Are you currently learning a new language? Are there any languages that are on your wishlist to learn?
I grew up semi-bilingual (English as my native language, Spanish spoken at least once a day at home), and went on to study Spanish as my language of choice in middle and high school. Despite this, I would still like to further my Spanish language skills/knowledge with some self-paced coursework, as the Spanish I grew up hearing in the house was much more colloquial and then the Spanish I studied in school was the "from Spain" Spanish, rather than the Central American Spanish my family spoke. I grew up being better able to understand more than what I could speak or write myself.
When I moved onto to college, I wanted to try studying a different language, so I chose French (bad idea; I could never really get the hang of it between the spelling challenges and the pronunciation being so different from the written word). I took one semester and passed just enough to get credit for the class but moved onto to German -- which was a little bit easier than French but more difficult than Spanish. Beginner classes in it were easy for me to learn, but I started to struggle when I got to upper-intermediate. Plus, I'm not always great at spelling in English, and French and German are not "speller-friendly" languages haha.
Now as I approach my midlife, I am thoroughly enjoying my ASL for Beginners course through my local community college. I find it incredibly intuitive whenever I learn new signs ("oh, that makes sense, cool" when I see a new sign). My mother-in-law has known and taught ASL (as well as SEE) for over 20 years so she is very helpful with me practicing and being able to correct any small mistakes I make. I don't know anyone who is Deaf, but have had a few friends growing up who used hearing aids (I don't think they knew ASL).
So what about you? Are you currently learning a new language? If so, what is it, how do you like it so far, and what led you to want to learn it? If not, are there any languages on your wishlist that you'd like to learn someday?
For me, I wanted to learn ASL as a way to connect more deeply with my MIL in our relationship, as well as have some level of ability to sign with those who are Deaf/deaf. I also wanted to learn it because I wanted an alternative way to communicate with my spouse if we are at a noisy event/party/etc. without having to shout to be heard.
I have been learning Ukrainian for a year now. I really like it a lot! At first, I was learning Italian, but really could not get motivated for it, and on a whim switched my Duolingo to Ukrainian. I found it to be really fun and enjoyable, and something about it just synced with my soul. Since then, I have worked through Pimsleur, did a year of Duolingo before quitting, and now pretty much do LingQ for app-based learning.
In fact, just yesterday I downloaded an Anki add-on to sync my LingQs to an Anki deck. Then I use HyperTTS to add audio samples to those decks (LingQs TTS is terrible for Ukrainian). I had to edit the code for the add on yesterday to strip the audio sample out when syncing back to LingQ so I can more accurately track the number of words I know.
Other than that, I visited Ukraine last year in October and had an amazing visit. Once the war is won, I would like to go back for a much longer stay. I have tutoring lessons three times a week with my teacher in Kyiv for additional learning. And I downloaded a lot of TV shows and movies in Ukrainian to watch.
Learning a language takes time and patience. I would guesstimate that I am a high A2 right now. My vocabulary is decent but I wouldn't anticipate ever getting past a B2 level without actively living in the country and using the language everyday.
In your opinion, does the free level of LingQ feel hamstring-y? Like, would you be missing out on significantly valuable features by not paying the monthly fee?
Looking at the features list, everything that comes with premium feels like a "bonus" to me but since I've never dipped a toe into LingQ I'm not sure if that's right or not.
Yeah, based on what I have heard about the free version, it isn't worth it. With Ukrainian, they were giving premium access for free.
I'm sorry, can you clarify what you mean by "it isn't worth it"? Do you mean "the free version is missing so much that it isn't worth using" or "it isn't worth paying for premium because free is almost as good"?
Sorry, been a busy work day for me.
The free version is not worth paying for. The value that I have with LingQ is that I can create as many vocabulary and phrases that I need, so I am not just learning words or just phrases, but both. I would hit the free limit in probably 10 minutes everyday. Plus I import a lot of my own material and without that, I just wouldn't see the point in using free except as a demo.
I was looking into business schools years ago and was intrigued by INSEAD's language requirements.
I thought they were a very sensible requirement so I've strived to maintain at least a practical proficiency in Mandarin and a basic proficiency in Spanish.
