Know (or want to learn) any foreign languages?

[Devicho]

Curious to know if anyone is interested in learning any foreign languages, or already is multilingual. Feel free to also talk about your progress in your language of choice, or what inspired you to learn the language. You can also share any language you think you'd like to try learning, even if you have yet to seriously study it.

While it would be cool to learn multiple languages, my main focus has been on learning Japanese. My first real exposure to the language came when I was a kid and Pokemon was at the height of it's popularity, and to keep up with demand, a comic shop near me was importing Japanese Pokemon goods. I remember grabbing a bunch of Japanese cards and finding the completely different language fascinating, but I wouldn't seriously look into learning Japanese until years later. I never did take classes, but I've been self-studying it for a long time and―at least via text―I feel like I can communicate my thoughts decently, given time and access to a dictionary. I'm still far from fluent, though, and because I mostly study written materials, I don't have a lot of practice with speaking or listening. I'd like to find some way to work on that, though, so that maybe someday I can visit Japan at least once and not feel lost trying to communicate.

Sometime several years back (more than a decade, iirc) I did actually take and pass the JLPT N4 (one of the easier levels of the official Japanese Language Proficiency Test). Maybe I can try to aim for passing one of the harder levels, like the N3 or even N2 (for reference, N5 is the easiest level, and N1 is the hardest).

 

[rrenaa]

I’d love to visit Japan and South Korea in the future, so I’m really interested in learning both Japanese and Korean. When I was a teenager, I tried learning Korean because I was really into k-pop and Korean culture, but I kept forgetting to practice and never quite got the hang of it. I think if I ever have a trip planned, I’ll have more motivation and ambition to stick with it and really learn.

 

[CoolJhon]

My only fluent language is English, but I'm studying Spanish at school (which I know everyone does and is not at all crazy), but I actually really like it (unlike basically everyone else in the class) and plan on studying it even after school. I'd also really like to learn German one day

 

[VernalLapin]

I took 4 years of German in high school. I’m a bit rusty and nowhere near fluent. But my dad taught me quite a bit from a young age and it helped a ton so I was usually ahead of the class for the first couple years haha. I chose to take German because I wanted to further learning the language and I became enamored with Germany in middle school and went there with my family.

I’m learning Japanese right now! I’ve wanted to for quite a while and I’m so glad I finally took the plunge. I want to visit Japan so bad and there’s so much art and food that I enjoy and want to be able to read the text. It’s so awesome to finally be able to read katakana and hiragana.

 

[Beanz]

english is my native language but i know a good amount of spanish mainly because my grandma is from chile and speaks spanish to my brother and i. however, my comprehension is better than my speaking skills as i can only respond back with limited vocabulary if that makes any sense.

aside from that i was learning basic french for nearly a year. i quit to focus on spanish so i could develop those speaking skills.

this thread reminded me of my aunt because she’s been trying to learn norwegian and she has actually traveled there twice.

 

[Halloqueen]

I would be most interested in learning Japanese. I would like to be able to converse with people, read things, and consume media in its native language without needing to rely on other people to translate things. I'm also a writer and one of the stories I'm working on would, I feel, be conveyed best in a graphic novel or manga format.

Chinese, French, Italian, and Spanish would be fun and interesting too.

I'm pretty open to learning any other languages, frankly, but those are the ones that hold the most interest.

Took a few Spanish classes in high school but didn't commit to it because I didn't need any more credits in it at the time, which at this point I regret. Annoyingly, Japanese didn't become an available course until I'd already graduated.

 

[thatawkwardkid]

I started learning Japanese when I was 12/13. My Japanese now is pretty broken but for some reason I still remember how to read/write. My listening is definitely better since I literally listen to Japanese everyday. I only learned it because half my family is Japanese and my mom is the only person on that side of the family that doesn't live in Japan so I thought it would be convenient for me to learn their language since none of them speak English.

I'm learning Spanish right now and my goal is to be at a conversational level. I actually originally wanted to learn Portuguese, but I thought the phonetics of Portuguese would be more of a challenge so I chose Spanish. My reasons is because Spanish (kinda) makes learning Portuguese, easier, it is a lot of more useful to learn and speak Spanish living in the U.S. so I'm more likely to use it, and now that I'm learning it, I loooove speaking it. Spanish is mostly a phonetic language so it's a lot more easier to be able to speak, and the vowels are largely similar to Japanese (except maybe the u sound). Spanish is pretty easy so far. The only hard part (besides certain grammar points like verb conjugations) is that there are so many variations of Spanish to choose from.

