this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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LanguageLearning

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What languages are you currently learning?

What languages do you speak already?

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[–] emb@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Right now I'm focused mainly on Japanese. Have a decent understanding of Spanish, and I'm sure I'll add more someday. Right now trying to feel proficient with these.

It's funny how much of a contrast it is. Going from one that has most words based off the same roots as English, to another that shares so little etymology and uses totally different writing systems.

[–] Fawkes@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm struggling enough with German, and they're in the same language family. I honestly cannot imagine trying to learn a language that shared literally no roots or similarities.

[–] emb@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It can be really overwhelming!

Even tho they don't share historic lineage, there are thankfully quite a few loan words. There's a whole set of characters (katakana) for foreign words, and most of those words are just the English word in a Japanese accent. So there's some reprieve.

But yeah, reading or watching native materials, there are so many very specific words in Spanish that I get to understand just for free. It kinda spoils a person.

German is another language I'm interested in (mainly because I perceive it to be pretty close to English), and even then I've heard the grammar can get tricky. And I know having gender the nouns will be confounding.