# Landmarks / milestones in learning a language



## mally pense

Whether the process of learning a language is gradual or progesses in spurts or bursts, without doubt there are always momemts when you suddenly realise that you can now do, understand or perceive things that you weren't before, or in a way that you weren't before.

If I may refer to these as the landmarks or milestones in learning a new language, this is my intented topic for discussion here, but why? Well rather than primarily providing an opportunity for gloating ("crowing over one's achievements" as the English expression puts it), it is really my hope that bringing a variety of such landmarks out in a discussion might be useful to other people also learning a language so that they can compared their progress against these informal landmarks. I think this is particularly useful when the learning process does feel very slow and gradual, and it's easy to feel that you aren't making progress at all. Having a list of potential landmarks to look out for may provide reassurance that you are indeed making progress, howewer little you may appreciate the improvements from day to day.

It may also provide a useful adjunct to those taking formal qualifications in a language - real world markers of progress rather than merely academic, or particularly for those of us who are only learning a language informally, it will perhaps provide some sort of checklist against which we can monitor our overall progress.

Above all though, it will be interesting to simply hear the sort of things that have happened to people to make them suddenly realise that their understanding and use of a language has moved on to a new level. These may be just little things indicating tiny steps of progress, or more significant realisations of whole new phases of appreciation of a language. 

Whatever, please let me know the sort of landmarks and milestones you've discovered in your journeys in a new language, and, despite my remark in the second paragraph, please don't feel averse to a little "crowing" (which is perhaps unavoidable/inevitable) provided your experience is in some way of interest here.

I should probably give some examples from my own experience, but perhaps it's better to leave this initial post just as a neutral introduction to the discussion for now.


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## scotu

I agree that this is an very interesting topic for exploration. I posted some milestones for me in another thread and repete them here to help get this one started:



> Originally Posted by scotu
> Very interesting question! For me there were a three "bursts/milestones":
> 1. When I could travel in a country and speak the language well enough to get a room, a meal, a date, a drink, a ticket, ask where the bathrooms were, etc.
> 2. When I could actually carry on a meaningful conversation with a local.
> 3. When I could understand a TV program without translating in my mind.


4. who knows???; I haven't got there yet! I still have a long way to go in the process of learning the language. This forum has helped me lots and I am very thankful for it.


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## Maeskizzle

What a fun question.
A couple of landmarks:
1 when your internal dialogue switches languages on you and you begin thinking in the language you are learning (if only in patches)
2 in the case of an immersion, when you forget a word in your original language, or the foreign language word comes to you first
3 dreaming in a foreign language
4 when you learn specific expressions that you prefer in the foreign language and you just can´t express in your native tongue

a specific landmark for me was:
when I was watching the Spanish gameshow "pasapalabra" (literally pass word or skip word) with my two Spanish flatmates and I came up with the words sometimes before they did.
I can´t remember super well how it was, but in pasapalabra the host would say the first letter of the word and the definition and the contestants had to guess the words.


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## scotu

Is there a stage when it's your new native language and no longer a foreign language?


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## mochilero

One of my few, small milestones was when I started to use a monolingual Spanish dictionary rather than an English-Spanish one. Of course, I didn't stop using the dual-language one. But I use the mono one first.


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## mally pense

Fascinating contributions so far, and some definite overlap with my own experiences. During the time that I've been thinking about starting this thread (maybe two weeks now), I've thought of all sorts of milestones and even prepared mental lists. Ironically, right now, I can hardly think of any, but not to worry, I'm sure they'll come back to me!

Here's just a couple though: A little one, but still significant in terms of personal satisfaction, was having a native speaker mishear something another native speaker had said (and asking for it to be repeated) when I myself had understood correctly first time round. Silly perhaps to mark this down as a milestone, but it's a little like Maeskizzle sometimes getting the words in the game right before his Spanish flatmates. Definite cause for hope!

However, one of the big ones for me was suddenly realising that French people were no longer speaking in a foreign accent, or at least in an accent that no longer sounded foreign to me. At first I thought this was because I'd had a very long break from learning French (20 years maybe) and that the French themselves had "toned down" their accent in the intervening time. I now realise this is a little unlikely (to say the least), and rather it was just that on returning to the language, its sounds had somehow with time entrenched themselves in my linguistic circuits and were no longer registering as "foreign". I'd be interested to know if this is something that other people have experienced. Most likely it is a normal part of the process?


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## avok

mally pense said:


> Above all though, it will be interesting to simply hear the sort of things that have happened to people to make them suddenly realise that their understanding and use of a language has moved on to a new level. These may be just little things indicating tiny steps of progress, or more significant realisations of whole new phases of appreciation of a language.
> 
> Whatever, please let me know the sort of landmarks and milestones you've discovered in your journeys in a new language,


 
A nice yet a difficult question to answer. 
Firstly, I do not think one is able to give such a specific date or a certain landmark in their journey through a new language. It is a bit like becoming a man out of your own childhood. When does a man become a man? I would not know!

Nevertheless, I can say that the only indication for me would be the "feeling" of a new language. The very moment I "feel" that I speak a foreign language, I do speak a foreign language.


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## mally pense

Here's another one while I think of it (I may forget again!):

While practicing talking French (just random stuff, anything, not a script or exercise), finding yourself switching in mid sentence back to English and ending up talking French exactly like the archetypical French person speaking English - including accidentally using French words and struggling to find the right words in English! Now that's odd, because obviously you know the words in English, but in a French frame of mind, they're no longer there at the forefront of the consciousness.

The other notable thing about this is that without trying, the rhythm and pronunciations (and mispronunciations) are all there, along with the tendency to introduce the same little grammatical errors that might be typical of a French person speaking English. And this is all more or less on automatic pilot, without consciously trying. So much so in fact that it really took me by surprised when it first happened.

Again, I'd be interested to know if this is something other people have experienced, and if it's something you've not tried, give it a go now and see what happens. Best to switch languages mid sentence for maximum effect I find!


