+- kanji koohii FORUM (http://forum.koohii.com)
+-- Forum: Learning Japanese (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: Off topic (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-13.html)
+--- Thread: Do you speak/learn any other languages? (/thread-11211.html)
Pages:
1
2
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - Hirakana - 2013-09-30
My dad is French so I speak quite good French, but I can barely read or write in it. When I'm done or partly done with Japanese I'll bring it up to scratch. Also in school I have to learn Irish because I live in Ireland, even though it's a dead, difficult language. Ní maith liom an Gaeilge már tá se an-deachar. I'm also learning Spanish in school, but even after a year and a bit, I know very little. Language education is pretty terrible here.
So how about you guys?
edit: Oh god I misspelled languages how embarrassing. Corrected now though.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - zurisu - 2013-09-30
I only speak English, sadly. In like five years or so, though, once I have a fair degree of mastery over Japanese, I want to tackle French! I'm just imagining how easy it would feel after 日本語 @_@ So awesome. So I'm jealous you already sort of know it!
I took a couple years of Spanish in high school, and my whole maternal side of the family is Mexican and speaks Spanish, but here I am still monolingual awwwh. That's about to change, though, once I wrap my mind around this Japanese thing
Foreign languages in general fascinate me, I think a lot more than most people. Ever since I was young I always viewed bilingualism as sort of a super power, mystical and powerful and something I really wanted to have too!
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - Taishi - 2013-09-30
Being from Sweden, I can speak naturally speak Swedish and English. Since you have to learn a third language in Swedish schools, I learned some German, but I haven't kept that knowledge alive, so I only have quite basic understanding.
At this stage, I'd say I 'know' Japanese, though I haven't had as much output practice as I'd have liked. I also started studying Chinese, and have come to a point where I understand, or get the gist of most texts, although I am completely handicapped when it comes to listening.
At one point I started learning some Korean, but I never got past the curiosity stage, so I'm at a point where I can, with concentration, read most of the hangul symbols, but I have no idea what anything means.
I've also recently started digging around in Taiwanese territory (臺灣閩南語), though I haven't come past the curiosity stage here either so far, so I don't know whether I'll commit or not yet.
I guess I've got a thing for learning languages ._.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - Artgor - 2013-09-30
My native language is Russian.
English is necessary in our world, so I know it quite well to be able to talk to my foreign colleagues, to watch films in English and to read english books.
Also in University I have been studying German for two years; recently I refreshed my knowledge of German and took test - it seems I have level B2 in German.
And, of course, I learn Japanese, but I suppose that I'm only a bit higher than at the beginner level.
After Japanese (in a year maybe) I'd like to learn Spanish and perhaps French.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - Yatagarasu - 2013-10-01
I'm a native Spanish speaker. Studied English as a kid and can say I'm "done" with it (but I'm still learning new things to this day). Had French at school too but I wasn't very interested at the time so it never stuck. Now I'm studying Japanese.
Sooner or later I want to start with Korean, German and Latin but I don't have any good reasons for any of them, I just like how they sound or look. I also have a decent share of media and literature in Chinese I'd like to understand so I might eventually try and tackle that language as well, but for some reason dislike how it sounds which makes it harder to get the motivation ball rolling.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - Arupan - 2013-10-01
.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - dizmox - 2013-10-01
I can only speak stiff-sounding English and somewhat foreign-sounding Japanese. :|
I no speak any language so good.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - ktcgx - 2013-10-01
Yatagarasu Wrote:I'm a native Spanish speaker. Studied English as a kid and can say I'm "done" with it (but I'm still learning new things to this day). Had French at school too but I wasn't very interested at the time so it never stuck. Now I'm studying Japanese.I am always so insanely jealous of people who speak my language like a native (the only language about which I'm qualified to make that kind of judgement), and here's me struggling to add even one more language to my repertoire... T_T
Sooner or later I want to start with Korean, German and Latin but I don't have any good reasons for any of them, I just like how they sound or look. I also have a decent share of media and literature in Chinese I'd like to understand so I might eventually try and tackle that language as well, but for some reason dislike how it sounds which makes it harder to get the motivation ball rolling.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - vonPeterhof - 2013-10-01
Having been born in Russia and raised in a Russian-speaking area of Kazakhstan, I speak Russian as my first language and English as a second one (started learning it back in kindergarten). Studied Kazakh all through my school years and German on-and-off in middle school and university. Started learning Japanese on my own during my second year at university. Took Norwegian classes during my semester abroad in Oslo. Checked out Esperanto for a couple of weeks before getting bored with it. Dabbled a bit in Abkhaz, French and Serbo-Croatian while preparing for a vacation that did happen, a job opportunity that fell through and a vacation that failed to happen, respectively. Doing some Latin on the side right now. I also took short Pimsleur audio courses in around ten other languages just to get a taste, without really intending to go anywhere with them.
