A community to discuss learning languages, and meet people who might speak the language you're trying to learn.
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.
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.
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.
I'm trying to pick Russian back up again. I got a minor in the language in college, but several years of not using it at all has caused me to forget a lot. I still have my old textbooks and resources so trying to crack those open again soon.
I am currently learning German, as I moved to Germany last year. My native language is English. I've dabbled in Spanish, French, and Russian, but German is the first one I've had reason to really intensively learn.
Having a reason to learn is crucial. Otherwise it's hard to prioritize learning high enough.
I'm stuck while learning Mandarin. I need more reasons next to "a third of world's population are speaking it".
Having scheduled online sessions with a tandem helped.
If Firefly is at all a predictor of the future, maybe we'll all be learning it in the next century.
Frohen Kuchentag wünsche ich dir.
Danke schon! Ich bin heute 0!
I've never put real effort into trying to learn a second language, but I have an opportunity to travel to Italy next year so I need to start learning some basic Italian so I'm at least not a tourist who doesn't know a lick of the local language.
I'm honestly looking for some advice on where to start
I like the concept of "spoonfed" cards which keep adding most common words for learning more and more. I couldn't find an Italian deck, though.
Ciao bella. Di dove sei?
I'm working on learning French again. Went in 2019, planning another trip for 2027. Its not critical that I become fluent. I just like being able to attempt to speak French as I always had good interactions by at least trying. I was using duolingo back then. Currently, I'm using EWA which I like way better.
I also follow every French community on Lemmy that I see and try my best to read the posts and comments.
Merveilleux!
I want to start learning German because it's where I plan to go live once my life is in a good place.
I speak spanish natively and "fluent" english (my pronunciation is still not quite there yet but writing, hearing, and vocabulary I have no problem)
Nice! My wife is from Argentina, so she actually has the exact same languages as you. She's been learning German for about 4 years now. A good channel for German is EasyGerman on Youtube.
Thanks for the recommendation! I'm gonna check it out!