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## mally pense

avok said:


> A nice yet a difficult question to answer.
> Firstly, I do not think one is able to give such a specific date or a certain landmark in their journey through a new language. It is a bit like becoming a man out of your own childhood. When does a man become a man? I would not know!
> 
> Nevertheless, I can say that the only indication for me would be the "feeling" of a new language. The very moment I "feel" that I speak a foreign language, I do speak a foreign language.


 
Very good point, though I think the thing about the landmark is not necessarily _when_ something happened, but when you first _realised_, perhaps retrospectively, that it had. Yes, the process of becoming a man is gradual, but at some point perhaps, some little thing may happen to trigger the realisation that you are now in fact a man, not the child you once were.

I'm fascinated about the "feeling" thing, and I think that perhaps it is something that still lies ahead for me (I _do_ still have a long way to go!) because it's not something that at the moment I'm not immediately identifying with.

Mally


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## scotu

avok said:


> Nevertheless, I can say that the only indication for me would be the "feeling" of a new language. The very moment I "feel" that I speak a foreign language, I do speak a foreign language.


 
For me it was/is the opposite, When I first studied the language for traveling and someone asked "¿Hablas español?, I would say "Si, yo hablo" (that must have raised some eyebrows) Now that I can communicate fairly well I'm only willing to to say "Si, muy poco" ...I guess because now I know that I still have much more to do than what I've already done. 

Another thing I've noticed is that the learning increments come much slower. When I only knew 500 words the second 500 doubled my skill. Now 500 more words only provide a marginal increase in skill. The good news is that new words come eaisly, rapidly and, more often than not, passively.


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## avok

mally pense said:


> Very good point, though I think the thing about the landmark is not necessarily _when_ something happened, but when you first _realised_, perhaps retrospectively, that it had. Yes, the process of becoming a man is gradual, but at some point perhaps, some little thing may happen to trigger the realisation that you are now in fact a man, not the child you once were.


 
OK then, I guess I must have realised that I speak English when I discovered I no longer need subtitles when I watch American sit-coms. 

I realised I speak Portuguese just when I started threads in this very language in the Portuguese forum.

But with all those "realisations" came along the "feeling". 



> I'm fascinated about the "feeling" thing, and I think that perhaps it is something that still lies ahead for me (I _do_ still have a long way to go!) because it's not something that at the moment I'm not immediately identifying with.


 
It is something personal, I guess. I give pretty much importance (maybe more than is necessary) to feelings and awareness. Thus, I have to feel in order to understand where I stand. And language learning is a process which is so human there it touches my feelings.


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## timpeac

I share many of the landmarks mentioned above, so won't repeat them - but one that was dear to me was when I realised I was listening along to the language and understanding without having my brain whirring at a hundred miles an hour (kind of "passively" understanding) - and able to make a mental note of those words which I didn't understand.


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## TimLA

Another great thread by Mally Pense!

From my personal experience with more than one other language:

1. Can I understand the basics?
What did he say? I should turn left or right? The toilet is in the back or front? eggs or bones?

2. Can I communicate the basics?
I would like some water. I want to go to Dallas.
Where the heck's the bathroom?! We are leaving tomorrow.

3. Can I understand 95% of "regular" conversation (not idiomatic, not intellectual).

4. Can I do "OK" with my pocket dictionary? (It was ALWAYS there! )

5. Do I feel confident enough with grammar and do I have enough vocabulary to leave my dictionary at the hotel? 

6. Can I sit at a table with all natives and carry on a nice, yet imperfect conversation?


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## Chaska Ñawi

All of the above are good examples of landmarks.

The telephone is also a good source of landmarks.  There is your first telephone conversation, even though you probably have to give it your total concentration and still miss parts of the dialogue.  Then then there is that milestone telephone conversation when you're so comfortable in the target language that you realize afterward that you were multitasking. 

I used to have to close my eyes and focus intently when speaking on the phone.  Now it's like a conversation in English, where I doodle, look out the window and worry about Dutch elm disease, discover new and improved dust bunnies, et cetera.


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## mally pense

First telephone conversations are certainly memorable, if only because there's a certain amount of mental build-up involved before 'taking the plunge'. I think perhaps there are two categories here though: one is the sort of call you make to book a hotel room or something similar, in which you have a relatively fixed agenda and reasonable knowledge of the essential vocabulary in advance _(hopefully!)_, and the other is an informal conversational call in which the subject matter and vocabulary are essentially unknown at the outset. I think both represent milestones in their own way - and both just a little scary first time round!

I started using msn earlier this year to 'chat' _(text, not voice, though I have also been using skype for the latter too)_, and another real milestone for me was getting to the end of long msn conversation _(over an hour)_ without resorting to using a dictionary at any stage. And that just happened by itself, not as a result of some sort of challenge I'd set myself. I was quite pleased when I realised.

In some ways, using voice is easier because there's no worries about typing accents or getting the spelling right, and also in a way it's easier because you have to go with what you already know, however imperfect or limited: there's no scope for quickly looking things up like there is in a text conversation or in a forum. In some ways, that makes it more productive and useful, but it's certainly a very different kind of landmark to a text-based interaction, and an important one too I feel.


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## sniffrat

Mally, I won't "crow over my achievements" as you wisely suggest. My achievements (such as they are) hardly warrant it. However, I have been tuning up this old trumpet for some time now...

After 2 years studying Spanish on my own, I took the plunge and found a private teacher. We met, exchanged pleasantries and then she asked me:

"Quieres un vaso de agua?" (Do you want a glass of water?)

To my amazement I understood instantly - without translating. As clearly as if she had asked in English . Okay, not exactly rocket science but I realized at that moment - _I can DO this!_. 

In a subsequent lesson I had to tell her about a film that I had watched. After 5 minutes of Spanish I had to deliver the "punchline" - the humerous outcome. She laughed instantly and spontaneously. _I can DO this! _

Then she told me about a film that she had watched. She spoke natural Spanish for 5 minutes. I understood 95% of what she told me.

