I started learning Te Reo Māori way back in 201X. I wanted to see if my ability to learn a programming language would translate into the skill to learn our native natural language.

I had a dear dear friend to do it with who was learning it as her own ancestral language. We did well.

I learned. I learned the culture. I learned that it can't be separated from the language. I learned a different world view.

Many years later I learned to view history in the multifaceted eyes of our native peoples. I learned how my (indirect) ancestors prosecuted generations of travesties.

I realized I was manuhiri (visitor) in someone else's place.

One day I'll be able to repay that which I've benefited from over generations back to those whom that benefit was stolen from.

Currently I'm studying Japanese and Norwegian with private teachers, Norwegian for about 3 years, and Japanese for 6 years though with the current teacher, about half a year.

Likely having autism, adhd or something of the sort, learning can be complicated for me, so changing the teacher for Japanese helped a lot, though I wish I had noticed I wasn't progressing sooner.

The teacher for Norwegian has a similar teaching method as my new Japanese one, and I think I'm progressing rather well. Though, similar to Spanish, which I found someone fluent to keep training with, I wish I had the same luck with Norwegian. "<.<

I had planned to go after other languages, but given life happening, I am pushing that further down the line.

Also I had tried Duolinguo for a short while, and hated it. Gamefied learning to make you obsessed with it, passive-aggressive failure messages, failing being rather frequent due to the gamefied nature, to push their subscription, and not teaching grammar rules all made me despise it. Most other "learning apps" I tried follow a similar design, even if less passive-aggressive, and the only one that showed grammar rules would lock up after a few lessons and wouldn't take payments on vanilla Android.

And more general to training, I like picking RSS feeds and generating bots of those through RSS Parrot on Mastodon to train reading at least. So far I found mostly Norwegian ones though, but some nice ones were Norway's public police reports (straight to the point so easy to pick vocabulary) and Spillhistorie (similar to GamingOnLinux on scope and in not meandering in articles).

Also for training reading, Japanese folks seem rather prone to making short messages in microblog platforms, fediverse included, so looking for them helps too. Also they boost and quote-reply a lot too from my experience, so good for discoverability too.

All in all, I think I'm in a good point right now. =)

Only working on Japanese currently. Technically I started in 2000 with undergrad classes, kept studying very part-time until a semester in Osaka a few years later. After, I almost entirely dropped it, just very light immersion here and there through media.

Why did I start? A friend asked me to do it with him and I needed to fill out my full-time course load. Always had an interest in the culture but languages have always been one of my weaker subjects, so I had to be talked into it. He ended up dropping the class halfway through the term, of course.

Around five-ish years ago I learned about SRS and picked up a program to start getting some of the vocab and kanji back. Also flipped through some old grammar. I started feeling how much I'd lost. Really demoralizing, and didn't have much motivation to push past it.

About three years ago I started getting more serious about it, once I heard about Seth Clydesdale's amazing Genki resources site. Genki is the popular beginner's textbook, and his site let you do the book's exercises online with some nice features. Sadly, the site got a takedown request, but before that, I revisited the last six chapters of Genki II with it. Ended up taking some time off when I went back to college for a short stint, but last year is when I really started to take it seriously. I finally switched to Anki and started doing 2+ hours a day of study and immersion.

Around the same time, I started developing an AI workflow for career development, and it was a complete game changer for my language learning. I use it mostly for planning and research, especially self-teaching pedagogy. That's how I discovered i+1 language learning (huge), a better way to manage my time, motivate me, make accommodations for ADHD, etc. While it's tempting to rely on AI heavily for questions, it's definitely not a replacement for asking a native user of the language. If you do, stick to stuff within your i+1 range so you have a good idea of when it's hallucinating an answer. While hallucination rates are better these days, it still happens. And follow up on the sources it gives you!

Once I started my new workflow, I went back to Seth's site for Tobira (it's still active!), an intermediate textbook. I went through it all over last summer, fall, and winter, just finishing it a few weeks ago. Now I'm doing planning for focused study on the JLPT N2 exam, and I'm feeling pretty good about taking it in December.

What are my future plans? N2 is the big goal, for a lot of reasons not entirely related to language learning itself, but my overall goal is to have the language be self-reinforcing. I want to get to a point where I can just pull up Bluesky or an NHK article and sustain the language. It'd be a disaster to lose progress again like I did last decade. I think I'm pretty close to this point, actually. I do have production work to do--the JLPT doesn't test English-to-Japanese production, so I've let it lag--but after that, I don't know! Where I go with the language will depend on other life factors at that point.

Great questions, thanks for bringing up the discussion.

Japanese - I wanted to learn this since I was a kid, for typical cultural-export-enjoyment reasons. For many years, I casually entertained interest in learning, but never dedicated much to it until recently. It was always that thing I'd love to learn some day.

In the past few years I've dug into Remembering the Kanji and gotten into Anki in general. It's helped create something persistent. I've got all sorts of resources lined up, but I'm undisciplined in consistency.

My level is still pretty low, overall. Could probably call myself advanced beginner (N4ish), but that'd be a stretch. Long way to go. This is a hard language!

My goal is to be able to consume Japanese internet (web pages and videos), games, books, and tv without it taking huge effort. Ideally, I basically want to switch any 'content consumption' or 'information gathering' tasks I normally do in English to Japanese.

If I were younger, I'd probably think about a goal of moving there, but as it stands I believe I'm too rooted where I am. I hope to visit there at some point soonish. But from what I hear most people speak English well, so knowing the language won't be a necessity for that.

Spanish - I studied this all though school. Found the classes fun and easy. Being in the US, you encounter the language a decent amount. And nice perks like having radio stations or documents available in it.

Growing up, I thought it would be useful to know since it's the second most spoken language in the region. In practice, not that much. I rarely talk to many people anyway, but I especially always feel like I'll insult a Spanish speaker by speaking Spanish. Like I might come off as thinking they don't know English.

My level is probably about B2/C1 (vibe guess). I can hold basic conversations and read pretty well. But long tail vocab and listening speed are weak.

Goals, I think I'm good on. I've travelled and had real conversations with people that don't speak English, and I've read multiple (paper) novels through. I'd love to be better and able to say I'm fluent, but I'm content here. Would rather focus on Japanese going forward.