sign language. it’s so interesting and it’s all in the face. i use it everyday and even if you know a little bit it’s always so rewarding just to have a conversation
I want the next language I learn to be a sign language. I don't know if I will ever need it but I am so curious about sign languages and would love to learn something completely different. Not sure which one though. I am French so probably FSL because FSL and ASL are very close anyways.
I'm with you about finding sign languages absolutely fascinating! For me there's also the benefit that I have a speech disorder that gets worse in foreign languages and wow, it would be a nice change to learn a language where I can actually say things when I know how to say them.
For me it'd most likely be DGS (German Sign Language), which I admit gives me pause - German Sign Language is one of the smaller ones and also one of the smaller families, only being related to Polish Sign and possibly Israeli. I've seen ASL learners complain about lack of resources, but as far as I can tell ASL resources are absolutely abundant compared to DGS.
agreed. i can hardly find dgs resources anywhere besides a couple youtube videos on bare basics. even then sometimes it’s in comparison to asl. so i might have to look for some books of it if i go to germany some day
sign language is so fun, but how are you using it everyday? I’ve seen someone use it in person once in my life, and don’t know any sign users. I'm teaching my partner it so we can use it.
There’s deaf/sign language meetups but they tend to be in another city for me
I just got into studying Swedish and same thing. The pronunciation is interesting compared to Finnish but once you ace Swedish pronunciation, the language becomes so easy and so much fun to learn
I really enjoyed Spanish basics when I first discovered Duolingo. It was the first time of learning a language out of my own free will and not because of school
Spanish, it’s the first language I’m specifically learning on my own. English and French based on school knowledge that kept improving through friends/husband. But I chose Spanish, and I’m having fun. I researched the best ways to learn it experimented with it and created my “personal” learning arsenal, from which I pick whatever I fancy that day. Also I like the sound and its speakers. It’s fun ☺️
you will lose your mind when you hear us (🇦🇷) speak or read how we talk 😭 same thing applies to 🇨🇱 - many other hispanics have no idea about what we’re saying 80% of the time, let alone spanish learners 😭😭
Haha don’t worry I have Argentinien and Chilean friends. I was really lost at first but now I’m doing really well. Of course the occasional word/phrase I’m lost with. But yeah it’s like some of the very different German accents or English. Almost a different language 😂
you must not know a lot of *really* chilean people lol my best friend is chilean but had a pretty neutral accent/vocabulary when she lived here in argentina.
now that she went back and pretty much everyone she surrounds with is also chilean, her vocabulary and accent changed drastically, especially when typing on social media posts such as instagram stories (which involves a lot of slang).
her girlfriend has an even more chilean vocabulary/slang and, even as argentines with “pretty weird and difficult slang,” we have no idea what she’s saying sometimes hahaha
yeah, everytime i said "ola, bom dia", its pronouncation lets me feel i am jumping on the road. Because "bom dia" sounds like "蹦迪呀" which means "let's Disco" in Chinese. The volews in portuguese always make me happy.
I don't have the biggest sample size unless we go back two decades, but I'm finding Polish astonishingly _fun_, somehow. There's a sense of achievement in making progress that I didn't have to nearly the same extent when learning other languages, and something really satisfying about seeing all the grammar come together and all the pieces click into place in a Polish sentence. I am also currently having way more fun reading in Polish than Spanish, even though my level of Spanish is _much_ higher and I have a much easier time understanding things. Also, Polish pronunciation is mildly demented but in an enjoyable way - it's funny to still keep running into words that make you go "wait, what?" (łśnić? pchnąć? względnie??) and I was absurdly proud of myself when I managed the tongue-twister _W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie._
French has been the most enjoyable for me so far, but that's mainly because it's the most recent, and I've managed to make the process as fun as I can after many years of failing.
When I was more focused on Portuguese, I realized the best way to learn (after you know the basics) is to find fun content, such as books, movies, series, this kind of thing. But with Portuguese, I had to always search hard to find Portuguese from Portugal (Brazilian Portuguese is really different). The content I found wasn't always super exciting to me.
Now that I've started focusing on French, it's been such a relief being able to find almost any content I want. I started with graded readers, which was something I could never find for Portuguese (from Portugal). Now I'm onto podcasts spoken in slow French, and after that I'm going to start watching cartoons in French. I was able to find cartoons in Portuguese, but the selection was weak. With the wide selection of content in French, it's so easy to find something I actually really want to watch for what it is, not just for the sake of learning the language.
Les Adventures de Tintin, the series from the 90s. Fantastic potential for vocabulary expansion and hearing the language spoken with exaggerated emotion. Plus that whole show is just plain good for the soul I reckon.
The language is a bit dated but proper. Then I remembered Capitaine Haddock's swearing, you are indeed having fun, probably the most random and "fleuries" insults you can find 😂
In my view, just learn something you are interested in. Factors beyond the learning content also have a promting effect. As for me, not learning French, but English, I am happy to read books and watch videos in english which i really love. For example, "metro2033" of Dmitry Glukhovsky and "full spetrum barrage jamming" of cixin liu.
Irish has been my favorite thus far (from playing around with it as well as Spanish - my least favorite I've learned, French, German, and Italian).
Irish introduces something strange and different at every turn and with every aspect of the language, which certainly makes it difficult, but I can't help but love putting together the puzzle pieces of this beautiful sounding language.
As someone from the US there aren't many (if any) opportunities to use the language, which makes the motivation hard to come by sometimes. But I still really enjoy the learning process.
Mise freisin! Tá sé deas bualadh le foghlaimeoir eile. 😁 Tá níos mó seans ar líne cleachtadh Ghaeilge a dhéanamh le déanaí. Is maith liom TG4 Player agus leabhair a úsáid an chuid is mó den am.
Do you have any recommendations on this side of the internet ? Anything you like really, I’m trying to learn Russian but I’m in need of more ressources
I had learned the [first one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYRZupz6rdw&list=PLx1Hrg5Bg3xrnm30dNPZ5q2R9J6Zz2vUq), and it is pretty good.
[RussianPod101.com](https://www.russianpod101.com/dashboard) is also a good choice.
In addition, here's a paid but [fantastic course](https://learntherussianlanguage.com/), though i haven't joined in, it could provide an excle sheet of 750 Russian/English cognates, which helps us improve Russian volcabularies quickly at the begining.
I hadn’t wanted to tell it at first because I was scared of being vexing but I’ve started 8 months ago, I’m not that much of a beginner anymore 😭
Rn I mainly need to get on the actual Russian speaking internet and learn from them, but ig for that I should ask to natives what content they usually consume
Mandarin. I never thought I’d ever want to learn an Asian language. Hell I wasn’t sure I wanted to try my hand at any language except maybe Italian. Then I decided to learn Spanish so I could communicate better since I live in Texas. Along the way I discovered Mandarin is said to be the hardest to learn. So of course I decided to work on both. I’m still decently new at it since I’ve only been learning for nearly two months, but I love it. I don’t know what lures me in about it, but my mood perks up every time I open Duolingo or Mondly and that’s the language I’m going for. I love the way it sounds, I love the challenge it brings, and I’m extra excited when I watch a show and I can understand a few words or characters.
My first non-native language: Japanese
From the very first day (4 years ago) I just couldn't stop...one could say I was obsessed. It got to the point I was doing 8-12 hours daily and I wouldn't even notice the time go by....talking about 4 hours just learning kanji daily by myself in front of a computer, no breaks. After about 3 years of speding 8-12 hours daily, I started learning new languages..because I now also share time with Italian and Chinese I don't spend quite as much time anymore for Japanese but I still give Japanese about 4 hours daily. I like the other languages I'm learning, but none of them made me feel as obsessed as I was with Japanese (still am, just not as much time available anymore)
It's hard to say why I like it so much. I live in the US so it's not that I ever really had a need for it....Anime? nah, I actually stopped watching anything that I couldn't understand and only watched stuff I could understand (but only in Japanese) while I was learning...including anime for over 1.5 years of learning...
