Introduce yourself here

General discussion about learning languages
EmGeeFab
White Belt
Posts: 39
Joined: Sun Jul 07, 2019 1:24 pm
Languages: English (N), German (advanced), Hebrew (early intermediate), Spanish (beginner)
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Re: Introduce yourself here

Postby EmGeeFab » Tue Jul 16, 2019 3:41 am

Hi all,

I've always been interested in languages, and even taught myself a fair bit of French in 3rd grade from tapes I got from the library.

Fast forward many years, I am a homeschooling mom with five kids. I speak English (native) and German (understanding - fluent, production - not quite). I was an exchange student in Germany in high school and refused to speak English to anyone for a year. I'd like to improve my German production over the next year. I've been learning Hebrew intensively for about 9 months now and am trying to figure out how I can back off from intensive to sustainable in order to make room for German improvement. And, finally, I'd like to slowly learn Spanish of the coming decade, but I don't want it to take over my life.

Like many on the board, there are other languages I'd love to learn, but I don't really enjoy dabbling in languages. I'd rather have the end goal as near-fluent, which is why it took me as many years as it did to learn a third language. I kept putting it off as impossible to do well enough.
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Elsa Maria
Blue Belt
Posts: 510
Joined: Thu Oct 15, 2015 5:20 am
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Intermediate Danish.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=6009
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Re: Introduce yourself here

Postby Elsa Maria » Tue Jul 16, 2019 9:25 pm

EmGeeFab wrote:Hi all,

I've always been interested in languages, and even taught myself a fair bit of French in 3rd grade from tapes I got from the library.

Fast forward many years, I am a homeschooling mom with five kids. I speak English (native) and German (understanding - fluent, production - not quite). I was an exchange student in Germany in high school and refused to speak English to anyone for a year. I'd like to improve my German production over the next year. I've been learning Hebrew intensively for about 9 months now and am trying to figure out how I can back off from intensive to sustainable in order to make room for German improvement. And, finally, I'd like to slowly learn Spanish of the coming decade, but I don't want it to take over my life.

Like many on the board, there are other languages I'd love to learn, but I don't really enjoy dabbling in languages. I'd rather have the end goal as near-fluent, which is why it took me as many years as it did to learn a third language. I kept putting it off as impossible to do well enough.

Welcome, EmGeeFab. You might want to check out the Homeschoolers United! thread. I was a homeschool mom until my youngest graduated two months ago.
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Corrections are always welcome.

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Cloudberry
White Belt
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Jul 14, 2019 5:45 pm
Languages: English (N)
Proficient: Norwegian
Beginner: Northern Sami
In the incubator: Japanese, Middle Egyptian
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Re: Introduce yourself here

Postby Cloudberry » Sun Jul 21, 2019 4:05 pm

Howdy y'all from Texas!

Long-time lurker, first-time poster here, now that I'm ready to devote some time to languages again. I'd like to revive my Norwegian, which used to be decent but has become pretty rusty through disuse, and I've decided to take the plunge and start learning Northern Sámi, which Chung's HTLAL log has given me hope is indeed possible. :lol:

I have also been stuck at an early beginner stage of Japanese and Middle Egyptian for several years now due to lack of coherent effort, so at some point in the next few years, I would like to get both of those off the ground.
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Bluepaint
Brown Belt
Posts: 1272
Joined: Fri Jul 03, 2015 7:41 pm
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Re: Introduce yourself here

Postby Bluepaint » Thu Jul 25, 2019 5:31 am

Welcome Cloudberry! I see you've been lurking for a while but welcome to posting ;) You are studying a very interesting mix of languages, I hope to read your posts about them soon.

Cloudberry wrote:Howdy y'all from Texas!

Long-time lurker, first-time poster here, now that I'm ready to devote some time to languages again. I'd like to revive my Norwegian, which used to be decent but has become pretty rusty through disuse, and I've decided to take the plunge and start learning Northern Sámi, which Chung's HTLAL log has given me hope is indeed possible. :lol:

I have also been stuck at an early beginner stage of Japanese and Middle Egyptian for several years now due to lack of coherent effort, so at some point in the next few years, I would like to get both of those off the ground.
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Bluepaint
Brown Belt
Posts: 1272
Joined: Fri Jul 03, 2015 7:41 pm
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Re: Introduce yourself here

Postby Bluepaint » Thu Jul 25, 2019 5:34 am

Oh Splog! Hi, I remember you, you did indeed teach us so much. I hope you'll start posting here - in moderation of course. Don't want to interfere too much with your learning!

