Re: FINAL QUESTION: your natlangs. Sorry this is the last of the

My first language is English.  The only other language that I have more
than a smattering of is Swedish, since I lived in Sweden for 11 months as
an exchange student (during the first few months of which I took intensive
Swedish lessons every afternoon).  That was ten years ago, but I can still
speak and understand a fair bit, even though I'm pretty rusty.  Recently
I spent a week in northern Norway, and I found I was able to do simple
things like read signs and menus and order food in Norwegian without any
difficulty (actually, when I ordered food I just spoke Swedish with a
few Norwegian words thrown in and everybody understood me).  By the end
of the week I was understanding between 40 and 60 percent of what people
were saying as well.

I also studied German for five years, and became reasonably good at it,
although it never really 'sank in', since I was never in an immersion
situation.  Also, I made the mistake (?) of continuing my German studies
while in Sweden, and thus managed to get the two languages mixed up in
my mind.  (Half the time I couldn't figure out if my teacher was speaking
Swedish or German!)  By the end of my year there, Swedish had won out,
claiming the area of my brain that had previously been reserved for
German, and the latter was irrevocably lost...

I also studied Russian for two years and Mandarin for one year, which
gave me a good appreciation of their structure, and a passing familiarity
with their vocabulary, but nothing even approaching fluency.

As a result of extensive fieldwork with native speakers, I now know quite
a bit of Malagasy as well - but again, my knowledge is confined mostly to
structure, while my vocabulary is fairly limited.

Matt.

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Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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