[Closed] Is anyone here properly bilingual?

My nephews are completely bilingual in english and dutch. They could certainly pass for UK natives

@Edukator must be?

To be bilingual and be able to pass as native you probably need to start speaking the language as a young child hence why my 10 year old sounds as Scottish as anyone else in his class despite Polish being his first language and not speaking English until he was 3 whereas his mum who only started speaking English in her 20s will likely always speak English with a Polish accent but her Russian which she started speaking as a child probably sounds more native (although I can't tell as I don't speak Russian)

Chinese, Russian, Franch, English and Japanese, to the extent that he can pass himself off as a native in any of those countries

Its possibly not just the language which needs questioned, there's a few visual differences too

Be great for a start if you could spell things properly in your first language 😉

[strong]andrewh[/strong] wrote:

Its possibly not just the language which needs questioned, there’s a few visual differences too

haha,good point well made. Maybe not a native in that case, but more as a citizen of those countries perhaps.

[strong]johndoh[/strong] wrote:

Be great for a start if you could spell things properly in your first language

As I hinted, linguitics have never been my stong point. Hence I have the greatest respect (and not a little envy) of people for whom langauges seem to come easily.

My German friend often corrects my English spelling! He is properly bilingual though, does book translations and things. To listen to him you really wouldn't know he was German, he speaks English with a strong Irish accent! His children are both bilingual and his dog appears to understand both too

I am proficient in English and always assumed that I was equally as adept when speaking Woman. I was able to communicate well enough in Woman to get ladies to undress and do those things without any issue. Thirty years on I realise that my understanding of Woman was fairly basic and my assumed proficiency was related more to the people I was speaking Woman to; I believe I was fooled into thinking I was fluent by people who took pity on me.

Pass yourself off as native in another country? Very rare, surely. Fluent, bilingual and (near) native are all very different things.

My 7yo is properly trilingual but when he speaks to his UK family they say he has an accent. English is or was his first language but you wouldn't say he sounded native. He's got my weird accent on some words (sku-wel for school, poo-eh for poor) and a youtuber US accent on others... He will also ham up a foreign English accent in front of his mates in the school play or whatever, so as not to stand out.

I'd consider myself bilingual from various cues - I dream in both languages, often speak the " wrong" one, when recalling news or whatever I don't remember what language I heard/read it in. Natives say I have the regional accent of where I live but no-one would mistake me as native. The very best non-native speakers I know will still drop lexical or pronunciation bollocks from time to time, and it's not the same as when a native speaker does it.

My two kids are - Swedish and English. Wife is trilingual: Swedish, Polish and English. Also, her French is good but she's not fluent.

People often think i am british even when they know i also speak Danish.

I know a few people who grew up in Welsh-speaking households who sound perfectly normal when speaking English, some Polish people who sound English and one individual who works in the translator industry who is regularly mistaken for being either French, Spanish, Italian or English depending upon which country she is in.

The last one says she has to downplay her linguistic skills sometimes as her clients (big business types and dignitaries occasionally) have been known to distrust someone who can switch between languages and dialects too easily. She is incredibly intelligent and gifted though, mainly due to her parents being highly intelligent and them moving round Europe when she was little. I feel completely inadequate when around her as I can barely speak English let alone another language! She did try teaching me French when I was in college with her but my brain just isn't wired that way. She can switch language every sentence, especially when drunk, and regularly does so to wind her husband up. Her daughter is multilingual too, being proficient in multiple languages at age four!

Depends what you mean by passing as a native. I speak English real good but I'd never pass as a native cockney, yorkshire person or geordie.
Just like my french might be grammatical as good as a parisian but my accent and idioms would get me found out in Quebec, northern france, any of the franch speaking african countries etc.

Glaswegian and English

I speak English and Spanish. My accent is mostly Castillian Spanish, as that's where I've lived longest, esp. right as I was becoming really fluent. Generally people can tell I'm a non-native speaker within a few sentences, but a couple of times I've gotten away a bit longer/asked if I'm Spanish. It's always been when talking to someone from a place with a very different accent. So I think my best hope of passing for more than 3 minutes would be to really study up on my vocab while doubling down on the Spanishness, then go somewhere with a completely different accent with relatively little back and forth with Spain. I'm thinking the Dominican Republic. I'd be found out in the 4th minute though when it became obvious that I had no idea what the heck they were saying back back to me.

