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Any language learners/enthusiasts around here?
Now that a community is starting to build here, I'm curious if anyone else is interested in languages.
Personally, I realized that I enjoy learning languages when I took a Spanish class in high school. The only languages I've studied seriously are Spanish and Russian, and unfortunately these days my Spanish is pretty rusty, but I still enjoy the process of learning about different languages, how they relate to each other, and learning how to communicate at least a little.
Anyone here share my interest? What language(s) are you learning/have you studied, and what do you like or dislike about it? What has struck you as the most interesting or weirdest thing about it?
I'm a native English speaker, my second language is Finnish and I speak some Russian (I live near the eastern border of Finland). Finnish has a reputation as one of the hardest languages in Europe, but it's surprisingly easy in some ways - phonetic spelling, no difficult sounds (for English speakers at least), regular grammar, no genders and a small core vocabulary (albeit one based on a non Indo-European language with some loanwords).
I speak a bit of French, and although I probably wouldn't consider myself super fluent, I can hold a pretty decent conversation. I love how learning a second language has improved my understanding of English and language in general, and it's just super satisfying to go to another country and be able to communicate and feel somewhat independent, rather than having to rely on other people to translate for you.
I've also learnt enough German to get the basics and a tiny tiny bit of Latin, but that was a long while back. Both of those put me off a tad just because they have a lot more memorising of different structures that you just don't have in French. French just felt a little more natural for me, and I hear Italian is fairly similar to French so maybe I'll give that a go some day.
I've had the same experience, learning more about English and languages in general through studying Spanish and Russian. Trying to learn new grammatical structures really makes you think about stuff that you always took for granted about English and consider why it is the way that it is.
I think I get what you mean about extra grammatical structures being a pain. Russian has six noun cases, which I hadn't ever had to deal with beyond pronouns in either English or Spanish, so that was quite a change to get used to, and combined with three genders it's a lot of memorization.
My understanding is that all of the Romance languages have some similar features, so knowing some French should give you a leg up if you tried to learn Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, or any of the other languages descended from Latin.
Nous sommes les amis français ici.
J'espère bien!
I have a general interest in languages and linguistics.
I've always loved German. I took it for two years in middle school, but they decided to remove it from the curriculum. I've never gotten over that haha, and have always wanted to learn the language since. I tried to switch to French, but they removed that too shortly before the school year began.
That's a real shame about them being removed from the curriculum. Language education is something that a lot of places unfortunately neglect, I think.
Have you considered trying to learn more German on your own? It's tougher than taking a class, but nowadays there are plenty of resources online like language apps like duolingo and communities of native speakers who can help you out. Who knows, maybe one day we'll see a some ~ groups that can be good resources.
On a side note, German may very well be the next language that I end up studying seriously - there's a chance (not a guarantee, sadly) I might be spending a few months in Germany next year for a work opportunity, and if that happens I want to have at least a couple of months of German practice under my belt before I go.
That's awesome that you have that opportunity! Your approach seems great since it'll afford you the opportunity to learn the basics and then go practice in the country.
Yeah I was really disappointed my school got rid of those languages. I should have mentioned that they got rid of them because they figured Chinese, Arabic, and Japanese were more important.
I chose Chinese, which I never really found the same passion for that I did German, but made some good friends in the class since there was only one class worth of people that decided to take the language, and as I result I had class with them for four years straight. Japanese and Arabic had even fewer people take it. I'm pretty sure Japanese only had 5 people or something like that. Most people just switched to Spanish which was by far the majority to begin with.
Yeah, I'm really hoping the opportunity works out. It would be my first trip to Europe, so I'm excited about the chance to see the sights there.
I had some friends in high school who took Mandarin, and they seemed to like the class. I do wish in hindsight that I had taken at least a year of it so I would have some exposure, but I don't regret taking Spanish instead.
I get what you mean about making good friends in it, though. I took a few semesters of Russian in college, and it wasn't a big class, so I ended up making a lot of good friends through it. There's a fun sort of cameraderie you get through those sorts of classes, especially since you usually end up with a lot of in jokes that very few other people in your community can understand.
One of my I.R. professors told us the best thing we could do for our careers is to learn Mandarin. Have you found it useful?
Definitely, I do agree that if you're in the professional world, Mandarin is the most useful language you can learn. If you're interested in traveling, it can open up a lot of doors.
That being said, we didn't get the best education being the guinea pigs of the program. The first couple years we learned entirely online, which hampered our ability to really learn the language. We did most of the work independently, which meant we'd accidentally write out the traditional characters instead of the simplified because we didn't know what the hell we were doing. The second and third years we had a teacher they brought in from China which was great-- the students who had them in their first year probably got a great experience learning this way. I sound a lot saltier than I am, but at the end of the four years I didn't feel like I had taken four years of a language. I didn't feel comfortable continuing my education in college.
