the number of languages we can speak now:

One.

Monolingual.  Pretty much.  Here is where we all are at the start of this linguistic adventure:

Cheris: I took a couple years of Spanish in high school.  Do I have to tell anyone that high school is probably the WORST time to learn a language?  It didn’t help that one of my teachers taught German most of the day and would lapse into it while explaining Spanish grammar.  I’ve been taking a Spanish class through a language exchange at Violet’s school.  One hour a week?  Not so helpful.  Mostly a review of what I learned in high school.

In Korea we learned the language in real life situations.  If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have been able to eat, or travel.  So I’d say we have a very basic survival level of Korean.  Rob and I made a good team; in general I was good at gleaning general meaning and he was good at grammar/vocabulary.

Rob: He took French in high school.  Not so useful down here in Austin.  But I would argue that he is multilingual in that he’s a musician.  I’m not sure if there have been any studies on this.  Still, I have noticed, anecdotally, that musicians pick up languages better or faster.  Hypothesis: those  neural pathways are already there, ready to take in new sounds and patterns.

Violet: She was enrolled at a “bilingual dance” Mother’s Day Out program two mornings a week for about 18 months.   Granted, the program was more about dance than being bilingual.  I mean, the teachers would say everything in Spanish, but then immediately translate it into English.  Plus almost all the kids spoke English at home.  (So it wasn’t the ideal dual immersion program, but I was mainly interested in getting a break a few hours a week.)   She got some exposure to Spanish; learned colors, songs, numbers and a few commands.

Graham: He joined Violet’s school for a few months.  Aside from that, they were Dora and Boots for Halloween last year.  Does that count?