A great combination to have!
https://www.insead.edu/sites/default/files/assets/dept/mp/mba/docs/INSEAD_Language_Policy_for_graduating_classes_of_2020.pdf
I have a friend in Italy that I met online. I am going to visit for the first time in a few months, so that is inspiring some basic language learning. I can read but not speak french and have some very basic conversational spanish. I find learning languages tedious and I was much more ambitious about it when I was younger. Anki is a good tool. My husband who is a much more dedicated language student than I am, suggests www.mylanguageexchange.com as a place to find practice buddies, if of course you already speak a language that a significant number of people would like to learn.
You're going to be (or you already are) like those tactical teams in the army, going to the store in black Friday, with all that noise going on and people shouting, and you calmly tell your significant other: "go for the 60° TV while I get the PS5, and we regroup here in 30 seconds". You actually made me want to learn ASL or something like that myself.
I know native Spanish but learned English at school, and now I finally could land a job that allows me to use it. I'm still learning English, but I also like Japanese, because I'm hard of hearing and Japanese phonetics are really close to Spanish (what you write is almost what you hear). I also love the culture, I love the process of learning the language, and I would like to reread some things in Japanese. It's just a hobby for now, but it may allow me to work with it in the future, maybe.
Also, I'm studying to become an Spanish language teacher in the future, so having two languages under the sleeve wouldn't be bad at all.
I've got a 550-day Irish streak on Duolingo, and Japanese for about half that-- two lessons each per day. I'd like to pick up German, but I'm not sure I can handle three at once. Trying to expand my reading to online Irish newspapers and other full text sources now that I've got enough of a grip on the grammar and vocabulary to sort of understand what I'm seeing.
Oh! Foghlaimeoir Gaeilge eile anseo ar Tildes. Ta áthas orm :)
Is ea! I am very bad at it still, unfortunately, but determined to keep going until I get better. I've just hit the past-tense lessons and my brain is melting.
Ádh mór / good luck :) It’s not easy, but for me, keeping it enjoyable helped things to stick. I’ve signed up for GaelGram to help me correct my shitposts too before I share them online :)
I've got The Hobbit and Hound of the Baskervilles on my list to read soon, hopefully that'll keep me motivated!
I would like to learn Italian since it is my ancestral language. I am only a third generation American. My great grandparents came over from Italy in the 1900s. My grandpa spoke Italian his entire life with his siblings and other Italians in the area, but he and all of his siblings made the conscious decision to not teach my dad, my uncles, and their cousins Italian because it wasn’t the “American” thing to do. I grew up with Italian culture being so important to me but never being able to speak the language. It’s sad really, everyone in my family makes a pilgrimage to our ancestral home in Italy at least once in their life time, but can’t even speak the language of our homeland.
My great grandparents also immigrated to the US from Italy in the early 1900s! Like your family, my mom and her siblings weren't taught Italian — I don't even know how much my grandparents could speak it, although I think they could understand a lot. I've started learning a little on my own, but need to actually set more time aside for it. Learning enough Italian to hold an actual conversation, and getting my Italian citizenship (since my great grandfather was still an Italian citizen when my grandfather was born in the US) are two of my eventual goals.
I need to actually start to try learning as well. I’ve tried off and on again for years but just haven’t had the time to dedicate to it. I have a degree in Spanish so I can read Italian pretty well, it’s the speaking that I can’t do.
I’ve looked into the Italian citizenship, and I’m not even sure if I’m eligible. My family is from Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and when my great grandparents were born it was technically apart of the Austro-Hungarian empire. My great-grandma has an Austrian birth certificate and I haven’t been able to find my great grandpa’s birth certificate. There are companies that will do all of the research, translation, and applications for you but it costs $$$ to do.
I may end up just getting Mexican citizenship through my wife. She’s Afro-Latina and can get Mexican citizenship so I should be able to through marriage.
I'm learning Norwegian as I've got a Norwegian partner.
It's really tough going as someone who's never properly learned a language beyond the very basics they teach at school.
I find it feels like I'm not making progress, even when I'm learning new words and able to understand a little bit more. Without being able to make or understand conversation, it's very frustrating. But I'm sticking with it.
It's been about 8 months so far. I'm able to say some basic sentences and read, but dialect in Norway is a nightmare. Where my partner lives especially the not only talk quickly, they slur their words so much that other Norwegians struggle to understand them. So I've got a challenge ahead of me.
If anyone has any advice to getting a bit more of a sense of achievement/progress out of it while learning (sorry the duo lingo "you did it!" doesn't do it for me) I'd appreciate any advice.
As a Norwegian that has an ex that learned quite a bit when we were together, I feel like I might offer advice here.