Being a WR addict also helps immensly. Negative imperatives? No problem. Pluperfect subjuctive? Bring it on. Irregular participles? I can spot 'em a mile away.

Sniff


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## viera

I have fond memories of my first year of learning French in grade 5 in a bilingual school in Toronto. 
It was total immersion in a class full of French-Canadians. Two landmarks stick in my mind.

There was the thrill of discovering that the word the teacher used all the time, which to me sounded like mec-mac, short and pithy, was actually the incredibly long _maintenant_ which I had encountered in written form. I remember excitedly explaining my discovery to my sister who was in the same class.

At the end of the first term we had exams, as usual. One of these was French composition for which I wrote a short paragraph in French, no more than 5 or 6 lines. It was a tramautic experience: I was sure my text was awful, full of mistakes, and that the teacher would tell me off. Sure enough, she called me up to her desk ... and questioned me about who had helped me write my composition, was I sure I had done it on my own, hadn't I cheated?  What a relief! I knew then I was on the right track.


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## EmilyD

One landmark for me is being able to communicate with young  children in Spanish.

I refer to being able to understand their expressions AND expressing my questions, comments, etc. to them meaningfully.

When a young Puerto Rican boy asked me, "?* Donde aprendiste el ingles*?"...
I felt both "success"(having just interpreted his echocardiogram) and sadness...

Thank you for this topic, mally pense and for all the responses,
_
Nomi_


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## AGATHA2

Hi Mally Pense

could it be a landmark choosing as your nick name the french motto of an english chivalry order (honni soit qui mal y pense )


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## mally pense

AGATHA2 said:


> Hi Mally Pense
> 
> Could it be a landmark choosing as your nick name the French motto of an English chivalry order (honi soit qui mal y pense)?


 
Oddly enough, it's far less of a landmark than another name-related event:

In 'real life', I'm known to my friends as 'Mally' or just 'Mal'. The first time I ever set foot on French soil was as a student with a barely-scraped 'O' Level pass in French to guide me. After stepping off the ferry and making my way with a friend to a main road out of town, we set about hitching a lift. My friend was a little nervous about the language, but I told him not to worry, I'd handle all of that. A short while later, a young lady stopped and offered us a lift. Once we were safely in the car, completely bypassing everything I'd ever learned at school, I introduced myself: _"Je suis Mal"_....

This was a landmark of sorts, and certainly one that taught me something of a lesson. It's not exactly what I had in mind when I started this thread though.....

_(I have my own personalised version of that motto in my Biography by the way. There's not a lot else there, so please don't be too disappointed if you choose to take a look)._


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## scotu

I just remembered another milestone; when I could tell a joke and people understood it and gave me a genuine laugh, instead of one of those laughs where you don't really get the joke but you laugh just to be polite.


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## Chaska Ñawi

Another milestone for me was identifying people's origins by their accent.  I remember feeling inordinately proud of myself the first time I nailed an accent, after I'd been living in Mexico long enough to identify people from the D.F. and from Oaxaca.

Of course, I can only nail those origins if I've been exposed to that form of speech for a while.  I'd never be able to pinpoint accents as being Cameroon French or Cuban Spanish, for example.  Another milestone to work towards!


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## curly

My favorite memory is that of my girlfriend's face when I beat her at Scrabble in her native tongue/language.


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## mally pense

curly said:


> My favorite memory is that of my girlfriend's face when I beat her at scrabble in her native tongue.


 
I hope you weren't "crowing over this achievement"! It sounds a little as if you might have been 

Seriously, this obviously highlights another aspect of language acquisition, though perhaps if this is something that had been getting closer to happening on several previous games, perhaps it is less of a landmark in the sense of a sudden realisation of progress than an achievement of something you'd been working toward.


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## mally pense

We've had a great number of landmarks contributed to this discussion so far, and perhaps it would be interesting to explore a little more those which are purely personal _(not having a foreign girlfriend, I can't really explore Curly's Scrabble scenario!)_, and those which some or all of us share, or will do when we reach the corresponding point in our progress.

From my own point of view, I'm interested to know if this landmark of a foreign language suddenly no longer sounding foreign _(or at least, not quite so foreign)_ happens to everyone, or is it perhaps a factor of me having resumed the language after a long gap?

Note: Any _detailed_ discussion on this particular point would perhaps be better in its own thread, so for the moment, just an indication of whether other people have (or have not) observed it as a landmark would suffice.


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## mochilero

Some time ago, two people walked past me and as they moved off I was thinking about what I'd overheard. Then a few seconds later, I realised they'd been speaking Spanish. I guess that comes under the heading of a language no longer sounding foreign.


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## brau

First of all, my congratulations to mally pense for coming up with this! 

- The first of these "landmarks" that I can remember was when I realised I could tell if someone was American or British quickly. It was really the first time that I said to myself "Hey boy, if you can do this, you must be _really_ making progress.

- When I was speaking Italian and the person I was talking to said she hadn't realised I was not Italian until like 2 minutes into the interview.

- ANY TIME when I naturally say something in another language that would follow a different construction in my native tongue. This is the first real example I can think of: I remember, when I was in England, having some problems trying to open a tin, and someone asking me "Have you tried with a knife?", and me answering without thinking "Yes, but it won't open". I remember standing there with a silly smile on my face, because I hadn't said (what's more, it hadn't even crossed my mind) "Yes, but it doesn't open", which is the literal translation for the Spanish "Sí, pero no se abre" or Catalan "Si, però no s'obri".

- When I listen to old songs I've listened my whole life and I understand them, or I understand some bits I didn't understand before. This is a very recurrent one. And hey, the pleasure is immense.


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## Porteño

For me the greatest milestone is when you wake up one morning and realize you are thinking in the other language. You can have no idea when the transformation actually occurred but it is an incredible feeling.