So would anyone consider themselves to be truly bi- (or even multi-)lingual? Could you pass yourselves off as a native in more than one country?

This pretty much only happens for young children. When you are young, you have very high neural plasticity. As you get older, this decreases and it becomes increasingly difficult to acquire new skills. The movie thing where someone takes a six month language course and then runs around chatting away in casual conversation is utter bollocks. Many adults do become quite proficient, but they never have the intuitive grasp of what is natural that children acquire, and it's very difficult to acquire natural pronunciation as an adult. Henry Kissenger and Arnold the Terminator are good examples of highly proficient adults with distinctive accents.

I know two Germans who I (normally) can't tell are not native English speakers. That said, both of them studied in the UK for university and both say that they are far more proficient talking about certain subjects in English. This really surprises me, given that they both spent their formative years only (to my knowledge) speaking German. (Two unrelated people by the way, just coincidence that they're both German.)

One of my best mates is French, lived in the UK 20+ years and is absolutely fluent. However, the minute he opens his mouth you know he's not a native although curiously lots of people think he has a speech impediment rather than being non-native!

I've also known a few Swedes who spoke English with a Yorkshire accent.

Maybe it's easier for Germanic rather than Romance language speakers to sound native in English and vice versa?

I know two Germans who I (normally) can’t tell are not native English speakers.

Keep in mind that German and English are fairly closely related languages and there is a lot of shared cultural heritage too, so the sociolinguistic aspect is also relatively easy. When you have languages like Chinese, which has a totally different phonological system, totally different grammatical system, totally different orthographic system, different sociolinguistics, etc., it's very unlikely that an adult will ever be able to sound natural to native speakers.

both say that they are far more proficient talking about certain subjects in English.

This could because of the way German tends towards cumbersome compound words.

My other half is German but without knowing you’d think she was British.

Learnt 3 languages as a child. Will correct my grammar. Not annoying in the slightest.

I think the accent thing is like a musical ear. I have a friend who is good with languages but his accent when speaking English is obvious. Others only speak 2 languages but have picked up agents really well.

A Norwegian friend of mine is absolutely fluent in Norwegian, Swedish and English - although the English has a slight accent, most people would guess it was just from a different part of the UK.

Her Spanish and French are both passable. Conversational but obviously a non-native speaker.

Is fairly well known for Scandinavians to be at least trilingual. Maybe not to native standards but certainly fluent.

I am. Italian and English. Can pass for Italian native every time, many a pint (media) won in Italian bars from people who didn’t believe I was English, luckily the Italians make you carry your passport at all times!

Back home in the uk it’s great to sit in restaurants with my Italian girlfriend and have conversations in Italian, we can talk about stuff as if we were in private and even comment on other people 😈 I’m sure we’ll get caught out one day but hasn’t happened yet! It’s also funny to see people’s faces when I switch to perfect English

I lived there for 12 years but the interesting thing is that my younger brother who spent a couple years less but moved there at 5 years old speaks terrible Italian with a bad accent

My Italian stepdad who has been in the uk for 40 years on the other hand speaks appalling English. But he’s a dick so maybe that explains that

My friend is truly bilingual, his parents fled from Hungary for political reasons and he was the first of their children to be born in the UK. When he started school at 4 he was sent home and told to come back when he could speak English....
Needless to say he can and does switch between languages mid sentence and you would probably think he was from London with his accent even though he grew up in Derby.

I agree that speaking another language from early childhood is really the only way to sound truly native but there will always be exceptionally gifted individuals who manage the impossible.

I wish I had tried harder at school when studying languages 🙁

All my kids are bilingual (German and English). Three of them are also proficient in a third language, either French or Spanish. If I really try I can pass myself off for a German native speaker but it feels to me more like impersonation so I don’t like doing it. It’s also strange that often I have problems retelling a story in English that I have told before in German.

My father and brother in law are both fluent in Urdu as well as English.

