[nekokami]

I can't believe I missed this thread for three days.

I speak English (my first language), and "family" Mandarin Chinese. I learned Mandarin from our kids, who were adopted at ages 6 and 11 years. I'm reasonably fluent (where I'm defining "fluent" here as speaking without hesitation), but only in certain domains and with not entirely correct grammar. Rather like my teachers, I suppose. I frequently have bilingual dreams, in which I'm puzzling through how to express myself in Mandarin, and I can follow parts of interviews with speakers of Mandarin on the radio or our Chinese movies and cartoons (a great way to learn!) but I can't have a normal conversation with an adult speaker. I can read about 300 characters and reliably write about 200, which puts me at a first grade level, probably.

I studied French and Spanish in middle school and high school, and Japanese and Sanskrit in college as a linguistics major. I can read French and Spanish at least somewhat, and I can follow a fair amount of technical conversation in Spanish (much to my surprise). I used to be able to speak Japanese well enough to get by in a restaurant, and even to surprise the waitstaff a bit. I can still read hirigana (the main syllabary) and some kanji. These days, everything I try to say in a language other than English tends to come out in Mandarin, but I'm gradually regaining what limited facility I once had in other languages.

I was very surprised a couple of years ago to find that I can read some Dutch, which I have never studied.

Originally Posted by Lady Blue

I think the best time to learn a language is as a child (generally speaking.)

It used to be thought that there was some specific age after which learning a second language with true fluency was impossible. That idea has been pretty much discredited now by research, with the exception of acquiring a native accent. But I think it really is true that kids have more time to learn a new language, as well as less resistance or fear, and are therefore generally more successful.

Originally Posted by GraceKrispy

I also have a tendency to use Hawaiian with the kids in public, especially if a little 'correction' is needed.

So funny -- I did this with my kids when they were younger. It was my way of passing hints to them about rules of politeness without publicly embarrassing them.

Originally Posted by GraceKrispy

This also begs the question : what defines fluency? What makes one fluent?

I don't think there is an agreed-upon definition the way you mean it, but the technical definition of fluency is usually related to speaking with few hesitations or gaps, as distinct from grammatical skill or pronunciation.

Originally Posted by rebarnmom

I was planning on teaching my daughter Spanish and learning it along with her. I purchased the Rosetta Stone software for that purpose.

I've used Rosetta Stone. I have mixed feelings about it. It's thorough, but boring, and it's essentially a flashcard program, built around memorizing words, then phrases, then sentences. It cannot replace conversation with a skilled speaker of the target language-- or even come close. I would recommend supplementing it with videos (movies, tv series, soap operas-- whatever you like to watch in your first language), and if at all possible, connect with some speakers to practice.

Originally Posted by astra

I believe most of them are from the "lucky" group. Western Europe.

English, German, Swedish, French, Italian, Spanish....if one of them is your native language, it is easier for you to learn another because they have many similarities.
You will not find many people who can fluently speak and read books in ..let's say English, Japanese and Hebrew.

That would be an unusual combination, but English, Japanese, and Chinese is not so uncommon, and those are all from different language families. I have also met numerous people from Africa who speak several languages from completely different families, e.g. Xhosa, Ibo, and English.

Originally Posted by GraceKrispy

A Japanese friend taught me a little bit of Japanese and the letters used really threw me off. My mind is trained to recognize the slight differences in English letters. I wonder if that would have been easier had I learned, or even been exposed to, a variety of alphabet systems as a child.

Yes, it undeniably makes a huge difference. For example, my kids had some trouble learning the Latin alphabet, which they had never seen before, and I constantly have to explain to my Chinese teaching friends that their students are going to need a lot more time to get familiar with writing in characters than their students back in China or Taiwan, who grew up seeing these symbols around them all the time. (Sometimes I write my name in Hebrew for them so they can get a sense of how difficult this is-- especially the Taiwanese teachers, who often started learning English at a relatively early age.) My Chinese friends have to be reminded that Westerners can't even tell, without prior instruction, whether a character is right-side-up or not.

That being said, if you can find someone to explain the writing system who either is fluent but NOT a native speaker, or a native speaker who is also trained as a linguist, you may have an easier time learning. It takes someone who is able to step outside the language to explain it to someone who is coming at it completely fresh. To a native speaker, too many questions are answered "that's just the way we do it," when in fact there are rules and patterns that become more obvious to "outsiders."

And now, I need to sign off, read for a bit, and get some sleep. 晚安！