My Catalan is much better than my Spanish, which can sometime lead to problems in restaurants!
Tell me about it! I'm a bit of a mixer myself but I grew up a child of immigrants, in New Zealand. I moved here to Catalunya to be with my husband, who is Catalan. My intention has always been to learn both languages and, of course, my husband and his family and friends all speak both but the truth is that my Catalan has progressed and my Spanish hasn't.
Basically, because Catalan is what we speak to each other every day and I also took advantage of the free government run classes. I'm now at the second level of classes and they cost but it's a token amount, really. However, I only found out recently that there are cheap government run Spanish classes too but they only start annually (whereas the Catalan classes run throughout the year), so I have to wait till September for those.
At the end of the day, though, for me (despite my language obsession) it's hard to learn two language simultaneously.
It is a problem when I go to places where people can't or won't speak Catalan - my understanding is slooowly getting better but I still can't produce more than a few phrases.
Having said that, I'll have lived here for a year, come April, and I'm already far more functional than I ever was in Mandarin, so I guess immersion works! My Da's coming over for a visit next month, though, and I've asked him to bring my Chinese books over because I'd like to get back into that, once I have a handle on the Catalan and Spanish, but we don't quite have the funds to ship all of my books over from NZ!
Tell me about it!
I'm a bit of a mixer myself but I grew up a child of immigrants, in New Zealand. I moved here to Catalunya to be with my husband, who is Catalan.
My intention has always been to learn both languages and, of course, my husband and his family and friends all speak both but the truth is that my Catalan has progressed and my Spanish hasn't.
Basically, because Catalan is what we speak to each other every day and I also took advantage of the free government run classes. I'm now at the second level of classes and they cost but it's a token amount, really. However, I only found out recently that there are cheap government run Spanish classes too but they only start annually (whereas the Catalan classes run throughout the year), so I have to wait till September for those.
At the end of the day, though, for me (despite my language obsession) it's hard to learn two language simultaneously.
It is a problem when I go to places where people can't or won't speak Catalan - my understanding is slooowly getting better but I still can't produce more than a few phrases.
Having said that, I'll have lived here for a year, come April, and I'm already far more functional than I ever was in Mandarin, so I guess immersion works! My Da's coming over for a visit next month, though, and I've asked him to bring my Chinese books over because I'd like to get back into that, once I have a handle on the Catalan and Spanish, but we don't quite have the funds to ship all of my books over from NZ!
Er...enough babble. Nice to meet you. :)
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