Introduce yourself here

[this_or_that]

Hello,
I've been lurking here for a long time (also on the old HTLAL forum; sadly, not in its heyday, and I was not a member). I've always wanted to learn multiple languages, but for various reasons English is the only one I mastered to active fluency. I almost gave up on my language hobby for a while, then resurrected it shortly before the pandemic and finally managed to create something like a consistent personal approach, instead of my previous random floundering. I'm still tweaking and experimenting of course, but overall my self-study goes better than ever before. Advice here and on the HTLAL has been incredibly helpful. So, after years of reading I finally decided to start writing.

[YoruTheLearner]

Hello, I am Yoru.

I'm an American who is learning Spanish and wants to become a translator in the future. I have dabbled in several languages but never took any of them far. I never did language classes in school either. I have no idea what I am doing but I am keeping track of my hours and process.

Currently I am going through the FSI Basic Course and Language Transfer Complete Spanish. When I finish these, I will read the CONALITEG textbooks and go from there.

Years into the future, once I've gotten a high level of Spanish, I have plans for learning Japanese and Korean as well.

[Treza]

Hi - I have been lurking for about a year on the board. I've found many great resources and ideas discussed here. I've been studying Spanish for about a year and a half. The first 6-9 months were tough - I tried a bunch of programs, including FSI Basic, but didn't feel like I was making much progress. Currently I'm at an advanced beginner level and making decent progress. I finished the first 50 lessons of Assimil with Ease in November. I decided to take a break and just study some basics before a 10-day trip to Mexico City in December. While in Mexico City, I worked with a tutor 1:1 for a total of 10 hrs, but definitely did not have an immersion experience. When I returned, I decided to pick up the FSI Basic program at Lesson 6. Even though the grammar is relatively basic for me, I really like the speaking exercises (something I felt was lacking in Assimil). This time around, I'm much less overwhelmed by how much information is included in each FSI lesson. I seem to get tired with different programs after a bit, so who knows, I may switch back to Assimil after awhile.

My background - 2.5 yrs of French in High School followed by a month in France. I doubt I progressed above a basic level and never felt very competent as a foreign language student. For some odd reason, I took 2 semesters of Chinese in college, maybe as a distraction from all of the science classes that I was taking at the time. I could not hear the intonations of the language and would consider it a major fail. I'm currently retired and decided that learning Spanish would be a great challenge and help me with travels that I'm interested in.

In addition to FSI and Assimil, tools that I'm using include Italki sessions (~2/week), ChatGPT 4, Lingq, and a note-taking app called Capacities that allows me to link (backlink) lessons that I'm studing with key verbs, words, grammer explanations, etc. I'm using another note-taking app called RemNote for a limited number of flashcards (it's comparable to Anki, but has a nicer interface).

[qxz]

Hi everyone, Happy New Years! Long time lurker here and thought it's time to create an account. I'm a beginner in German and will be sticking with that one for some time. I hope to contribute a great deal to this forum in the new year!

[Iversen]

Welcome. You have arrived in a period with access problems, so just being here is quite an achievement. I see forward to your posts.

[Keyrowg Ella]

Hi everyone,

I've read some threads on the forum over the past few weeks and thought I should create an account. Glad to see you're back up and running! I hope to contribute where I can and look forward to getting to know some of you.

This year I've begun to study Italian. As you can see from my profile, I also have experience with French, German and Irish to varying degrees.

[vanessa.peterfeld]

Hi,
I'm Vanessa! I've been learning German for quite a while now. I am interested in language learning in general, have also been learning some French, and dabbled in a few other languages. Right now, my focus is German, and as I'm always looking for new resources and ways to practice, I thought I'd join a forum and see what else is out there. I hope that this forum is still active enough, because I saw that quite a few posts are from quite a while ago? In any case, I'm going to give this a shot! Looking forward to meeting fellow German learners!

[rdearman]

Hi,
I'm Vanessa! I've been learning German for quite a while now. I am interested in language learning in general, have also been learning some French, and dabbled in a few other languages. Right now, my focus is German, and as I'm always looking for new resources and ways to practice, I thought I'd join a forum and see what else is out there. I hope that this forum is still active enough, because I saw that quite a few posts are from quite a while ago? In any case, I'm going to give this a shot! Looking forward to meeting fellow German learners!

It is active, but we had a couple weeks of bot attacks that stopped people interacting much. All better now.

[engpolusap]

Hello,

I'm a bilingual speaker of English and Polish looking to improve my Polish.
I have been researching various learning mediums and hope to learn more and share here.

[Tumlare]

Hello everyone!

I've been lurking around the forum for a little bit and finally decided to start actively posting. I'm an American with a passion for languages currently living in Sweden. My primary focus is on improving my Swedish from my current level (B2) to C1 (and eventually C2).

I've studied a few different languages in the past (3 years of French in high school, 1 semester of Japanese in college, a few months of Spanish, 2 weeks of travel-survival German) and I would like to return to them/explore additional languages in the future.