Reply to comment about "Being able to speak 4 languages: It’s great … but not always"

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Submitted by Ann-Marie Friesen on August 8, 2025, at 11:48

i agree that knowing many languages has it's ups and downs - being born in canada to parents who knew 3-4 languages had an interesting home dynamic - my parents grew up in british ruled hong kong with ties to portugese ruled macau so they had english, cantonese, portugese and the lesser known macanese in their head - ensuring their children fit in we were only taught english but grew up around cantonese, portugese and macanese phrases in an informal way - we did attend a cantonese class in chinese town once but didn't like it so stayed with english and school french

technology has allowed the learning of a language to be more accessible and even gamified in various apps - it's never to late to start and it's always good to know some basics which you can build on at your own pace as you see fit