I can't really add
English, though I will say it is
not the language my mother spoke to me when I was born nor for most of the time until I was at least around 8-10 years old. Father only spoke English to me though.
French, the first language I ever heard alongside English. I have a strange and up/down history with it as I've waffled about elsewhere. It is my best 'foreign language', though Dutch has rapidly caught up. It is the language I consume the most media with after English.
Normal study at school of
German,
Latin. I was competent enough at both, but better at German.
All the rest are the languages I've chosen to impose upon myself. Firstly
Cantonese. I already said elsewhere why I started this, but it really was also because of a teenage fascination with Chinese things. And of course in the UK the dominant Chinese immigrant community is/was from Hong Kong speaking Cantonese. So I followed that, with self-study and even took some classes. Found it very hard. Can I speak it though? In an unimpressive, elementary way. I gave it up.
Russian. I started this around age 16/17 and applied myself as much as I could. I would certainly do it differently now, but it was hard to get reading and listening materials at the time. I did have interaction opportunities though, so I managed to get functional at a moderate level. I considered this my first 'self-taught' language from scratch. Speaking has suffered since. I can still read it, but it needs much work. I actually revived this in the late 90s and early 2000s, but it has lapsed again.
Welsh. I've never started a language 'just for the sake of it' without it already being somewhat present around me. This is definitely the case with Welsh, because at the time I was living in Bangor and then over the bridge on Anglesey. There is encouragement to at least attempt to learn Welsh and since I thought I might even stay there it seemed a good idea and a necessity. I tried really hard, but you have to really want it, not meet it as a 'requirement'. As such I didn't spend enough time on it and I consider this a great failure and an opportunity squandered.
Hawaiian, this was more of a fad, but I kept it up for a while, though few materials and little opportunity throttled the life out of it. I later picked it up again when Duolingo released their course.
I started
Esperanto around this time. From the original, revised version, of the
Teach Yourself book. Easy to learn, needed more reading material than I could get then, but I did locate a local(ish) Esperanto group who lent or gave me books - including a dictionary - and went to some events. A very fulfilling language due to its ease and how quickly you can get functional. The pain threshold is low. I still maintain it.
Norwegian. My first go at this before I left England. I used old materials and wasted a bit of time, but learnt enough for the basics to stick. Then dropped Norwegian until I picked it up again quite some years later. Around this time I had a crack at Danish too, but the pronunciation scared me.
Dutch, This was another necessity language. I was quite content to stay lower down in Belgium and speak French rather than commit to trying to learn another language, but my companion wanted to move back to the Netherlands and also landed a job in northern Belgium. So I bit the bullet, and actually found it a rewarding experience. It is my main day-to-day language 'in real life'.
German. Another necessity because we moved to Cologne for a while.On the back of school German, my grandparents and prior dabbling and also recent Dutch I fast-tracked into a class there, and made a great effort to interact and fully immerse to try and get functional asap. I had a very respectable level between maybe B2-C1 and although it has probably dropped now I still use it and try to maintain.
Indonesian/Malay. Initially an homage to my wife and her background and particularly to communicate better with her mother. I started on Malay and then just went for standard Indonesian. I'd put it as A2/B1 for listening and some speaking. I only wanted it in order to take part in those family conversations and party gatherings. Just being able to listen and understand and follow as best I can is enough, because no-one cares if I reply in Dutch or English, in fact some 2nd/3rd generation do this themselves. Though I've always tried to dig for better speaking and learning colloquial speech.
Sranan Tongo. Same story as above. As with quite a few Surinam families there is often a language mix. Sranan is the language my wife's parents use to speak to each other as a common language, even though her language background is Indonesian-based (Javanese) and he is from the Hindi community. Sranan is easier than Indonesian for me because it is a mainly English creole with obviously much Dutch. I've studied it casually, but learned a lot of this through sitting listening and then trying to talk. All of my wife's sisters and their Surinam friends speak it - though in different ways.
Latterly,
Swahili in which I got to about early A2 before shelving it do to my free time being spread too thinly.
Spanish is what I have been learning most of all for the last couple of years and where 90% of the focus has been.
There are other smaller dabblings along the way, but they're not worth recording.