learning other languages is hard

[omx32x]

 when i was a kid i remenber wanting to go to the usa why? i dunno i was just a kid but while i dont want anymore that put me in the path to learning english with took years and i have found memories of using games like megaman final fantasy and pokemon to learn it especially pokemon since the games are easy and their writing is very simple.

 now some years later i decided that i would start to learn japanease because i want to play many games that are exclusive to japan and while many have fan translations i want to have the original script to enjoy and learning a new language can be rewarding in other ways too and while im having difficults its still imensely fun to learn and i want to use videogames to help learning it like i did with english though im nowhere near as skilled to do it at this point in time.

 so if you speak other languages tell me your experiences on learning it

[Gokuma]

Gibberish is easy, but people will understand you less.   It's good for when you want people to leave you alone.

[Nevander]

I only know a small amount of Spanish. Enough to maybe understand basic sentences when spoken slower. Definitely not fluent. Only learned it from classes I had in high school.

[Wobbz]

Language is amazing. Confusing and downright frustrating at times, but man is it fascinating to dive into -- that's what drove me to study and teach it.

 

That is so incredible that you've taught yourself language through video games. They can be fantastic teachers while keeping you entertained and engaged, hungry to learn more!

 

Props to pursuing the Japanese language, man! I began studying a few years ago and while it hasn't been easy, or fast by any means, when you start to see it all come together in your proficiency, it is such an incredible feeling.

 

The best thing to start with and help push you through the peaks and valleys of learning is your purpose for learning the language. If you are genuinely interested in learning -- for whatever reason -- as long as it means more to you than the pain it takes to get there, you'll be amazed with how fast you can learn.

 

All the best!

[Gez]

16 hours ago, omalefico32x said:

when i was a kid i remenber wanting to go to the usa why? i dunno i was just a kid but while i dont want anymore that put me in the path to learning english with took years and i have found memories of using games like megaman final fantasy and pokemon to learn it especially pokemon since the games are easy and their writing is very simple.

Hah, I learned English with games like Ultima Underworld II, which uses a lot of ye olde timey Englishe so when I got into actual English classes I'd surprise the teacher by using some really outdated words sometimes.

[omx32x]

43 minutes ago, Gez said:

Hah, I learned English with games like Ultima Underworld II, which uses a lot of ye olde timey Englishe so when I got into actual English classes I'd surprise the teacher by using some really outdated words sometimes.

i remenber being lost for hours on pokemon yellow because i didnt know what thirsty meant ( and a lot of other times i got lost for similar reasons ) i never played ultima but seeing how it is both an old rpg and its english i olde timey you must have got lost a lot

[Remilia Scarlet]

I speak some Spanish, some Japanese, and a little bit of Esperanto.  For me, memorizing vocabulary was always WAY more difficult than learning the grammar.  The normal methods people suggest simply don't work.  This is kinda mirrored in programming, where I can pickup syntax and structure quickly but I always need to look up function names.

 

My Japanese has gotten a bit rusty, especially reading it, but I can still occasionally look away from a show and not need the subtitles.  Just depends on the context and their dialect.  One thing that's led to me being rusty is that I don't go to aikido class anymore (where I knew some native speakers).  So I don't really have many places to use it, outside of some Touhou-related twitter accounts I follow.  One thing that's sorta funny, though, is that I picked up a very slight dialect after living in Osaka.  So apparently I sometimes go into the Kansai dialect without noticing.

 

Spanish... my grandma's first language is Spanish, though she speaks English perfectly fluently as well.  So I kinda grew up around it since it's part of my family's heritage.  I actually still use it from time to time on Discord in friends' servers, and living in Colorado I see and hear it fairly often as well.  But I am definitely not fluent lol.  I can get around fine and generally hold a conversation, but all the conjugation specifics still elude me, even after studying it for so long.  Again, vocab :-/

Esperanto was something I decided to learn on my own for fun.  It's incredibly easy, and I found myself able to read and understand some news articles after just a few weeks.  But, I have no one to speak or practice with.  Doesn't help that this is a conlang, and thus isn't common.  I do use it for fun occasionally, though.  One of my songs in Umbra of Fate's soundtrack is named in Esperanto, as is the name of map 03 in Shadows of The Nightmare Realm.

