What languages have you attempted to learn?

General discussion about learning languages
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księżycowy
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Re: What languages have you attempted to learn?

Postby księżycowy » Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:10 pm

Hmmm, interesting topic. I definitely have a few oddballs on this list. :P

Aside from my current studies (Biblical/Classical Greek, Biblical Hebrew and German), I'll add the following (in no particular order; unless otherwise noted, these are self-taught languages):

Irish: I took an interest to this one some years ago from my grandmother (on my mother's side). She didn't speak a lick of it, but would occasionally talk about her father, and how he came over to America from County Cork, Ireland. I still don't know the whole story, but I guess that's part of the interest. It took many years for me to get materials which I liked, and that worked for me. I first bounced off the C.O. edition of the Teach Yourself book because of the lack of vocabulary, and the insistence on giving phrases instead of individual words. I'm a curious guy and like knowing how phrases are out together! Then I found the likes of Learning Irish, and had something that was at least better (made it through a few lessons in 2011, apparently). I was still holding out for Munster resources, though. Then I found the original Teach Yourself book, and made some real progress back in 2017. Up to lesson 16, if I'm remembering correctly. Hoping to have another swing at it soonish.

Polish: My other grandmother (on my father's side) spoke Polish before I knew her. Unfortunately she had lost a lot before I came into the picture. He husband didn't like her speaking the language. F**k him. Never met the man myself, and I'm probably better off for it. I took a good swing through First-Year Polish back in 2018. Made ot through the first six lessons, including the very FSI like drills and exercises in the supplemental workbooks. Like Irish, I hope to return in the near future.

Japanese: I am returning to this one. Even if it's on my deathbed. It's been on-again-off-again for years. I've chronicled some of my journey here in my logs, but I also made a serious attempt around 2017 as well. I'm sure there were other serious attempts as well.

Mandarin: I had long dreamed of this language (well, really any variety of Chinese I could get my hands on) since I was at least a teenager. But it didn't actually start until 2018 when I was planning to go to Taiwan to teach English to Taiwanese students. this never panned out, but it got me a few lessons into Practical Audio-Visual Chinese. I may have made attempts before hand (I'd be surprised if I didn't, honestly) but I can't remember now. I think I also had a go at a lesson or two in New Practical Chinese Reader 1 prior to this. I like the Taiwanese accent better, though. Hardly any erwa. I hope to return some day.

Taiwanese (Hokkien): Around the time I was interested in Chinese and going to Taiwan, I attempted to pick up the largest local vernacular of Taiwan, Taiwanese (a.k.a. Hokkien). I actually had an interest in Taiwanese (and Cantonese) stretching back to at least 2007ish, when I ordered copies of some Maryknoll textbooks for the language, but I never really got around to learning the language until 2018. Primarily because the books didn't come with audio (at the time it was reserved for students at the school in Taiwan). Fast forward a decade or two, and that changed and I was able to get the audio! Woohoo! But I had also collected other resources in the meantime, and when through a lesson or two in each. The main thing (aside from the move to Taiwan not panning out, thanks COVID) that killed it was that most textbooks were crap. Looks like my attempt in 2018-2019 made it through some of Unit 1 in Bodman's Spoken Amoy Hokkien/Spoken Taiwanese and two lessons in the first Maryknoll textbook. Now that I have the audio for the Maryknoll books, I wish to return one day, hopefully.

Seneca (Onöndowá'ga:): I took a beginning online course (for free!) through the Seneca Tribe in New York state in 2017. I'd actually love to take the course again, eventually. It'd definitely a bit hard scheduling wise now that I'm in Ireland. (Let alone the lack of energy and time from focusing on my studies, of course!) I'll also add that I self-learned a tiny bit of Cayuga and Cherokee from Wadęwayistanih and Beginning Cherokee respectively. I'd like to return to them eventually as well, if time and energy allow. (Without the goal of fluency, but just to know some.)

Arabic: I went through the beginning lessons of Elementary Modern Standard Arabic sometime between 2007-2015 (I can't clearly remember anymore). I made it through some of the abjad/pronunciation lessons, and I believe that I also jumped into a grammar lesson or two as well. I'd love to return to it eventually.

Burmese: I once had a Burmese coworker, and because of that I became interested in learning the language. I went through a few lessons of Okell's Burmese by Ear around 2014.