Dad passes as the white missionary guy, BiL is Indian heritage.

As a child I too spoke Urdu most of the day with friends. I was in India until I was 7 - I can't speak any now now, but can still pick out words in conversation.

Its all about practice for natives too. I have a work colleague who's French but has lived int he UK for about 20 years and as such doesn't get to speak French much. When he's presenting to a French audience he gets more stressed out about his French than what he's presenting as he's 'rusty' and has to remind himself how to speak it. Similar thing with my brothers Russian wife.

Also it was interesting to observe once another work colleague who is French Canadian who translated a presentation I did into French. A French intern looked over it and though I'd attempted to translate it as it was such a crap translation. Not sure if that is because French Canadians generally speak crap French or she too was just a bit rusty after living in the UK for so long.

So quite interesting to observe these things. I can't imaging living in a different country and speaking their language for so long that my English would become rusty and the other language would become dominiant, but I guess it would be bound to happen. Interestingly my French college says he now thinks in English.

I could hardly speak English until I went to Secondary school. Born in Bangor and raised in Snowdonia. I lived 3 years in Portugal and am now in Austria since 2016.
I made it a priority to learn the language. It makes it so much easier to integrate into the society and culture where you decide to live. I do sound foreign though.
Maybe some incomers from over Offas Dyke should do the same.

Nope. Three years in and, whilst I can understand a normal conversation in Swedish, I run out of words far too easily and quickly to talk it fluently.

I also have a huge problem pronouncing the R sound properly. I think, even if I was fluent in grammar and words (and could get the en/ett thing worked out), my lack of rolled R would identify me as a non-native.

I know two people that are fluent and have the hairstyles to pass as Stockholm natives, but even I can identify they are British by the way they speak Swedish.

I also have a huge problem pronouncing the R sound properly. I think, even if I was fluent in grammar and words (and could get the en/ett thing worked out), my lack of rolled R would identify me as a non-native.

Yeah the rolled r kept me from sounding native even a couple of years after fully learning the language

After a while it just clicked without me noticing though, all of a sudden I noticed I was doing it right!

Just ask a french person to say 'Hospital', the H normally gives them away as non native - my French teacher can't say it properly. Mind you, most of my French sounds appalling...

Squirrel is a good test word for Germans and Scandinavians.

My brother has lived in Paris now for 25 years, and is perfectly fluent (he’s a M&A Lawyer in a foreign language so no slouch). But Parisians all think he’s Belgian and his two sons (born and raised bilingually) still laugh at his accent.

I'm 'properly' bilingual in Latvian and Russian and some-sort-of-lingual in English and German. Properly in this case meaning being able to converse freely with native speakers without being asked 'so, where are you from' for a while. I could probably maintain a passable impression of a native English speaker virtually for a while, however as soon as I open my mouth I turn into Borat, there's just no getting around it. Yes, I could spend a lot of time learning to imitate RP but honestly, what's the bloody point when I walk into a Polish store and even with half of my face being obstructed by a mask they immediately start speaking Polish to me. Why go through all that trouble when I'll always be a foreigner, no matter how long I spend here?

I can pass for a native Russian anywhere in that massive country (again - only for a while), but speaking without a discernible accent is only a part of that. The other half of the equation is having a shared cultural heritage of growing up as a kid in Soviet Union. You absolutely need both to have any hope of blending in for longer than a couple of pints.

To address the original post: blend in as a native in all 5 cultures? No chance on Earth, just not happening. Up to three different languages and cultures: yes, with some caveats. Of course you can have long conversations about various subjects in more than two languages fluently but that's not all it takes to be able to blend in for longer than a passing interaction. Idioms, humour, movies/tv shows, social norms: hundreds of things you do subconsciously as a native of a certain region will be picked up by a keen observer quickly and you can't possibly master all of that in a single lifetime.

I've said this before, and disagreed with Edukator on the topic, but most French people can't tell where I'm from. They can pick up on an accent on some specific words but usually struggle to place it. I guess I am "properly" bilingual. Studied French at University in the UK then did a degree in French literature at Grenoble, with future French teachers (it's the usual job prospect for anyone studying Lettres Modernes). I agree with comments above that it's a little like a musical ear in terms of being able to reproduce sounds which are not present in your native language (the difference between "u" and "ou" in French is a good one). I'm quite good at it and though I lack grammar in other languages that I speak a bit, I struggle less with getting the accent right.