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## ireney

For me, one of the landmarks is when (and it has happened to me and I was so proud!) you feel like your brain is so much gooey sludge and you are so tired that you can hardly think in your own language and up pops a foreigner (a lost tourist in my case) and you can give him directions and information in a clear and concise way (minus some problems in my case with left and right but that's mild dyslexia at work  ).

Being quite drunk and being able to have a screaming conversation in a bar with loud music is another milestone I think. At least that's how I felt (the next day after lots of coffee and an aspirin or two) when I thought back to the conversation with an American acquaintance of mine over the pros and cons of various Greek islands when it came to finding a place to a) take his fiancee b) take his parents.

I hope my next milestone report will be when I resurrect this thread some decades from now and proudly say that I no longer find the English prepositions a devilish scheme to thwart foreigners' efforts to speak English correctly.


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## mally pense

ireney said:


> Being quite drunk and being able to have a screaming conversation in a bar with loud music is another milestone I think.


 
I can relate to that _(I suspect many of us can!) _though in my case it would have been "very" rather than "quite". It would also have been rather more years ago than I care to remember, and sadly, owing to my inebriated condition at the time, my memories of those occasions are rather more hazy than I _should _care to admit, though I do vaguely remember it being very liberating throwing off the shackles of linguistic constraint that very often prevent us saying _anything_ we're not fully sure of beforehand.

Definitely a milestone experience for anyone I think, but not one with any particular significance in terms of actual progress in a language. A little drink and you're bound to think you're doing rather better than you actually are I suspect!


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## ireney

Well when you are very drunk yes, I agree; I mean when you are quite drunk you don't really care how you speak do you (regardless of which language you utter whatever you utter  )?

When however you are "quite" drunk (at least the way I perceive "quite" in this case) you have perfect recollection of words and actions and you are able of coherent speech  . However, I do think that when having a pleasant buzz in addition to being surrounded by loud music (especially if that music is not in the language you try to communicate at) is a milestone. You are still self-conscious and afraid of the possible mistakes you might make but a) alcohol reduces your concentration abilities b) the music gets in the way of the inner rehearsal of the next sentence.

You have to have reached a better level  in the language you are learning than the one you might think you have in order to carry a meaningful conversation in that state and place (by meaningful I don't mean "how do you like Greece?" kind of conversation.  )

Don't confuse it with the "I'm home take me drunk" condition of "I'm speaking gibberish and I can't even realise it and I don't care! Hooray!" state many of us have been through. This one has nothing to do with linguistics and everything to do with moderating how much you will drink in the future (hopefully) or at least swear you will drink in the future till the next weekend.


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## mally pense

You are right of course. All very beautifully expressed.


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## Chaska Ñawi

Irene's story reminds me of a joyous moment during a youth exchange.  A trio of young New Brunswickers decided, given that the Bolivian participants seemed able to ingest any amount of alcohol without obvious effects, to test the limits of one participant.  They took turns coming up with a pair of beer bottles, offering one to my friend and chugging the other.

After an hour, the three boys were passed out around a picnic table.  My friend, whose English had hitherto been limited to words like "yes", "no", and "beer", was quite conscious and coherent.  Yes, he was wearing only his underpants .... but he was speaking clear, fluent and very idiomatic English for the first and only time during the entire seven-month exchange.


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## Maeskizzle

I thought of another milestone.

When you are seated at a table with a bunch of locals speaking a foreign language and you are able to understand most of what is being discussed.  Since the person who is talking constantly varies, you have to get used to different speakers.  Also you have to pick up on the change of the topic of conversation, and be able to concentrate on one discussion if there are several going on at once.


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## SwissPete

Chaska Ñawi said:


> All of the above are good examples of landmarks.
> 
> The telephone is also a good source of landmarks. There is your first telephone conversation, even though you probably have to give it your total concentration and still miss parts of the dialogue. Then then there is that milestone telephone conversation when you're so comfortable in the target language that you realize afterward that you were multitasking.


 
Indeed! I remember dreading having to answer the phone, until one day I realized I was doing it without thinking.

As an aside, perhaps not totally on the subject of this thread: I will always do math in my mother language...


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## mally pense

SwissPete said:


> As an aside, perhaps not totally on the subject of this thread: I will always do math in my mother language...


 
Maybe so, but then if you ever DO find yourself doing maths in a foreign tongue, that will be quite some landmark!


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## Cracker Jack

Hi mp.  This is a lovely thread you have started.  I will not talk about my milestones in my steep course in language learning. Here are some landmarks I would consider:

1. Deliver lectures
2. Exchange cuss words, trade barbs with a native speaker or better pick a fight with a native and giving him a dose of his own medicine.
3. Maintain a phone conversation without having only to say yes, no, I see, etc but able to express arguments
4. Speak spontaneously using argot where appropriate without thinking of what to say next.
5. Receive compliments about one's ability to communicate from a native speaker.


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## jinti

One milestone for me was remembering the content of conversations without being able to remember what language we had been speaking at the time.  It meant that I was finally focused on _what_ was being said instead of _how_ it was being said.


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## tom_in_bahia

mally pense said:


> Here's just a couple though: A little one, but still significant in terms of personal satisfaction, was having a native speaker mishear something another native speaker had said (and asking for it to be repeated) when I myself had understood correctly first time round. Silly perhaps to mark this down as a milestone, but it's a little like Maeskizzle sometimes getting the words in the game right before his Spanish flatmates. Definite cause for hope!



This one has happened to me here in Brazil, on a few occasions. One thing I've come to realize is that I've started to pick up a register separation for Portuguese. Where, I realize that with many of my close friends I'm picking up a distinct register of the language from Minas Gerais, and with the people who I'm acquainted with or who I need to do business with, I'm using a more "standard" register. On one occasion, a woman from São Paulo was having trouble understanding a street vendor who had a particularly rural accent and I was able to clarify the word she wasn't understanding. I remember thinking that was insanity because it's not my native language.