Swedish: I definitely remember going through a few lessons of Colloquial Swedish, but I can't for the life of me remember when. Hmm.

Rather than boring you with all the details for each language, here are some odds and ends in addition to what I've said above:
Aleut (2009; 2018)
Yup'ik (2009; 2013)
Arrernte (2010; 2017)
Lakota (2011-2012)
Arapaho (2012)
Aymara (2012)
Lushootseed (2012)
Muskogee/Creek (2012)
Quechua (2012)

This has been both a fun and depressing trip down memory lane. :P

EDIT: I forgot about Georgian and Armenian. Much like Swedish I can clearly remember going through a few lessons of Beginner's Georgian, Eastern Armenian for the English Speaking World, and A Textbook of Modern Western Armenian, but not when I did so.

EDIT2: Oh, and of course Modern Hebrew! I may not be able to resist this temptation while I study Biblical Hebrew (as is often the case for me :lol: ). I last studied it in 2013, and was tempted again in 2018. I started with Modern Hebrew For Beginners: A Multimedia Program, but then switched to Israeli Hebrew for Speakers of English.

EDIT3: I also forgot French, which wasn't my choice, but was a language I did enjoy at the time. I took it in Middle/Highschool. So somewhere around 1997-2001 is my best guess. I can't remember how far I got. Probably upper beginner, low intermediate. I dropped it like a hot potato after the classes ended. On occasion I threaten myself with picking it up again, and that triggers PTSD induced nightmares for a week or two. That usually quiets the urge for a few years at least.

EDIT4: And of course I forgot to add two "serious" flirts with Klingon and Sindarin.

EDIT5: And Vietnamese (Southern dialect primarily) and Mongolian. I don't quite remember when, but it was in the last few years for Vietnamese at least. (Last edit, I swear!)
Last edited by księżycowy on Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:52 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: What languages have you attempted to learn?

Postby jeffers » Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:49 pm

In roughly chronological order:

Hindi is the first foreign language I ever had to learn in school. I started this in primary school in India in 1977, and have kept chipping away at it periodically ever since. It has moved to the back burner since I have no immediate prospect of visiting India, but I really enjoy my opportunities to speak or otherwise use the language.

Spanish-- three years of middle school Spanish in New York didn't take. I do remember the pharase no se apuya contra la puerta because of NYC subways.

Ancient Greek-- I studied Attic Greek in university because I didn't want to learn another modern language. I continued with Biblical Greek later. I can still read and understand a bit, and it's been on my "must get back to this" list ever since.

Biblical Hebrew-- studied for my Master of Divinity degree. I tried to revive this a couple of times, but didn't keep at it for more than a few weeks each time. I can still sort of read it.

German-- the first language I ever studied by my own choice, although I also had in mind that it would be useful for future studies in theology or South Asian Studies (believe it or not). My first attempts were pretty lame, but subsequent efforts have been dragging it up little by little.

French [EDITed in as I somehow forgot it!]-- I started learning French because it was the only subject for which I couldn't help my children with their homework. They have long since stopped studying French, but it has become my most studied foreign language.

Sanskrit-- I briefly dabbled with this on a trip back to India, partly because Assimil had just released their Sanskrit book, and partly because I was visiting a friend who was studying it at the time. In the event, I got to around lesson 10-12 in Assimil, and when I was in India I decided to keep my focus on Hindi rather than diffusing my efforts. I'll be honest, part of the attraction was simply to see how Assimil works as the primary source for a language I had never studied, and in my opinion it was the best way to go.
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stell
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Re: What languages have you attempted to learn?

Postby stell » Tue Jan 31, 2023 1:24 pm

I grew up speaking French and English, I have studied Spanish on and off for years, and I'm currently starting Russian (for the second time).

Here are the languages that I've abandoned:

I visited Brazil as an 18-year-old in the mid-90s, and decided to study Brazilian Portuguese in University. But the first-year Portuguese class was cancelled, and it never crossed my mind to see if I could learn on my own. So Portuguese was the first language I was interested in, and also the first one I dropped before even starting.

I spent six months traveling in Eastern Africa after I graduated from University, and I fell in love with kiSwahili. I wrote down every word I learned in a notebook, and I spoke to everyone who was willing to let me practice. I think that if the online language resources that exist now were available then, I would have done a deep dive into studying. Instead, I took out some books from the local University library, but I didn't really get anywhere and it eventually fizzled out. Sometimes I think about trying kiSwahili again.