I had a former colleague who was fluent in seven or so languages and could pass of as native in at least 3 or 4 (he's Swiss to start with....) It's rare but by no means impossible.

Bilingual means fluent in two languages. So yes I am bilingual.

I am not however ‘simultaneous bilingual’ which is having 2 native languages from birth (or very shortly after), which is what a lot of you are mentioning.

But Parisians all think he’s Belgian

I used to able to speak French reasonably well, but without the practice it's amazing how soon you loose it. Anyway, a guy I used to chat to in a bar thought I was Parisian manly because he thought I was taciturn (just reluctant to open my gob and make a tit of myself)

Taught a kid who was properly bilingual. In S1 he really struggled with language as he'd mix German and English. Surprisingly he didn't do well in German A-level because he didn't communicate in exam German.
As for accents I work beside a Yorkshireman absolutely no doubt where he from. But he moved from Yorkshire Scottish Borders aged 12. By which time his accent was fixed in place.

Everyone has an accent, In France I sound British/Canadian/Swiss depending on who is listening, and in the UK people think I've got an accent they're unsure about. Junior who has lived all his life in France sounds perfect in both to me but Brits recognise he's French straight off, and they notice errors he makes which I don't notice and probably make myself. When I speak German (I'm not bilingual just good conversational) people reckon I'm English more than French.

If you want to sound native, which accent to you chose to copy? RP won't do you any good, that marks you as odd straight off. If you try to be brummy you'll sound like Peaky Blinders and a Brummy will spot you're not native straight off - but a Yank might not. so if you are trying to pull the wool over someone's eyes chose something strong from one place to imitate and use it in another.

Bilingual is just being totally fluent in two languages as someone else noted above. No need to even think about about it, once in context the brain operates in the appropriate language and it can be quite hard to even find words in the other which is the very specific exercise of simultaneous translation. When I used to do simiultaneous translation work I used to find it mentally exhausting whereas it's no effort to speak either French, English or even German all day.

Madame and I can't think of a single TV or radio personality who has perfect accents in two languages, there's always something that gives the game away.

Even immigrants who've spent most of their lives in their country of adoption (I have) retain something of where they started. I've got Turkish, Spanish, Portugese and North African neighbours/friends who've spent at least 30 years in France and we've all got our respective linguistic tics. Junior's SO has a French father, German mother and has lived in both countries for several years. But she went to school in Germany and she sound's just a bit German when she speaks French and very German when she speaks English.

I'm bilingual in Spanish but there's no way a Spaniard would ever think I'm a native - I'm physically clearly from north Europe, and I speak Spanish with an English accent 🙂

But even if I could speak with a perfect Madrid accent (quite possible one of the ugliest accents known in Spanish), I'd still get caught by this:

Idioms, humour, movies/tv shows, social norms: hundreds of things you do subconsciously as a native of a certain region will be picked up by a keen observer quickly and you can’t possibly master all of that in a single lifetime.

I grew up with Dangermouse, the A-Team and Battle of the Planets. Not Mazinger-Z, Bola de Cristal, Naranjito and the rest. I've learned about a lot of them (clearly!) but there are bound to be more that I'm missing, and a native of my age would inevitably end up noticing.

Worked witn a bloke from South Yorkshire had a flat cap and sounded like Wallace from Wallace and Gromit.

He spoke pefect French with a Parisian accent that was so good the French business we worked with thought he was french and spoke strange English.

Parisien accent

Lequel ? Neuilly, 93, petit Paris, bourge', bobo, Bidochon ?

A Yorkshire roadie used to have a paid ride with the Oloron club and soon got bilingual, after a few misunderstandings we've agreed to speak French because it's easier than trying to understand each other in English. Madame hasn't got a clue what he's on about in English.

English (for the telephone and business) and North East Derbyshire for normal life - two different languages!!