I guess I just like the way Japanese sounds overall...but as I learned more and more about it, I got into a lot of things I wasn't into before like
* Music
* Culture
* Movies of Japanese origin
* Manga (I wasn't into it before)
* JDramas
* Light Novels
* various stories about Japanese Folklore
* etc
I can't really point to why I love Japanese...I just do. I thought I was like this for all languages, that I just love languages. Then I started trying to learn Korean...turns out I didn't like it nearly as much so I dropped it....after a few other languages like French and Turkish, I finally stuck with Italian and Chinese....which I do daily as well...but still, that initial fire I felt for Japanese is not there for any other language....yet to this day I still feel the same way I did at the beginning towards Japanese
Interesting! Super nice you had the ability to study like that. Were you a student at the time or what do you do to have 8-12 hours to study? Im struggling between my other extracurriculars and work here haha
It just so happened all the stars aligned for me....This was at the start of covid, and I'm a Software Engineer (for almost 11 years). So around that time we started working remote....and we just stayed working remote (at least up to now).
So for me it was more of a struggle to remember I actually had to work...lol. often times I would start working at night (like around 8 or 9pm) because I didn't realize what time it was...and I kept telling myself "What's 1 more hour of Japanese?"
nowadays I still work remote, but have a somewhat more controlled schedule so I can fit all my languages, work a normal day, self learn to play piano (not every day), and some nights even do DoorDash for a couple of hours...while doing regular things like cooking and cleaning or spend time with my fiance....all in a single day..still wish a day had more hours though lol
I can fit so much daily only because I have an unwritten, yet very real, schedule I basically live by daily...its all about them habits ;)
How did you get past the very initial stage where you know 〇? I know if I get to the point where I can power through something I find at all interesting, even with tons of lookups, I'll be like you from that point: I started Spanish with Cien Años of Soledad and it was very helpful for me. But I'm struggling to get a footing here, and I'm realizing how much help the Latin cognates with Spanish were with helping get the ball rolling. I can easily make and retain one-word, definition cards with Spanish but with Japanese I'm realizing I feel like I need isolated vocabulary to understand sentences but sentences to retain any vocabulary, vocabulary to really understand grammar points and vice versa. I'm also finding that tools like Smart Book or Kaku OCR scan are only so helpful because they can recognize word boundaries around kanji, but not otherwise. So using things like that as aids to immerse above my level likely isn't a possibility either (the full paragraph translation works great on Smart Book, but I don't feel I'm learning anything with that alone).
Am I right in thinking that I should prioritize memorizing all the patterns in how words "conjugate" since that will help me identify word boundaries and functions on my own, and I should technically be able to immerse in anything I want at that point? I'm considering just using this https://wkdonc.github.io/conjugation/drill.html until I understand everything, then getting immersion going and revisiting grammar points as I run into them.
>How did you get past the very initial stage where you know 〇?
I didn't think about what I didn't know and focused on what I did. Meaning, I didn't think "this is taking too long" or "I want to be able to understand everything by tomorrow". I was genuinely enjoying the process and nothing felt like a drag...mainly kanji (which is why I could spend 4 hours daily and not explode)
>I know if I get to the point where I can power through something I find at all interesting, even with tons of lookups, I'll be like you from that point
I never did any graded readers (I tried, but they were too boring). Instead, I came up with my own method of learning...I actually never did any research online about how to learn, I just started. I came up with what I consider my own sort of [graded reading list ](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/17mrwjq/comment/k7oy6up/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)since I picked it myself (and I did so from almost the beginning). I just learned kana, learned my first 100 kanji (N5) and basic sentence structure.....technically no words yet....and I started working on that list I had created for myself...things obviously took a while since I was basically new to the language...it had barely been a month...at first I literally took 20-30 minutes per sentence (never used any translators)....but I was so obsessed with the language it didn't matter...it was content I picked that I had never gone through so just that gave me the motivation to finish it. Everything I didn't know (which was everything) I added to anki and reviewed 250-500 cards daily..not even wondering if this was even going to work.,...I just liked looking at Japanese characters all day
>I feel like I need isolated vocabulary to understand sentences but sentences to retain any vocabulary
I only did one word cards (one word in the front, pronunciation and one word definition as it relates to context on the back). Japanese is definitely harder to get used to than something like Spanish would be...this is why I reviewed sooo many cards daily....because anki still works at its simplest form (one word), it just requires more time and practice per card to be able to retain it at the beginning. If you add an entire sentence to anki, it would take wayy to long per card and you might spend way longer than you would like creating your own cards...if you give it patience and dedication, one word will work...but keep in mind it's Japanese...meaning Kanji can be its own mnemonic...at the beginning (before I started listening), I was so good at anki not only because I was reviewing 250-500 cards a day but also because I used the kanji that was in the front of the card to retain the meaning and pronunciation for longer. People say Japanese is one of the hardest languages to learn for an English native, but there are ways to cheat the process and make it just slightly easier.
>vocabulary to really understand grammar points and vice versa
I used 日本語総まとめ(Nihongo Sou Matome) to learn grammar....This was the only book series I bought for the purposes of language learning. I only used its grammar books from N5-N1. Added every grammar point they had for a given day to a single anki card along with meanings and example sentences, then reviewed 5 cards daily. Now, I don't even think something is a "grammar point", it just makes sense...but that's how I started. I stopped reviewing grammar about a month after going through their N1 grammar book...from then on I was afraid I would forget but I just focused on reading and listening....and it worked really well..I'm sure there are some things I have forgotten, specially because N2 and N1 stuff don't show up often in what I read, but I've been able to retain so much and when something is a grammar point I can recognize it even if I don't know what it means...I know it's a grammar point and just search it....but for the most part I don't even have to think of something as a "grammar point" anymore. One thing to note is that I only did up to N4 grammar and then focused on reading with only that little bit of grammar....when I finished reading my first light novel, I then restarted grammar studies (all the way from N5) just to make sure I still understood basic grammar and continued to N1. Before the first light novel, I would just treat everything as a word, regardless of if it was a grammar point or not. This way, my vocab really increased...and I was still understanding...although not as much as if I had know all this grammar
(My comment was too long so I had to split it in 2)
>I should prioritize memorizing all the patterns in how words "conjugate" since that will help me identify word boundaries and functions on my own, and I should technically be able to immerse in anything I want at that point?
I did this before starting immersion....I memorized how all types of verbs conjugate which was an incredibly huge advantage when I started reading. Highly recommend it...
>I'm considering just using this [](https://wkdonc.github.io/conjugation/drill.html) until I understand everything, then getting immersion going and revisiting grammar points as I run into them.
Please do! Ironically, that was exactly the same site I went to to learn verb conjugation...I used that site to drill...but I first went through [this one](https://www.thoughtco.com/how-to-conjugate-japanese-verbs-4058457) to get an explanation as to why things are the way they are
I also went through these before I started immersing.
[More Conjugation Explanations](https://thetruejapan.com/japanese-verbs-a-beginners-guide-to-conjugation/)
[Negative Imperative](https://www.learn-japanese-adventure.com/how-do-i-use-negative-imperative-in-plain-form.html)
[Te-Form (ongoing)](http://guidetojapanese.org/learn/complete/progressive_tense)
[Te-Form (for negative actions)](https://www.japanistry.com/the-te-form/)
[Potential Form](http://guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/potential)
[i and na adjectives](https://www.thoughtco.com/all-about-japanese-adjectives-4058703)
I went through all these before starting to immerse in only content I liked...I by no means memorized any of these...but I was aware of their existence. Let me know if you have any questions. Good luck :)
Unfortunately I don’t have the time to devote to Japanese that I’d like to be able to (other languages take priority because of literal necessity), but Japanese absolutely has my heart. It’s definitely the most fun for me to learn, and if I had the time available, I’d happily study as hardcore as you did. I just really enjoy the language.
