• tiredofsametab@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    9 months ago

    How many languages do you speak? How many did your grandparents speak? How many do your children (or theirs) speak (if you have any)?

    • 0x4E4F@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Two, my native and English, though I do understand Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian perfectly as well. I do speak them, but not as good as English.

      My grandpareents… IDK, probably 3 I guess… tops. Slovenian, Serbian, Macedonian. My granma from my mother’s side also knew a little Turkish and was quite fluent in German (she was in a labour camp during WWII). My kid is little, like 4, he speaks Macedonian and some English (words only, not sentences).

      • tiredofsametab@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        9 months ago

        Interesting! Thank you for answering. I’ve met folks from around the bulkans and many speak a few lancuages

        Edit: also, the Balkans. Spelling > me

        • 0x4E4F@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          9 months ago

          Well, yeah, our local ones, we do usually, at least, understand what our neighbours are saying (Albanian is an exception, it’s not a slav language), and English nowadays. Used to be French or Russian back in the day, in the 60s, but at the end of the 60s, Yugoslavia had a good thing going with the US and a lot of things got centered towards the US, including culture (there was a hippy movement in Yugoslavia as well, not to mention YU rock, that’s a subgenre on it’s own) and which foreign languages were taught in school. English became the default at the end of the 60s, begining of the 70s.