A colleague's then-fianceë hailed from Kenya and had a strong Manchester accent. She used to ring up her granny and hear complaints about the elephants getting into the vegetable patch so I assume that was in Swahili.

a native of my age would inevitably end up noticing.

Wondering what the Spanish equivalent of “Garlic? Bread?”, “Four candles”, etc would be!

Damn! Well anything starting with W or V will properly mess up Scandinavians half the time.

Funny you should mention squirrel, I pronounced it "squerrel" for years until 2-3 years ago.

My nephews I referred to above grew up speaking both english and dutch hence why they are totally bilingual. MY sister is british, married a dutchman and the kids were born in the netherlands. they spoke mainly english at home and Dutch at school.

Jodie Foster, interview in french

Wondering what the Spanish equivalent of “Garlic? Bread?”, “Four candles”, etc would be!

That would be "digamelon" and probably loads more. Which I don't know 🙂

Idioms, humour, movies/tv shows, social norms: hundreds of things you do subconsciously as a native of a certain region will be picked up by a keen observer quickly and you can’t possibly master all of that in a single lifetime.

Maybe you can’t, but don’t project your shortcomings onto everyone else

Jodie Foster is excellent, that's about as close to perfect as a non-native will get. There's still something that tells me she's not native. The video is much cut, I suggest that any give aways were in the cut sections. I watched another and she made a couple of errors in agreements one of which she quickly corrected, she is aware of her own weaknesses. I repeat though, excellent.

Note how she starts saying réalisateurs and corrects to realisatrices. She has to work on it, as do I but without the panache.

I can’t imaging living in a different country and speaking their language for so long that my English would become rusty and the other language would become dominiant, but I guess it would be bound to happen.

A friend of my Mum's from her university days moved to The Netherlands after graduating. Met a Dutch guy, married, 2 kids, she's lived out there since she was in her early 20's.

They've visited us a few times and she really struggled with her English sometimes; you can see the thought process she has to go through to speak in what is her original native tongue. She thinks, dreams, speaks, reads and writes in Dutch, has done for decades to the extent that her original English is very much a second language for her.

Her two children were completely fluent in English from their primary school days albeit with a definite accent.

Talking about getting accents, my ex-wife was Swiss-german and had a huge problem understanding a scouse mate of mine. Whenever he called she would recognise the voice and then just hand the phone to me.

I didn’t think his accent was that bad, but I think there was something about it that she just could not process. Her English was essentially perfect but, as you say, you could tell she was not native.

Oh, and a thanks to all at STW and Bikemagic before that. They're the only English media sources I've found sufficiently interesting to check out and contribute to most days, it means I can still talk about most things in English. If you don't use it you lose it.

I've grown to dislike American cinema, find British TV news laughable propaganda and simpering judgemental bollocks, the British press irritating... . But you guys and girls, you remind me there is a little corner of the UK where sanity prevails.

Not me, but my sister.
She spent 6mths living in Northern France as a 9yr old.
Came back pretty much fluent, then as an adult she has lived (and raced for France as a pro athlete) in the South/South West since she was 25ish.

People assume she's French, but can never quite place her accent, they just think she's from a different region!

Also, when she speaks English, it's now with a slight French accent.

Why go through all that trouble when I’ll always be a foreigner, no matter how long I spend here?

TBH you’d be a foreigner in Bristol even if you came from any other part of the U.K. 🙂

