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The Language Thread

English is my first language, but I’ve been working on my Hindi as well (since I’m Indian lol). Funnily enough I didn’t speak it that much when I was young, English was easier to speak since I was constantly using it; compared to Hindi. I could understand it perfectly though. I only went out of my way to speak it a few years ago, it was kinda weird at first but I quickly eased into it. Sometimes it’s hard getting the exact word you wanna say for something so you like switch over haha. I can’t read or write it though.

I can understand some Punjabi as well. In school I studied japanese ages ago and some french. I did japanese for a while, but it’s been so long since I last used it.
 
I like to dabble in learning languages, however busy schedules means it's hard to dedicate time to them like I used to! In order of fluency, I have at some point looked at/studied:
  • German
  • French
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Spanish
I would say right now German is the only one that I really try to keep any proficiency in, although my vocabulary has shrunk a LOT and Japanese (nice to see so many learners/speakers in here!) is something I only recently started studying, but it has been quite slow.
 
I have been studying Mandarin for almost 2 years and at first it seemed very difficult for me to pick up and that I would not be able to do it, but over time I had results and it began to motivate me even more. I think it is important to find good courses and good teachers, because your success depends on it.
 
Posted this in my personal thread but it fits here. I don't really know the "why" but I do know that it happens to me a lot...anything similar for you?
...Sometimes kind of. I'm not the best at Spanish/Japanese/etc., but when I recognize a word, I'm like "ooh! It's the word!"
 
I've been trying to learn Spanish but I'm pretty lapsed at this point. I also want to learn Gaelige someday.
 
I taught myself to read/write Swedish pretty well, but my speaking/listening skills are nonexistent at best. Initially I learned it as a joke, but now I'm looking into attending university in Sweden, so it's funny how that turned out. I'm currently in school for my country's sign language and that's been great.
Not sure what my fourth language will be, but I'm looking at picking up either Turkish or Russian.
 
My mother tongue is Spanish but I eventually learnt English off the internet.
Other than those two, I'm also B1 level in French (according to my grades, personally I can't speak French to save my life :') )
I still make mistakes in English (perfecting a language is hard!) but I think I manage pretty well :)
 
French is my birth language, and I learned English through Internet. While I did take spanish classes back in college, I certainly didn't get good at it. And while I can't count after 3 in german, I know a bunch of german phrases due to many parodies of Der Untergang. I learned to count up to 100 in japanese by... applying some logic to it. By this I mean saying "21" in japanese is "ni-ju-ichi", which would be "2-10-1" when spelt separately, mimicking how we count numbers in french but with much better logic (90 in french is spelt "Quatre-Vingt-Dix", or "4-20-10").

I've been following Xiaoma's channel for quite some time now, seeing how he interacts with a lot of people and speaking their language. Always brings joy to me~
 
I’m learning Spanish right now. I do occasionally think in Spanish or just randomly translate in my head. Though, I wouldn’t say I’m great at it. Still much to learn.

I’d be interested in learning Japanese but just haven’t gotten up out of my chair yet.

And of course, I can speak English.
 
My first language is English, but I also speak French and Japanese. I've been studying French for about six years now, mostly in school, but my university doesn't offer French courses at my level, so I haven't had much opportunity to practice lately. I'm a little worried that I might get rusty, I've been thinking of doing a journal in French just to keep my skills sharp.

My Japanese experience is.......complicated lol. A lot of my family is Japanese, so I technically learned Japanese at the same time as English, but I didn't use it enough to really become fluent. I can read and understand Japanese fairly easily, but writing and speaking are more difficult for me since I haven't consciously learned that much vocab or grammar. I don't really have any concrete way to practice or anything, so mostly I just collect random words I hear in videos or songs lol. Listening to Japanese music and YouTubers has helped, actually.
 
Torchic update on languages: English is my first language, took several years of Spanish, have a bit of German under my belt, taking Japanese in a more formal setting, dabbling in Greek and Polish.

I also collect... a lot of language books. Some of the languages on my shelf are:

  • American Sign Language (ASL)
  • Aramaic
  • Chinese
  • French
  • German
  • Hungarian
  • Indonesian
  • Italian
  • Latin
  • Polish!!! (Finally found a book on it in the secondhand book store)
  • Russian
  • Korean
  • Ukrainian
  • Hindi
  • Arabic
  • Farsi
 
my native language is english, but i have some experience with basic german (although i've come to learn i don't really like it at all) and i'm currently learning japanese. japanese is actually essentially a special interest of mine, i'm super super super obsessed with it and have been for some years, so i'm majoring in it in university now and potentially might do a masters degree on it in japan? completely unsure though, it's a long time away haha.
regarding other languages, i don't know a lick of anything else and honestly don't know if i have the brainpower for anything other than japanese, but i am, i think, particularly interested in russian, persian, and portuguese. i also think french, arabic, and korean are pretty cool. to be honest, though, all languages are amazing? if i could have any superpower it might be the ability to be fluent in every language.
 
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