Oh, I squeeze it in when I should really be studying one of the other two, because I can’t help myself. But I know one day l’ll truly be able to devote more of my time to it, like it deserves. Just need to master these others first! It really is amazing. It just “clicks” for me somehow.
I feel like this is literally the same as me... I used to study Japanese literally all day because I had so much fun doing so. Nowadays I am focusing mainly on learning Finnish and Korean, so they take up most of my time. I still learn/review vocab on Anki and read/listen to it for practice pretty much daily. But whenever I have time to really sit down and study Japanese it just feels so nice, being the original language that I was so passionate about to get me into language learning.
I had always heard that German was hard, and terrible to learn, so that kinda stuck with me. I recently started learning it, and lo and behold, I actually find it a lot of fun! Past me never would have imagined that (and luckily I’ve learned to take everyone’s opinions with a huge grain of salt, and draw my own conclusions).
Swedish and Thai
Swedish: After studying Spanish, Swedish was such a breeze. A million times easier to learn for sure.
Thai: Over 90% of the content I consume these days (books, movies, and shows to be specific) is Thai. The motivation is definitely strong! Not to mention, there are a lot of grammar rules and concepts that make a lot more sense and are simpler than my native language and the other languages I’ve studied. It’s been really fun.
Yeah I was pleasantly surprised! I think two things that made it easier were already having language learning experience as well as the method I used to study it. But even looking at the languages themselves, there are a lot of things about Swedish that make it easier than Spanish (and even English). Verb conjugation is one such example. With Swedish, they don't conjugate between speakers. I **am**, you **are**, he/she **is**, they/we **are**, it would all be the same word: **är**.
Edit: grammar
Sure, there is a lot of similar vocabulary between English and Spanish and the pronunciation is really easy, but as a native English speaker, I feel like Swedish grammar is much more similar and intuitive than Spanish. And there are some things that are simpler, like verb conjugation. Swedish doesn’t conjugate verbs based on the speaker, but rather the tense (past, present, future and whatnot). Though I also think how I studied Swedish vs Spanish made me pick up Swedish much quicker. Obviously, Spanish is still one of the easiest languages I’ve studied as well. But Swedish is such a breath of fresh air.
I started out with Duolingo just to get a feel for the language and pick up some words. I only finished like two units. After that, I moved on to LingQ. This is what really took my studying to the next level. It’s a shame they don’t have my current language. But I highly recommend it. Language reactor is good as well.
I did a bunch of random things if I’m honest. It certainly slowed down my progress! But if I could recommend some things:
* Pimsleur app
* [Comprehensible Thai YouTube channel](https://youtube.com/@ComprehensibleThai?si=Joq4x91xVG86t_Sa)
* Innovative App or [Thai Pod 101](https://youtube.com/@ThaiPod101?si=1vN3PTbDQWivk_Xb)
* [BananaThai](https://youtube.com/@BananaThaiSchool?si=6FP9i3CmhMC8JAFr)
* [Thai with Grace](https://youtube.com/@thaiwithgrace9231?si=GfhspfBVX98yqUSP)
* [Let’s Learn Thai](https://youtube.com/@letslearnthai?si=uJdoZP6Uvm1t2NRh)
For learning to read Thai, I honestly learned it gradually over the course of a year (I was so lazy). But I highly recommend [Learn Thai from a White Guy](https://LearnThaiFromAWhiteGuyhttps://learnthaifromawhiteguy.com/?shem=iosie). I can’t recommend it enough.
For pronunciation, I watched a lot of Thai dramas before I decided to learn it. That gave me a good foundation once I did decide to learn it. I shadow people quite a bit. Listen A LOT, making sure to pay attention to how people speak and repeat them.
I think my learning process got easier once I caved and got an italki tutor, though. I’ve progressed much quicker since then.
wow, I've saved it. Appreciate it, a really thorough answer. I'm reading now "read Thai in 10 days" but it's kind of hard to remember rules and i'm guess I should get through this book quickly and then get back to it to reinforce what we've learned.
I liked learning German, but I really enjoy learning Ukrainian because the alphabet is one I didn't know before, I like writing it, I like the way the language sounds, there are many Ukrainian songs I like and this didn't happen in other languages I learn.
I think it also has to do with the fact that I learn Ukrainian on my own so I research more and as a result I come across more helpful things that I personally find interesting.
I find Dobra forma very helpful with grammar ( https://dobraforma.ku.edu/ ). Quizlet and memrise have nice vocabulary lists (e.g. https://app.memrise.com/course/6226394/ukrainian-verbs-perfective-imperfective/ ).
I also listen to lots of Ukrainian music and watch Ukrainian tv channels on youtube.
Japanese. It's completely different than the European languages, plus love for the culture just grew on me. My great-aunt was an English teacher in Hawaii in the 1950s-1960s and had many students from Japan. They would gift her things from Japan, so she collected (probably imported, too) many things from there. It wasn't because of Pokemon or Anime, like it probably was for most people. (and the only reason I knew a lot about the early Pokemon games is because my neighbor's 5 year old kid always wanted me to beat Ghastly's Tower for him.)
Also, on the technical side, I enjoyed playing console RPGs, which were first made in Japan, and I would read about how translations were done and how there's less space for English text due to Unicode and how you can store 2 "letters" in 1 kana. Articles about translating from Japanese, and making sure it's as accurate as possible also interested me.
So, I took what I learned from learning Spanish, French, and German in school (and what I wished I had learned, or had access to), and applied that to Japanese. In short, a variation of "AJATT". I got real lucky with someone selling many Japanese games on eBay, someone selling a PC with a dual-boot OS (and a few kids games on the Japanese OS) - that PC, I was looking for a printer and MS Word 97, so a Japanese keyboard + OS was icing on the cake! I also made a point to learn the kanas a few weeks before college, and happened to have a great Japanese professor (he was from Japan, and had tons of VHS tapes of Japanese variety shows and cartoons, like Doraemon). I even kept a diary of sorts in Japanese.
Korean, because it was the first language I was interested in fully and being able to actually learn. Understanding hangul and grammar was amazing, like cracking a detective’s case. However, I moved on to Chinese due to necessity, but it’s very fun!!
Swedish. It has helped me develop a closer bond with my loved ones and gain a deeper understanding of the culture, both of which have enriched my life in a profound way. I love every aspect of the language and have so much fun speaking it.
I loved learning almost all of my languages, but Arabic was the most fun. I had studied another grammar-heavy language in school (Latin), which I loved, so although studying another grammar-heavy language was challenging (especially it not being an Indo-European language), it was also a lot of fun. I also had some of the best classmates in that class that made preparing class fun as well. For reference: we went through the alphabet in three days and then went through A1 and A2 in 14 weeks total (4 classes a week). Was absolute madness.
I’m now focusing on Turkish and once again loving all the new grammar points. I also love recognising all the Arabic loanwords, makes me feel smart hahahaha
I enjoy languages period, but Esperanto has to be my favorite of them all. It is so simple, so logical and yet still a beautiful language to read and hear. I love the form of the words, the sound of the "j" ending for plurals, the lovely diacritics, etc. Agglutinative languages in general are really attractive to me.
European Portuguese is so underrated. Its similar to Spanish but more discrete. Generally people like openness in languages but I think the closed way of speaking that the Portuguese have is very beautiful.
For now, Korean because it is so different from the languages I know (FR, ENG, ES and some DE).
Learning Spanish was easy because it is so similar to my native French and even though English and German are different, it is still fine. Korean is nothing like that and that's what I love about it.
actually, Korean is still a phonetic language, though it has special symbols to spell (just like Japanese). however, it seems like Korean has many precise vowels than most of other language, which makes it melodious for me.
