Language

[cosmicnxght]

My main language is portuguese, but I'm learning english and spanish and I would like to learn italian, german and japanese.

[shizuna]

My native language is Korean. Also, I studied in Japan, I can speak Japanese.

In Korean school curriculum, studied English so I can speak a little, but now I'm studying again from the basics.

[sh20000sh]

I'm still not sure about using word 'we' properly.

In Korean, it can be easily replaced with word 'I'.

[L4D2]

I speak English and know... I'd say... intermediate level German

[Wildmoon]

Minu emakeel on eesti keel~

 

That means, my native language is Estonian. However, I speak English pretty much fluently, and also speak some Finnish (language is similar to Estonian in some ways), some Korean, some German, and some Russian (though not well anymore, I had to learn it in school, and it is second most spoken language in Estonia)  

[calona]

My native language is French ! 

I have no problem understanding english, but speaking/writing is a bit more difficult. 😅
In general, making sentences seems to take more efforts, because we do not use english often in France and the classes are not frequent enough.

I think I understand everything very clearly, because of all the years on the internet, and because I read in english everyday as I'm a student in computer science.

However, I feel that my writing does not seem fluent at all, so I want to start communicating in english, like formulating things and be more and more confident and at ease with speaking/writing.
I hope I can progress here, and I'll be happy to help with French if needed !

(I also speak a little bit of spanish and japanese that I learnt in school. 😊)

[Astreya]

@calona

Bienvenue! From what I read so far you are doing very well. You only need to keep the courage to keep on writing. You will notice that many people who studied English as foreign language will have a better grammar and orthography than many people for whom it is their native language! You only need to lose the fear to make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes, and the main important thing is that people will easily understand what you want to convey even if you make one or the other mistake

[_Ro_]

Yeah, school language lessons often get really caught up in things that don't matter.

When speaking german i've never once had anyone unable to understand me because I forgot the gender of a noun, for example. It would have been MUCH more helpful to focus on vocab and sentence structure than is 'it die, der or dem?' so I guess keep that in mind if youre trying to teach yourself a language haha

 

Also i'm trying to learn japanese for my job, so if anyone wants to practice together thatd be cool..

I can help people with german or greek at a basic level btw if anyone wants.

[calona]

Thank you both for your advice ! 😊

[DragonSpirit009]

My main language is Afrikaans. Second language is English.

Then I know the few odd words in Tswane and I'm trying to learn a bit of Xhosa as well

[Moonshineforest]

My native language is German as well as Lower German/Plattdeutsch.

Because of the region I live in, I can also speak a bit of Dutch and Danish, but I‘m not very fluent.

Then of course English. Although I have no problems understanding everything, my writing, especially word choice and sentence structure, might be a bit weird to native speakers. And my speaking skills…I never fully trained them since there has never been usage for speaking in my job or surrounding. 

I have also been learning Chinese for two years now (mostly listening & understanding) and started with Spanish a few month ago, which I once learned at school, but forgot. 
If anyone needs help with learning German I would be glad to help!

[G'lant]

I'm practicing spanish. It helps that a lot of my family has tooken a course or two in it. The tenses are a pain though.

[hanniballecter]

my native language is french ! i learned english almost entirely on my own, my only lessons were my mom teaching us the basic verb structure and pronouns when i was 9. i'm trying to learn lithuanian now but had to put it on hold for the summer because i had summer classes. looking forward to picking it up again though.

[Selever]

I try to learn english and i speak in russian because its my native languane (even though i'm from Ukraine). i use a translator and this forum helps me to improve my english. 

I want to speak good on english, but so far im not good in it

[Elizabeth Moonstone]

My native language is French. However, English is the language I use pretty much all the time as my job is in English and I talk to my partner in English as well.

I have a B2 in Dutch. I’ve learnt it while living in Belgium these past four years. That’s not enough to be fluent though.

I’m moving to Germany so I’m learning German again. I had it for years in school but French foreign language teaching is notoriously bad (I mostly learnt English on the Internet).

I also had three years of Russian in high school. Fun but can’t speak it at all now.

I tried to learn Finnish for a few months because my boyfriend is Finnish. I gave up as this was the second most difficult language I faced. The most difficult imho is Chinese. I tried to learn that in college and also failed miserably.

So for years of language learning, the only foreign language I feel any confidence in speaking is English. It’s common for Europeans to speak three or even four languages (often because of familial or cultural reasons), I think I should make more efforts. I’m hoping living in Germany will help me achieve fluency in that language.

Edited August 27, 2021 by Elizabeth Moonstone

[Tiira]

I signed up for a basic course in Japanese at the university this autumn. Yay! That's something I'm really looking forward to. Although, it will be the same time as basically all the courses that I could choose to make some progress with my main studies... priorities, eh? Why does everything have to happen at 10 a.m. on Monday, anyway?

 

@Elizabeth Moonstone If you ever decide to take up Finnish again, I'd be glad to help with any questions! Or even if you just want to surprise your boyfriend, hah. 😸 I'm native in Finnish and also a 5th year Fennistics student at the uni!

[catstaff]

@Elizabeth MoonstoneI'm also trying to teach myself Finnish - tsemppiä Duolingolle! If you'd ever like to practice with someone else who's learning, I'd be more than happy to volunteer.

 

@VarislapsiGood luck with that Japanese course!

Edited August 28, 2021 by catstaff

[Tiira]

@catstaff Thanks, I'm quite excited! I've wanted to take up Japanese for some time already but I didn't have a chance. Well, now I thought that since I'm not going to graduate in time, anyway, perhaps I could at least take advantage of the free language courses at the uni even if that means postponing something else... 😸

[Code_NameUnknown]

I speak Dutch and English, I can understand a bit of German and French and I can read some Latin and Ancient Greek.

I'm going to learn Spanish soon, which I'm very excited for, and one day I want to learn Italian too.

[_Terminus24]

I am Spanish, but learned English when I was very young. About 3 years old I started to learn English