Norwegians are very proficient in English. The younger you are, the better. Young teenagers can often fool an American, seeing as Americans are used to all sorts of domestic accents already.
This means we will quickly switch to English to make communication easier for everyone. Making it very hard to learn. Be ready to ask people to keep it Norwegian so you may learn.
It's okay if you don't have much of an ear for picking up new languages. Don't be too hard on yourself.
If you learn best from text together with speach I recommend finding books for toddlers and songs for children. They are often very simple, incorporating just the basics of the language, with much repetition.
As with everything, immersion is good. Use the language with your partner. Expressions of love is an easy thing to incorporate. As is greetings like "god morgen", "god natt", "hade bra". We also usually always say "takk for maten" when we're done eating. Even the cook, it's more a thank you for having shared this time eating than just thanking someone for the food they've provided. These were staples between my ex and I.
They also picked up on my expressions of annoyance quite early, as I had a kitten when we first got together. I would often tell the kitten to "kutt ut!" when it was chewing on things, or "pokker" when I found already shredded items lol
My ex surprised me with cooking a meal once, where they'd looked up the needed phrases and words to go shopping on his own. Using only Norwegian.
The heavy accent made it easy to understand that they were learning, and he just kept to his Norwegian words to avoid being spoken to in English. Using a list of the needed items, and some phrases like "unnskyld, kan du hjelpe meg å finne..."
Avoid using Google translate to learn Norwegian. It relies on assuming context and often gets things very wrong. It's okay for translating to your own language to get an okay understanding of the meaning of texts, but singular words are often a miss.
I like tritrans.net for translating words.
It's an English, Spanish and Norwegian dictionary. You can search in any of the languages and get the results for all three languages in return. Makes it easier to see potential synonyms too, as it gives you several matches if applicable.
Choose some basic sentences and learn those, use them.
Learn swearing! It's fun, even if you don't actually swear normally, and it also shows the essence of things like pronunciation, where to place the emphasis in words.
Different places here have vastly different choices for what counts as swearing, and it says a lot about what was considered taboo or bad. That goes for any place in the world, really. It is a window into what has shaped the culture of the people.
For Norway, that often means that the further south you get, the more Christian the swears. The further north you get, the more biological. Synonyms for genitalia, faeces etc.
You can use tv.nrk.no to find Norwegian tv, both live and on-demand. Some of it is geoblocked, some is not. We have subtitles for most everything that isn't live, due to laws and regulations, so you can follow along.
Asking people to go slower is okay. It will be frustrating when you don't understand much, and cat make it flow from single words into actual understanding and communication.
Most of all, just try your best and we will be very charmed. We all appreciate someone trying their best to speak our own language I think, no matter where you are in the world.
Thank you for all the advice! I've been learning Norwegian via Duolingo for a year or two now. It's definitely time to branch out to some of the things you suggested (children's books, TV, etc.) and I'm hoping I can visit Norway in the near future!
My wife is Norwegian and she changed the language on our Netflix UI to Norwegian to mess with me. I sometimes jokingly try to read the show descriptions in Norwegian, even though I haven't really studied it. The spelling is so frustrating! I realize this is the case with English too, but we live in Germany and German spelling is very straightforward and regular, so I felt so betrayed when the answer to "when do I pronounce the letter g" is just "sometimes". Her family all speaks English though so actually learning Norwegian isn't much of a priority for me atm, since I already have to work on my German instead.
Sometimes I'll read the Norwegian sentences with a thick American accent -- Norwegian with an exaggerated American accent sounds like you're in The Sims and it's hilarious. Highly recommend.
I'm a 42yo Danish guy, I speak Danish and English and read Norwegian, Swedish and German (German only well enough to read and, mostly, comprehend the newspaper)
I think that's enough languages for me for now, but I would like to brush up on French (which I took In high school but mostly forgot since then) and maybe learn a bit of Spanish down the line.
Yes, when I was in high school, I read Thomas Mann Buddenbrooks in German(with a dictionary beside me). We read a couple of chapters in class, but I thought it was so good I finished it by myself. Yes, like your boyfriend, I also took German and Latin in high school, as well as French.
Ah, Hærværk is a great novel! I read it years ago,and loved it. There's a movie too, which is worth watching if you can find it. You can probably lend ithe movie at the library, actually.