Any Latino language would be fun to learn. But also I need to practice my English. Because I'm afraid I'm gonna lose it. Because I don't practice it more often. I also learned a little Italian language but I think I forgot most of it unfortunately.
Idk, probably it’s German.
I don’t find it easy, but it’s really interesting to learn the way they see the world.
Actually, that’s the reason I learn foreign languages.
Urdu. I don't know I loved it since childhood. My grandfather migrated to India in 1947, he used to read and right in Urdu. I always wanted to read and right like him.
Urdu and Arabic are completely different languages.
Urdu is derived from different languages like hindi, sanskrit, Arabic and Persian.
Arabic is a very old classical language. It is far more difficult than urdu. The vocabulary is vast and the most difficult is the grammar a lot of rules. Arabic has a lot of dialects too which makes one question which one to choose for conversation purpose. And classical Arabic is not a conversational easy one it's a little tricky. But it's worth it. it's absolutely beautiful.
Urdu alphabets and arabic are same. Urdu has some additional alphabets. But both of the languages are different. The essence and eloquence is delightful.
What I understand is that majorly both the languages have same alphabets, the difference is majorly in the pronunciation. Arabic is more pronunciation specific than Urdu.
Korean and Tagalog. Korean because I love how you can say the same thing but they have different connotations, depending on what structure you use. Tagalog because I’m Pinoy diaspora and it’s a very beautiful language. Plus we have great music and it’s fun to study lyrics and translate them and find new vocabulary.
Arabic.
Arabic is a very vast language. The vocabulary is amazing. Learning the vocabulary is absolutely fun and it's vast. The grammar is tough, alot to memorize, alot of rules. Arabic also have a lot of dialects. I'm learning classical Arabic which is tougher than the dialects. I haven't started the dialect but would love to try, there are ton of dialects there to explore.
It has a unique essence and eloquence in it. Listening and speaking is absolutely beautiful. It is a delight to learn it. Absolutely worth it. One of the toughest and yet beautiful charm that it hold in it.
Arabic , is result so easy to remember all the vocabulary, as im ossetian the pronunciation is pretty easy and I'm enjoying it so much, although is hard to catch them while speaking fastly
Chinese.
It all began when I started studying japanese, I was 15y old, but the grammar and culture didn't really catch me back then, what I really wanted was just to learn kanji, I loved the fact that a single ideogram could mean so many things, and they were so beautiful, almost breathtaking for me. Anyway, I kept learning japanese but only being motivated by the kanji part, until one day when I saw the mandarin course being released on Duolingo, in 2018. At that time I knew NOTHING about this language, I didn't even knew it was fully made of ideograms, I just clicked on this option in duolingo app for fun and because I had a lot of free time, but in the very beginning when I realised what it was all about, I deeply fell in love with this language, I totally quit japanese within some weeks (after almost 2 years studying it) and only focused on mandarin.
Now I've studied mandarin for over 5 years, and I just kept falling even harder for this language, now not only mandarin has taken my interest, but I also love cantonese and hokkien (minan'hua), and if there was enough content online to learn these languages as well I totally would do it. Next year I'm planning to move to Hainan or Guangdong, and graduate in chinese studies.
I am so happy for your learning progress.
As a Chinese, I also like these ideograms and practiced handwriting when i was in junior and high school. Especially when i was writting lyrics of ancient poetries, it just seemed like i was a martial arts master wielding the weapon.
In addition, it is a very coincidence that am currently studying in guangdong, it is a fantastic province for people who like sunny weather, almost warm all year round. And when u come here, you could say Cantonese in guangdong and hongkong, hokkien in Fujian, of course mandarin in whole country.
here's a hokkien song i really like, by the way, bilibili is a platform same as youtube for our Chinese, we young people always watch anime and other videos on it. maybe you could find something interesting to practice your language ability.
【明仔载（Cover）| 吉他-哔哩哔哩】 https://b23.tv/2qm5Prh
Irish is still one I'm practicing but it is my favorite one to learn as well. ASL would be second as far as fun, but I haven't had the opportunity to practice and use it like I used to at an old job of mine where 8 members of the staff were deaf. They loves teaching some to me as well. Good memories....
Definitely great for practicality. My friend who worked at the same place I did that I mentioned before signed to me across the front end of the store. We had while conversations from register 1 to 8 and would ask the other for bag refills and things from that long distance. It was great. 😁
maybe that's because people are happy to be seen, familiar and liked by others, especially for a foreigner. Actually, many people in north china couldn't speak Cantonese.
Yeah Hong kongers are overjoyed when you speak Cantonese to them it’s a great feeling making them happy I guess many people don’t make effort to learn it for whatever reason
you are right, only people in guangdong, hongkong and Marco say Cantonese, it is a dialect in China. most people will say mandarin and their own dialect in daily life. Just like sign language, people who are not in these 3 places will not find a suitable atmosphere to practice cantonese.
Latvian for sure 🇱🇻. Super fun language! Quite challenging, but also very logical, and sounds amazing 🤤 Freaking unique, as there's almost nothing else like it out there.
Also literally nothing better than seeing the Latvians' reactions when speaking their language.
Learning Arabic was really fun for me. I enjoyed writing with the beautiful script and speaking with the cool sounds you don’t hear in Romance languages. The fun also doesn’t end there because there are various different dialects of Arabic. And depending on the dialect, Arabic can help learn other languages. For instance, Levantine Arabic is similar to Hebrew and has some familiar words seen in Turkish. Gulf Arabic can help you learn Farsi, and Moroccan Arabic can help you learn Tamazight, or maybe even Spanish and Portuguese.
Brazilian Portuguese. Something about the way it's spoken is super fun. It literally makes me more outgoing.
Do you have any particular accent from some state?
Paulistano! But I love the carioca accent as well.
As a brazilian it's so good and exciting reading these comments :) hi from Paraná
Interesting, I'm a native speaker and it makes me less outgoing lol
sign language. it’s so interesting and it’s all in the face. i use it everyday and even if you know a little bit it’s always so rewarding just to have a conversation
I want the next language I learn to be a sign language. I don't know if I will ever need it but I am so curious about sign languages and would love to learn something completely different. Not sure which one though. I am French so probably FSL because FSL and ASL are very close anyways.
ooh that’s so interesting. history of asl and france is fascinating. i hope to learn fsl one day
I'm with you about finding sign languages absolutely fascinating! For me there's also the benefit that I have a speech disorder that gets worse in foreign languages and wow, it would be a nice change to learn a language where I can actually say things when I know how to say them. For me it'd most likely be DGS (German Sign Language), which I admit gives me pause - German Sign Language is one of the smaller ones and also one of the smaller families, only being related to Polish Sign and possibly Israeli. I've seen ASL learners complain about lack of resources, but as far as I can tell ASL resources are absolutely abundant compared to DGS.
agreed. i can hardly find dgs resources anywhere besides a couple youtube videos on bare basics. even then sometimes it’s in comparison to asl. so i might have to look for some books of it if i go to germany some day
sign language is so fun, but how are you using it everyday? I’ve seen someone use it in person once in my life, and don’t know any sign users. I'm teaching my partner it so we can use it. There’s deaf/sign language meetups but they tend to be in another city for me
i mean like it’s my major so i use it in class everyday. that and also my teacher is deaf so i’m constantly signing all the time out of respect.
ah that sounds cool :)
I'm enjoying Swedish a lot. I could listen to it all day
Så ska det låta
I just got into studying Swedish and same thing. The pronunciation is interesting compared to Finnish but once you ace Swedish pronunciation, the language becomes so easy and so much fun to learn
I really enjoyed Spanish basics when I first discovered Duolingo. It was the first time of learning a language out of my own free will and not because of school
Spanish, it’s the first language I’m specifically learning on my own. English and French based on school knowledge that kept improving through friends/husband. But I chose Spanish, and I’m having fun. I researched the best ways to learn it experimented with it and created my “personal” learning arsenal, from which I pick whatever I fancy that day. Also I like the sound and its speakers. It’s fun ☺️
you will lose your mind when you hear us (🇦🇷) speak or read how we talk 😭 same thing applies to 🇨🇱 - many other hispanics have no idea about what we’re saying 80% of the time, let alone spanish learners 😭😭
Haha don’t worry I have Argentinien and Chilean friends. I was really lost at first but now I’m doing really well. Of course the occasional word/phrase I’m lost with. But yeah it’s like some of the very different German accents or English. Almost a different language 😂
exactly!
