By the way, @Total_Saikou, I guess it was you I saw on wavy.fm listening to a pagode group. Considering how Brazilian that kind of music is I mistakenly assumed you were Brazilian as well.
@innominatu That’s because I sent her a playlist with that group lmao
I speak Portuguese and English fluently and can understand Spanish almost fluently, but due to lack of opportunities to use it my speaking skill is terrible. I learned Japanese for several years and even have some formal qualifications but I gave up my studies so I can basically only read katakana/hiragana and the most basic kanji without really understanding meaning apart from basic weeb phrases. I think I might go back to studying it at some point since I have so many learning resources.
No worries, you didn’t knew that I didn’t knew answers
And I hope that you’ll find usage for these languages since they’re… well, not the most common/required ones.
Im native spanish speaker, and there’s nothing relevant with it, teached myself English from almost cero, took me about 2 years and currently I’m trying to learn Japanese because got tired of don’t understanding shit, little by little I’m getting into. Only want to get what is going on lol
I’m from the non-French part of Canada, in BC. I’m probably too shy to try out my rusty French but peut-être
Indeed. I’m still young myself but multi-cultural acceptance is in a better place than when I was a little kid, I think. It really is all about where you live, though. If you live in a big city, then there’s a lot of people not just with different races but also cultural backgrounds there for everyone to get acquainted with. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better if I grew up in a big town but my family didn’t have that kind of money, plus the bullying stopped when I got older and spoke English fluently so there’s no real good reason to lament it, I think
My dad’s from Beja, Alentejo. I remember it as very hot and boring lol (I used to go every summer until I was 14ish)
I do love Lisboa and Porto though.
And yeah it’s definitely the intermediate plateau and I don’t think it will change much. I’m at this point that I have to work instead of study and don’t choose to study for fun in my free time. Also there’s nobody close to me that can’t speak English (or Dutch).
When I was studying at the language schools we practiced kanji everyday, but I barely write since I quit being a student so I only remember the common ones I see on the streets, stores, tv etc. daily.
And I can write my address lol.
I also automatically use the most standard grammar, or simply the easiest way to say something, even though I learned several ways to say the same thing or to say it more precisely before. I think I’m only improving my Japanese slang… Thanks to variety tv shows x]
When I try to watch the news, I understand the topic and general points… definitely not any details, so I refer to English websites such as JapanToday.com
Native Finnish speaker, I guess my English is more or less fluent, even though my brain shuts down and forgets how to form sentences if I get blindsighted lmao. Writing is easier when I get to think what I want to say.
I’ve been watching anime and Japanese movies/dramas since 04/05 and Korean stuff since 09 so I understand them a little but I wouldn’t be able to hold a conversation. Lately I’ve been trying to learn more Japanese, but I’m lazy/have very little self discipline so I haven’t actually opened a text book or any apps. Any tips on how to pull myself together?
Technically I’m supposed to know Swedish but lol no. And I can guess some words/phrases in Spanish. Maybe a few words in French.
That is so amazing!!
it’s amazing to be an English and Japanese teacher but not cool to teach in China. after working in educational institutions for over 6 years, I have to say, the whole educational “market” in China (mainland) is pretty harsh and unreasonable. most of the institutions will make you a money-worshipper and you won’t care about students in the end, but only money. that’s why I called it a “market”, that’s not what I wanna be for sure.
thanks! my purpose of learning those languages aren’t for “actual usage” but I’m only interested in learning them and getting to know the culture, and reading some literatures in native language later. that’s why I didn’t learn French, Spanish, German, etc, all of those more useful ones. probably could become an amateur translator eventually cuz it’s difficult to find them of course
but tbh, I’m never a fan of translation. if I’m highly interested in something in a foreign language, I’d rather learn them instead of begging for or reading translated version.
I was born in Latvia but all of my family members and relatives speak Russian which makes Russian my mother tongue basically. And since i still live in Latvia i speak Latvian. Obviously, i also speak English. I also know a tiny bit of Ukrainian because of my relatives and Spanish since i had an internship there for almost two months - but for these two languages i only know a couple of words and some very basic phrases. Currently trying to learn Japanese by myself.
I’m Ukrainian, so it’s my native language. I like learning more about every aspect of it, because I find it one of the most beautiful and melodic languages (I’m biased, but for me its so). There are so many great Ukrainian poets and writers from the old days.
Also I know Polish, English and russian.
Used to learn Japanese at university, but failed.
Would like to learn how to speak Belarusian(my long time partner is from there) even though I understand it. Maybe Suomi and I guess Korean (really enjoy how it sounds, especially in some casual conversations I used to hear a lot at work).
And of course Chinese would be so useful in the modern world
it’s pretty sad Belarusian is “almost close to death” (doesn’t mean endangered but almost all the Belarusian ppl I’ve known prefer using Russian…) nowadays, but glad to see more musicians writing lyrics in their native language instead of English and Russian. one of my fav is Bristeil.
intelligent rock is great.
Yeah, there are some great bands with lyrics in Belarusian nowadays.
I like to see how young people are gaining interest in this language.
Knowing and speaking in your mother tongue is so important to increase self-awareness and understand more about your cultural identity and roots, so I’m happy that there are less people who dont care about it than it used to be.
I speak English fluently, and I can also speak Chinese (Mandarin) at a conversational level; my reading and writing in Mandarin is something left to be desired, though XP Sadly, I only know a few phrases and words in Cantonese; I would really love to learn it!
