What Does Language Mean to You?

[OriginalRen]

I'm a guy who loves languages. Having studied them throughout my high school and university career, there is never a time I won't be interested in speaking about them. To me, language is culture, a representation of all things that make a person unique. The way words are formed, the way a person speaks, the way someone acts, it's all thanks to language. Some language is spoken, some written, while even some comes from mere gestures and facial expressions. Now I am no philosophical ranter, so I won't bore you with origins and linguistic backgrounds, but the point of this thread is to discuss (in a way) languages and what they mean to everyone. My goal here is to share with the community my love of languages, and to understand the thought processes that go into learning languages for all of you.

 

Being an English teacher, I am always interested to see how people study a language and what styles of learning are implemented in your everyday life. I love taking ideas from others and working off of them, because as a saying goes in the language teaching world, stealing is okay. More so this thread is simply a place for me to observe all of you and what sorts of stories you have from learning languages growing up, so please feel free to share! What were your classes like when learning a language? What kind of methods were used in the classroom for teaching? Did you listen and repeat, work in groups, or just study independently? All of this intrigues me, and I want to hear you stories.

 

With that, I guess I'll start with my own background to get the ball rolling.

 

The very first language I took was in junior high. We had a choice between studying French or Spanish. I took French simply due to the fact that all the prettier girls were in that class, but after I started to learn it I realized this was a path I wanted to pursue growing up. High school came, and I ended up taking another 4 years of French there. My high school years, while productive, weren't really that great. Classes were taught using a CLT approach and a lot of time was spent working in groups. Our tests consisted of a listening section, reading and grammar comprehension questions, and a written section with essays. In addition, we also had oral exams that popped up every so often. While I think it was good practice utilizing all 4 core skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking), I can't really say I remember much from my high school years.

 

When I got into my university, I pursued French further by backtracking 2 semesters and getting back into the language. I never used it over the summer too often being in the states, so I thought it would be a good idea to get some review under my belt. After 6 years of study, I finally decided to pursue the major for French language studies. Most of the classes after the language learning involved advanced grammar and literature classes. The literature I took involved medieval and contemporary studies. I also dove into older works from the 18th century and even took a course on the Maghreb with French African literature studies. At the end of my studies (another 3 years worth), I completed a French senior project, which entailed an 18-page essay about any topic of our choice.

 

Around the same time, I had started to learn Italian simply due to the fact that after playing an online video game, I met someone speaking the language and thought it looked cool. I took Italian for a total of 5 years in my college career, and even studied abroad in Florence my first year into the school for 3 months. This experience shaped me as a language lover, and I am proud I ended up doing it. Classes were formatted much the same as the French department worked and in the end, I pursued an Italian language studies major in addition to my French studies and ultimately wrote another 18-page essay in Italian for a 2nd senior project.

 

During my time at the university I also studied Latin for 2 years. I never involved myself in the 4th semester work regarding prose and poetry with Virgil, but I did study and read Caesar and Cicero. Latin was one of the best decisions of my life. It had nothing to do with my majors, yet it shaped me as a language expert and helped me understand grammar to its fullest. "Case" never existed in English, French, or Italian, yet German and Latin (Latin much more so) showed many signs of it. The grammatical concepts I learned from those 2 years helped me appreciate the intricate details regarding language studies, and for that I am thankful.

 

But my god, is Latin rough. After studying it for a year I dove into Ancient Greek, and in some ways that was very similar and was proud I had done that as well. Not only did I learn another language, but I also got to study a new alphabet! After those languages, I also ended up studying German for a year and was very happy, considering my family origin is from Germany itself.

 

Overall, I am happy I took so many languages in my college career. While it was challenging keeping them all straight at times, I felt it was worth it in the end. Heck, there was a semester where I was taking French, Italian (both literature courses), German, Latin, and Greek all at the same time. My brain was overloaded, but I was happy because it really was a pleasure to learn all them at the same time. Studying languages, it made me realize just how hard English is to a lot of people not born with it, and for that reason it helped shape me as an English teacher moving forward.