Portuguese is not phonetic at all, and the main thing I find challenging is the nasal sounds (at least in Brazilian Portuguese) and open/closed vowels like é vs ê. Apparently, if you don't use the proper nasal sounds, it could sound like a different word (like pão). There's a lot of rules to reading that I know I'd have to get used to (e.g., s between two vowels makes a sort of "z" sound, a before n/m becomes a closed/nasal sound, t/d followed by e/i makes a chee/jee sound, etc.). I want to learn it mostly because I love how Brazilian Portuguese sounds and how melodic it sounds. Another hard thing about Brazilian Portuguese is that there are so many accents to choose from, and there are three types of r's depending on the regional accent.

I'm learning Spanish/Portuguese mainly because I love the language and I want to conversate with people in their native language. I plan on moving abroad in the future, but depending on where I go, I might have to learn another language? Spain/Portugual is on my list of potential places but if for some reason I change my mind I have to be open to learning an additional language.

 

[skarmoury]

I am multilingual!!! Tagalog was our main language at home but my parents taught me english at a young age as well, and our TV had cable so I was easily exposed to both languages at a very young age. When I moved to the province I learned of a third language (which I'd rather not mention out of fear of being doxxed lol), and I learned it purely out of listening to the locals every day for an entire 6 years. I'm not fluent in said language because I learned everything just from listening to others, but it's enough for simple conversation :]

I don't know if I have the energy to learn another language, I tried Japanese but never got to fully commit to it ;v; maybe one day,..

 

[Cetoddle769]

Idk if this counts, but I know how to speak Gerudo.

Words I know:

Voe - Man
Vai - Girl
Vevhi - Daughter
Vure - Bird

...That's all I can remember off the top of my head. There are several greetings I get mixed up on.

 

[-Raven-]

I wish I knew German or Italian. I tried learning Italian from games before and it went okay but obviously I can’t really speak or write it. I can read some but I think even without studying, if you know etymology, you can figure it out. And I have an Italian dictionary. I know some swears from both but I guess I won’t post those here! Always joked I’d fit right in with Italians because I already swear so much.

 

[Envy]

I'd like to know all of the western European languages including the defunct language of Latin. I am a music history nerd so knowing all of those languages would be really neat.

I haven't ever succeeded in learning a second language, though. I took a few semesters of French, so French is likely the language I know the best aside from English, but that was five years ago and I haven't kept it up and only remember basic stuff like how to greet with my name or say I am a woman. Lol. I need to refresh myself.

I've learned a little German, too. I was dedicated to that a year or so ago but fell out of it for some reason.

Right now I'm thinking that learning Spanish would be great, and am trying to do that. I recently moved and am noticing a lot of Spanish speaking in my new area, and lots of workers are bilingual, so it looks like a skill I need to attain. Sadly, Spanish just isn't as exciting to me as learning French or German for some reason, but I'll try to push through it.

 

[Kamex]

I took three years of German in high school, though I can only speak it at a basic level. During college, I learned French and currently speak it quite well. I'm really fascinated by the culture and music, particularly French-Canadian music, which helps me stay motivated to learn French. Currently, I'm taking a French cinema class at uni and I think watching movies in foreign languages definitely helps me learn in an immersive and natural manner. I also took some Spanish classes in college, though I cannot speak it well, let alone understand the language anywhere near as much as French.

Besides that, I can speak Persian because my parents are Middle Eastern and it's their native language. I don't have any need to speak it though unless I'm speaking with family members or relatives who don't speak English well.

I don't have any motivation to learn any other languages, though I might consider learning a bit of Turkish in the future. Though I might only learn basic greetings since I'm already mixing up a few French and Spanish words. It's hard to learn two languages that are so similar to each other.

 

[Giddy]

I did a short, in person course to learn Japanese, but it's been so long I may need to reread what we learnt >.< We even were learning the writing too. It was an amazing experience and I defintely wanna learn more again.

When I went to Poland, I bought a book to learn a lil bit of Polish while I was there. And when the chef at my old work worked there, she only knew Italian so I bought another book to try anf learn some too.

I also took a course to try and learn British Sign Language and again, wanna relearn everything for that too!

There are probbaly other languages I wouldn't mind learning, to practice different ones to see which I think I could learn well?

I never had classes for languages when I was primary school, so when it come to secondary school it felt so sudden when we started learning French and Spainsh. My teacher wasn't very good, I remember one who completely ignored me, so I don't really know much.
Spainsh may be an interest since my sisters family live in Mexico!