Another thing I've noticed was interference. I remember when I lived in Spain, I started to dream in Spanish and then Spanish started to conquer some of my English patterns. Whether this is good or not is not the question, but it should some level of adherence. The same has happened now to me in Portuguese with intonation levels and stress patterns.

Edit: I was reading about and I remember trying to help a foreigner (a french couple to be precise) who didn't speak Portuguese. My French isn't that great, but I understand it very well. I remember that when they were telling me something, it was going straight to Portuguese without having to leap through English first. And when I couldn't remember a word, I was considering the possibilities out loud to myself in Portuguese instead of English.


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## Philippa

jinti said:


> One milestone for me was remembering the content of conversations without being able to remember what language we had been speaking at the time.  It meant that I was finally focused on _what_ was being said instead of _how_ it was being said.


Yes, this is a nice one! Cool thread!


TimLA said:


> ...
> 5. Do I feel confident enough with grammar and do I have enough vocabulary to leave my dictionary at the hotel?
> ...


And this is a good one too - it's about being confident (or foolhardy!) enough to explain the word you don't know with other words (or actions!). I think I'm going back past this milestone the wrong way - I was just wondering whether I should buy a little SpEn dictionary for a trip to Spain next month!
Saludos desde Reading
Philippa


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## Suehil

One landmark for me was realising that the fact that I was finding my pocket dictionary woefully inadequate was because I no longer needed to look up common words.


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## LaLoquita

Hi everyone,

The milestone that meant the most to me was the first time I read a complete novel in Spanish. (_Nada,_ by Carmen Laforet, when I was in college) I felt such a sense of accomplishment at having read it through and understanding it! 

However, my favorite story to tell is about when I spent a semester studying at a private university in Mexico City as part of a requirement for foreign language majors at my college. One day in September I went with a group of Mexican young people to a nearby small town, sightseeing, eating, celebrating the holiday. We spent the whole day together, and towards the end of the day, as we were walking back to our vehicles, one young man started walking with me and asked me where I had learned to speak English. English! Keeping a straight face, I said, "Oh, I went to school in the United States."  (I didn't tell him that it was from kindergarten through college, much less that I had been born and raised there!) He said, "You speak it really well." Oh, it was sooooo hard to keep from laughing out loud, but I had to keep up the act! 
Inside I was jumping up and down and screaming, "I did it! I did it! The natives think I'm native!" On the outside, I just smiled and thanked him for the compliment!

This happened again a couple of years later in a different Mexican city--same question, same answer! Twenty years later remembering how I fooled the native speakers makes me laugh!


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## Don Esteban

I have had some of the same experiences you guys have had.  The wierdest ones having to do with my own mind switching between languages without me realizing it or saying something in English using Spanish grammar, and like someone else said before, trying to convey an expression from Spanish into English and not being able to.  

Also no more subtitles needed when watching novellas with my wife (she's a native) and the best of all...correcting my wife and her family when they use a word or expression incorrectly (they hate me for that).  One that drives me absolutely nuts is when they say that something "no hace sentido".  Sounds like spanglish to me.


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## Outsider

Don Esteban said:


> One that drives me absolutely nuts is when they say that something "no hace sentido".  Sounds like spanglish to me.


Could it be a Latin American regionalism?


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## Don Esteban

_Could it be a Latin American regionalism?_

I don't think so because they always shake their heads and tell me that yes I am correct. 

I also subscribed to all of the spanish channels on my cable service and have spent years watching and listening to different accents from different countries and have never heard anyone else make that same mistake, but I obviously could be wrong on that one. 

This also made me think about one of the posts here talking about being able to distinguish between accents. I too can now tell you which country someone is from by hearing their spanish. Some countries are a little more difficult as they don't have a monster accent like Dominicans or people from Argentina (by far my favorite accent of them all, che!!) but for the most part I can nail it after a few seconds of hearing someone speak.


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## Grosvenor1

In my case, my first language is English (with a Central Belt Scottish accent) and I have several acquired second languages. The first second language I became fluent in and studied at university was German. With that, my landmark was when I watched a TV drama about Martin Luther while studying in Germany, and I suddenly realised that I understood just about everything the actors were saying. Prior to that, I would pick up the thread, lose it, pick it up when watching TV.  

Other milestones are more gradual, like reading a newspaper or magazine or book in the second language and needing to consult a dictionary less and less, finding it easier and easier to make a phone call and not fear that the person at the other end will be incomprehensible etc.


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## brau

Don Esteban said:


> Some countries are a little more difficult as they don't have a monster accent like Dominicans or people from Argentina


 
Really? I would say Argentinians and Dominicans have two of the most easily recognizable accents of Spanish, probably along with Mexicans and Spaniards.

By the way, another milestone I thought of is when you're able to speak fluently in another language in a situation of extreme anger. I usually can't find the words even in my own language when I'm angry, so when I do it in English or Italian it kind of make me feel good.


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## Nil-the-Frogg

My main landmarks so far have been when I:

1) Managed to read a full chapter from Terry Pratchet and understand it (but I was exhausted)
2) Managed to read a full book in English (it was a collection of Heroic Fantasy novellas)
3) Wrote a text in English without a single thought in French along the way
4) An American reader told me he had not realized my two pages long text had not been written by a native. I still suspect he had not read it very carefully, but it still was a milestone


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## Don Esteban

brau said:


> Really? I would say Argentinians and Dominicans have two of the most easily recognizable accents of Spanish, probably along with Mexicans and Spaniards.


 
That's what I said, that Dominicans and Argentinians have a "monster" accent (along with spaniards) and that some of the other countries that don't have that "monster" accent are a little tougher for me to place.  

Grathias


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## Etcetera

A nice question. 

Here's my version:

1. When you can understand sentences and whole texts in the language without translating it into your native language.

2. When you can hold a meaningful conversation.

3. When you can write texts without consulting with your textbooks and speak freely without thinking over each two words. In other words, when writing and speaking comes naturally and you can rely on your intuition rather than tables in your textbooks.