 

But that's enough about me I guess, I ranted a lot longer than I had hoped. Please feel free to share you experiences from learning languages growing up, be it English or another. Or just simply share a thought or two.

[Guest]

Wow, that lots of time you spent studying languages.

 

I have another approach of languages.

 

I'm french but I have lived abroad and I travel quite often.

 

I lived in England when I was still a little Kiddo and in China during highschool for 2 years.

 

I find it really hard to try and learn a language if it's not to use it to communicate with native speakers. Trust me, nothing is as boring as talking english with a french guy.

I do really like to learn languages, but I have to use them. I've been learning German for 10 years and still can't talk fluently because I want to be able to talk to german people.

 

Not knowing the language also may not seem as horrible as it may sound.

Learning how to speak it is a way to make yourself part of a community, it's trying to integrate yourself in one another's culture.

But having lived 2 years in china and still not being able to talk great chinese, I can tell that it was no problem and even fun sometimes.

 

I knew a guy who lived 7 years over there and still couldn't make a correct sentence (he was quite a dumbass x) ).

But man, communicating as strangers is so funny.

If you go somewhere without learning how to speak the local language is like putting an emphasis on the gap of cultures. 

And this is a really interesting experience.

 

Don't make me say "Don't learn languages" that's a false statement, but as learning them is a way of adapting yourself, the opposite is a way to show the differences.

I don't think I make much sense to any of you though, i'm having a really hard time explaining.

 

 

Plus learning to speak a foreign laguage is so much easier were it's actually talked

So yeah, my anwser would be I do like languages if I can speak them on a daily basis.

(If ever you didn't understand anything which is problably the case please ask, i'll try harder to explain x) )

 

Edit : wow I make lots of mistakes when i'm tired. Please forget them *hypnosis*

[FruitsPunchSamurai]

Well i'm a born spanish/english speaker, pretty fluent in both languages I'm studying japanese right now, it'd be nice to learn a third language. It's nice to learn other languages and cultures, even though it's very hard for me. In highschool i just took spanish classes to get an easy 90-100. But i couldve taken a different one if i wanted too.

[Undying]

Usually language to me means that if it isn't portuguese or english I can't play. 

[Kaguya]

I learned english without really trying to. It's just that everything I liked was only tld to english, so it just kinda happened while I was listening to music, watching movies, playing VNs and such. Same with spanish, though my spanish sucks. My native language is portuguese, and I'm currently learning jp. 

Language, to me, is nothing but a way to communicate with other humans and enjoy myself, since it's needed for any sort of entertainment. I don't have any special attachment to any language, and in fact, I think it would be better if everyone spoke the same language, since I don't care much about the cultural aspect of things.

[garejei]

For a few seconds I thought you would go on about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, haha. Anyway, I have quite a long history with English. It's not my native language, but I've been mistaken for a native speaker several times during the past couple of years -- mainly based on my writing, of course, since I do have an accent when I speak, so it becomes quite apparent that I wasn't exactly born and bred in the US of A.

 

I honestly made very little effort in English classes during my high school years. I was that guy that just sat around bored out of his mind because my English was already at a level where nothing the teacher could throw at me would be challenging. When people ask me how I got to this level, I say video games with zero hesitation. And that's true. If it weren't for being a geek I wouldn't be where I am today with English, so I guess that's one argument for the idea that constant exposure to a language will have a positive effect in some shape or form.

 

The same applies to the second foreign language I know, which is Japanese. I had a very clear goal in mind when I started taking classes, plus a time limit as well (long story, but I had to take a Japanese exam roughly equivalent to JLPT N3 before a certain date to be able to get my diploma; thankfully I passed on my first try, so all the work paid off), so that in itself was a bit stressful. But while some people are broken under pressure, I found that it motivated me like crazy. I did work my ass off, sure, but my teacher was genuinely surprised by how fast I improved and got the hang of certain things. Again, I cannot help but think that the 8-ish years of watching anime and being exposed to the language had a part to play in that. Especially since I crashed and burned with the third language I attempted, which was Spanish, a language that I had no such background with.