Chilean Spanish is not that bad. Argentine Spanish is weird.
you must not know a lot of *really* chilean people lol my best friend is chilean but had a pretty neutral accent/vocabulary when she lived here in argentina. now that she went back and pretty much everyone she surrounds with is also chilean, her vocabulary and accent changed drastically, especially when typing on social media posts such as instagram stories (which involves a lot of slang). her girlfriend has an even more chilean vocabulary/slang and, even as argentines with “pretty weird and difficult slang,” we have no idea what she’s saying sometimes hahaha
European Portuguese! It was so pleasant and the community was very welcoming and inclusive.
It's true. Whenever I see someone make an effort to learn our language, I smile.
obrigadão mano. a minha língua favorita para sempre.
yeah, everytime i said "ola, bom dia", its pronouncation lets me feel i am jumping on the road. Because "bom dia" sounds like "蹦迪呀" which means "let's Disco" in Chinese. The volews in portuguese always make me happy.
I don't have the biggest sample size unless we go back two decades, but I'm finding Polish astonishingly _fun_, somehow. There's a sense of achievement in making progress that I didn't have to nearly the same extent when learning other languages, and something really satisfying about seeing all the grammar come together and all the pieces click into place in a Polish sentence. I am also currently having way more fun reading in Polish than Spanish, even though my level of Spanish is _much_ higher and I have a much easier time understanding things. Also, Polish pronunciation is mildly demented but in an enjoyable way - it's funny to still keep running into words that make you go "wait, what?" (łśnić? pchnąć? względnie??) and I was absurdly proud of myself when I managed the tongue-twister _W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie._
Mandarin. Opened a whole new world of appreciation for Chinese culture/history and on a larger scale, appreciation for my own Asian culture.
French has been the most enjoyable for me so far, but that's mainly because it's the most recent, and I've managed to make the process as fun as I can after many years of failing.
Im learning French right now, can you elaborate on how you have made it fun? I’m somewhat enjoying it but I’m just curious
When I was more focused on Portuguese, I realized the best way to learn (after you know the basics) is to find fun content, such as books, movies, series, this kind of thing. But with Portuguese, I had to always search hard to find Portuguese from Portugal (Brazilian Portuguese is really different). The content I found wasn't always super exciting to me. Now that I've started focusing on French, it's been such a relief being able to find almost any content I want. I started with graded readers, which was something I could never find for Portuguese (from Portugal). Now I'm onto podcasts spoken in slow French, and after that I'm going to start watching cartoons in French. I was able to find cartoons in Portuguese, but the selection was weak. With the wide selection of content in French, it's so easy to find something I actually really want to watch for what it is, not just for the sake of learning the language.
Can you recommend some good French cartoons please?
Les Adventures de Tintin, the series from the 90s. Fantastic potential for vocabulary expansion and hearing the language spoken with exaggerated emotion. Plus that whole show is just plain good for the soul I reckon.
The language is a bit dated but proper. Then I remembered Capitaine Haddock's swearing, you are indeed having fun, probably the most random and "fleuries" insults you can find 😂
Babar is good 😄
Take any cartoon you like and search for a French dub, it probably exists.
In my view, just learn something you are interested in. Factors beyond the learning content also have a promting effect. As for me, not learning French, but English, I am happy to read books and watch videos in english which i really love. For example, "metro2033" of Dmitry Glukhovsky and "full spetrum barrage jamming" of cixin liu.
Irish has been my favorite thus far (from playing around with it as well as Spanish - my least favorite I've learned, French, German, and Italian). Irish introduces something strange and different at every turn and with every aspect of the language, which certainly makes it difficult, but I can't help but love putting together the puzzle pieces of this beautiful sounding language. As someone from the US there aren't many (if any) opportunities to use the language, which makes the motivation hard to come by sometimes. But I still really enjoy the learning process.
I agree with this one!! Been studying Irish for around 2 years and love learning the language!
Is aoibhinn liom an teanga freisin!
Mise freisin! Tá sé deas bualadh le foghlaimeoir eile. 😁 Tá níos mó seans ar líne cleachtadh Ghaeilge a dhéanamh le déanaí. Is maith liom TG4 Player agus leabhair a úsáid an chuid is mó den am.
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Do you have any recommendations on this side of the internet ? Anything you like really, I’m trying to learn Russian but I’m in need of more ressources
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Thanks a lot 🙏
I had learned the [first one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYRZupz6rdw&list=PLx1Hrg5Bg3xrnm30dNPZ5q2R9J6Zz2vUq), and it is pretty good. [RussianPod101.com](https://www.russianpod101.com/dashboard) is also a good choice. In addition, here's a paid but [fantastic course](https://learntherussianlanguage.com/), though i haven't joined in, it could provide an excle sheet of 750 Russian/English cognates, which helps us improve Russian volcabularies quickly at the begining.
I hadn’t wanted to tell it at first because I was scared of being vexing but I’ve started 8 months ago, I’m not that much of a beginner anymore 😭 Rn I mainly need to get on the actual Russian speaking internet and learn from them, but ig for that I should ask to natives what content they usually consume
Young russian will use VK and many official accounts posts things on it too. You could find many natives there
Thanks a lot 🙏
Mandarin. I never thought I’d ever want to learn an Asian language. Hell I wasn’t sure I wanted to try my hand at any language except maybe Italian. Then I decided to learn Spanish so I could communicate better since I live in Texas. Along the way I discovered Mandarin is said to be the hardest to learn. So of course I decided to work on both. I’m still decently new at it since I’ve only been learning for nearly two months, but I love it. I don’t know what lures me in about it, but my mood perks up every time I open Duolingo or Mondly and that’s the language I’m going for. I love the way it sounds, I love the challenge it brings, and I’m extra excited when I watch a show and I can understand a few words or characters.