[roadworx]

18 minutes ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

I speak some Spanish, some Japanese, and a little bit of Esperanto.  For me, memorizing vocabulary was always WAY more difficult than learning the grammar.  The normal methods people suggest simply don't work.  This is kinda mirrored in programming, where I can pickup syntax and structure quickly but I always need to look up function names.

u g h, SAME. learning grammar is honestly the easiest part for me (although it's still hard for me to remember it all) but whenever it comes to vocabulary i just fall apart and end up giving up. this has happened nearly every time i try learning a new language and it sucks ):

[omx32x]

40 minutes ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

I speak some Spanish, some Japanese, and a little bit of Esperanto.  For me, memorizing vocabulary was always WAY more difficult than learning the grammar.  The normal methods people suggest simply don't work.  This is kinda mirrored in programming, where I can pickup syntax and structure quickly but I always need to look up function names.

 

My Japanese has gotten a bit rusty, especially reading it, but I can still occasionally look away from a show and not need the subtitles.  Just depends on the context and their dialect.  One thing that's led to me being rusty is that I don't go to aikido class anymore (where I knew some native speakers).  So I don't really have many places to use it, outside of some Touhou-related twitter accounts I follow.  One thing that's sorta funny, though, is that I picked up a very slight dialect after living in Osaka.  So apparently I sometimes go into the Kansai dialect without noticing.

 

Spanish... my grandma's first language is Spanish, though she speaks English perfectly fluently as well.  So I kinda grew up around it since it's part of my family's heritage.  I actually still use it from time to time on Discord in friends' servers, and living in Colorado I see and hear it fairly often as well.  But I am definitely not fluent lol.  I can get around fine and generally hold a conversation, but all the conjugation specifics still elude me, even after studying it for so long.  Again, vocab :-/

Esperanto was something I decided to learn on my own for fun.  It's incredibly easy, and I found myself able to read and understand some news articles after just a few weeks.  But, I have no one to speak or practice with.  Doesn't help that this is a conlang, and thus isn't common.  I do use it for fun occasionally, though.  One of my songs in Umbra of Fate's soundtrack is named in Esperanto, as is the name of map 03 in Shadows of The Nightmare Realm.

damn dude thats a lot i sometimes get confused with portuguese and english so i can only imagin how hard must be talking to a friend and remenbering the word in all different languages exept the one he speaks

i always wanted to learn spanish but because portuguese is my first language i never had much of a difficult interacting or reading spanish though i really should learn it so nothing gets lost in translation

[omx32x]

20 minutes ago, roadworx said:

u g h, SAME. learning grammar is honestly the easiest part for me (although it's still hard for me to remember it all) but whenever it comes to vocabulary i just fall apart and end up giving up. this has happened nearly every time i try learning a new language and it sucks ):

i still dont know the grammar of my native language 100% and i hate that

i honestely think my english is better then my portuguese

[roadworx]

5 minutes ago, omalefico32x said:

i still dont know the grammar of my native language 100% and i hate that

i honestely think my english is better then my portuguese

tbf the only things i've ever heard about portuguese are very negative things lol

 

from what my s/o who knows spanish tells me, it's pretty much just old spanish with squiggles to make it unpronounceable. idk how true that is BUT that's certainly what it looks like to someone that's only fluent in english

[Endless]

I have been fascinated by the idea of learning languages, but I always feel a bit behind because I lack the ideal resources to learn them properly, such as language academies, or better yet, native speakers to talk to. I learned English through pure experience on the internet, video games and music. The first time I realized I knew English was when I started watching movies with subtitles and I understood perfectly what I was reading. Now I can understand almost everything I hear and read, as long as that person doesn't have accents that are difficult to understand (Scottish or a heavy British accent is an example of things I have difficulty with). Probably my biggest challenge is writing. I have trouble writing even in Spanish so in English I prefer to use programs like DeepL to avoid making embarrassing spelling mistakes. No autotranslator is perfect, but if you know the grammar and sentence order, you can correct the output and create good paragraphs.

Oh, I'm my native tongue is Spanish.

 

@Remilia Scarlet Fascinating to hear that you learned Japanese and lived in Osaka! Japanese is one of those languages I would love to learn, along with German and Russian. A trio of languages particularly complicated for Spanish speakers.