4. When you can read a book without a dictionary - there can still be unknown words, but you can guess their meaning from the context and even if you can't, you still can understand the meaning of the sentence/paragraph. 

5. When thinking in the target language becomes natural for you.


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## mally pense

Wow, I wish I could have achieved all those landmarks at your age! Maybe if I could have discovered the University of Word Reference at the time, but it was a couple of decades (at least) before it came into being.... 

Just to add to my own personal recollection of landmarks which have had some significance for me, one was understanding my first joke in French, or at least thinking I understood it. It made me laugh anyway, so I guess that counts. I'm still working on actually constructing a joke in French - I've had couple of attempts but I'm not entirely sure they were successful.....


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## Etcetera

mally pense said:


> Wow, I wish I could have achieved all those landmarks at your age! Maybe if I could have discovered the University of Word Reference at the time, but it was a couple of decades (at least) before it came into being....


Let me add one more landmark: When you don't feel that native speakers' compliments are just nice words.



> Just to add to my own personal recollection of landmarks which have had some significance for me, one was understanding my first joke in French, or at least thinking I understood it. It made me laugh anyway, so I guess that counts. I'm still working on actually constructing a joke in French - I've had couple of attempts but I'm not entirely sure they were successful.....


Yes, understanding jokes is just another landmark, and very important. 
The ability to solve riddles in foreign language can also count as one, but riddles seem to be something too special - quite frankly, I'm not very good at solving riddles in English, but then, I'm every bit as awful at solving riddles in my native Russian!


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## mally pense

Anna-Leia _(only just noticed your name!)_



> Let me add one more landmark: When you don't feel that native speakers' compliments are just nice words.


 
Very perceptive. Actually it's difficult enough in text anyway to decipher the subtleties of meanings, to do so in a foreign language doubly so (I imagine!) 

If I could add another one (which relies on a third party rather than your own perceptions): When a native speaker can read something written by you and genuinely not be able to tell it is not written by a native speaker. Oh, and by the way, as if you hadn't guessed already, this clearly applies in your case 



> The ability to solve riddles in foreign language can also count as one, but riddles seem to be something too special - quite frankly, I'm not very good at solving riddles in English, but then, I'm every bit as awful at solving riddles in my native Russian!


 
For myself, for the moment I'm happy if I can understand the _solutions_ to riddles. 

Mally


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## Etcetera

mally pense said:


> If I could add another one (which relies on a third party rather than your own perceptions): When a native speaker can read something written by you and genuinely not be able to tell it is not written by a native speaker.


Yes, and it's a serious criterion.
In my University, the first year is devoted to learning how to speak English with as little accent as possible, but the remaining 3,5 years are dedicated to learning how to write. 


> Oh, and by the way, as if you hadn't guessed already, this clearly applies in your case


Thank you.


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## brau

Don Esteban said:


> That's what I said, that Dominicans and Argentinians have a "monster" accent (along with spaniards) and that some of the other countries that don't have that "monster" accent are a little tougher for me to place.



My apologies, I understood it the other way around. I should have read more carefully.



Don Esteban said:


> Grathias



 De nada!


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## Nanon

One of my landmarks was having to discuss a translation of an article I had written. In fact, it was not translation but proofreading since I wrote the text directly in the target language. Then I had to convince him that my proposals were accurate (I am not boasting - discussions were about scientific terminology). Pfff! 
Now, was it a landmark, or an apex?!


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## MysieBlondie

mally pense said:


> I started using msn earlier this year to 'chat' _(text, not voice, though I have also been using skype for the latter too)_, and another real milestone for me was getting to the end of long msn conversation _(over an hour)_ without resorting to using a dictionary at any stage. And that just happened by itself, not as a result of some sort of challenge I'd set myself. I was quite pleased when I realised.
> 
> In some ways, using voice is easier because there's no worries about typing accents or getting the spelling right, and also in a way it's easier because you have to go with what you already know, however imperfect or limited: there's no scope for quickly looking things up like there is in a text conversation or in a forum. In some ways, that makes it more productive and useful, but it's certainly a very different kind of landmark to a text-based interaction, and an important one too I feel.


Even though the chat doesn't help you with your pronunciation, it is a way to immerse yourself when you can't go to the country of the language you are learning. You get on the street lingo. I don't know Spanish yet, but this is one way that I'm learning it. The chat really helps me a lot, and I use other method to get up to speed on the pronunciation.

In order for me to chat in Spanish when I don't know Spanish I use a translator, and dictionary, and the help of whomever it is that I'm chatting with. I usually like to find friends that speak both English and Spanish.


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## MysieBlondie

Chaska Ñawi said:


> Another milestone for me was identifying people's origins by their accent.  I remember feeling inordinately proud of myself the first time I nailed an accent, after I'd been living in Mexico long enough to identify people from the D.F. and from Oaxaca.
> 
> Of course, I can only nail those origins if I've been exposed to that form of speech for a while.  I'd never be able to pinpoint accents as being Cameroon French or Cuban Spanish, for example.  Another milestone to work towards!


That does seem like a significant landmark! I would hope for a landmark just like it one day. 



brau said:


> - ANY TIME when I naturally say something in another language that would follow a different construction in my native tongue. This is the first real example I can think of: I remember, when I was in England, having some problems trying to open a tin, and someone asking me "Have you tried with a knife?", and me answering without thinking "Yes, but it won't open". I remember standing there with a silly smile on my face, because I hadn't said (what's more, it hadn't even crossed my mind) "Yes, but it doesn't open", which is the literal translation for the Spanish "Sí, pero no se abre" or Catalan "Si, però no s'obri".


This too is a landmark that I hope for. 



Porteño said:


> For me the greatest milestone is when you wake up one morning and realize you are thinking in the other language. You can have no idea when the transformation actually occurred but it is an incredible feeling.