So these days I mainly use my knowledge for catching bits and pieces of what Chinese speaking characters say in films :P
I actually really struggled with German in Duolingo (as someone who only speaks English), as it doesn't do a very good job of explaining the different gender nouns. I found that at the start of learning each new set of nouns or words, I would have to just guess what the correct word was and then repeat until I got it.
I am and I can help you with Spanish if you want, but keep in mind that I am not a good teacher, I'm just someone who speaks Spanish. I studied English because I knew it was going to be useful later in life. What I dislike about it is that it is not a phonetic language, pronunciation and writing are very inconsistent, but those things are caused by the thing I like about English: it's history. English took a lot of vocabulary from very different languages, from Old Norse to French and many others. I am currently trying to learn French on my own and I'm enjoying it, the only thing I dislike about it is that in pronunciation many letters from the ending of words are omitted and that causes a lot of different words to share the same pronunciation, you can only know which word is the correct one if you know the context.
Ah yes, gotta love English words like 'read' (pronounced 'red') and 'read' (pronounced 'reed'), tear ('tare') and tear ('teer').
As for French I have to agree, the pronunciation isn't always intuitive either (e.g. perfect tense vs third person plural of a verb being spelt similarly but pronounced differently, like 'passant' and 'passent').
What is the old saying? English doesn't just borrow words, it leads other languages down alleys and mugs them!
I feel I'm fortunate in that I grew up with English and never had to 'learn' it in that way. But I think for many mainly-English-speaking nations it can be a disservice in the long run as you can pretty much get by without picking up another.
I think the version I always heard was along the lines of "English lures other languages into dark alleys, mugs them for vocabulary, and then turns out their pockets for loose grammar."
I've had to move to many different places in my life so I've dabbled in a few. My mother is an immigrant to the US from Germany, and I speak relatively basic German, but can understand it at a pretty decent level both spoken and written. I spent a few years learning Latin in early high school, although I've forgotten much of what I learned and it's not very usable. I learned a little bit of basic Japanese when I lived in Japan, but purely at a conversational level, no reading or writing abilities. I've hung around Danes and Swedes long enough to understand some basic written Danish / Swedish (fuck Danish pronunciation though). And next year at university, I have to take 2 years of Hawaiian, so it looks like I'll be able to add that to the list. So far I've been mostly a learn a little bit of everything kind of guy, but I hope to eventually learn all of them on a deeper level :)
My least favorite thing about German is the arbitrary grammar rules and the ridiculous gender scheme. I know for consistency diminutive words are neuter, but the idea that "little girl" is neuter and not feminine, and that a door is feminine, will never make sense. My favorite thing about German is probably Germany itself; it's a really nice country, I wouldn't mind living there again sometime.
And seriously. Fuck Danish pronunciation.
I've been planning to teach myself Latin. Recently, I was wandering the stacks and stumbled upon a photocopied edition of Grotius' 1st treatise on international law in the original Latin handwriting. I just about died. I love this man and I want to learn to read him in his own words. Now I have a concrete goal.
I've heard it takes roughly a year to gain a basic proficiency so I can only imagine how long it'll take to gain legal-treatise level proficiency. I'm determined to do it nonetheless.
I have native fluency in Spanish which should make it a smidge easier, even though it's a derivation of a derivation with regards to Latin.
This is also great because you get to learn a ton about the etymology of your native language!
Wow, that's quite a find and an awesome goal to set for yourself. Good luck!
Being able to read the great works in a language seems tough, but rewarding. I've read a little bit of Pushkin in the original Russian (just scattered verses, I've never sat down and read any of his works all the way through), but I know I'm not fluent enough to tackle the huge works like Tolstoy's novels yet.
I've always been super into languages, but have a hard time sticking with one long enough to really get conversational. Sometimes it's just a brief journey where I learn the basics of writing and grammar and then see another language and get distracted.
Most recently I'd been working on French and also picked up Russian due to dating someone with a Russian family. Trying to maintain what French I have while adding Russian.
But I've also done, with varying degrees of success (gonna vaguely try listing in order of when I first started): German, Latin, Spanish, Attic Greek, Russian, Japanese, Sanskrit, Mandarin, French. Scatterings of a few others here and there.
I've also been into conlangs and probably still have passable Esperanto. I was also heavily involved with Lojban for a long time.
Conlangs are definitely fun. I used to be pretty decent with Mando'a, the constructed Mandalorian language from the Star Wars books. It's far from complete, but I found it pretty interesting.