 

[gavriel]

I only speak english and portuguese (my native), I can understand japanese on an average level, like childreen cartoons and some shows because I was bored during pandemic and started learning japanese, but I dont think I will ever use it in my life
I wanted to learn greek for reading the new testament and understand what christian icons means LOL

 

[Yoshi155]

All I know is English, but because of school and Duolingo I kind of know some Spanish? It’s only because of those things, but I seem to have a more retentive memory than most of my classmates and I remember things I learned in Spanish from older grades, so I can form some sentences, although I’m far from fluent. To be honest, I’m not really interested in learning any other languages anyway, so it doesn’t affect me that I only know one, even if I wouldn’t be opposed to being able to speak another.

 

[StarlitGlitch]

I speak Japanese! (but I live in Japan so it’s technically not “foreign” for me lol) most of my work is in Japanese so I’m at least business level.

I’ve been on and off learning Korean. I think it’s fun learning a new language, and I travel to Korea sometimes/Korean is similar to Japanese so it makes sense to learn, but my motivation isn’t as strong as Japanese so I always end up falling out of the habit of studying to focus on other things.

 

[Briar]

My native language is English, and the only foreign languages I've learned to a decent level are Korean and Spanish. I've dabbled in Arabic and German, but I never committed enough time to either of them to make any real progress. I'd like to revisit them in the future though. But, for the two I have actually somewhat learned:

Korean
When I started learning Korean I was really into Korean music and variety shows. I started off by listening to Talk To Me In Korean. I didn't get very far in it before I started using the Korean Grammar in Use books. There was an Anki deck someone had made called Korean Grammar Sentences by Evita which included sentences from KGIU, and I also made my own deck for vocabulary. And of course I was always listening to Korean music and watching variety shows, so I was hearing the language all the time. I made good progress and learned a lot, but I studied too much and burned myself out badly in the end. I shouldn't have put so much focus on Anki. My knowledge of Korean has definitely atrophied, but I still remember a decent amount.

Spanish
Now, for Spanish, technically I took two years of it in high school, but I barely learned anything during that time. In the second year my teacher went on maternity leave at some point, and we has a substitute who didn't even speak Spanish. I started actually learning Spanish about a year and a half ago, although there was a period of a few months where I didn't study much due to health stuff. As to my study methods, I decided to take a different approach this time, namely no Anki. At the beginning I listened to the entire Language Transfer course for Spanish and worked through a little more than half of a book called Complete Spanish Step-by-Step. At some point during that I began watching Dreaming Spanish on YouTube, and I've since watched all the superbeginner, beginner, and intermediate videos they have on YouTube as well as the other free videos on their website. They do have many additional premium videos that you need a subscription to watch, but I haven't bought the subscription. I'm working through the advanced videos now. Aside from Dreaming Spanish, there are other channels I've watched as well such as Español con Ali, Spanish After Hours, and How to Spanish Podcast. But, a recent favorite channel of mine that was only created about six months ago is Spanish Boost Gaming! Essentially, it's a guy who does gaming videos geared towards learners that are in simpler/slower Spanish. I've also been slowly mixing in more content meant for native speakers. Overall, I think I've made good progress so far, and I'm eager to continue learning~

 

[Aniko]

English for me is a foreign language that I learned mainly on forums, like here . I can read modern books but it would be hard to read old English or technical books I guess. I'm not fluent. I should study it seriously one day.

I know a little bit or Korean and Japanese as well, not much. Korean because the first person I talked to on the Internet was Korean and Japanese because of a Japanese guy in a student exchange at my school. Those two people made me curious about their language and culture.

Because of some movies, I learned a bit of Italian and Polish in the past but forgot all about it.

I'm not a good student.

 

[lasagne_of_death]

I speak a fair amount of Irish, though I definitely don't consider it as a foreign language, just a second one (even though it's technically my first, I stopped speaking it when I was really little because no one else in my family kept up speaking it). I'm studying it in school, preparing for most likely the B1 TEG exam. I'm a bit nervous not gonna lie, I don't want to fail. I'm far better at understanding Irish than speaking it, like I'd know what a person is saying or what's written down, but due to the lack of oral practice I'm not the best speaker.

I wish I could learn Spanish and Polish. I don't see that happening any time soon, but it's something I'd like to start. A lot of my friends are Polish, so it'd be cool to be able to talk with them in the language. Spanish just seems fun, probably one of my favourite European languages.

 

[Neb]

I studied Dutch and Japanese for a while, but now I focus on Spanish. Of the three languages I've tried, I find Spanish the easiest. It has no overly complex writing systems or difficult sounds that don't exist in English.