No, I haven't been to Lübeck, I haven't travelled much in Germany at all. I was in Frankfurt as a kid but apart from that, I've mostly been just across the border to buy beer and/ or candy
You've learned a lot of great, practical Danish, I see! "Slaraffenland" is a great word ( It kinda sounds like it originated from German, actually)
I just recently started learning Japanese on Duolingo. It's only been 12 days so still very new to it. I got injured at work so I've been at home with a lot of free time and wanted to do something that was more productive than what I had been doing day to day. Also watch a lot of anime lol so it would be cool to be able to watch eventually without subtitles or dubs and hopefully that can be a way to immerse myself in the language as well. But duolingo has been fun so far I really like the way they approach introducing the language and how they encourage you to stay consistent. Definitely recommend it to anyone looking to start on something.
I'm learning Greek. I used Duolingo for about a year, but felt I hit a bit of a wall. It was very useful for the alphabet and some vocabulary, but it wasn't scaling well. Now I'm using Language Transfer and couldn't be happier. It's still hard, but building my own sentences and forcing myself to think in a different way is having an effect.
I've had Norsk on my wishlist forever. It's the place I would ideally like to call home, but I don't really have the motivation to learn more as I'm in chronic pain most days and it's hard to concentrate
I was really interested in Norwegian too but duolingo only took me so far. I have two books sitting on my bookshelf in Norwegian reminding me that I dreamed of learning it.
I've been thinking next time I dive into it I'm going to do an online course or something with more accountability and interaction.
How were you trying to learn it?
Rosetta stone.i uh, found, a copy.
It's not the normal version, it was like a beginner's guide
I've been learning Japanese on and off for the past decade
My native language is Dutch (Flemish), I've studied French, German, and English in school. Of those I have decent passive knowledge of the former two (can follow news/movies without much trouble, but speaking/writing is difficult). English on the other hand is practically fluent (standard language at work, academics).
I've followed classes for 9 years for Mandarin, although I'd need a lot more to consider myself fluent. I can take care of myself in China, though.
I also did a couple of years of Spanish. Enough to learn the basics.
Now I'm learning Japanese by myself with Duolingo. It's more relaxed than following classes. Duolingo doesn't really explain grammar, so I supplement it with some actual textbooks, or look things up when they are not clear.
Gregg shorthand. Because i'm apparently insane. It's extra stupid because my handwriting is "bad", up from "a disaster" when i was kid, and dear god it's probably the most hostile thing in the world my inconsistent scrawl.
Could you perhaps have dysgraphia?
Nah. Just the usual “not great” hand writing. I’ve been practicing again lately for various reasons and it’s improved markedly, it’s just that shorthand literally having half its symbols be identical except for size it’s just brutal for me
I looked it up, and oh my... Yes that would be confusing! But people have used it for a long time, so this Internet stranger is rooting for you!
I have done some transcription, not professionally, and found myself struggling to stick with proper grammar and spelling once I got in the groove.
Writing "just as it sounds" is so much easier than I'd thought in advance. I was surprised at how natural it was to write out sounds just as they come with almost no thought, compared to the proper spelling of things. My country has a lot of dialects, so standard grammar vs. spoken can be very different.
If regular writing is a chore, I fully believe that shorthand will be much easier once you get the hang of it!
I am currently studying German again. I travel to Germany and surrounding countries every few years and some of the language has actually stuck with me.
However, I need to refresh my vocabulary.
I cannot seem to get the hang of verb tenses and word order but as long as I know enough to be polite I am fine.
I studied French in college for 2 semesters and learned to read and write fairly well but the pronunciation always trips me up. I have Canadian relatives who helped me during that time. Practice partners enriched my experience.
I recently traveled to Denmark and Norway to visit family and had a bit of difficulty with those LOL!
I also had difficulty with the Czech language although I did finally learn how to say "thank you" by the end of my time in that country.
Thank you for your reply. I always enjoy the opportunity to use a few brief German phrases when I travel there.
Most of the time people seem to understand me then they just start speaking English LOL!
I am learning spanish and going to a language school next week, so that's exciting. I also want to learn the Mini language (constructed language) after I read about it on a Tildes post.
I speak English and Farsi, but I've been wanting to learn Korean (half my family is Korean) and have been trying to learn "survival" Icelandic since I'll be needing that soon.
Italian yet again. It’s a bit of a goal of mine to move there years down the road but in the meantime I love the sound of the language, the food, and the history.