AnthonyLauder wrote:My name is Anthony. I used to be on HTLAL, with the nickname Splog. I haven't posted anything here or on HTLAL for quite some time. Mostly because I realised I was spending more time talking about language learning than actually doing language learning. So, I took a long break from talking to focus on doing. Now I feel ready to do some talking again.
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tungemål
Blue Belt
Posts: 947
Joined: Sat Apr 06, 2019 3:56 pm
Location: Norway
Languages: Norwegian (N)
English, German, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Polish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17672
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Re: Introduce yourself here

Postby tungemål » Wed Jul 31, 2019 5:13 pm

Hi.
I recently realised that languages is one of my passions. After being inspired by the internet community, youtube videos and so on, and learned valuable techniques, I have been busy working to improve some of my languages, and to start one more. I know I really need to focus on only one language at a time.
I live in Norway and work as a music teacher.
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Monelasa
White Belt
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Jul 29, 2019 3:45 pm
Languages: N: German
C1+: English
C1: French, Spanish, Polish
B2+: Hungarian
B1: Russian, Dutch
A2+: Finnish
A1: Turkish, Amharic
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Re: Introduce yourself here

Postby Monelasa » Wed Jul 31, 2019 7:30 pm

Hi everyone,
I don't really remember how I became interested in languages, but when I was fifteen I started teaching myself Spanish and found out that it is not even that impossible to learn a language without a teacher. I've been adding languages ever since, some with courses, and others without.
As many people, I hate answering the question how many languages I speak, since the number is what I care least about. I am learning these languages, because I love every single one of them, not because I wanted to add +1 to my list to make it more impressive.
At the moment, I am focusing on Russian and Dutch and I hope to start Amharic soon.
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Colloquial Amharic: 12 / 14
1000 words Amharic: 1000 / 1000

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cjareck
Brown Belt
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2017 6:11 pm
Location: Poland
Languages: Polish (N) English, German, Russian(B1?) French (B1?), Hebrew(B1?), Arabic(A2?), Mandarin (HSK 2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=8589
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Re: Introduce yourself here

Postby cjareck » Wed Jul 31, 2019 8:12 pm

Monelasa wrote: I've been adding languages ever since, some with courses, and others without.

Your list of languages is impressive! Polish, Hungarian and Finnish surely are not easy ones!
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Please feel free to correct me in any language


Listening: 1+ (83% content, 90% linguistic)
Reading: 1 (83% content, 90% linguistic)


MSA DLI : 30 / 141ESKK : 18 / 40


Mandarin Assimil : 62 / 105

Monelasa
White Belt
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Jul 29, 2019 3:45 pm
Languages: N: German
C1+: English
C1: French, Spanish, Polish
B2+: Hungarian
B1: Russian, Dutch
A2+: Finnish
A1: Turkish, Amharic
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Re: Introduce yourself here

Postby Monelasa » Thu Aug 01, 2019 6:09 pm

cjareck wrote:Your list of languages is impressive! Polish, Hungarian and Finnish surely are not easy ones!

Thank you! They are definitely not easy, but the challenge is part of the fun. :)
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Colloquial Amharic: 12 / 14
1000 words Amharic: 1000 / 1000

Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Introduce yourself here

Postby Lisa » Fri Aug 02, 2019 4:42 am

When I was younger I dabbled and studied languages, and also traveled a lot. The ones I did in school were Spanish and German; and then, I have non-English speaking (older) relatives in Germany that I used to visit that gave me a lot of momentum. I've also studied Italian and Malay (to the point of being able to barely communicate). But I never really pursed languages and 20 years ago I settled down and didn't travel for a long time.

However, one of my goals in life is to be fluent in another language. Every time this floated up, I had to pick one - German or Spanish. Usually German won. This year I got inspired to recover/improve Spanish and with Anki, online information, and Spanish-language library books, I'm very happy with my progress in Spanish. I mean to get back to the German this fall. It will probably knock all the Spanish out of my brain so I hope I can go someplace and get some use out of it before that.

One reason I joined the forum is worry about keeping languages straight. I've always been popping out German when I mean to say something in Spanish. Once a customs guy asked me something in Spanish and I replied in German... I really don't have faith that I can have two other languages both functional. But members of this forum are proof otherwise.

Lisa
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