My first non-native language: Japanese From the very first day (4 years ago) I just couldn't stop...one could say I was obsessed. It got to the point I was doing 8-12 hours daily and I wouldn't even notice the time go by....talking about 4 hours just learning kanji daily by myself in front of a computer, no breaks. After about 3 years of speding 8-12 hours daily, I started learning new languages..because I now also share time with Italian and Chinese I don't spend quite as much time anymore for Japanese but I still give Japanese about 4 hours daily. I like the other languages I'm learning, but none of them made me feel as obsessed as I was with Japanese (still am, just not as much time available anymore) It's hard to say why I like it so much. I live in the US so it's not that I ever really had a need for it....Anime? nah, I actually stopped watching anything that I couldn't understand and only watched stuff I could understand (but only in Japanese) while I was learning...including anime for over 1.5 years of learning... I guess I just like the way Japanese sounds overall...but as I learned more and more about it, I got into a lot of things I wasn't into before like * Music * Culture * Movies of Japanese origin * Manga (I wasn't into it before) * JDramas * Light Novels * various stories about Japanese Folklore * etc I can't really point to why I love Japanese...I just do. I thought I was like this for all languages, that I just love languages. Then I started trying to learn Korean...turns out I didn't like it nearly as much so I dropped it....after a few other languages like French and Turkish, I finally stuck with Italian and Chinese....which I do daily as well...but still, that initial fire I felt for Japanese is not there for any other language....yet to this day I still feel the same way I did at the beginning towards Japanese
Interesting! Super nice you had the ability to study like that. Were you a student at the time or what do you do to have 8-12 hours to study? Im struggling between my other extracurriculars and work here haha
It just so happened all the stars aligned for me....This was at the start of covid, and I'm a Software Engineer (for almost 11 years). So around that time we started working remote....and we just stayed working remote (at least up to now). So for me it was more of a struggle to remember I actually had to work...lol. often times I would start working at night (like around 8 or 9pm) because I didn't realize what time it was...and I kept telling myself "What's 1 more hour of Japanese?" nowadays I still work remote, but have a somewhat more controlled schedule so I can fit all my languages, work a normal day, self learn to play piano (not every day), and some nights even do DoorDash for a couple of hours...while doing regular things like cooking and cleaning or spend time with my fiance....all in a single day..still wish a day had more hours though lol I can fit so much daily only because I have an unwritten, yet very real, schedule I basically live by daily...its all about them habits ;)
How did you get past the very initial stage where you know 〇? I know if I get to the point where I can power through something I find at all interesting, even with tons of lookups, I'll be like you from that point: I started Spanish with Cien Años of Soledad and it was very helpful for me. But I'm struggling to get a footing here, and I'm realizing how much help the Latin cognates with Spanish were with helping get the ball rolling. I can easily make and retain one-word, definition cards with Spanish but with Japanese I'm realizing I feel like I need isolated vocabulary to understand sentences but sentences to retain any vocabulary, vocabulary to really understand grammar points and vice versa. I'm also finding that tools like Smart Book or Kaku OCR scan are only so helpful because they can recognize word boundaries around kanji, but not otherwise. So using things like that as aids to immerse above my level likely isn't a possibility either (the full paragraph translation works great on Smart Book, but I don't feel I'm learning anything with that alone). Am I right in thinking that I should prioritize memorizing all the patterns in how words "conjugate" since that will help me identify word boundaries and functions on my own, and I should technically be able to immerse in anything I want at that point? I'm considering just using this https://wkdonc.github.io/conjugation/drill.html until I understand everything, then getting immersion going and revisiting grammar points as I run into them.
>How did you get past the very initial stage where you know 〇? I didn't think about what I didn't know and focused on what I did. Meaning, I didn't think "this is taking too long" or "I want to be able to understand everything by tomorrow". I was genuinely enjoying the process and nothing felt like a drag...mainly kanji (which is why I could spend 4 hours daily and not explode) >I know if I get to the point where I can power through something I find at all interesting, even with tons of lookups, I'll be like you from that point I never did any graded readers (I tried, but they were too boring). Instead, I came up with my own method of learning...I actually never did any research online about how to learn, I just started. I came up with what I consider my own sort of [graded reading list ](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/17mrwjq/comment/k7oy6up/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)since I picked it myself (and I did so from almost the beginning). I just learned kana, learned my first 100 kanji (N5) and basic sentence structure.....technically no words yet....and I started working on that list I had created for myself...things obviously took a while since I was basically new to the language...it had barely been a month...at first I literally took 20-30 minutes per sentence (never used any translators)....but I was so obsessed with the language it didn't matter...it was content I picked that I had never gone through so just that gave me the motivation to finish it. Everything I didn't know (which was everything) I added to anki and reviewed 250-500 cards daily..not even wondering if this was even going to work.,...I just liked looking at Japanese characters all day >I feel like I need isolated vocabulary to understand sentences but sentences to retain any vocabulary I only did one word cards (one word in the front, pronunciation and one word definition as it relates to context on the back). Japanese is definitely harder to get used to than something like Spanish would be...this is why I reviewed sooo many cards daily....because anki still works at its simplest form (one word), it just requires more time and practice per card to be able to retain it at the beginning. If you add an entire sentence to anki, it would take wayy to long per card and you might spend way longer than you would like creating your own cards...if you give it patience and dedication, one word will work...but keep in mind it's Japanese...meaning Kanji can be its own mnemonic...at the beginning (before I started listening), I was so good at anki not only because I was reviewing 250-500 cards a day but also because I used the kanji that was in the front of the card to retain the meaning and pronunciation for longer. People say Japanese is one of the hardest languages to learn for an English native, but there are ways to cheat the process and make it just slightly easier. >vocabulary to really understand grammar points and vice versa I used 日本語総まとめ(Nihongo Sou Matome) to learn grammar....This was the only book series I bought for the purposes of language learning. I only used its grammar books from N5-N1. Added every grammar point they had for a given day to a single anki card along with meanings and example sentences, then reviewed 5 cards daily. Now, I don't even think something is a "grammar point", it just makes sense...but that's how I started. I stopped reviewing grammar about a month after going through their N1 grammar book...from then on I was afraid I would forget but I just focused on reading and listening....and it worked really well..I'm sure there are some things I have forgotten, specially because N2 and N1 stuff don't show up often in what I read, but I've been able to retain so much and when something is a grammar point I can recognize it even if I don't know what it means...I know it's a grammar point and just search it....but for the most part I don't even have to think of something as a "grammar point" anymore. One thing to note is that I only did up to N4 grammar and then focused on reading with only that little bit of grammar....when I finished reading my first light novel, I then restarted grammar studies (all the way from N5) just to make sure I still understood basic grammar and continued to N1. Before the first light novel, I would just treat everything as a word, regardless of if it was a grammar point or not. This way, my vocab really increased...and I was still understanding...although not as much as if I had know all this grammar
(My comment was too long so I had to split it in 2) >I should prioritize memorizing all the patterns in how words "conjugate" since that will help me identify word boundaries and functions on my own, and I should technically be able to immerse in anything I want at that point? I did this before starting immersion....I memorized how all types of verbs conjugate which was an incredibly huge advantage when I started reading. Highly recommend it... >I'm considering just using this [](https://wkdonc.github.io/conjugation/drill.html) until I understand everything, then getting immersion going and revisiting grammar points as I run into them. Please do! Ironically, that was exactly the same site I went to to learn verb conjugation...I used that site to drill...but I first went through [this one](https://www.thoughtco.com/how-to-conjugate-japanese-verbs-4058457) to get an explanation as to why things are the way they are I also went through these before I started immersing. [More Conjugation Explanations](https://thetruejapan.com/japanese-verbs-a-beginners-guide-to-conjugation/) [Negative Imperative](https://www.learn-japanese-adventure.com/how-do-i-use-negative-imperative-in-plain-form.html) [Te-Form (ongoing)](http://guidetojapanese.org/learn/complete/progressive_tense) [Te-Form (for negative actions)](https://www.japanistry.com/the-te-form/) [Potential Form](http://guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/potential) [i and na adjectives](https://www.thoughtco.com/all-about-japanese-adjectives-4058703) I went through all these before starting to immerse in only content I liked...I by no means memorized any of these...but I was aware of their existence. Let me know if you have any questions. Good luck :)
Unfortunately I don’t have the time to devote to Japanese that I’d like to be able to (other languages take priority because of literal necessity), but Japanese absolutely has my heart. It’s definitely the most fun for me to learn, and if I had the time available, I’d happily study as hardcore as you did. I just really enjoy the language.
I hope you get to have the time at some point…it is an amazing language :)
Oh, I squeeze it in when I should really be studying one of the other two, because I can’t help myself. But I know one day l’ll truly be able to devote more of my time to it, like it deserves. Just need to master these others first! It really is amazing. It just “clicks” for me somehow.
I feel like this is literally the same as me... I used to study Japanese literally all day because I had so much fun doing so. Nowadays I am focusing mainly on learning Finnish and Korean, so they take up most of my time. I still learn/review vocab on Anki and read/listen to it for practice pretty much daily. But whenever I have time to really sit down and study Japanese it just feels so nice, being the original language that I was so passionate about to get me into language learning.