[Gokuma]

Somewhere I've seen that a major regret of people who have learned Esperanto is that despite how easy or efficient it may be, it has no culture or history attached to it.

 

I took Spanish in High School, and Japanese and Russian in college.   I wouldn't be able to speak or understand shit with people.   Occasionally I at least reteach myself the hiragana and katakana "alphabets."   I think only hiragana was required in the course I took.   Russian Cyrillic is easier to hold onto.

 

Even so, with just have an English-Japanese Dictionary and knowledge of the writing systems I managed to make a couple partial translation romhacks.

http://www.romhacking.net/community/4066/  Well two different system versions of the same game.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Well, it really depends on the language. If you speak spanish (like me) for example, you will understand a little of portuguese and Italian, as those languages are based on the latin and share some words.

 

Learning another language requires hard work and a lot of time. I've spend 7 years studying english and I still don't understand some stuff, mostly vocabulary. Not everyone has a knack for languages. Especially if they are brutally hard, like Chinese and Japanese. For example, a friend of mine that is studying chinese made a mistake on his test, and instead of writing "Hello, how are you?", he wrote "Hello, give me a kiss" or something like that.

 

[Arrowhead]

I know some Quebecois French, but not a lot. I took it from Grade 1 to my senior year. This thread makes me think I should probably pick it up again at some point.

[omx32x]

1 hour ago, Endless said:

I have been fascinated by the idea of learning languages, but I always feel a bit behind because I lack the ideal resources to learn them properly, such as language academies, or better yet, native speakers to talk to. I learned English through pure experience on the internet, video games and music. The first time I realized I knew English was when I started watching movies with subtitles and I understood perfectly what I was reading. Now I can understand almost everything I hear and read, as long as that person doesn't have accents that are difficult to understand (Scottish or a heavy British accent is an example of things I have difficulty with). Probably my biggest challenge is writing. I have trouble writing even in Spanish so in English I prefer to use programs like DeepL to avoid making embarrassing spelling mistakes. No autotranslator is perfect, but if you know the grammar and sentence order, you can correct the output and create good paragraphs.

Oh, I'm my native tongue is Spanish.

 

@Remilia Scarlet Fascinating to hear that you learned Japanese and lived in Osaka! Japanese is one of those languages I would love to learn, along with German and Russian. A trio of languages particularly complicated for Spanish speakers.

what helped me in that fase was watching youtube

today i can understand all accents and i lost my shame from talking in english and being wrong about it

[omx32x]

26 minutes ago, Arrowhead said:

I know some Quebecois French, but not a lot. I took it from Grade 1 to my senior year. This thread makes me think I should probably pick it up again at some point.

you should dude learning another language changed my life for the better

[Remilia Scarlet]

3 hours ago, Endless said:

Probably my biggest challenge is writing. I have trouble writing even in Spanish so in English I prefer to use programs like DeepL to avoid making embarrassing spelling mistakes. No autotranslator is perfect, but if you know the grammar and sentence order, you can correct the output and create good paragraphs.

Oh, I'm my native tongue is Spanish.

 

@Remilia Scarlet Fascinating to hear that you learned Japanese and lived in Osaka! Japanese is one of those languages I would love to learn, along with German and Russian. A trio of languages particularly complicated for Spanish speakers.

Oh I check my Spanish or Japanese against machine translation, too.  Gotta make sure I'm not making any embarrassing mistakes XD  Usually I'm not, but I'm still worried sometimes.

But yeah, I minored in Japanese in college.  Part of that was spent living and studying in Osaka prefecture.  Russian and German are both languages I wish I knew more than just a few words in.  Mandarin, too.  Someday... someday...
 

5 hours ago, omalefico32x said:

damn dude thats a lot i sometimes get confused with portuguese and english so i can only imagin how hard must be talking to a friend and remenbering the word in all different languages exept the one he speaks

Oh there are times when I go to speak, and all of the languages end up in the same sentence somehow.  Or I'll put Japanese words into Spanish.  And there's at least a very small number of words that I first learned in Japanese that I forget the English for, despite it being my native language.

[spineapple tea]

I had to take a spanish class for one third of a year and holy shit I learned literally nothing, not even the alphabet.

