I was able to maintain relative fluency only in three languages at a time. Switching between more languages is not practical for me. Now I use only four natural languages on a weekly basis. But at various times, I was fluent in five in total.
Я тебе кохаю. Я тебя люблю. Te quiero. Ich liebe dich. I love you.
Before I was five, I spoke mainly my first native Ukrainian (Українська). Then, I lived in a more Russian-speaking city and went to a Russian (Русский) school. By age twelve, I spoke a street dialect of Spanish (Español), while living in Latin America. I started using German (Hochdeutsch) in 1999, and became fully fluent by age twenty-eight, and my decent English fluency came after 2015.
English I studied in schools previously, but the challenge was to unlearn the wrong stuff I acquired elsewhere and to deal with the referential cultural archness of U.S. English. My attempt to revive it and learn standard Castellano fifteen years later was not successful. Now, living in Southern California, I hope to pick up more of it again.
In general, most difficult in operating multiple languages are these three aspects:
- separating the languages clearly in the mind, provided it is difficult to know for me, which language I am currently using - it takes a few seconds to realize;
- switching between thinking modes of approaching live and expressing thoughts base on different concepts of classification of matter and various societal traditions;
- dedicating time for regular immersion.
In the past, I tried to learn French, Chinese, and Japanese - to read poetry in original and to improve my calligraphic stroke, but I did not give myself enough time to achieve much at all. I am also very attracted to Sanskrit, Thai, and Arabic, but life is too short for all languages I want to know well.
