Anybody deaf who can speak multiple languages?

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sheila022

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Hi everybody,

I am a deaf American-born Chinese myself raised in a Chinese speaking household (but family decided to teach/speak to me in English only) . I was implanted when I was 3 years old and had learned to speak English only at that time, but lately, I've started to learn to speak and listen in Chinese. Many times I wished my parents would teach me to speak Chinese when I was a lot younger because it's no fun when you go back to China and people randomly walk up to you in the street and ask me questions in Chinese and that there is a major language barrier between my grandmother, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, and cousins who can't speak English.

So, I'm planning to take Chinese classes at my college and see how it goes, although I do have some rudimentary knowledge of Chinese and are able to speak whatever I have passably, but I want to be able to speak Chinese near fluently. I also had 5 years of experience of learning Spanish in high school and excelling in it...but not much emphasis on conversational aspect in classes, so I just end up acing all of those paper translation/reading/writing part. (Chinese is soo much harder than Spanish!!!!)

I am wondering if there is anybody else deaf and oral who can speak another language fluently or near fluently besides English (no, I don't count ASL). Especially someone at older age like me and learning from scratch. :)
 
Hello Sheila022! My little girl is 4, was implanted at ~2 and 3, and bc she was profoundly deaf from birth never picked up any Chinese while she was in China for her first year. We're focusing on spoken English and ASL right now, and just beginning to work on reading/writing English, but we have dreams of Mandarin immersion someday. We're just not yet certain when is the right time, and whether or not such a tonal language is feasible with CIs (although she's been playing piano for almost 2 years and seems to have a wonderful grasp of pitch). So I love reading that you already have a rudimentary knowledge (so maybe it is possible) and that you think you might pursue more. Post how it goes if you think of it. Best of luck at MIT when you return, I'm right next door.
 
GrendelQ said:
Hello Sheila022! My little girl is 4, was implanted at ~2 and 3, and bc she was profoundly deaf from birth never picked up any Chinese while she was in China for her first year. We're focusing on spoken English and ASL right now, and just beginning to work on reading/writing English, but we have dreams of Mandarin immersion someday. We're just not yet certain when is the right time, and whether or not such a tonal language is feasible with CIs (although she's been playing piano for almost 2 years and seems to have a wonderful grasp of pitch). So I love reading that you already have a rudimentary knowledge (so maybe it is possible) and that you think you might pursue more. Post how it goes if you think of it. Best of luck at MIT when you return, I'm right next door.
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Hi GrendelQ!!! wow, so you are in Boston area! Actually, I had formal Chinese schooling when I was younger, starting around 7-12 years old. I did pick up a lot of Chinese language at that time, including reading and writing. I certainly can speak passable Chinese. The funny thing is, when I speak, I have to memorize tonal language, but when I listen, it's too hard for me to hear tonal language (but if you speak very slowly, I can hear the tone differences not too bad)....so I use context clues which helped me to communicate something simple to my grandma.

I would definitely strongly encourage your daughter to learn a foreign language--Spanish or Chinese. It is absoutely great that your daughter can pick up on the pitch and play piano! Keep it up!

I am not sure about the right time either, but I guess you can try starting at the age I started to learn Chinese formally (around 7-8 years old). You seriously have no idea how many times I wished I can speak and understand Chinese (and being bilingual is always great for marketing yourself for job--no matter what the economy :) )
 
sheila022 said:
Hi GrendelQ!!! wow, so you are in Boston area! Actually, I had formal Chinese schooling when I was younger, starting around 7-12 years old. I did pick up a lot of Chinese language at that time, including reading and writing. I certainly can speak passable Chinese. The funny thing is, when I speak, I have to memorize tonal language, but when I listen, it's too hard for me to hear tonal language (but if you speak very slowly, I can hear the tone differences not too bad)....so I use context clues which helped me to communicate something simple to my grandma.

I would definitely strongly encourage your daughter to learn a foreign language--Spanish or Chinese. It is absoutely great that your daughter can pick up on the pitch and play piano! Keep it up!

I am not sure about the right time either, but I guess you can try starting at the age I started to learn Chinese formally (around 7-8 years old). You seriously have no idea how many times I wished I can speak and understand Chinese (and being bilingual is always great for marketing yourself for job--no matter what the economy :) )
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why did your chinese parents sent you to chinese school, not public or school deaf?
 
I am HOH, and can lipread in both English and Spanish. (Incidentally, I am trying to learn a little Chinese due to a recent marriage in my family, but I'm finding lipreading really hard in Chinese.)

Since I got my new HA's, I am more confident speaking Spanish than I was before.....
 
I speak English and some words in German but I feel I am not very good at pronoucing German words because of my English (American) accent. Lol.
 
Throughout school English and French (in Canada when I was in school we all took French from K-9 then it was an option in grades10-12.)
I attended a "bi track" jr high and high school - which means that in one building there was effectively two schools:
an English school (English language classroom instruction except for French class)
and
a French school (French language instruction in all classes except for English class)

Because of this, even though I was in the "English side" we got all announcements in French and English (or half and half), posters/signs etc where all in French and English and all teachers spoke both languages so many students would flip back and forth between French and English in the halls or when talking etc ... we also spoke a "half and half" pidgin type language called "Franglais" which is an informal combining of English and French together sometimes using English word-ending on French words, &/or French word-endings on English words etc lol.


I was effectively conversationally fluent in French during jr high and high school - but haven't used French much since 95 (high school).

Occasionally I still will read some novels etc in French as a challenge (I'm hoping to do this more often and become fluent in written French again) but can no longer speak it well enough to consider myself even close to fluent
 
i can read french, speak french, but i can no longer understand spoken french. However, i am late deaf and grew up immersion french.
*EQL*
 
I took French in high school Very rusty. Although I can undy my quebecois friend's statuses on Facebook sometimes. Also ASL.
And shelia, CHINESE?!?! Wow....just wow. I'd expect that it would be very difficult for even a hoh kid to speak Chinese b/c it's so tonal!
 
deafdyke said:
I took French in high school Very rusty. Although I can undy my quebecois friend's statuses on Facebook sometimes. Also ASL.
And shelia, CHINESE?!?! Wow....just wow. I'd expect that it would be very difficult for even a hoh kid to speak Chinese b/c it's so tonal!
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Haha, yeah, Chinese. Yes, it is much much more difficult than Spanish, but I think I can do it. When I was in China last year for summer, I tried to speak Chinese with tones and stuff like that....my grandmother and relatives were able to understand me mostly...and I can sort of read lips in Chinese and listen to what they say and use context clues to communicate. But man...it's annoying that Chinese isn't one of the Romance languages. Haha.

I had thought that if i wasn't deaf/HOH, languages could be one of my talents, since I seem to take up on to Spanish so well in high school, I think.
 
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