Some really good observations made so far. When I moved to Germany my german was non-existent. I also had a job in the university on an EU project that had to be reported in English, so was under strict orders to only speak english in the workplace to help everyone else to improve theirs (fat chance lol). I only really learned the language from my caving club hign in the Swabian hills south of Stuttgart which means I speak Gemran with one of the strongest German dialects out there (think Glaswegian!). The advantage is that the accent is so broad that many of the variable endings to words (der, die, das, den, dem, etc) are often slurred into a generic durr!
The point about shared cultural references was bought home to me while watching "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" in Germany. I could very very rarely get any of the first 2-3 questions right, as they are always silly things like refernces to proverbs, nursery rhymes, sayings or kids books, popular tv programmes etc. If you hadn't grown up in the country you would have no way of knowing the answers to all those questions.
What I will say is that one of the great joys of becoming competent in another language is being able to watch people who you have only ever seen on TV speaking english, revert back to their native tongue. I am thinking of people like Arnie, Borris Becker, Seb Vette, Juergen Klinsman, etc. I was actually a bit blown away the first time I watch F1 on German TV and saw that almost everyone interview replied in German. In fact most of the non-Germna drivers do interviews in german to the german media.
I really hated languages in school, failed misserably at every subject we were offered and have a grade E french "O" level to my name. KNowing what I do know I wish I had tried harder. However, with hindsight I think language teaching in schools (certainly back then) was appalling. I think teaching of modern languages would be better taught by spending 3 years in secondary school teaching pupils about language structure so that the differences and similarities between all languages start to make sense. In the past Latin was used as a basis for this, but I think there is scope for a far broader and more interesting course focusing on loads of different languages, wihtou any need to learn the languages, just why they are constructed as they are and how that relates to toher languages. MAybe then the final 2 years of secondary scholl pupils can opt to learn specific languages. I have always felt I have been playing catch-up learning German as I never had that basic grounding in how languages work.

We're watching the Americans at the moment - a drama about Russian spies living undercover as Americans. It's really good and all that, but the least plausible thing in it for me is that the spies' English, learned in Russia lets them pass as native Americans. As others have noted, it's really only kids brought up in two countries and bilingual families who can do this and even then there are signs. However, as with so much quality American drama, thinking the Wire, the lead actors are English and Welsh and most of the US audience won't pick this up. So, I dunno, accents can be learned...

(On kids, we moved out of London when our oldest was nine and she never lost her London inflections; her younger brothers picked up the Yorkshire, which is pretty typical.)

I spent a lot of time in Germany and Switzerland as a teenager. I spoke fluently, but was often aware that my accent would give me away eventually, and once when hitchhiking through Austria back up towards Munich the driver looked sideways at me and asked where I was from. I replied that I was English, and he expressed complete surprise. He explained that the way I spoke was subtly "non German" but no way did I sound like an English person speaking German. He thought perhaps I was Dutch or possibly even Polish.

I studied linguistics at Uni, and the most recurring themes of give-aways are intonation, emphasis and cadence. Not to mention pronunciation of certain language specific sounds. Very few English speakers can pronounce "Deutsch" correctly for example. We have to wrestle our tongue into the wrong part of our mouths and push air sideways past it to get the "tsch" consonant, so we give up and make it sound like the tch at the end of "Dutch" If you listen to a German saying it you can more or less hear all four letters being pronounced in turn. The German "R" is a moveable feast, and changes depending on where it features in the word, and conversely it's the one consonant that Germans really struggle to get right when speaking English.

A friend of mine, Des, lived in Guttersloh, his Dad being based there in the 70s. When visiting him there I met a guy who spoke perfect English. He was about 17 or 18 and in fact had an accent that would have put him in the South East of the UK. He'd clearly grown up with the Brit kids from the Airbase and it showed. I was beginning to think he was absolutely flawless, a true bi-lingual, until he asked me if was "staying BY Des". The only give-away I ever noticed. He always had the last laugh as his name was Uwe. No one could ever get that quite right.

People assume she’s French, but can never quite place her accent, they just think she’s from a different region!

I confirm, I was active in triathlon 1993-2015, the name was a bigger give away than the accent. She sounds different but you can't immediately put your finger on it.

An exercise that's even more revealing is if you get someone to sing. Here I am in French

and German

No spying for me then. 🙂

I didn’t think his accent was that bad, but I think there was something about it that she just could not process.

Many Americans struggle with British regional accents (some Brits do too!). When i lived in Missouri I worked with people with fairly strong Welsh (Valley), Glaswegian and Geordie accents. I'd often have to 'translate' what they were saying for some of my American colleagues.

Accents are great anyway, I never tired of overhearing an Italian colleague talking about Sheet Piles 🙂

bastard block-quote bollx, can't be arsed to try and edit it any more.