Does this happen to every one when they learn a new language? I personally do not want learning Spanish to corrupt my English, and truly hope there is a way to become perfectly fluent in Spanish without doing this, without corrupting my English.



LaLoquita said:


> Hi everyone,
> However, my favorite story to tell is about when I spent a semester studying at a private university in Mexico City as part of a requirement for foreign language majors at my college. One day in September I went with a group of Mexican young people to a nearby small town, sightseeing, eating, celebrating the holiday. We spent the whole day together, and towards the end of the day, as we were walking back to our vehicles, one young man started walking with me and asked me where I had learned to speak English. English! Keeping a straight face, I said, "Oh, I went to school in the United States."  (I didn't tell him that it was from kindergarten through college, much less that I had been born and raised there!) He said, "You speak it really well." Oh, it was sooooo hard to keep from laughing out loud, but I had to keep up the act!
> Inside I was jumping up and down and screaming, "I did it! I did it! The natives think I'm native!" On the outside, I just smiled and thanked him for the compliment!


I envy you Ma'am and hope I can learn Spanish well enough to fool the natives. This is truly the landmark of landmarks, is it not?



brau said:


> By the way, another milestone I thought of is when you're able to speak fluently in another language in a situation of extreme anger. I usually can't find the words even in my own language when I'm angry, so when I do it in English or Italian it kind of make me feel good.


That is interesting that you say that, because I've heard others, who are learning Spanish, say that when they are angry their Spanish instantly is much more fluent. Would the other members relate their experiences like this, whether it is/was easier or harder to speak the language when you're angry.

*Wow I really hope to experience all these landmarks. For me a landmark is understanding one sentence or getting the drift of what the other person is saying. My landmarks hardly compare to the ones above. *


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## CrazyArcher

Very nice thread

It's hard to me to make an organized and ordered list, and many nice points have been stated, but here's one of mine: you are able to spot mistakes in native's speech/text, while not looking for them on purpose. 
As for solving riddles and puzzles in foregn language, I have personal struggle with it  Each time I go to my university, I pick the newspaper given out at my railway station for free, and try to solve the crossword there. While not strictly a language puzzle, they typically contain some obscure words in Hebrew I don't know, and when I'll solve one completely without outside help, I guess it will be a landmark.


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## mally pense

MysieBlondie said:


> Does this happen to every one when they learn a new language? I personally do not want learning Spanish to corrupt my English, and truly hope there is a way to become perfectly fluent in Spanish without doing this, without corrupting my English.


 
Does learning to dance stop you from being able to walk? I don't think you should worry about this. Your English will not get corrupted, though it may well get enriched. Like secretly thowing in a little dance move when you think no-one is looking as you walk down the street 

Or is there a danger here? Really I'm not the best person to say. Maybe some of the more experienced linguists here have some opinion, though obviously any_ in depth_ discussion of this which is not just following up on the landmark aspect might be better discussed in a new thread.

Mally


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## Nanon

Another milestone: having to speak a foreign language the entire day and not getting tired.


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## Solbrillante

Hi everyone, it's been very interesting reading all these wonderful landmarks.  I've been studying Spanish for awhile now, and have a long, long way to go, but one thing I have noticed lately is that when I am involved in conversations where both languages are being spoken, sometimes I will suddenly stop and think, was that English or Spanish I just heard (spoke). It's like I can no longer differentiate between them unless I am consciously aware of it.  Another strange thing is that sometimes my sister and I will speak Spanish when we're out on a walk. I used to know that the majority of people could not understand what we were saying, but suddenly I feel as though everyone can understand what it is we are saying...like it is just so natural.  I cannot  imagine not being able to understand it.  

Like some other's have mentioned before, when you actually start to think in the foreign language or dream in it you have really made progress.  

Sol


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## Montaigne

I am half deaf and I need hearing aids (or earphones when I watch television).
When I realised I could read the lips of american actors and forget about both hearing devices and subtitles, then it was a major landmark.


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## mally pense

Wow yes, that truly is a major landmark!


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## Musical Chairs

I have dreamt in French and I know I can't speak it well. I have also dreamt in Portugese, after conversing with Portugese people who sat next to me in a theater. But it wasn't me doing the speaking, it was them.


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## Maeskizzle

When you are reading a text and are so immersed in it that you momentarily forget that you are reading a text that's not in your native tongue.


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## Dom Casmurro

Sorry for arriving so late to this thread. I just hope the party is not about to come to an end.

My old British tutor was not very much into talking. He was a rather introspective, silent man, not the charismatic, warm, conversation-prone kind of person that we sort of expect all the language teachers to be. His focus was on writing, and he would force me to come up with a new composition every time we had a session. He would spend much of the class time correcting my composition, and that basically was what his classes were all about. It was painstaking for me, as he would hold an unusually thick red pencil with his trembling hand, with which he would pitilessly mark every single mistake that I made, sometimes with just a gentle stroke on a word, sometimes with huge, openly angry interrogation and exclamation marks. At the end of this process, he would write on the top of the paper a number between 0 and 10 that would better reflect, according to his own criteria, the quality of my homework. Sometimes, when he was in the mood to be funny, he would say, after taking a good look at the mess his red pencil had made on my paper: 'Looks like we have got a pretty severe hemorrhage today.'

In the first five or six months, my compositions were invariably topped with the cruellest number of all: zero. I was desperate, but I did not give up. 

I can assure you that the most important turning point that I have ever experienced in my English learning process was the shining day when instead of a plain zero, my tutor was so generous as to grant me a 0.2 mark.

That was my milestone.


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## Solbrillante

What an absolutely precious story, Don Casmurro.  You made me smile.
We all have been there ¿no?

Sol


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## jackie22

For me a milestone was when a native speaker in a hotel spoke to me in Italian, 

a) I didn't have to say "Sorry, speak slower please, I'm not Italian" (in Italian)
b) I answered fluently and at length
c) A little frown passed across his face as he thought "What accent is that?"