I worked on Tagalog quite seriously for about half a year, but the payoff just wasn't worth the amount of work that I was putting in. My Tagalog is at a level where I can understand basic household conversations (so long as they aren't too abstract), and I can participate by throwing in Tagalog sentences - which is mostly for comedic effect, because the Filipinos that I know well think it's hilarious every time I say something in Tagalog. My accent is really good, which I think makes it even more hilarious!

I learned Italian to the level where I could read translated Stephen King novels and watch dubbed Star Trek. I struggled with finding native content that I connected with, and speaking felt like such a chore due to interference from Spanish. I had very little opportunity to interact with Italian speakers in day-to-day life, and we shelved travel plans to Italy. Italian just didn't "stick".

I studied Esperanto just for fun, when the new Duolingo course came out and caused a big buzz. Materials were easy to find, and the language was easy and fun to study. I set myself the goal to speak for an hour with an italki tutor in only Esperanto, which I successfully did. Then, I realized I had zero reason to keep learning. I'm not interested in attending Esperanto conferences, or in speaking with people online. There's no Esperanto club where I live. I honestly just started learning because I was ever-so-briefly sucked into reading and watching content in the online "polyglot" world. Then I realized that I had very little interest in that world.

So out of all my languages, only Spanish has really rooted its way inside my brain. We'll see if Russian joins it, or if it's just visiting for now.
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Re: What languages have you attempted to learn?

Postby tractor » Tue Jan 31, 2023 8:12 pm

In this company, my list is fairly short:

English
Spanish
Catalan
French
Latin
German
Italian

I'm too lazy to try to learn something outside the Latin/Romance and Germanic branches.
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Re: What languages have you attempted to learn?

Postby Le Baron » Tue Jan 31, 2023 9:54 pm

tractor wrote:I'm too lazy to try to learn something outside the Latin/Romance and Germanic branches.

Or just sensible?
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Re: What languages have you attempted to learn?

Postby språker » Tue Jan 31, 2023 11:51 pm

Nowadays I am forcing myself away from dabbling with new languages until I brought up the ones I've started to a higher level, but I have dabbled before. First it was Dutch. I know German, so I was a bit curious, and bought a tape course (Lingaphone, I think). Did the course, but not much more. Also dabbled in Czech. I had been there on holiday, and then a girlfriend at that time was interested in Czech (for no obvious reason), and I thought like well. We borrowed a tape course from the library and made copies of all tapes. Didn't learn much though. Given how much energy I have spent on Lithuanian now, I understand why...

At some time I thought it would be really cool to know latin. In the sense of a person that is really studied. Still think it would be cool to know latin and ancient greek, if not just for that reason. But I now know that I need a much greater motivation to progress anywhere useful. I did buy a couple of books and a dictionary for Latin though. Also thought it might help my French...

A good friend of me lives in the German speaking part of Switzerland, and I have been visiting him many times. When we meet with his friends we speak German (otherwise Swedish, his heritage language), and that German is on a scale from standard German with another melody to completely incomprehensible. I was at a time interested in learning a Swiss German dialect. But I get a better hang of it the longer I visit, generally.
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german2k01
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Re: What languages have you attempted to learn?

Postby german2k01 » Wed Feb 01, 2023 10:51 am

I learned English to read books and websites online. I hardly interacted with native speakers and never lived in an English-speaking country. I could read books meant for university-level students without looking up words in an English dictionary so as far as reading goes I did Ok I guess thanks to self-learning.

I never had problems understanding lectures in English delivered by German professors so my listening was also okay. On the IELTS exam, my listening and reading were rated at the C1 level. 5 years ago.

However, the German language is my new love. It is so beautiful when you hear it (it is like you are transported into a totally strange world). When I read it in the text, it raises my blood pressure :D . I feel like how on earth Germans can speak such convoluted sentences fluently. I am glad that I have decided to learn it seriously and this is one language I would like to keep to my deathbed.

Also, I learned Arabic to read Holy Koran and offer prayers. It is standard Arabic.

Basically, in my case, all these languages I tried to learn out of necessity rather than out of having a passion for languages.

