (which for the most part we
spoke only with our (grand)parents) probably tended to
deteriorate over the years, although I myself, as I said,
made a conscious effort to improve it, my sister moved to
Spain (Catalonia) with my parents --her Catalan is better
than her Spanish now--, and my brother in Paris married an
Argentinian girl. My youngest brother, who lives here in
Holland, is again the exception. His Spanish is still
fluent enough, but I don't think it could pass muster as
"native".

One thing my mother insisted on was sending us to normal
Dutch schools (my father had toyed with the idea of sending
us to a French or other Intenational school). What kind of
school did you attend?

What's wrong with my arguments? :-)

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@wxs.nl

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