Language Thread • Page 2

You also need to be expressive which is super hard for me because I am not expressive at all lol and being expressive is like mentally draining for me. It may work for you tho! I know for a lot of people it's one of the easier languages

 

Oh uh yeah no I have the same issue lol...This is good to know though

 

I just spoke at length in Russian for the first time in over a year. I scheduled an "informal lesson" with a Russian guy on the website italki, so we had a 30 minute skype call just now. It went a lot better than expected. I was so nervous going into it and I was intensely worried that my understanding of his speech would be very bad and that my speaking would be horrible, but everything went so much better than expected.

I was able to understand him perfectly and he was very complimentary of my Russian. I definitely hit some walls when trying to explain stuff due to my diminished vocabulary, but things came back to me much quicker than I thought they would.

The guy was also really good at leading a conversation. Whenever there was the slightest hint of silence, he had a question ready to go, which was so helpful.

It feels good to have done this and to have finally gotten past myself to finally speak Russian again.

 

well I've dropped the ball with Spanish in every possible way so I fail.

 

I'm still annoyed that I've been living in Madrid for a year and a half and I feel like my Spanish has plateaued and/or gotten slightly worse. Along with my English, for that matter. Listening to Spanish teenagers make all kinds of mistakes in English has begun to sink in and I sometimes find myself making the same mistakes they do. In my native language. Oh well.

Also, thought this was great:

 

Wow some of those myths are straight up ridiculous. Maybe I'm biased having grown up bilingual but it definitely doesn't give kids enough credit.

 

I'm about 2 weeks into my most serious attempt at Spanish. The numerous pronouns are killing me.

 

If you haven’t already, I recommend making your own sentences to review the various pronouns. Not sure how Spanish works, but Russian has a lot of mutations and it really helped for me to come up with my own sentences to help nail everything home. Eventually it becomes second nature.

Also, sorry if that’s rudimentary and unhelpful advice!

 

Not bad advice at all!

 

My GF tries to teach me french and it flys right by me like nothing.

 

My first language is Filipino and I started learning English when I was about 4 or 5. And I must say, I am both equally fluent in Filipino and English but my English proficiency is much better than Filipino when it comes to writing and speaking.

 

Started learning Japanese a few years ago but then I had to drop out of classes cause some family stuff happened and I haven’t jumped back into it since. I’ve basically forgotten everything but I think if I started practicing again I could get the hang out it, I’m just so damn lazy. But it’s my dream to speak Japanese, Dutch, and Italian.

 

Practice with me so maybe I will retain some knowledge of my Japanese class

 

Does anyone here have experience with Arabic? I have been studying Chinese for a while so I do have experience with learning a foreign language but it’s a hobby and isn’t something i’d like to take at my university. My options at this point are Arabic, German, and Spanish. I think German sounds gross (though i’ll probably have to get familiar with it at some point due to my major) and Spanish is something I feel like I can learn without the aid of a university professor.

 

No experience with Arabic, but I started German from beginner level at university and it was a good start. What's your major?

 

My undergrad was communications and my graduate is marketing. I’m interested in international business so German is a language that I’m expecting to add to my list so that I will not be blind when it comes to European sales and marketing.

 

I've been learning Portuguese with Duolingo for a couple of months. It's a good app but since it's just "learn by doing" rather than any explanations as to why then it makes it hard at times. Remembering some French from high school has helped as they have some similarities. I've not been going hardcore and just been doing like 10 mins a day or whatever so I'm not crazy fluent or anything but I do know a lot of basic words now which is mostly what I wanted. I wouldn't dare try and have an actual conversation out loud to someone though haha.

It's still pretty enjoyable to do though and makes me feel like I'm doing something productive with my time at least.

 

I'm trying to learn Farsi from my boyfriend and it wasn't really sticking by only listening (though it's helped), but I have to see the verb conjugations for each pronoun and proceed from there. I think this is probably the same for anyone learning a non-native language, maybe?

 

I am learning ASL and I really love it. I have been thinking about continuing learning and getting my interpreters license. This area is really populated with deaf people though so there are always events and meetups to do to keep your signing fresh and get in with the community.

 

That's awesome! I work in education and we are always short on asl interpreters so I commend anyone who goes into it!

 

I probably wouldn't do it at a school because unfortunately you don't make as much. At least around here you don't even need to be licensed to work at a school so you get paid less. but if you're licensed you can make like $40/hour

 

Anyone use the Duolingo app? I'm trying to learn french and have learned quite a bit from it already.

 

My Italian teacher in high school used that. It was pretty helpful in my opinion

 

Been listening to Coffee Break Italian a lot. I don't expect to learn Italian from this podcast, but I do think it'll be supplemental and, if anything, it is very pleasant to listen to

 

My dad was from Mexico and obviously spoke Spanish, and my mom lived in Mexico for years and speaks it fluently and I still cannot believe they didn’t teach it to us. Like, I get that my dad couldn’t speak English well and wanted to be fluent, but it still sucks lol