My swedish ex au paired in London for a few years in her early 20s and developed a posh London accent that completely hid the Swedish. People were generally very surprised to find out she wasn't from England. However in her written work it was more noticeable that she wasn't native

[strong]Scapegoat[/strong] wrote:

bastard block-quote bollx

sorry Scapegoat, what starnge language is this you speak? 😂🤣

@Edukator

Ha, my semi-famous 'little' sister 🙂 Very proud of her I am!

It was always funny hearing the pronunciation of her name 'Gessika 'arrizon' (or the hedgehog lady!)

Grew up in North Wales, so school was 100% Welsh apart from "English" lessons but English was spoken at home, friends' houses/aprents were probably 50/50 so it was entirely normal to be having conversations and just flick between them depending who in the room you were talking to. Same with the shops, you knew which ones were Welsh. We even got new Maths textbooks under some grant or other, and they were all Welsh, my mum was on the PTA and asked me what language they were in and I genuinely had to go back into school the next day and focus on reading it to figure it out.

Made moving to England at 11 a PITA as I might know the answers to the teacher's questions, but in Welsh which was utterly useless.

I think if you learn it as a kid you just accept it and it's 2nd nature, there's no internal monologue to translate like say GCSE French, so it's not difficult. It's like English as a 1st language, you don't learn all the irregular verbs as a list, or exceptions to the tense rules, you just know them. One of the KS2 exams was to translate a poem (including making it rhyme), something you'd probably not attempt in a 2nd language till A-Levels?

My wife is. She speaks English with an English accent. And on holiday was told that she spoke amazing German for an English person.

She is German.

I know a few people who grew up in Welsh-speaking households who sound perfectly normal when speaking English

This is somewhat different though as a Welsh accent is considered a native English one when it's really not, it's the accent that goes with the Welsh language. Which is why when non-Welsh speaking Welsh people learn the language they seem to have a lot less trouble with the accent.

I have met one or two French people who I'd have taken for English, and I have a very acute ear - but I didn't know their back-story, if they'd been brought up in England or not. I also once met an American woman who'd lived in Brittany for 40 years and her English was heavily accented and actually not that fluent! It is rarer to hear perfect English accents from French people than Germanic though, as you'd expect.

I seem to remember having a few words with Alpin's gf on the phone once and she sounded 100% British but I think she's of middle-eastern origin, living in Germany.

Indeed... My GF has a fairly strong Essex/Cockney twang.
Met in Australia and she spent lots of her time thereafter in Essex/London. It's her use of geezer, bird, and other colloquial words that let her getaway without being outed too early on.

She struggles at times listening to some accents (eg Glaswegian, Sunderland) but her Scottish impressum is getting better.

was told that she spoke amazing German for an English person.

This happens lots to us in Germany. We'll be speaking English with each other when someone will enter the conversation in English only for us to then switch to German. Throws them sometimes.

My German is pretty good, but as others have said, it's the Rs that blow my cover.

I've often been mistaken for a Bavarian when further up north. Use of des rather than bothering with der, die, das / dem den.

In fact I've had to translate some sentences for customers when colleagues of mine have mumbled something and then disappeared.

Agree with the posters liking using local slang to avoid bothering with the der die das die nonsense.
My kids confuse their German teachers by overuse of their granny's Fraenkish "des" all over the place.

Oh, and a thanks to all at STW and Bikemagic before that. They’re the only English media sources I’ve found sufficiently interesting to check out and contribute to most days, it means I can still talk about most things in English. If you don’t use it you lose it.

Very much this. I know some folks who've lived here 40+ years and now speak Spanglish, as if they're now translating into English. Also heard of language teachers in Japan getting sacked because they were too Japanese.

I grew up in near Durban, South Africa. Grew up in a really rural location. My parents were Scots, but all my friends were Afrikaans so grew up speaking that away from home. I also was fluent in Zulu.

Now having moved back here I no longer hear or speak them and really struggle to talk them. When I go back it all seems to come back but nowhere near as fluent as I was.

I've lived in France for over 15 years in total. Studied the language for over 10 years before that and was lucky to be exposed to it from a young age (my Dad is a French teacher). Hand on heart, I'm not truly bilingual, but I would describe myself as such in most circumstances.