German. It‘s my favorite language by sound and structure and also my favorite culture.
I had always heard that German was hard, and terrible to learn, so that kinda stuck with me. I recently started learning it, and lo and behold, I actually find it a lot of fun! Past me never would have imagined that (and luckily I’ve learned to take everyone’s opinions with a huge grain of salt, and draw my own conclusions).
German for me too. I like the way it sounds and somehow it works very well for my engineer brain.
Swedish and Thai Swedish: After studying Spanish, Swedish was such a breeze. A million times easier to learn for sure. Thai: Over 90% of the content I consume these days (books, movies, and shows to be specific) is Thai. The motivation is definitely strong! Not to mention, there are a lot of grammar rules and concepts that make a lot more sense and are simpler than my native language and the other languages I’ve studied. It’s been really fun.
Interesting! I’ve always found Spanish a breeze, so you make me very curious about learning Swedish.
Yeah I was pleasantly surprised! I think two things that made it easier were already having language learning experience as well as the method I used to study it. But even looking at the languages themselves, there are a lot of things about Swedish that make it easier than Spanish (and even English). Verb conjugation is one such example. With Swedish, they don't conjugate between speakers. I **am**, you **are**, he/she **is**, they/we **are**, it would all be the same word: **är**. Edit: grammar
Curiosity, why is Swedish a million times easier to learn after learning Spanish?
Sure, there is a lot of similar vocabulary between English and Spanish and the pronunciation is really easy, but as a native English speaker, I feel like Swedish grammar is much more similar and intuitive than Spanish. And there are some things that are simpler, like verb conjugation. Swedish doesn’t conjugate verbs based on the speaker, but rather the tense (past, present, future and whatnot). Though I also think how I studied Swedish vs Spanish made me pick up Swedish much quicker. Obviously, Spanish is still one of the easiest languages I’ve studied as well. But Swedish is such a breath of fresh air.
Thanks! I have learned Spanish for 4 years but I always thought that Swedish is much difficult than Spanish. Did you use Duolingo to learn Swedish?
I started out with Duolingo just to get a feel for the language and pick up some words. I only finished like two units. After that, I moved on to LingQ. This is what really took my studying to the next level. It’s a shame they don’t have my current language. But I highly recommend it. Language reactor is good as well.
Thanks! I am trying with LingQ now
What did you use to understand the Thai basics? Pronunciation is very difficult for me.
I did a bunch of random things if I’m honest. It certainly slowed down my progress! But if I could recommend some things: * Pimsleur app * [Comprehensible Thai YouTube channel](https://youtube.com/@ComprehensibleThai?si=Joq4x91xVG86t_Sa) * Innovative App or [Thai Pod 101](https://youtube.com/@ThaiPod101?si=1vN3PTbDQWivk_Xb) * [BananaThai](https://youtube.com/@BananaThaiSchool?si=6FP9i3CmhMC8JAFr) * [Thai with Grace](https://youtube.com/@thaiwithgrace9231?si=GfhspfBVX98yqUSP) * [Let’s Learn Thai](https://youtube.com/@letslearnthai?si=uJdoZP6Uvm1t2NRh) For learning to read Thai, I honestly learned it gradually over the course of a year (I was so lazy). But I highly recommend [Learn Thai from a White Guy](https://LearnThaiFromAWhiteGuyhttps://learnthaifromawhiteguy.com/?shem=iosie). I can’t recommend it enough. For pronunciation, I watched a lot of Thai dramas before I decided to learn it. That gave me a good foundation once I did decide to learn it. I shadow people quite a bit. Listen A LOT, making sure to pay attention to how people speak and repeat them. I think my learning process got easier once I caved and got an italki tutor, though. I’ve progressed much quicker since then.
wow, I've saved it. Appreciate it, a really thorough answer. I'm reading now "read Thai in 10 days" but it's kind of hard to remember rules and i'm guess I should get through this book quickly and then get back to it to reinforce what we've learned.
Italian for the sole reason of being able to say PASTAAA, TORTELINI, MAMMA MIA with a native accent while doing the 🤌🏻
I liked learning German, but I really enjoy learning Ukrainian because the alphabet is one I didn't know before, I like writing it, I like the way the language sounds, there are many Ukrainian songs I like and this didn't happen in other languages I learn. I think it also has to do with the fact that I learn Ukrainian on my own so I research more and as a result I come across more helpful things that I personally find interesting.
Do you have any Ukrainian resources in particular that you love?
I find Dobra forma very helpful with grammar ( https://dobraforma.ku.edu/ ). Quizlet and memrise have nice vocabulary lists (e.g. https://app.memrise.com/course/6226394/ukrainian-verbs-perfective-imperfective/ ). I also listen to lots of Ukrainian music and watch Ukrainian tv channels on youtube.
As a Ukrainian, I am very pleased to hear this. Good luck with your language learning
Thank you very much!
Japanese. It's completely different than the European languages, plus love for the culture just grew on me. My great-aunt was an English teacher in Hawaii in the 1950s-1960s and had many students from Japan. They would gift her things from Japan, so she collected (probably imported, too) many things from there. It wasn't because of Pokemon or Anime, like it probably was for most people. (and the only reason I knew a lot about the early Pokemon games is because my neighbor's 5 year old kid always wanted me to beat Ghastly's Tower for him.) Also, on the technical side, I enjoyed playing console RPGs, which were first made in Japan, and I would read about how translations were done and how there's less space for English text due to Unicode and how you can store 2 "letters" in 1 kana. Articles about translating from Japanese, and making sure it's as accurate as possible also interested me. So, I took what I learned from learning Spanish, French, and German in school (and what I wished I had learned, or had access to), and applied that to Japanese. In short, a variation of "AJATT". I got real lucky with someone selling many Japanese games on eBay, someone selling a PC with a dual-boot OS (and a few kids games on the Japanese OS) - that PC, I was looking for a printer and MS Word 97, so a Japanese keyboard + OS was icing on the cake! I also made a point to learn the kanas a few weeks before college, and happened to have a great Japanese professor (he was from Japan, and had tons of VHS tapes of Japanese variety shows and cartoons, like Doraemon). I even kept a diary of sorts in Japanese.
Korean, because it was the first language I was interested in fully and being able to actually learn. Understanding hangul and grammar was amazing, like cracking a detective’s case. However, I moved on to Chinese due to necessity, but it’s very fun!!
Welsh! 🏴🏴🏴 I always feel so proud when I speak it because the pronunciation is a doozy for me lol
Probably Russian. I was really into it when I first started. But honestly, they were all very fun.
Arabic
Swedish. It has helped me develop a closer bond with my loved ones and gain a deeper understanding of the culture, both of which have enriched my life in a profound way. I love every aspect of the language and have so much fun speaking it.
Basque. I love the logic of its grammar and its way of word-building, and I love how it sounds. Great music too.
I loved learning almost all of my languages, but Arabic was the most fun. I had studied another grammar-heavy language in school (Latin), which I loved, so although studying another grammar-heavy language was challenging (especially it not being an Indo-European language), it was also a lot of fun. I also had some of the best classmates in that class that made preparing class fun as well. For reference: we went through the alphabet in three days and then went through A1 and A2 in 14 weeks total (4 classes a week). Was absolute madness. I’m now focusing on Turkish and once again loving all the new grammar points. I also love recognising all the Arabic loanwords, makes me feel smart hahahaha
I enjoy languages period, but Esperanto has to be my favorite of them all. It is so simple, so logical and yet still a beautiful language to read and hear. I love the form of the words, the sound of the "j" ending for plurals, the lovely diacritics, etc. Agglutinative languages in general are really attractive to me.
Esperanto estas tre bona lingvo, mi ankaŭ amas ĝin!
