I was just wondering if my fellow language learners have the same access to native speakers of different languages as I do/did. I think I just assume it is normal for someone to be exposed to many different languages on a daily basis, just living in their hometown…
my hometown…
I’ll ignore the bad part of Lowell, and quote the good part from wikipedia…
“As Lowell’s population grew, it acquired more land from neighboring towns, and diversified into a full-fledged urban center. By the 1850’s it was the largest industrial complex in the United States. It continued to thrive as a major industrial center during the 19th century, attracting many immigrants and migrant workers to its mills, reaching almost 50% foreign-born by 1900”
Does everybody have this same access? I was just thinking that I literally know and have on demand access (people that I have actually been friends with) of native speakers of …
Spanish (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Columbia, Mexico, Cuba) friends from all walks of my life!!
Greek (my first girlfriends’ best friend and more…) ,
Portuegese (Brazil) (my good friend who I worked at rent-a-center with) and (Portugal) (my wife’s best friend and many high school friends) and various others through my work as a bartender.
Khmer, Thai, Vietnamese (many friends in high school)
Chinese (I’m assuming they spoke Mandarin, high school and college friends)
Sinhala and Tamil (my Sri Lanka’n college friend)
Hindi (from my friends from India mostly met studying engineering at the University of Massachusetts and way too many to list of their regional languages, I can’t even remember the names of the languages they said they spoke!)
Polish (where I have visited 3 times and where one of my best friends lived his first 12 years)
Russian, Ukrainian and Armenian (the best man in my wedding, his grandmother speaks armenian, the sweetest little old lady you would ever meet!)
Arabic (Egyptian, Iraqi and Saudi Arabian dialects) (I worked at a gas station for 2 years)
People from Kenya, Nigeria, and Cape Verde
and literally friends of friends that I have personally met and had many conversations with (in English of course!!) that spoke, Italian, French, German, Korean, Tagalog, Czech, Romanian, Swedish… and many more.
These are people that I have met within the city limits of my hometown!
I am probably missing 20 more that spoke languages I didn’t even know they did!
Am I just one of the lucky few that wasted their chance for practice?