Languages

[appleAlc]

I’m not learning Pashto via Arabic, it’s simply that I can’t quite find resources to learn Pashto and I was seeking to learn a language that used the Arabic script, so, in absence of resources for one, I decided to try to take up Arabic. As for why Pashto caught my eye initially…I have no clue frankly. I’d been seeking to learn the Arabic script for, frankly, an aesthetic appreciation and figured I should at least attempt to learn a language to make use of that.

[starbreaker]

What languages do you guys speak? Do you have any interest in learning more?

I'm really only fluent in two languages: English and bad English. I've picked up enough French that my wife and I were able to spend two weeks in Paris without coming across as "Ugly Americans"; I could order in restaurants, ask directions, make limited polite conversation with the staff at our hotel or with random strangers, and admit that I don't speak good French. I can manage a little Spanish where it's similar to French, but I haven't studied it and I don't rely too heavily on the Romance language connection. I've picked up "hello" and "goodbye" in a couple of other languages, but most of the languages I know are programming languages and outside this thread's intended scope. =^.^=

[Elagabalus]

What languages do you guys speak? Do you have any interest in learning more?

I speak a few, English, Russian, Norwegian somewhat decent some that are quite rusty, Irish and Chinese. Then a bit of Etruscan (the little that is known now)

[Memory]

I love languages! My second language is French, which is the native language of most of my family. I'm not fluent by any means, but I understand a good bit of it (my reading and listening comprehension is much better than my speaking and writing, lol). I also know a bit of Brazilian Portuguese, and I'm working on learning the basics of Russian currently!

[_ghost_]

I'm a native English speaker currently studying Spanish. I was casually into language learning off-and-on throughout middle school and the first part of high school and looked at Japanese, but none of it stuck. I ended up taking Spanish in high school and loved it so much I kept doing it when I went to university. Linguistics generally fascinates me, but I wanted to focus my time on one language rather than the study of languages generally, otherwise I would've majored in linguistics. I'm nowhere near fluent but can read and write pretty solidly.

I have a whole list I'd like to study at some point, although the odds of actually getting anywhere with most of them is low. Probably the next one I'll go for will be French, Russian, or Portuguese; I'm leaning Portuguese because I can kind of puzzle out some written Portuguese already, so it doesn't seem like it would be as much of a leap.

[nasgor]

I learned english in school/through media and indonesian from my surroundings, I can understand both pretty well, I use both in my daily life. English is helpful for scrolling the internet (and making friends) and indonesian is what I use in real life.

I find english to have very bullshit grammar rules sometimes, and I tend to forget things sometimes. The learning curve is very difficult if you didn't grow up immersed in the language (I was lucky that I loved reading american YA books). I appreciate the fact that the words are very short in comparison to my native language. It's the opposite in indonesian - the words are long but the grammar rules is very simple and you often just need a few words to form a complete sentence. Actually, indonesian is meant to be a lingua franca, so for millions of people it is a second language (and it seems that people tend to be more fluent in indonesian than their native language here).

My crush speaks/sings in brazilian-portuguese around me and I recognize very few words. In return he knows quite a few indonesian words from me.

[koiitan]

My first experience was that I really hated learning any other language than English (I'm Polish) because in school the lessons were boring, and I didn't learn anything. One time my aunt gave me a book about Japan for Christmas, about their culture and the last page was a little phrase book. I really enjoyed it and that was a moment when I thought "Yes, I wanna learn this language." That made me being more interested in just learning other languages, that it doesn't have to be so boring, and I can learn it on my own way! I'm still learning Japanese (I had many times I just stopped and had to go from beginning) but I also want to learn Malaysian, Italian and Portugal. I think French or Spanish would be also very helpful.

[fablefound]

late to the party, but oh my gosh, in high school i thought i was going to be a proper polyglot. besides my native language of english...

• a lot of my family friends are asl interpreters, so i actually was signing in asl before i verbally spoke
• i went to french immersion as a kid and subsequently did advanced french through high school
• i took spanish in high school too for funsies, and ended up getting an academic award for it??
• i also was a massive anime nerd in my late teens/young adulthood, and when i went to japan in 2023 with family, i played translator for basic verbal queries (couldn't read it though whoops)

unfortunately, "use it or lose it" is very real. i have maybe a toddler's vocabulary in all of these combined ;_; my family's been anglophones the last few generations so for better or worse there's nothing there i'm missing out on, but i'd really love to pick french or asl up again in particular--or maybe one a conlang like toki pona...