Otenba
Maverick
Are you multilingual? What languages are you fluent in already?
Have you started studying any new languages? How well do you think you're getting on with learning them?
I decided to take up learning another language properly originally in preparation for a holiday abroad, and after that, I've just tried to keep that education going for a hobby. I have mostly done this through self-study, and nowadays by using phone apps, though I have managed to arrange lessons with a tutor a few times. Tutors migrated back to their home countries so the lessons stopped. Sadly I am not fluent in any other language yet, especially in comparison to my English (which is my mother tongue), but I feel my progress has been reasonable considering how much I work on learning.
When I was at school, I was given the opportunity to study both French and German as separate classes and when the GCSE exams were on the horizon, I was told my strongest language of the two was French so I took that for my exams. That didn't turn out very well; I don't think I cared enough about learning a language at the time - just going through the paces because, as always, schools have a standard to try and meet. I cannot remember what my enthusiasm levels were like for Japanese at that point despite my interest in anime.
Later, I barely learnt any Japanese for my first trip to Japan in November 2007, but this wasn't too much of an issue because I travelled with three other people and one of them (my now husband) was at a higher level of study than the rest of us combined, so helped to tackle any language barriers, but also the fact we stayed in Tokyo helped a lot too. For my second trip in March 2011, it was just my husband and I that went, and I had done a lot more studying of the Japanese language and found it only added to the overall experience. I was still not good enough to hold a decent basic conversation though. We had plenty of Japanese people come up to us to practice their English which was funny.
I hope to go to Japan again in time for the Olympics being held in 2020 since my husband wants to attend that, so I have also started using smartphone apps alongside other resources to keep my Japanese learning going. My husband and I are also big tabletop gamers so I have also decided to pick up German again, ready for when we go to Essen Spiel someday. I cannot remember much of my lessons from school, but thankfully, learning resources for European languages are easy to find.
I did get over enthusiastic when I first started using the language apps for Japanese and German, that I started trying to learn Russian and Korean but I dropped them for now since my mind felt overwhelmed. I will try again at some point to learn them, and I also want to try learning Klingon for fun someday.
I have also had the luxury of finding people online and knowing people who also speak the languages I am trying to learn. I appreciate the challenge of being able to understand what they are saying to me using my own memory instead of an online translator. It has been quite fun!
How about you?
Have you started studying any new languages? How well do you think you're getting on with learning them?
I decided to take up learning another language properly originally in preparation for a holiday abroad, and after that, I've just tried to keep that education going for a hobby. I have mostly done this through self-study, and nowadays by using phone apps, though I have managed to arrange lessons with a tutor a few times. Tutors migrated back to their home countries so the lessons stopped. Sadly I am not fluent in any other language yet, especially in comparison to my English (which is my mother tongue), but I feel my progress has been reasonable considering how much I work on learning.
When I was at school, I was given the opportunity to study both French and German as separate classes and when the GCSE exams were on the horizon, I was told my strongest language of the two was French so I took that for my exams. That didn't turn out very well; I don't think I cared enough about learning a language at the time - just going through the paces because, as always, schools have a standard to try and meet. I cannot remember what my enthusiasm levels were like for Japanese at that point despite my interest in anime.
Later, I barely learnt any Japanese for my first trip to Japan in November 2007, but this wasn't too much of an issue because I travelled with three other people and one of them (my now husband) was at a higher level of study than the rest of us combined, so helped to tackle any language barriers, but also the fact we stayed in Tokyo helped a lot too. For my second trip in March 2011, it was just my husband and I that went, and I had done a lot more studying of the Japanese language and found it only added to the overall experience. I was still not good enough to hold a decent basic conversation though. We had plenty of Japanese people come up to us to practice their English which was funny.
I hope to go to Japan again in time for the Olympics being held in 2020 since my husband wants to attend that, so I have also started using smartphone apps alongside other resources to keep my Japanese learning going. My husband and I are also big tabletop gamers so I have also decided to pick up German again, ready for when we go to Essen Spiel someday. I cannot remember much of my lessons from school, but thankfully, learning resources for European languages are easy to find.
I did get over enthusiastic when I first started using the language apps for Japanese and German, that I started trying to learn Russian and Korean but I dropped them for now since my mind felt overwhelmed. I will try again at some point to learn them, and I also want to try learning Klingon for fun someday.
I have also had the luxury of finding people online and knowing people who also speak the languages I am trying to learn. I appreciate the challenge of being able to understand what they are saying to me using my own memory instead of an online translator. It has been quite fun!
How about you?
