Why are you learning the language you're learning?

Spanish. I love Spain and Latin America (in Argentina right now, and going to Chile tomorrow) and tired of not being able to hold a conversation ...

or the Spanish person having to revert to English is just not right !

its a great language too and not too dissimilar to French which I also speak a bit

 

I'm learning German at the moment. Already had German classes in high school for three years, but back then I never thought it'd be important so I didn't care much.

However, last year I moved to Germany, so knowing some German might be useful now It's going quite well actually, I have learnt a lot over the past year. Just writing texts is difficult cause German grammar is true hell.

Once I've mastered German, I want to start learning Swedish. Part because I think it's a beautiful language, and because I want to move to Stockholm for a longer period of time once I get bored of Berlin.

 

I'm aiming to learn Latin again, and along with Greek sometime in the future. For them, it's mostly a means of feeling closer to my love of history, art, anthropology, and the Roman/Greek pantheons.

Another I'd love to nail within ten years is Icelandic, since I've thought about relocating to Iceland somewhere down the line.

 

For me I'd say my bigger interests right now are ASL and Spanish.

ASL because I've always been fascinated by deaf culture and learning how to speak without using my voice. I know the alphabet plus a few signs but not much else. Really enjoy watching Switched At Birth and learning signs through that.

Spanish... that's a language I've known bits and pieces of since I was little. I was homeschooled and my family joined a homeschool group and one year we learned some Spanish with La Clase Divertida video tapes. Since then (I was maybe 8? 9?) I've taken three years of high school Spanish online and done some with DuoLingo. I know enough vocabulary that I can read maybe 50% of the words in a book and sort of figure out what's going on.

I've also taken two high school Latin classes as well as one of Mandarin Chinese. I'd love to eventually be fluent in all of those plus more. Languages are pretty tricky!

 

I'm studying to become a translator, so you might guess languages are quite important to me x)

I would like to have five languages under my belt: French, English, Spanish, German and Italian. The two first ones are already mastered, Spanish is getting close while German is... getting better I guess? I still have Spanish and German courses, so I guess I'll just keep getting better.

As for Italian, I'm doing it in my own time, so it hasn't progressed much. Though, I can understand the written parts pretty easily. I love Europe, so that's why I'm learning mostly European languages. All of them are so interesting, I wish I had time to master them all

 

Glad someone mentioned ASL, since that's what I should be learning since I'm hard of hearing to begin with. It's just a matter of finding good resources.

 

French, because it's one of the languages my school does and lots of people speak it, and it's an official language of the UN and NATO. I think it's a really useful language.

 

I'm learning German because some day I intend on moving to Germany. It might help to know the language before I do.

 

German seems easy to me now after trying to learn Russian. That is one difficult language to learn (for English speakers).

Right now, I'm studying Turkish. It's purely because of my interest with Turkish history and Turkish culture. I've never actually been to Turkey and don't have plans to go any time soon, but at least I will now have another reason to visit.

 

Urgh yeah this is the worst thing ever. I have honestly given up on ever learning that.

Welcome party at my place when yr here.

 

In Finnish, there is no gender.
But 15 cases...

 

I try to learn French because it is one of the main languages today. There are several persons, books, etc... that are from France, Canada, etc... Aside from that, it is very useful.

 

The first time I went with Latin. Highly unusual in this day and age. But we did a bit of Latin study in 8th grade science (and I mean just a bit. It was tied to the fact that Latin is used in science). It seemed interesting, and others thought so. So my teacher started a once a week Latin club after school. He unearthed texts that dated to when the school still taught Latin. (I remember, in fact, going with him to get the books. The building they were in was closed down that year, and it was interesting seeing the ghost town classrooms, including my 7th grade English teacher's room, still fully decorated). I learned relatively little Latin, though. Once a week "class" with a late starting point pretty much guaranteed that.

In high school, my mother decreed I'd take 4 years of a language. (College track requirement.) There were 3 languages the school had: Spanish, French, and German. Spanish didn't really appeal, plus it was hard to get into (very popular language). French "won" because it somehow seemed nicer. Bad mistake: the teacher was horrible, and after 4 years of her, I had zero real world French skills, even though I got good grades.

I added German to fill a hole in my schedule. Part of the reason was I needed to fill this hole. Also, the teacher had a great reputation, and I thought it would be nice to know German. There was some interest in the family of visiting Germany at the time.

These days, I study English. My native tongue, but, even so, there things to learn...

I every now and then have fantasies of learning a language. I liked the study when younger--particularly once I had my good German teacher. But it's hard finding time and energy, and language seems rather pointless for my current life. If visiting a foreign country were ever an option, though, I might do at least a "quick" language course to get a few basics.

As I write this, an evil impulse has hit. Maybe I could learn ancient Greek so that if I encounter homophobic fundamentalists who spout New Testament Bible verse at me, I can spout some back...in ancient Greek. :lol:

 

I started to learn German in July 2015 and it's been one hell of a ride. It was harder in the beginning but I'm getting the hang of it. Sometimes I can even naturally formulate a few sentences in response to outside stimuli. Since Portuguese is my native language it was a bit of a shock not being able to correlate seemingly new words with their Latin roots, which is what I used to do with Spanish and could do with Italian and French were I ever interested in learning said languages.

In 2014/2015 I learned a bit of instrumental (legal) Latin but forgot most of it. A shame, really. I hope to return to it in the future.

My adventures have cost me a great deal of fluency in my own native language though. Sometimes I forget adjectives or adverbs mid-sentence so it's a little embarrassing. Familiar road signs now seem weird looking. And some people have told me I've quite a bit of an accent. It's rather sad.

 

I've not heard of this problem before. But...if one gets into language study, it can become a big thing, and strange things might happen. One story that sticks to mind: my 7th grade geography teacher studied German in IIRC college. One day, he got called in by a professor in some other class right after a test. Apparently, my teacher was so wrapped up in German that he'd written his answers on the test for the other class in German!