 

I'm not sure if this is what you wanted to hear or if it even makes sense but there you have it.

[Undying]

I learned english without really trying to. It's just that everything I liked was only tld to english, so it just kinda happened while I was listening to music, watching movies, playing VNs and such. Same with spanish, though my spanish sucks. My native language is portuguese, and I'm currently learning jp. 

Language, to me, is nothing but a way to communicate with other humans and enjoy myself. Since it's needed for any sort of entertainment. I don't have any special attachment to any language, and in fact, I think it would be better if everyone spoke the same language, since I don't care much about the cultural aspect of things.

Ive been a gamer since I was a kid, most of my english Ive llearn from playing so Its mostly self taught.

 

Here in Brasil the only aditional language they teach in normal school is english, the other ones you need to look for specific schools to learn, you can find spanish easily but the rest its harder to find. 

[OriginalRen]

Wow, that lots of time you spent studying languages.

 

I have another approach of languages.

 

I'm french but I have lived abroad and I travel quite often.

 

I lived in England when I was still a little Kiddo and in China during highschool for 2 years.

 

I find it really hard to try and learn a language if it's not to use it to communicate with native speakers. Trust me, nothing is as boring as talking english with a french guy.

I do really like to learn languages, but I have to use them. I've been learning German for 10 years and still can't talk fluently because I want to be able to talk to german people.

 

Not knowing the language also may not seem as horrible as it may sound.

Learning how to speak it is a way to make yourself part of a community, it's trying to integrate yourself in one another's culture.

But having lived 2 years in china and still not being able to talk great chinese, I can tell that it was no problem and even fun sometimes.

 

I knew a guy who lived 7 years over there and still couldn't make a correct sentence (he was quite a dumbass x) ).

But man, communicating as strangers is so funny.

If you go somewhere without learning how to speak the local language is like putting an emphasis on the gap of cultures. 

And this is a really interesting experience.

 

Don't make me say "Don't learn languages" that's a false statement, but as learning them is a way of adapting yourself, the opposite is a way to show the differences.

I don't think I make much sense to any of you though, i'm having a really hard time explaining.

 

 

Plus learning to speak a foreign laguage is so much easier were it's actually talked

So yeah, my anwser would be I do like languages if I can speak them on a daily basis.

(If ever you didn't understand anything which is problably the case please ask, i'll try harder to explain x) )

 

Edit : wow I make lots of mistakes when i'm tired. Please forget them *hypnosis*

 

It's interesting you say that speaking is your favorite part about the language. Japanese, while I have been interested in it recently is not something I enjoy speaking. The tone and pitch of native speakers irritates me at times, and I find it very difficult to distinguish one person from another when they speak.

 

I learned english without really trying to. It's just that everything I liked was only tld to english, so it just kinda happened while I was listening to music, watching movies, playing VNs and such. Same with spanish, though my spanish sucks. My native language is portuguese, and I'm currently learning jp. 

Language, to me, is nothing but a way to communicate with other humans and enjoy myself, since it's needed for any sort of entertainment. I don't have any special attachment to any language, and in fact, I think it would be better if everyone spoke the same language, since I don't care much about the cultural aspect of things.

 

You're one of the few people I know that thinks that way in terms of the cultural aspects. It does surprise me that your Spanish, which has that similar Arabic/Latin background isn't as strong as your English, considering you speak Portuguese.

 

 

For a few seconds I thought you would go on about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, haha. Anyway, I have quite a long history with English. It's not my native language, but I've been mistaken for a native speaker several times during the past couple of years -- mainly based on my writing, of course, since I do have an accent when I speak, so it becomes quite apparent that I wasn't exactly born and bred in the US of A.

 

I honestly made very little effort in English classes during my high school years. I was that guy that just sat around bored out of his mind because my English was already at a level where nothing the teacher could throw at me would be challenging. When people ask me how I got to this level, I say video games with zero hesitation. And that's true. If it weren't for being a geek I wouldn't be where I am today with English, so I guess that's one argument for the idea that constant exposure to a language will have a positive effect in some shape or form.