[Nine Inch Heels]

On 4/7/2021 at 9:39 PM, omalefico32x said:

im nowhere near as skilled to do it at this point in time

I speak english, some french creole (not to be confused with actual french), I'm still pretty decent at german, I have a very spotty actual french under the belt (so bad that I have trouble understanding the spoken language), and I picked up some spanish bits and pieces as well... With all that being said, some languages can synergize very well with one you may have learned already, because they belong to an overarching family of languages (hence, there are similarities like you see for example in italian and spanish)...

 

The big problem I've come across when I had to dig around in the turkish language, because I wanted to figure something out, is that it's entirely different in "nature" from any other language I was familiar with at that time, because it's an "agglutinative" language (like japanese), which means that meaning is added to words by way of adding syllables. If you want to learn such a language, it's arguably less about your cognitive ability to "rote" learn vocabulary, but perhaps more so a matter of having to overcome the hurdle that is coming to terms with the fact that japanese is, quite literally, built differently as a language. If that's a problem you happen to have with japanese, that would be an issue I could definitely sympathize with...

 

Just to give you an idea how deep the rabbit hole goes with regards to turkish, the longest turkish word is around 70 characters in length, and equates to an entire sentence and a half. It may very well be less bad for japanese, I don't know enough about it to be able to judge that, but I can see where there may be hurdles that go well beyond the letters that I couldn't read for the life of me without spending some real time on it...

[[McD] James]

I can read a lot of Japanese and speak it reasonably well when given enough time to prepare and organize everything in my mind. My comprehension is definitely a lot stronger than my ability to speak it though. 

[SilentD00mer]

I can read and understand a bit of the English, but my big problem is to write(and speak), because I don't have here  native speakers to talk to. The YouTube videos and music helped me a lot, but I always feel like I'm writing the sentences wrong and always checking what I write with a translator. I feel my progress very slow now and I'd like to learn other languages too, like the Japanese, but I will do this after learn to speak the English decently.

[Kizoky]

Learned English via Google Translator, or tried to, I was about 8-9 years old so naturally at first I tried building sentences like I would in my main language - It didn't end up well. Years later I would pick up words and sentences from games, videos, talking (with limitations) to other people in English, gradually building up my vocabulary
(School didn't help with my English at all)
I was maybe 12 or 13 years old where I could finally grasp what I really say or write in English and that was satisfying (but it still wasn't that perfect), and I also found out why so many people from my country (Hungary) doesn't really speak or talk English

And now I'm learning German, it's fun, but trying to learn and memorize the vocabulary is really hard, some words feels identical to English's which helps a little 

[Mayomancer]

I learned english mostly through getting used to it from having a good English teacher at school and video games. Learning another language now would be a huge effort though, even spanish that is very similar to my mother language (portuguese) already seems too hard. Maybe i'm just lazy.

 

Your english seems good but please, use more punctuation. Reading all that text without any commas almost gave me a headache.

[DSC]

9 hours ago, roadworx said:

tbf the only things i've ever heard about portuguese are very negative things lol

 

from what my s/o who knows spanish tells me, it's pretty much just old spanish with squiggles to make it unpronounceable. idk how true that is BUT that's certainly what it looks like to someone that's only fluent in english

I almost never hear a non-native portuguese or other romance language speaker ever pronounce the words correctly. 95% of the time they are butchered beyhond belief. Portuguese, especially European Portuguese, is extremely overlooked in all those "hardest languages to learn" discussions. If you're mother tongue isn't one of the already mentioned romance languages, you are gonna have a rough time.

[Dwimepon]

As a French translator: yes, yes it is. Oh so much.

[Lucky_Edie]

Indeed. I'm just starting my journey to learn 日本語. Here's a discord that has a lot of wonderful resources and people to help. Copies of textbooks, practice exams, chatrooms etc. 

 

https://discord.gg/languages

 

 

[Taw Tu'lki]

I know english very well. Learn Spanish and French, because romanian languages are not hard. Then another european languages for example German. 

[_bruce_]

I have always liked English and thus learned it(to some extent).

I have ok skills, but spoken it's not really good as there's no folks to practice with. I would love to learn Latin again but this will most likely remain a wannabe effort.

German is a bitch to learn and many foreigners I meet never learn it appropriately and thus sound amazingly amusing. Too many of them here are too lazy to put any kind of effort into sounding at least a bit "genuine".