I also took Spanish for a while (up until high school), and I remember a good portion of it, but it’s been a while since I’ve seriously used it. So, I’d probably need to brush up on it again to utilize it coherently, lol.
I also studied Japanese throughout my university years, and I’ve also continued studying it on and off afterwards. I think it’s gotten better since I first started learning it, but it could definitely use more improvement~
My first language is German. Started learning English at the age of 11 in school (5th grade) but even after 13 years in school altogether, so 8 years of English lessons I barely could communicate by it. For the past two years it’s been about literature in school but I barely read the books in English, I either got me some summary or the German version. Back then all I had for translations were dictionaries coming as books not online. There barely was any colloquial language included so the dicitionaries felt in vain.
It was in 2006 when I read a book in English at my desk, the online dictionary open and ready for translations of parts I didn’t get.
Then in 2007 I joined LiveJournal and that was my actual start into the language (btw. I was good in school it was just crap for basic conversations what got taught). I met a lot of people online, regularly updated my own journal and been pretty active in communities. By writing that much and also by reading lots of stuff from others I got better at English.
I also had 5 years of French lessons in school but barely remember anything from back then.
And I started learning Japanese in some kinda evening school in 2006, lessons once a week, quite some years of break when there weren’t enough people to start a course. I still do this even though we are very slow and I take very long until I really can use a language. I have some basic grammar knowledge and I can handle quite some grammar forms within themselves. But I can’t really use this for communication yet (but I really take like forever with stuff like this). I also practice kanji writing on my own with stuff I got from my sensei. It’s materials Japanese elementary students work with. I made it to the beginning of 5th grade by now but always forget so much from before so right now I’m just repeating that stuff and re-learn things. I also do use Memrise for reading kanji practice and also learn vocabulary by this.
I still struggle to really understand Japanese though. I get the words but I too often fail to get the exact meaning still. Even though I very slowly but at least get better. I’m not good at listening stuff but it’s just because I’m not used to it and most of the time things just get spoken too fast.
English and Tagalog but only conversational as I moved to Canada and no longer learned past Grade 5 level.
oh I just saw this, sorry
surely it is, but it’s very difficult to learn Chinese. believe it or not, I’m 29 years old now and it’s my native language, I still have problems in literature, logic, and some grammatical usage. (sometimes I even have problems of expression while having an argument with others, which I only know how to say that thing in English, awkward ) it’s definitely one of the most difficult language in the world, and if we just simply want to communicate easily, artificial languages like Esperanto, Ido, or even Toki Pona would be ideal in my opinion. English is easier than Chinese I think, and I could express myself better, that’s why most of the time I use it instead of Chinese even communicating with ppl from HK or Macau. also, it doesn’t mean English is simple.
according to my experience of languages I’ve learnt or tried or I’m using now more or less, the difficulty for me is,
Chinese> Polish> Vietnamese> Welsh> Hungarian> German> Romanian> Russian> Czech> Uyghur> Ukrainian> Karelian> Finnish> Croatian> Spanish> Catalan> Estonian> Japanese> Danish> Swedish> Dutch> Nynorsk> English> Norwegian Bokmål> Volapük> Malay= Indonesian> Esperanto> Ido> Toki Pona
I’m deadly serious, Chinese is much more difficult than Finnish. just too many “exceptions” in grammar and easy to get misunderstood.
English, Danish (int+), and Japanese (adv+), though my Danish has become verrry rusty, I really really love the language, the spelling, how you speak it, and even the soft ‘d’, but it was so hard to find anywhere to use it other than writing blog entries or bad song/poems. I did find some cool Danish indie artists on Bandcamp to listen to, but that was it aside from watching Mads Mikkelsen films lol. Even had Denmark on my possible list of places to move to, but I guess it wasn’t going to happen.
I studied Mandarin for 3 years and could only ‘write’ (type) shakily to people, but I did make a few artist friends through LINE for awhile. Unfortunately even though I have extremely above average speed reading capability, I have very bad auditory processing, even in English, and other languages even more so, it was impossible for me to ever register the tonal part of Mandarin in speech so I had to abandon it.
All my knowledge of hanzi really helped me excel in my Japanese studies, though I had also started studying Japanese when I was about 8 or 9 at a basic level with cassette tapes so I partially had that innate ‘comfortable’ feeling about it. I could be completely fluent by now if I studied every single day since I began, but I tend to binge learn when I’m feeling good. Now I translate songs / stories both for fun and expanding vocabulary, it’s very satisfying to not have to rely on other people’s translations anymore. I’ve recently been getting into old literature and antiquated speech because I’m interested in folktales, but I tend to get ahead of myself haha.
Listening is still my weakest as with anything, I much prefer reading and love kanji because I’m so pictorially inclined, but it’s more a need to ‘switch’ my brain into that listening mode more than just complete confusion now. (I still can barely comprehend people in English on the phone / headsets…so I have to stop being so hard on myself here lol.)
A year before covid I had seriously finally considered joining JET or a similar program, I’d really like to teach in the countryside because I’m not really into crowds or cities, and I’m a lot more used to that kind of landscape, though I think it’d be more difficult / way less people who know any English.
Aside from that, I’ve always really wanted to learn Russian, but I know it would be another big commitment and I don’t want to half-ass learn it if I can’t put my all into it.