Introduce yourself here

[Jarndyce]

Hi, I'm a 31-year-old American woman who recently started taking German night classes for fun. I'm also very very slowly translating my way through Im Westen nichts Neues with the help of a dictionary, because I am not patient enough to wait until my German is better. On that note, if anyone understands what "Speckjäger" (bacon hunter???) means, I'd love to hear from you! My goal is to hit C2 by age 40, which should hopefully lessen the pain of that birthday.

[Philipp]

Hi, I'm a 31-year-old American woman who recently started taking German night classes for fun. I'm also very very slowly translating my way through Im Westen nichts Neues with the help of a dictionary, because I am not patient enough to wait until my German is better. On that note, if anyone understands what "Speckjäger" (bacon hunter???) means, I'd love to hear from you! My goal is to hit C2 by age 40, which should hopefully lessen the pain of that birthday.

Welcome to the forum. I remember Im Westen nichts Neues from school. It's certainly a challenging read, regarding the subject matter as well as the language. Speckjäger is an archaic word for a vagrant. I think it's a colloquial term, so maybe hobo or tramp would be a good translation. If you have any more question, I'd be glad to help and there also several other German native speakers on this forum. Good luck with your German.

[Sarchta]

Hello,

I've been scrolling through this site for a past few days and I decided to start writing. My name is Walenty, I'm 18 years old and I come from Poland. Education in Poland is clearly not enough to learn a language let alone two languages, and so I wanted to practice more. I think this forum will help me with my English and may give me some nice ideas about language learning as well. Besides English I'm studying German and Esperanto. If you have any questions about Polish, fell free to PM me. I'm more than happy to help you.

[Baeticus]

Hi everyone.

I'm an undergraduate student from Spain. Learning languages means to me an opportunity to open a window into other people's points of view and other culture's ways of life. I became passionate about learning languages a year and a half ago, when I started to study English. After getting the basics and acquiring some fluency, I've decided to start with another one (probably French, though I've my doubts yet).

I'm sure I will learn a lot from all of you.

Regards!

[zed]

hello

i love languages and tattoos. i am from canada and am interested in learning icelandic, russian, latin and greek. i joined hoping to get some advice on the greek language and whether a couple of phrases i would like to get as tattoos are correct but am having trouble posting. hope to get to post soon and talk and learn from you all!

[sirgregory]

Greetings. My name is Gregory and I like languages. In early adulthood I spent some time in Latin America where I learned Spanish. I stumbled upon the HTLAL site around 2006. Francois's material inspired me to try to learn French through self study. I spent a few months studying it with Pimsleur and a few books. I was learning it quickly but I was never able to get much practical experience with it or get much beyond a very basic level. Since then, I have been on a bit of a break, shall we say. About 13 years thanks to school and professional distractions. But just within the last few months my interest in languages has made a comeback. I've decided to restart with German. I'm finding it somewhat more of a challenge than French (I felt like I was getting a enormous discount there) but still very enjoyable. I'm really loving the similarities to Old English.

As this site seems to be the successor to HTLAL, it looks like the right place for motivation and self study techniques.

[Storyling]

Hello!

I'm Oscar from Sweden.

I've been traveling consistently with no real home base for 3 years now and that's when I started to get interested in languages.

I run a language learning startup while traveling which has been super rewarding and fun!

Other than that I love playing poker and you can expect to find me in Las Vegas during the hot summers.

Looking forward to interacting with y'all.

[Mackie]

My name is Max/Mackie however is easy, or Maxi.
I am Filipino. I am not exactly homogeneous. The issue is my father 's strain is Chinese so I do not look like the type-casted versions from that racial group.

I am 39 years old in 2019.

Everyone I encounter either find it interesting that I am Filipino, because all sino-tibetic groups think I belong there (ie. I get mistaken for a Tibetan, Nepalese, Korean, Japanese and mostly mainland Chinese) or the sino-tibetic group themselves think I am one of them and they just start flooring with either Japanese, Chines, Nepalese and Tibetan.

I am from Asia, that part of the political conversation, the shadowy part.

I grew up in the Philippines, I am currently in New Jersey, Jersey City doing a Mechanical Engineering Tech program at a CUNY school in Brooklyn.

The language I grew up with has Spanish, Malayo-Polynesian, American-English, Chinese embedded into the mainstream dialect from the group of islands, I am from, Visayas (Cebuano Seeb-wano).

I studied Chinese in high school (93-97) written and spoken
I picked up Italian for 10 months (2004) (informal jargon, survival mode type,/broken)
I can understand written Spanish without translation, since somehow the language is a preferred mode for a lot of third world and far-flung colonized areas in the far east and in the southern area of the Americas and some other islands.

I do not speak fluent Spanish either.
I am self learning the following right now (unsuccessfully, all at baseline zero)
German
Italian
Chinese-review and rehash; control of modalities and expression
Japanese-trying to absorb hiragana and katakana.
Korean - still null

I can fully understand English, as long as it does not get too dicey or certain specified jargons.
I can only say a few lines in Italian, Chinese, <Spanish maybe> and some Japanese for the following lines:
I speak little <insert language> , but still learning because I am a stranger.

Its safe to say whatever I've mentioned above are all at zero to none just to be safe.

I am actively using Mandarin and Cantonese, since I am trying to also learn hopefully
Chinese Literature 文言 文 (wen yan wen) and procure food items.

I signed on to the forum so I can look at examples of certain languages I am learning on and off (since I want to complete mechanical engineering as an application not just as a college degree).

I also would like to just read threads/posts on how people actively understand and translate whatever language is out there.

I partly collect language books (mostly English-<target language>)
So far I have a lot of German, Italian, some Japanese, Chinese, a Korean Phrasebook, a basic Greek grammar book, 2 Curso Intensivo Spanish, A French dictionary.

I mostly am applying what I know for written correspondence and to read material <engineering,architecture> in the target language.
I have intent to read German, Italian, Chinese and Japanese.
Sadly right now only basic Italian and basic Chinese ( Mandarin and Cantonese) have any progress.

My main interest is the colloquial morphology of language, say when someone describes how to cook fish.. and when it is orally delivered/expressed in different languages the idea of process changes depending on how culture treats the idea of raw versus uncooked and other conditions that may apply.

If I get to all of the above, I will struggle to learn Latin (dead language) because it has its use in science and engineering and also logic.

Thank you for reading this.

Max/Mackie

[SCMT]

Hello, I'm a middle aged learner who should have learned Spanish a long time ago. I interact with native Spanish speakers with excellent English every day for work, and it is long past time that I should be able to reciprocate. I'm grateful to have found a place like this to aid the learning process by helping to find resources, get advice from seasoned learners, and post a log.

[Tricia]

Hello!
I'm originally from the US (native English speaker) and have always wanted to be fluent in another language. I studied Spanish for 5 years in school and never got to a conversational level so I am skeptical of formal learning methods. I'm currently living in Japan and am on a journey to discover how I can learn Japanese through self study. It's been about 9 months and so far I pretty much have all the kana memorized and a few basic phrases but I really want to get to the point where I can go out in town and converse with native speakers. There's so much information to weed through and I'm looking forward to reading this website for new tips and tricks.