This time I’ve got Anki cards and have been watching some QVC trying to pick up simple words.
I’m really enjoying the natural method book. Every sentence seems purposely crafted to teach you something new, provide a new context clue, or help memorize a word.
Lastly - the Language Transfer series is really good and seems to be resonating with me more than any other class.
Hopefully in a few months I’ll be at a point where I can start to consume media. From there I think things will be much less of a slog.
I have native-grade proficiency with both portuguese and english (let's not talk about accents though). I studied french in middle school and once in a while I make a half-assed attempt to brush up on it, the latest of which was in 2020, prior to a trip to France (it helped!) Ideally I'd want to be at a point where I can start reading books or literally anything else written in french so the learning would be self-sustaining, but unfortunately I never quite get there and it's never enough of a priority.
The principle also applies to japanese. That one is more of a lifelong project, I guess. I think every time I make an attempt to "learn" japanese I get a little better, but it's much, much more difficult. The last time (last year) I seem to have done a good job of finally memorizing (most?) katakana. I try to read hiragana and katakana whenever I see them in order to train myself to read them more intuitively. The pronunciation isn't so bad and I have some notions of the grammar too, but every time I work on this I have to make a massive effort to learn the kanji, and I'm hoping there are at least a few I'm not forgetting within a month or so (it's difficult to learn logograms due to my poor visual memory).
It doesn't help that so many kanji have at least two distinct readings, it's often contradictory which one you're supposed to use, there are a whole bunch of irregular exceptions, and the design of the symbol itself can change a lot depending on medium, font, etc. since what truly matters are the strokes used to draw the symbol, which always have a proper order and relationship (even harder to memorize, especially for hundreds/up to thousands of symbols).
I picked french back in the day because, unlike let's say german, it's spoken officially or officiously in many countries all over the world. I still think that was a good decision.
I'd lIke to learn japanese because there's a vast trove of entertainment media of all kinds made in Japan that is never translated into a western language.
I'm unlikely to ever take an interest in spanish, due to its closeness to portuguese.
You know, english pronunciation can be very tricky for non-natives too, due to changes over time and words borrowed from a mishmash of other languages and language families. Why does pier sound like peer, rather than like pie, or piper? Crier sure doesn't sound like pier! The ending of disappear kind of does, but... pear is once again completely different! Argh!
The Tofugu article on kunyomi and onyomi can give you the seeds to start to intuit when you should use a given reading (assuming you have already learned it).
I'm learning Khmer. My in laws are survivors of the Cambodian genocide and I'm trying to get their stories written down, or at least what they are comfortable sharing. But it's difficult to understand some details in their broken English, so I'm working on bridging the language gap.
Been learning Japanese for about 4.5 years...I still have a very long way to go
I've been learning German on Duolingo for about a year. Taking it casually and doing it every day, it's quite rewarding. Does anyone know alternatives to Duolingo for German? It can be a little one-note sometimes.
I took 4.5 years of German between HS & College. Why? Because I had to have a foreign language credit of some kind & my brother had taken it & said it was easy. It was pretty easy for me. I think my school only required 2 or 3 years of a language, but I kept going just using it as a general elective since it was easy. I was in the honor society for it & German club in HS both.
I had an opportunity to write an essay in German while I was in HS (I forget the topic) to get into some sort of college course or special event type thing. I wasn't selected or I declined to attend (I did write the essay I think), I forget which. I'd say I was high-intermediate/semi-fluent at that point. Near daily classes for 4+ years will do that. That was years ago, so I've lost most of it. I still remember bits & pieces though. I'd like to relearn at some point.
Other than that, I've been studying Spanish & Japanese off-and-on for a few years. Mostly off lately. Spanish started because at my job at the time, we were getting a fair amount of Spanish speaking customers & I wanted to be able to communicate more easily with them especially because when we shipped them stuff, sometimes there were problems with their orders. Also, Spanish is becoming more & more common in the US.
For Japanese, I started when I used to run my own gaming blog (since closed) & was going to learn it so I could do posts about Japanese-only games & play them of course. Also, I want to visit there one day (along with Germany & Spanish-speaking countries).
Of the 3, Spanish is probably my strongest these days. I had had a few language partners here & there, but most of them weren't anywhere near as active as I was, so that was discouraging and made it harder to stay motivated.
Working on Korean right now. Has been really interesting!
I have never tried any of the Asian languages. It does help if you have someone to practice with!