Since I'm aiming to pass N1 this year Japanese is the only language I am actively studying at the moment. However, apart from Esperanto, Serbo-Croatian and the ~10 Pimsleur languages, I am trying to maintain the meagre levels I've attained in the other aforementioned languages through semi-regular reading, listening and Anki reviews. This is hardest to do with Abkhaz, thanks to both its huge dissimilarity to all the other languages I've ever attempted and an extreme scarcity of materials, and with Kazakh, since its grammatical similarity to Japanese facilitates a lot of interference from the latter. Maybe I'll start picking them back up one by one once I'm comfortable enough with my Japanese, or maybe the desire to expand the list of languages I can (barely) understand will win over yet again.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - Northern_Lord - 2013-10-01
I live in Norway and speak Norwegian. My mother is from Iceland so I know a lot of Icelandic. Then English of course, where I consider myself to be closer to fluency in writing and reading than in speach. Sadly I haven't bothered to learn much about the differences about English/American writing so I guess I write a nice mix between the two. And comma rules. I hate comma rules. And of course Japanese, which I've been at for 1.5 years now.
Other than that I recognize so much french from my high school years that I get the meaning out of french newspapers but I hardly can write or speak anything. And since Swedish and Danish resemble Norwegian a lot I understand both spoken and written Swedish and Danish.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - Marble101 - 2013-10-01
My family language is Gujarati, a language from the West Coast of India. I grew up in the United States, so I also speak English natively. Since my family is still pretty Indian, I was also encouraged to study Hindi, the national language of India, to the point where I can have basic conversations in it.
During school (I'm still in High School) I started learning Spanish. I want to be a polyglot, so I have immediate plans for my Spanish and Gujarati (which is less-than-stellar due to only having my family to practice with). After that, I'll beef up my Hindi and then focus on some other languages.
I'm a huge dabbler to the point where I know limited Mandarin and Japanese (I did RTK, so extreme dabbling I guess). I guess I'm getting way ahead of myself, but I really enjoy learning foreign languages.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - Yatagarasu - 2013-10-02
ktcgx Wrote:Haha thanks but I'm not quite there yet. My reading and writing skills are pretty decent but my speaking lags quite behind! I can express myself fine but since I've never had much of a need to actually talk my pronunciation is all kinds of bad.Yatagarasu Wrote:I'm a native Spanish speaker. Studied English as a kid and can say I'm "done" with it (but I'm still learning new things to this day). Had French at school too but I wasn't very interested at the time so it never stuck. Now I'm studying Japanese.I am always so insanely jealous of people who speak my language like a native (the only language about which I'm qualified to make that kind of judgement), and here's me struggling to add even one more language to my repertoire... T_T
Sooner or later I want to start with Korean, German and Latin but I don't have any good reasons for any of them, I just like how they sound or look. I also have a decent share of media and literature in Chinese I'd like to understand so I might eventually try and tackle that language as well, but for some reason dislike how it sounds which makes it harder to get the motivation ball rolling.
Don't give up though, all languages are hard at the start but get gradually easier and much more fun once you start to understand the things that interest you!
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - tashippy - 2013-10-02
TIL there is a place called Abkhazia. Thanks vonPeterhof.
I took lots of language courses in college: Spanish, Italian, Swahili, Zulu. I only really got anywhere with Spanish because of an immersion class I took and kept it up with coworkers later on and Zulu because I spent a semester in South Africa. Although people are scared of the clicks, Zulu is pretty easy.
Nevertheless, I never got to a really great level with any of them and definitely can't speak much zulu anymore, but I can understand Spanish that I hear (sometimes).
I started pursuing Spanish on DuoLingo last week (mostly because they don't have Japanese yet) and last night I started on French. I was always afraid of French because of the accent but it's not so bad once you try it.
vonPeterhof someday I'd like to learn some Russian, just because it's the language of Nikolai Gogol et al.
