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Linguaholic

Best uses for knowing a second language.


ScratchNSniff

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One of my favorite things to do is speak a foreign language in public. I live in the United States and it's a fair bet anywhere you go that people won't understand the casual foreign language spoken with reasonable proficiency.

I've recently become ’strong' in french, and let me tell you, speaking with a friend in public in another language opens up all sorts of possibilities. It's like a private conversation. You can talk about personal affairs in public, you can talk all the **** you want you want. I know it's incredibly rude, but oh man, is it fun. 

Especially great if it's your significant other and you can say fun dirty things to each other and no ones the wiser.

Anyone else do this?

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I do this sometimes as well, but as I am living in Switzerland, I really need to be careful about what language I am speaking. We speak many languages in Switzerland and in my city 40 % of all the people are foreigners. However, there are not many Asians in my city, so I often end up speaking Chinese (not to myself but on the phone for instance) and usually there is no one around that can speak/understand this language. Chinese is not very popular yet in Switzerland. As far as I know it is much more popular in the States and also in other european languages, such as Italy and Germany!

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I've used other languages before to communicate so that others cannot understand what we are saying. Actually it's often the only real world practice I ever get. When I've been learning other alphabets before like Greek and Cyrillic I've written my diary in English using those scripts so that I can both keep it secret and practice Cyrillic at the same time.

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I have used Spanish in my job, actually knowing it is what helped me get my job so it has been really useful and helpful.  I am studying Mandarin now to go on a trip this summer with some friends.  It is a fun language to learn and I like learning new languages as a hobby.

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For me, knowing more than one language came in handy when I badly needed money but there were openings for translators all over the net. I used my knowledge of foreign languages and a made little dough that kept me going.

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Best use for knowing a second language is being able to communicate with more people. You can make friends with other people who might not otherwise be your pal because of a language barrier. You also get a peek into how individuals not native to your culture live.

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Reading the answers in this thread kinda made me question why I'm learning a third language to begin with...

I don't need to communicate with more people, chances of it coming handy in my work are pretty slim, and I'm not thinking of moving to another country... I guess I'm just in it for the challenge and the new perspective.

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I'll definitely enjoy speaking in Spanish when I move to the Netherlands, specially with my friends :)  I think that will open a world of possibilities for me, because I will be able to talk about several things in public and hopely will  bond even more with my Spanish speaking friends, specially if they are also coming from Mexico.

By the way, I also enjoy speaking English in public in my own country, because even tho we live next to the US, not many people know English.  So I can freely speak English with my boyfriend, since I'm almost certain most people around us will not even know what we are talking about.  Speaking a foreigner language in public is quite fun :)

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I guess that's one of the best uses of knowing a foreign language, but you can never be too sure though if the person next to you happens to understand what you're saying, so I still will converse cautiously! Apart from that, it enriches your knowledge, and you can get a better high paying job if you know another language.

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Reading the answers in this thread kinda made me question why I'm learning a third language to begin with...

I don't need to communicate with more people, chances of it coming handy in my work are pretty slim, and I'm not thinking of moving to another country... I guess I'm just in it for the challenge and the new perspective.

Well, knowing one more language is always an advantage. We'll never know when we need it but when we do we'll be glad that we did.

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I am Portuguese and English is very important as you can all imagine. I use it a lot at work because I work at a university and we have a lot of foreign students and teachers. Also when going abroad, English is a language that everyone knows.

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I think it's important if you want to get a job in which it could help you, or if you want to date and have a relationship with someone from another country. It's also good for self-fulfillment or if you would like to travel to or move to another country.

I don't think I would personally feel comfortable speaking another language in public for the sheer purpose of saying things that I didn't want other people to hear. It gets on my nerves when I hear people do it, and it's usually pretty clear when it's being done.

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