I always hated learning languages. In highschool we were forced to learn French (for something like 7 years) and I was abysmal at it. Just awful! Thought the idea of learning languages was fine, but just believed I wasn't capable.
Then, at university, I met my now-wife. After living together in the UK for quite some time we moved to Spain and, of course, I had to learn the language. I am now fluent, and realise how much your world-view can change upon really immersing yourself in another language. The way you think, and dream, shifts... I even find myself switching languages mid-sentence because the vocab of one language just isn't expressive enough!
I now know I have the capacity for learning languages, and know my kids will be brought up bilingual at least.
It is so sad to see teenagers that think they're bad at learning languages and thus start avoiding making the effort, but it's very common.
I think one of the main problems is bad methodologies, which make it boring and aimless. I'm sure not having the opportunity or the need to practice is part of it as well, but nowadays, with the internet it should be different.
I know a little French, but nothing impressive. I am really interested in languages and linguistics though. Were I not to study Computer Science I expect I would pursue linguistics. The subjects have a lot in common, after all - both are about how abstract concepts are represented and manipulated.
I've always loved linguistics, especially in regards to constructed languages. Personally, I'm only fluent in English, but I'm currently learning Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. I want to start learning Arabic eventually, but I don't want to be studying too much at once.
I hope we can set up some language related communities here, for example a ~lang.learning, and a ~lang.conlangs.
I studied Spanish in elementary school. I took 4 years of German (had AP credit and I'm still not bad). In university I studied Russian and my first major job also had me learning more Russian (military related to the Cold War).
I was married to a Filipina so I learned a fair amount of Tagalog/Pilipino. My 2nd wife is Mexican and she's also fluent in English and Mandarin (long story).
I started learning Mandarin when I moved to Taiwan - it's damn hard but it's also very fascinating and keeps my interest pretty well. It also helps I work for a Taiwanese company and travel there often enough to use my Mandarin.
I guess I love languages and learning them, though I have a full time career unrelated to any of that. Sort of my spice of life.
I feel like an odd one out in this position, as I love langauges, but I can seemingly never find the energy or dedication to study them. I studied German for around 3 years, taking almost-private lessons from a Fulbright scholar with PhD's in French and German (shoutout to Frau Rußt!), but it's been so long since I moved away from where the classes were that I've forgotten most of the grammar and vocab. I tried to start studying Japanese, but that quickly fizzled out after the prospect of learning Kanji intimidated me away before I could even finish learning Hiragana.
I suppose I'm kind of a middling, wannabe language enthusiast. Or maybe it's just a bad rut. Or perhaps burnout even? Any tips for dealing with such a weird mental state in regards to language?
Hmm, I definitely get what you mean about getting into a rut. Without practice it's easy to let the language get away from you, and then going back to it is a pain.
Maybe consider easing yourself back into the language if you are worried about getting burned out. Something as simple as finding some music that you like in the language might be helpful for getting you back in the right frame of mind for it. One of the good things about the internet is that it's really useful for finding resources like that, and with languages like German or Japanese you should be able to find music in plenty of genres.
I've been studying English since I was 5 or so. Besides that, the school I go yo atrempted to teach us German, but due to teachers and circumstances that didn't work out. I might pick it up sometime, since it's likely I'll have to move to a german speaking place sometime.
I'm surprised that only one person mentioned Esperanto! I only speak English (OK-ish IMO) and Portuguese (terrible language). But everything changed when I learned about Esperanto. Its grammar rules fits on a A4 sheet of paper! It's so simple, and sounds so beautiful. 80% of its words are based on Latin. And almost every word sounds similar to speakers of Romantic languages. People say that you can learn Esperanto in 1/10th of the time that would take you to learn any other language. I'm so excited to learn Esperanto. I highly recommend you to watch this video if you want to learn more about this fantastic language. This video is a great intro.
My first language is English and my second is American Sign Language, though it's gotten a bit rusty this year. I studied Japanese in high school and remember just a little bit, I'd love to start learning it again. I've recently finished my Bachelor's degree and have a little more free time in the evenings so I might pick it up again.
I really got into learning languages in my first few years of college, I'm a Spanish native but I'm fluent in English. I studied French for 3 years and Japanese for 2, pretty much lost all my motivation for learning Japanese after going to Japan. I've been thinking of learning German lately, but I'm not sure how it would go.
What happened to you in Japan??
English and German speaker here. I've always been fascinated by linguistics and know enough to get around a basic paragraph written in MOST western languages, and can generally sound out Japanese, pick out words, and look up kanji by radicals. I've got a few conlangs under my belt and I'm ALWAYS interested in learning more about a variety of languages. I'm hoping for a ~lang at some point...