TLDR: no, just English.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - devilsbabe - 2013-10-02
I'm French and lived in the US for 4 years when I was little so I can speak both languages fluently. I learned a bit of Spanish in school and have lots of spanish friends so I can pick up on that a bit but I'm not focusing on it at all at the moment. When I'm satisfied with my level in Japanese I'll tackle Spanish for real.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - Loviatar - 2013-10-02
My native language is Finnish and we all have to study English and Swedish at school so I know both. The difference between the levels is stellar though; I consider myself to be pretty much fluent in English since I can converse freely in it, and have no problems understanding it either (except for certain accents). My Swedish on the other hand...well it's pretty awful since I haven't had any use for it since college (which was ten years ago). However, I am slowly re-learning that since it's part of the curriculum of my current school.
Currently, I've been learning Japanese for almost two years and intend to continue until the day I die. I may start learning something else on the side someday though, like Korean or Spanish, but at the moment I'm concentrating on fixing my broken Japanese and extremely broken Swedish
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - Raschaverak - 2013-10-02
Fluent in english, german, hungarian is my mother tongue. Would have learned more languages in the last 4 years, but I got depressed, and what not, so I stopped... getting back on track lately, so we'll see where I will be, in...lets say 5 years.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - furokansai - 2013-10-05
I am a french native speaker. I can speak english and I learn japanese and german.
I have always been a huge consumer of anglo-saxon media (american tv shows mostly) which helped me a lot. I also did study german at school but lost interrest in the language for years and forgot everything but the basics.. As for japanese, I did study a bit but it followed the same path as my german did when I focused on my major studies.
I recently graduated from uni and got back on track with languages learning which, as recently discovered (hopefully not too late), I enjoy a lot.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - martinjapan - 2013-10-06
I only speak English (not too surprising being a Brit) but and working hard on my Japanese.
I am very jealous of those that are multilingual, and have plans to learn Chinese (or possible Portuguese) when/if I am done with Japanese. Can't see it happening for a while yet, and Japanese is almost certainly going to be a life-long thing.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - buonaparte - 2013-10-06
When I was one I learned 1, when I was two I learned 2, when I was three I learned 3. Then I stopped. I restarted when I was 7. I learned, yes, you've guessed it, 0. I got depressed and decided not to restart again. But life took the upper hand. I re-restarted when I was eleven, and I learned 1. When I was twelve I learned 2. And so on. Now I'm very old. But I'm still learning. I'll never give up. Until death do us part.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - Stian - 2013-10-06
I'm a native Norwegian speaker and (sort of) fluent English speaker (C1). I also speak German half-decently (B2 comprehension; B1/B2 production).
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - Zorlee - 2013-10-06
Speak:
Norwegian (native)
English
Japanese
Studying:
German
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - HonyakuJoshua - 2013-10-07
I did French and Spanish at college (high school in the USA) and hated the structure.
I studied Japanese at university and hated the structure to the point where I actually turned down a scholarship to Japan.
I became seriously disillusioned and almost gave up.
My current aim is to learn basic Hindi and Arabic and I am doing quite well at this.
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - guian - 2013-10-07
I'm a Brazilian living in Amsterdam. My mother tongue is Portuguese and I use Dutch in daily life.
Portuguese (native speaker)
Dutch
French
English
Spanish
Very basic Italian
Learning Japanese
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - Z30G0D - 2013-10-09
I live in Israel since birth hence I am fluent with Hebrew.
I would define my English level as fluent as well due to the fact that I can function like an adult and sound almost local in English speaking countries.
studied Arabic in junior High school (we have to take it) so I know the alphabet, but my overall skills in this language are quite dead.
Japanese is fascinating though =]
Do you speak/learn any other languages? - KanjiCrosser - 2013-10-09
I took two years of German when I was in high school, although I didn't really take studying the language too seriously and, as a result, have stopped learning it. The case system (and genders) frustrated me to no end (der, die, das, dem, den...). However, since I had started learning Japanese two years ago, I've developed a better knack for learning languages. If I had that knack (and work ethic) back then, I feel that I would have been more successful learning German. Though now that I think about it, speaking the language wasn't too difficult for me. As English is a Germanic language and I am a native speaker of it, I guess the speaking part came natural. Maybe I'll go back to German someday when I am happy with my Japanese.
I also dabbled a little bit in Finnish, although that didn't last very long.