Curious what other languages are represented here. Are you learning a new language? Is anyone here learning any endangered languages?

  • lefthanded1990@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 years ago

    Russian (native), English. Knew some Spanish but forgot most of it due to anglo dominance in media, it just wasn’t that useful for me unfortunately. Going to try and learn Mandarin too, at least enough to read and understand some basic stuff.

    • lefthanded1990@lemmygrad.ml
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      3 years ago

      Also a little fun fact, my Spanish teacher in the university used to be a soviet diplomat on Cuba back in the day, he was old as fuck but on point with the knowledge. Later I had a native cuban teacher too, and to this day I think they pronounce shit much more clearly than people from Spain, at least I can understand them much easier.

  • hamfandango@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 years ago

    Language learning is fun. It is kinda learning an instrument, most often than not, the answer is practice, practice and practice. I really do reccomend to everyone to try a new language.

    With that said, I’m native portuguese speaker, fairly confident in English, can do the basics in french. At the moment, I’m learning russian.

    In the past I tried latin too, and have some very minor interpretative knowledge of ancient hyeroglyphs, but that’s from my academic background.

    Edit: Reading it now sounds kinda snobish. I didn’t intend this, just wanted to spark more discussion. Sorry comrades.

    • mauveOkra@lemmygrad.ml
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      3 years ago

      You don’t sound snobbish. If people have the opportunity to study another language it is a valuable experience that gives you a broader perspective of the world

  • kamraten@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 years ago

    Vietnamese, Swedish and English. Unfortunately my Vietnamese is quite basic because I was too edgy and rebellious, rejecting lessons from my mother.

  • Star Wars Enjoyer @lemmygrad.ml
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    3 years ago

    I know a little bit of German, I studied it for like 6 straight years but never really got to a conversational point with it. I study Anglo-Saxon, though. It’s a fascinating language.

      • Star Wars Enjoyer @lemmygrad.ml
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        3 years ago

        more or less, it’s the root of what became English. There are a lot of words with direct overlaps, like house, wife, or hound, but have different spellings and pronunciations. But then there are a lot of words that are completely foreign to English speakers, like Beornwiga (a warrior hero), Fefitehwearf (to my understanding, a group of people on foot), or Eaxlgestealla (like “comrade”).

    • Star Wars Enjoyer @lemmygrad.ml
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      3 years ago

      you can visit the DPRK, the US government just advises US citizens against going and claims the only way to go is to do a guided tour. But you can do unguided stuff too. With Covid restrictions it’s a lot harder to get in, but before the restrictions nothing really restricted a tourist from just showing up.

  • lil_tank@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 years ago

    Native French, fluent in English aaaand that’s all folks French people are generally so trash at foreign languages that just one of them (and the most spoken in the west) makes me look incredibly proficient

    Trying to self-learn mandarin also but I’m still really far from basic understanding

  • 33rdJanuary@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 years ago

    (Mandarin) Chinese, decently enough, and English. Having to relearn chinese was a fun (sarcasm) experience, but we’re pretty much there

  • CommunalAirplane@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 years ago

    English, Russian, and Swahili. I’m trying to learn Spanish right now. I guess I can say I know quite a large amount of American Sign Language too if that counts.

  • CHGordon@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 years ago

    Actively learning the native language of my country Ireland, gaelige. The language was almost completely wiped out due to British colonialism but made a resurgence in the last century and is growing daily

  • alyxms@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 years ago

    English, American, Canadian and Australian. That quadlingo for you right there.

    In all seriousness just Mandarin and English.

  • KimJongGoku@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 years ago

    I’m bilingual in German and French since I have family on both sides of the border and I’m mostly okay at English. I’d love to learn Mandarin one day but I feel like I’m too much of an idiot to get anywhere with that, really

    • The_Monocle_Debacle@lemmygrad.ml
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      3 years ago

      Honestly I’ve just started on Mandarin a couple months ago and the basics really aren’t that bad. The tones are kinda difficult to grasp for me but I dunno reading-wise I’m finding it easier than German was to learn as a second language from English, which should have been a cakewalk. I’ll probably never be completely fluent or have a huge vocabulary but it turns out the majority of communication only uses a relatively small subset of characters anyway. I’d highly recommend giving it a shot, you may be surprised.

      • 33rdJanuary@lemmygrad.ml
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        3 years ago

        Well, “relatively small” being about 2k for causal speech and texting, and 3~5k for texts, depending on the type of literature. Luckily most Chinese characters are phono-semantic, meaning one side gives a pronunciation hint whilst the other gives a meaning hint.