I loved it!


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## mally pense

Don Casmurro

The capacity to enhumble a native speaker such as myself with something so brilliantly and entertainingly written must surely count as some sort of landmark. 

Mally

P.S. You can check my post for errors - I think you are better qualified to do so than I am!


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## sniffrat

mally pense said:


> Don Casmurro
> 
> The capacity to enhumble a native speaker such as myself with something so brilliantly and entertainingly written must surely count as some sort of landmark.
> 
> Mally
> 
> P.S. You can check my post for errors - I think you are better qualified to do so than I am!


 
I agree 100%...I give you 10/10 Dom


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## Porteño

You have to admit Dom Casmurro, that for all his faults, your tutor did a pretty good job, judging from the high standard of your writing. Congratulations"


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## panjabigator

I think a rather huge landmark is when native speakers do not switch back to English  or language X when speaking with you.  I initially had this problem when I was in India this past summer; every speaker would immediately recognize my American accent as I labored on speaking in Panjabi (I'm only a cogent speaker is a few particular contexts) and switch to a laughable English or Hindi (almost so heavily accented that you still felt it was a foreign language).  Eventually either I improved or the people did...I like to think it was both


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## elmohdez

Hi,
The milestone that meant the most to me was the first time that I can understand the people tha was talking around me with out lisen their conversations.
Situation: you are in a bar/restaurant... with few friends talking and having fun,the next table is a couple argue about "anything" (a little loud,just a little) and you in the another table talking with your friends still been able to understand was going on.


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## Adge

for me the big landmarks, other than those already mentioned were: forgetting words in English, or constantly using a Spanish construction/cognate that doesn't sound native to English; and when I stopped thinking of Spanish as a foreign language.  When I tell my monolingual friends that they find it very weird, but to people who really speak other languages it seems normal that at some point the language stops being foreign and starts being just another language that you speak. My Spanish isn't as good as my English, but I don't have many problems with it and most native speakers think I'm a heritage speaker.
The other big landmark was when I was living in Mexico and I was at a party with a friend when a (native) guy assumed I was from there. =) That was honestly one of the happiest moments of my life.


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## Dom Casmurro

Thank you Solbrillante, Mally, Sniffrat and Porteño. You make me look like this: . I truly admire that tutor of mine, and all I tried to do here was pay hommage to him. He taught me English in 1976 in his flat in Copacabana, a Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood. Mr. J.M. is long dead, but still I feel it inapproriate to disclose his name, out of fear that his relatives could disagree on what they might regard as an unfair depiction of a grumpy, Dickensian-looking old man. 

Cheers!


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## legallearning

I spent 6 months in Florida and usually used to carry my dictionary spanish-english with me and sometimes when I grabbed my dictionary to look for a word I noticed I forgot that word in spanish, so how could I look for it in english then? So, I used to say, well, i won´t learn english but I will forget spanish... Any way, when I came back home in Venezuela I noticed my tongue was rolling too much and my pronunciacion was weird, I felt like I had and ice on my tongue. I lasted about 4 to 6 moths to feel ok with my spanish pronunciation again. Please, don´t worry if this happen to you, it is normal, in my point of view. It is more what you will gain than what you will loose. "Learn a new language and gain a new soul"One thing I liked was that at USA a waiter asked me: what part of USA I was from. It was very cute (the waiter was not latinamerican). : D


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## cirrus

I think one of mine was talking about something which had happened to me while speaking Spanish and realising I didn't have a clue how to put it in English.

Another earlier one was when I was first living in Spain and being shocked that English mates who came over didn't have any Spanish - weird isn't it, how the mind can play tricks on you!


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## Stiannu

*French:*
When people asked me if I came from the south of France, taking my slight Italian accent for the accent of a southerner.
When I had my first dream with people speaking in French.
When I started recognizing regional and national accents of French (southerner, Québecois, Senegalese, Ivorian...).
When I was able to detect ortographic errors made by natives (ok, this is rather common; foreigners pay more attention to a correct ortography).
When I was able to talk with drunk people at parties catching most of what they were saying.
When, coming back from a long stay in France, I still spontaneously addressed unknown people with "pardon" or "bonjour", causing surprise in those who didn't know me ("is he French?") and embarass in those accompanying me ("is he idiot? yes, he is").

*English:*
When I grew dissatisfied by the Italian translation of TV series "Friends" and started watching it in the original.


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## anothersmith

I've been visiting various WR forums for some time, but just discovered this one yesterday.  I was reading the thread on El Día de Muertos and became very engrossed in what people were writing.   I glanced back at one interesting post I'd just finished reading and was surprised to find it was in Spanish.  I hadn't noticed.

I'm relearning Spanish now after not speaking it for many years, but I had an interesting milestone in my youth when I spoke it fairly well:  I had just begun studying French, and discovered it was much easier for me to learn French using a French-Spanish dictionary than a French-English one.

I look forward to dreaming in Spanish again.


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## LaReinita

Solbrillante said:


> Another strange thing is that sometimes my sister and I will speak Spanish when we're out on a walk. I used to know that the majority of people could not understand what we were saying, but suddenly I feel as though everyone can understand what it is we are saying...like it is just so natural. I cannot imagine not being able to understand it.
> 
> Like some other's have mentioned before, when you actually start to think in the foreign language or dream in it you have really made progress.
> 
> Sol


 

This is exactly how I feel about other people understanding you.  It's nice to know I'm not the only one.


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## panjabigator

I rather huge milestone for me is when I have trouble speaking in English!  I have barely spoken any since I've been in Spain (8th day now) and yesterday when I was forced into a conversation, it did not flow fluently.  It felt foreign, but I'm not concerned...I'm sure things will shift when I'm back in the states!

The other day, I was on the phone with my parents speaking in Panjabi, and I used the word _vale_ for O.K!  Very odd!


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