Foreign Language/multilingual thread

[mister miller]

Apparently there's no thread for this yet so here it is

Any bilingual or multi lingual folks here?

I'm learning French atm and I'm just looking for some advice on language learning.

Obviously full immersion is not an option for me at this point but I do have quite a bit of spare time outside of work.

Any suggestions?

[d-a-m-o]

lol excellent choix.

[milkface]

I speak both French and English fluently and remember a fair bit of German from when I studied it a few years back.

[Limo]

Just say “putain” all the time. You’ll sound like a born Frenchman.

[d-a-m-o]

true.

[mister miller]

3 minutes ago, rhmilo said:

Just say “putain” all the time. You’ll sound like a born Frenchman.

putain

[Enthusiast]

J'aime aussi les cigarettes et le fromage

[mister miller]

30 minutes ago, milkface said:

I speak both French and English fluently and remember a fair bit of German from when I studied it a few years back.

did you learn french in school or is that your native language

[dingformung]

 

[dcom]

First language: Finnish (native)
Second language: Russian (elective first foreign language at school from, 9 years old; basic proficiency due to disuse)
Third language: Swedish (compulsory at school from 13 years old, Finland is bilingual; basic proficiency due to disuse)
Fourth language: English (second elective language at school from 14 years old; fluent UK/US vernacular)

Bits and pieces of French, Italian, German, Latin and Japanese, would love to freshen up Russian and learn more Japanese.

 

[Nil]

 

[brian trageskin]

 

[ambermonk]

I'm approaching borderline braggart, so I'll just briefly rank every language I know according to proficiency and age/year started.

English - Started at about age 3, have been told that's when I actually began speaking coherently. Sometimes it's fun to corrupt intentionally.
Japanese - Official learning began shortly before age 19. Was fluent towards the end of my exchange year in northern Japan in 2008 but has rusted since then due to lack of use. Have been brushing up since September last year but only thru language apps and Vtuber streams.
German - Began learning freshman year of high school approaching age 15. I'd say a step above basic level but still below my Japanese proficiency. Haven't really used it since high school.
Chinese (Mandarin) - Took one semester in late 2005. Basic level, but can still identify certain characters here and there.
Korean  - Took one semester in late 2008 right after concluding exchange year in Japan. Have pretty much mastered Hangeul and know basic greetings, counting, and scattered vocabulary.
Russian  - Started learning cyrillics in early 2017. Basically have reading mastered but pronunciation is still slightly off. So far know only basic greetings but currently training up on basic grammar as well.
Indonesian  - Started very recently, as in December 2020. Conveniently uses Roman alphabet, but noticed that adjectives and pronouns come after the nouns. So far know only a couple of greetings. Too early in the learning process to even begin conversing.
Spanish  - You'd think I would have started learning a long time ago. But new words are easy to identify thanks to Latin lineage. Still have barely begun.

( - indicates active Duolingo practice)

I wonder if it's better though to focus on just one language per day and rotate for the sake of focus, as opposed to practicing multiple in the same day in small bits. Still experimenting.

[Hail Sagan]

Caveman-level Spanish speaker

[chenGOD]

I grunt from my mouth hole and people seem to understand. Or they’re just being sympathetic. 

[cruising for burgers]

I speek english bestest then everyone, lot's of times bestest... 

[milkface]

5 hours ago, mister miller said:

did you learn french in school or is that your native language

Born and raised in the UK but both of my parents are French immigrants so I learnt it from them, as well as studying it currently in university.

[drillkicker]

I have almost exactly as many Duolingo points in Hungarian as in French, but I can understand a good deal of French and still can't even recognize a single word in written or spoken Hungarian.  It's very disappointing.  What a grueling language.

Anyway, I speak basic English, even worse German, and I can understand French but not speak it.

[toaoaoad]

I was doing pretty well in German on Duolingo for a couple years, but it was more like playing a game than anything, and without any actual practice I've probably forgotten just about all of it since then. Not the easiest language and not particularly useful but I enjoyed it. Considering I live in Canada I should probably be working on my French if anything, cause it's pretty bad lol. 

[Braintree]

I studied German in high school and kept up a little bit afterward. Still speak a little bit, but anything past the basics is forgotten. Knowing there are like 12 forms of 'the' depending on the context makes me feel like I'll sound like a fucking idiot if I even try at this point. I can understand a bit of Japanese (from a past relationship). Forgot most of the katakana and hiragana ages ago. Oddly enough, my pronunciation is pretty good for both. There's an air of femininity when speaking Japanese since I learned it from women.

My Spanish is just dogshit and being in Mexico City would have been a real struggle if everyone there didn't speak English passably already.

[EdamAnchorman]

Growing up in rural America with American parents, there was literally zero chance I would be fluent in any language other than English by college-age (I hate that being multilingual isn't stressed more in the US).  My high school was total shit and only offered Spanish and Latin. I took two years of Latin, then the teacher retired and they replaced it with French so I took two years of that.  Most of that is gone.  Was too busy with ChemE in college to take any languages there.

The Mrs was a native spanish speaker until she was 5.  She can understand and read Spanish near perfectly and can speak fine to my ears, but she says she is unsure about verb tenses sometimes from lack of use.  Just from being around her and visiting her family, I can understand some Spanish if they speak slowly (which they never do).  Latin vocab helps there.

Spent three months in Brazil for work and could understand some words visually thanks to some similarity to Spanish vocab but I'll be damned if I could catch it with my ears at first.  Brazilian Portuguese IMO is one of the ugliest and strangest pronunciations of any language I've personally experienced.

[drillkicker]

I think European Portuguese sounds stranger

[toaoaoad]

3 hours ago, Braintree said:

there are like 12 forms of 'the' depending on the context

YES this.  Definitely one of the hardest things I found about German as well. And the syntax gets pretty complicated. Other than those things I found a lot of it fairly intuitive after awhile because of its commonalities with English. But yeah wtf

[AnwarAutokino]

On 2/14/2021 at 6:05 PM, mister miller said:

Apparently there's no thread for this yet so here it is

Any bilingual or multi lingual folks here?

I'm learning French atm and I'm just looking for some advice on language learning.

Obviously full immersion is not an option for me at this point but I do have quite a bit of spare time outside of work.

Any suggestions?

I'd suggest to get into podcasts/radio shows/youtube vids in French pretty early on, you might not understand a whole lot but it will give you a feeling for the way the language works IRL, i.e. how people ask/respond to questions, which expressions people actually use as opposed to what the books tell you they use etc. At least that has worked for me quite a bit.

as for myself: German (native), English (fluent), French (can read & understand BUT speaking involves lot's of UUUHMM UHHMMM UHHHM)

[dingformung]

French is useful. The French are the only European demographic that doesn't speak reasonable English (or refuses to do so) so it might be helpful to know some words if you need to communicate with them. I always wondered why it is that the French speak such terrible English, especially since French and English share so much vocabulary. I think they have less English classes in school than other European countries for some reason, and I bet a lot of people probably still dream of French becoming the world language one day.

11 hours ago, toaoaoad said:

was doing pretty well in German on Duolingo for a couple years, but it was more like playing a game than anything, and without any actual practice I've probably forgotten just about all of it since then. Not the easiest language and not particularly useful but I enjoyed it.

For English native speakers German is very useful because it helps you understand your own native language better. If you want to read a bunch of philosophy in original it's useful as well. But other than that you don't need it outside or even inside of Germany/Austria/Switzerland because English gets you far here (with limitations of course).

Edited February 17, 2021 by dingformung