To native speakers, they can tell that I'm not exactly French but they're often confused about where I'm actually from. I've been assumed to be Corsican, Belgian, Quebecois, etc. on many occasions. i.e. locals can tell I'm not quite French but after a short conversation I might still pass for a native speaker - just not their kind of native speaker.

I think language skills go up and down all the time. I have times where I speak mostly English (my wife is also Scottish, most of my clients are Brits and there are a lot of other ex-pats around). Equally, there are times I speak mostly French (like right now, where there are no British tourists and I'm teaching a LOT of French kids to snowboard!). I can feel my fluency and accent come and go in these different times. It's also much harder to speak French well when I'm tired. After a full day's teaching in French, I'm way more spun-out than I am if I'm speaking English all day.

Just, please, don't ask how I'm able to speak French when I have a Scottish accent. Especially if you're going to ask the question in a strong Scouse / Geordie / London / Aussie / American / Whatever accent. I may get grumpy. I get this a lot. My Dad also got it a lot and he had a degree in the language, had taught it for 25 years and had written books about learning it. I think he got even grumpier about it than me.

Side note, my brother lives in Sweden and has a Swedish wife. Sweden is almost a bilingual country, with English in use for a lot of people on a daily basis. My two nephews were properly bilingual by the time they were 2-3 years old, able to switch languages comfortably depending who they were talking to and even able to translate things for us when we were over there.

To be properly bilingual, I think you have to be exposed to it from a young age and be able to use the languages interchangeably. There’s a story about the author Jorge Luis Borges who apparently grew up speaking in one way to his nanny, another way to his parents. Turns out the first way was English, the second Spanish. To him as a child, it didn’t occur to him that they were different languages.

Personally, I started studying French at 8 at school, Spanish at 12 and took both all the way to BA(Hons) with distinction in oral Spanish. I went out with a non-English speaking Spaniard for 6 glorious months and have since worked in Barcelona and Paris. I’ve also picked up Nepali along the way so have been speaking various languages all my life. However, no matter how good a level I achieve, the best I reckon I can hit is fluent but not bi/tri/quadrilingual which I reckon means being able to pass yourself as a native. The best compliment I’ve received was when the French person I was chatting with couldn’t work out where I was from.

I,.every so often, wonder if the way languages was taught put lots of folk off. I will never be mistaken for french so why spend an age perfecting oui? Especially when I then went on holiday spent 4 weeks to France. The French i spoke when I got back was much better for youthful conversation with teenage French girls but not for passing Scottish exams. And my languid drawn out southern oui was totally wrong, apparently.

However, no matter how good a level I achieve, the best I reckon I can hit is fluent but not bi/tri/quadrilingual which I reckon means being able to pass yourself as a native.

On that basis you can get to be the governor of California, EU deputy, Democratic party representative, major of your town, minister... without being bilingual - which is nonsense. Think of all the people who have done great things in their countries of adoption whilst retaining an accent that gives away their country of origin, yet still expressing themselves as well as the intellectual elite of their country of adoption.

A Polish friend has taught French in French schools, sure she has an accent but her French is better than all of the kids and most of their parents. My son would run rings around you in English in a discussion on political science, philosophy, sociology... with his French accent.

On a personal level, I make no effort with accent in any of the languages I speak, I'm me, people can take or leave me, and if the accent they perceive is a problem for them I'd rather they leave me, because that's xenophobia.

C2 is bilingual whatever your accent:

https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F34739

So would anyone consider themselves to be truly bi- (or even multi-)lingual? Could you pass yourselves off as a native in more than one country?

It's almost 2 different things.
My ex was brought up in France from age 2 .. she speaks fluent French and English but not the same French and English. Her French is somewhat guttural (learned in the playground) vs her English for speaking to parents so she can easily pass herself as French but not the same person as in English.

One of my other mates was brought up in Spanish as a first language until 2-3 then English and speaks Parisian French and Bergundian to a level noone can tell. His spoken Bavarisch is native but his spoken Haupt Deutch not the same level... likewise his Italian has a regional spoken accent from "somewhere south".

I'm pretty crap but I did once score 4.5/5 on written French (AF) but my oral was picked up in bars vs reading for written so the two barely met.