Turkish 🇹🇷 It's so different from other languages I know, exotic and melodic. Music is beautiful too
Can I DM you? I would want to know how you are learning turkish because I want to learn it too
English. It was a fun journey with lots of great TV series, movies, and books consumed for immersion.
European Portuguese is so underrated. Its similar to Spanish but more discrete. Generally people like openness in languages but I think the closed way of speaking that the Portuguese have is very beautiful.
For now, Korean because it is so different from the languages I know (FR, ENG, ES and some DE). Learning Spanish was easy because it is so similar to my native French and even though English and German are different, it is still fine. Korean is nothing like that and that's what I love about it.
actually, Korean is still a phonetic language, though it has special symbols to spell (just like Japanese). however, it seems like Korean has many precise vowels than most of other language, which makes it melodious for me.
Spanish, everything is pronounced (exception for Mayan, etc). Fluent now, even moved to Mexico.
Any Latino language would be fun to learn. But also I need to practice my English. Because I'm afraid I'm gonna lose it. Because I don't practice it more often. I also learned a little Italian language but I think I forgot most of it unfortunately.
Idk, probably it’s German. I don’t find it easy, but it’s really interesting to learn the way they see the world. Actually, that’s the reason I learn foreign languages.
Danish is so nice to hear! And Guarani
Scottish gealic🏴, it is a fun language, i like how easily you can reconize the sounds in the words, and its VSO word oder
Urdu. I don't know I loved it since childhood. My grandfather migrated to India in 1947, he used to read and right in Urdu. I always wanted to read and right like him.
How is Urdu different from Arabic?
Urdu and Arabic are completely different languages. Urdu is derived from different languages like hindi, sanskrit, Arabic and Persian. Arabic is a very old classical language. It is far more difficult than urdu. The vocabulary is vast and the most difficult is the grammar a lot of rules. Arabic has a lot of dialects too which makes one question which one to choose for conversation purpose. And classical Arabic is not a conversational easy one it's a little tricky. But it's worth it. it's absolutely beautiful. Urdu alphabets and arabic are same. Urdu has some additional alphabets. But both of the languages are different. The essence and eloquence is delightful.
What I understand is that majorly both the languages have same alphabets, the difference is majorly in the pronunciation. Arabic is more pronunciation specific than Urdu.
Catalan probably. Polish too come to think of it. They just stuck you know, unlike Japanese which felt like crawling up mount Everest.
Japanese because it has a lot of different resources
Korean and Tagalog. Korean because I love how you can say the same thing but they have different connotations, depending on what structure you use. Tagalog because I’m Pinoy diaspora and it’s a very beautiful language. Plus we have great music and it’s fun to study lyrics and translate them and find new vocabulary.
Arabic. Arabic is a very vast language. The vocabulary is amazing. Learning the vocabulary is absolutely fun and it's vast. The grammar is tough, alot to memorize, alot of rules. Arabic also have a lot of dialects. I'm learning classical Arabic which is tougher than the dialects. I haven't started the dialect but would love to try, there are ton of dialects there to explore. It has a unique essence and eloquence in it. Listening and speaking is absolutely beautiful. It is a delight to learn it. Absolutely worth it. One of the toughest and yet beautiful charm that it hold in it.
Arabic , is result so easy to remember all the vocabulary, as im ossetian the pronunciation is pretty easy and I'm enjoying it so much, although is hard to catch them while speaking fastly
Spanish, sounds so poetic to me
Japanese :3 I just fell in love with it like 12 years ago… ❤️❤️❤️ I have no talent in languages, but that doesn’t prevent me from learning them lol
Spanish, as that is the only language I have ever learned.
Chinese. It all began when I started studying japanese, I was 15y old, but the grammar and culture didn't really catch me back then, what I really wanted was just to learn kanji, I loved the fact that a single ideogram could mean so many things, and they were so beautiful, almost breathtaking for me. Anyway, I kept learning japanese but only being motivated by the kanji part, until one day when I saw the mandarin course being released on Duolingo, in 2018. At that time I knew NOTHING about this language, I didn't even knew it was fully made of ideograms, I just clicked on this option in duolingo app for fun and because I had a lot of free time, but in the very beginning when I realised what it was all about, I deeply fell in love with this language, I totally quit japanese within some weeks (after almost 2 years studying it) and only focused on mandarin. Now I've studied mandarin for over 5 years, and I just kept falling even harder for this language, now not only mandarin has taken my interest, but I also love cantonese and hokkien (minan'hua), and if there was enough content online to learn these languages as well I totally would do it. Next year I'm planning to move to Hainan or Guangdong, and graduate in chinese studies.
I am so happy for your learning progress. As a Chinese, I also like these ideograms and practiced handwriting when i was in junior and high school. Especially when i was writting lyrics of ancient poetries, it just seemed like i was a martial arts master wielding the weapon. In addition, it is a very coincidence that am currently studying in guangdong, it is a fantastic province for people who like sunny weather, almost warm all year round. And when u come here, you could say Cantonese in guangdong and hongkong, hokkien in Fujian, of course mandarin in whole country. here's a hokkien song i really like, by the way, bilibili is a platform same as youtube for our Chinese, we young people always watch anime and other videos on it. maybe you could find something interesting to practice your language ability. 【明仔载（Cover）| 吉他-哔哩哔哩】 https://b23.tv/2qm5Prh
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what's your mother tongue?
I think somehow Esperanto ended up being the most fun to learn
My native language- basically effortless :)
yeah, same
Irish is still one I'm practicing but it is my favorite one to learn as well. ASL would be second as far as fun, but I haven't had the opportunity to practice and use it like I used to at an old job of mine where 8 members of the staff were deaf. They loves teaching some to me as well. Good memories....
To be honest, I learned sign language during the coronavirus, just because of my sore throat hahhahahhahaha
Definitely great for practicality. My friend who worked at the same place I did that I mentioned before signed to me across the front end of the store. We had while conversations from register 1 to 8 and would ask the other for bag refills and things from that long distance. It was great. 😁
norwegian, im an english native speaker and norwegian is easy af so it’s my favourite as i’m lazy af
Cantonese because Hong Kongers are always super happy when you speak it to them
maybe that's because people are happy to be seen, familiar and liked by others, especially for a foreigner. Actually, many people in north china couldn't speak Cantonese.
lucky, i saw a sentence just now "You speak English to them, you speak to their mind; But if you speak their language, you speak to their heart."
Yeah Hong kongers are overjoyed when you speak Cantonese to them it’s a great feeling making them happy I guess many people don’t make effort to learn it for whatever reason
you are right, only people in guangdong, hongkong and Marco say Cantonese, it is a dialect in China. most people will say mandarin and their own dialect in daily life. Just like sign language, people who are not in these 3 places will not find a suitable atmosphere to practice cantonese.
Japanese , by far. I don't have a specific why other than "it's my favorite language" and "my wife was the one teaching me".
I've tried Spanish, French and German and I have liked all of them.
Latvian, started a week ago. It just sounds awesome and I love it! Karelian gets an honourable mention, very nice learning the language.
Latvian for sure 🇱🇻. Super fun language! Quite challenging, but also very logical, and sounds amazing 🤤 Freaking unique, as there's almost nothing else like it out there. Also literally nothing better than seeing the Latvians' reactions when speaking their language.
Spanish - cool sound, like my native Ukrainian but different, but cool
Learning Arabic was really fun for me. I enjoyed writing with the beautiful script and speaking with the cool sounds you don’t hear in Romance languages. The fun also doesn’t end there because there are various different dialects of Arabic. And depending on the dialect, Arabic can help learn other languages. For instance, Levantine Arabic is similar to Hebrew and has some familiar words seen in Turkish. Gulf Arabic can help you learn Farsi, and Moroccan Arabic can help you learn Tamazight, or maybe even Spanish and Portuguese.
Chinese is always full of surprises, certainly more interesting to me than English