If there is one language I would love to learn purely out of passion and curiosity reasons, then it is definitely going to be Russian. The written script looks like deciphering secret codes. In my workplace sometimes I hear it it sounds challenging to my untrained ears.

Right now I need to cage the German language.
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Re: What languages have you attempted to learn?

Postby Gaoling97 » Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:21 am

First one I ever learned (after English) was German, which I started taking in school in 8th grade (2010-2011). Studied it a lot in my free time for quite a few years in high school, won a trip to Germany in a competition and spent a month there during summer break between 11th and 12th grade, took a couple classes in college, studied abroad for a year...and then just kind of stopped until about two years ago, when I started casually studying again (was probably about C1 level at that point), and didn't start intensely studying again until last year.

I dabbled a bit in Japanese using Tae Kim's guide in 8th grade. I even remember making this huge stack of paper flashcards (this was before I discovered my love of Anki), but I don't think I really learned anything beyond hiragana and katakana.

I think I played around with Dutch on Duolingo for a couple weeks in 12th grade.

I also spent a month or two during a summer break in college doing Vietnamese with Duolingo and Memrise. I met a good friend from Vietnam on lang-8 that I still regularly talk to to this day...but my Vietnamese was apparently atrocious lol, especially my pronunciation.

And then I started Chinese June 28, 2019 (according to Anki) and moved to China in August. To make a long story short, I have spent several thousand hours on this language at this point, and I love Chinese (even though I think it hates me). No matter what happens, it's a part of me forever now lol.

One thing I will say is that while German is the first language I seriously studied, and it did help me a lot in learning Chinese (on a meta level), I was not actively studying German at the time that I started Chinese. I spent, as I indicated, A LOT of time studying Chinese, refining my general study methods, with the result that Chinese actually helped me learn how to study German (and any other future language). My study methods now are, obviously, significantly more sophisticated than the stuff I did when I was just a teenager.
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Re: What languages have you attempted to learn?

Postby Ug_Caveman » Thu Feb 02, 2023 5:58 pm

English - native. Was my best subject at school, but I had zero interest in pursuing it academically beyond the mandatory point of year 11 (GCSEs/16-years-old) and studied science instead.

French - studied in school from 5-16 (was mandatory at both of my schools.) Easily my worst subject and scraped a very low 'C' grade in my GCSE. Since I've been studying other languages, I've noticed my passive French skills have remained reasonably strong (or even improved) at the level I last studied it (I could understand a fair chunk of spoken French from a DELF-A2 paper - roughly equivalent in ability to a GCSE exam.) I'm tempted to go back at some point.

Spanish - one years worth at school. Given I could barely handle French, I decided not to double up on my GCSEs as it probably would have explodified my brain into goo. Still know enough to order what I want in a restaurant when my family inevitably chooses Spain for our next holiday destination.

German - one taster lesson in year 8 (12-13 y/o) at school. Never picked it, probably should have, but somewhat glad I didn't for reasons I'll explain soon. Very interested to go back at some point though. Much like French, I have some decent passive skills (listened to an unfamiliar dictation earlier and had around 95% comprehension.)

Italian - said I'd learn it, didn't happen. Would like to just because I'm a bit of a pizza addict.

Latin - two years at school, never again.

Mandarin - studied small amounts at a club at school but never 'got going'.

Japanese - like lots of people into various Japanese cartoons and fads, I insisted I'd learn it to watch things in the original language and for 'business' (which, as an eight-year-old, I absolutely knew what I was talking about.) Never even opened the book.

Russian - flirted with a few times, can read Cyrillic quite well but again never 'got going'.

Dutch - found after trying all other languages on this list. Developed a very strong affinity for the language, interest in the culture and over a long period of time have built my basic skills up enough to pass the A2 exam. I'm hoping in four months time I'll sit and pass the B1 too. My favourite language by far. Glad I never got into German as I feel like I wouldn't be able to handle the interference and I'd rather my Dutch was the stronger of the two (I will go back to German at some point though.)

Swedish - took some classes because I really, really love Nordic Noir and would like to get back to it when I'm happier with my Dutch. Also interested in Danish but as of yet I've not studied it yet.
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Re: What languages have you attempted to learn?

Postby Le Baron » Thu Feb 02, 2023 6:22 pm

Ug_Caveman wrote:Japanese ... for 'business' (which, as an eight-year-old, I absolutely knew what I was talking about.)

:lol:
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