 

The same applies to the second foreign language I know, which is Japanese. I had a very clear goal in mind when I started taking classes, plus a time limit as well (long story, but I had to take a Japanese exam roughly equivalent to JLPT N3 before a certain date to be able to get my diploma; thankfully I passed on my first try, so all the work paid off), so that in itself was a bit stressful. But while some people are broken under pressure, I found that it motivated me like crazy. I did work my ass off, sure, but my teacher was genuinely surprised by how fast I improved and got the hang of certain things. Again, I cannot help but think that the 8-ish years of watching anime and being exposed to the language had a part to play in that. Especially since I crashed and burned with the third language I attempted, which was Spanish, a language that I had no such background with.

 

I'm not sure if this is what you wanted to hear or if it even makes sense but there you have it.

 

 

I'm a huge fan of working under pressure when it comes to learning a language, which is why I was able to study 5 languages simultaneously.

[Kaguya]

You're one of the few people I know that thinks that way in terms of the cultural aspects. It does surprise me that your Spanish, which has that similar Arabic/Latin background isn't as strong as your English per say, considering you speak Portuguese.

There weren't that many things that made me interested in spanish, so while it's definitely easier (a lot of the grammar is almost identical) I didn't spend enough time on the language. My english is also kind of bad, too.

[Guest]

For some unkown reason, I'm really good at picking up accents. Most of accents (I'm good with my tongue perhaps ? No comment).

And above all Japanese is really easy to speak for french since it has the same tonalities.

I'm no phonologist but i've heard of it and can confirm it.

 

I do understand that studying a language's evolution can be really interesting and be an illustration of culture and history.

But I like to talk them. Nothing is as rewarding to be able to talk with somebody, because in the end that's the purpose.

I'm talking a language that around 200 million people can talk.

 

What about the 6.8 billions that don't. Maybe I have something to tell them or do they ?

[OriginalRen]

French phonetics is...challenging. I took a course in college on it, and I learned quite a lot from it (h-aspiré, le "e" caduc, etc.) which really made my french stand out for a non-native speaker. Still, a lot of that stuff I have forgotten so I don't even know anymore.

[Flutterz]

I was born in Russia and my family moved to Canada when I was 4, then back when I was 10, back to Canada when I was 16 and I've stayed here since. As a result I am fluent in both Russian and English.

 

Besides that my school and later my parents made me study French and Spanish, and while I like to think I am generally pretty good at learning languages, because both my Russian and my English seem to be better than most of my peers', I'm also incredibly lazy when I'm not motivated. And let's just say that "It's useful to know languages" didn't motivate my younger self much, particularly because I know English so I'll most likely be able to find someone I can communicate with regardless of which country I go to. So while I was in grades 1-4 in Canada I studied both French and Spanish, then we moved to Russia and my parents made me continue studying French. But due to my complete lack of motivation I barely made any progress. After a year of French in Russia my parents made me study Spanish instead. Because I generally like Spanish more than French I didn't neglect it as much as I neglected French, but I still barely learnt anything despite having studied it for 3 years and then another 3.

 

And now, thanks to VNs, I have a reason to learn Japanese, which is already going far better than either French or Spanish.

[EruwaYuril]

Being able to communicate with people, and also to get information I wouldn't be able to get if I didn't speak another language. Most of the information on the net is in English, so knowing how to read/speak it is very useful, not to mention lots of stuff gets translated from X language to English, so there's that too.

English isn't my native language but I'm decently good at it. I started playing games from a young age so I *had* to know English in order to know what to do next, where to go and all that. That was my main and only purpose at the time. I actually "leeched" knowledge of the language from my older brother. He did all the research from English to Spanish and, because we only had one gaming console, I usually watched him play for hours, often asking him "what does that mean?". I like to think that he helped me as much as I did to him, because I often asked stuff that even he wasn't that sure of. He's studying to become an English teacher because he loved the language.

So yeah, English means a lot to me because I understand a lot of information on the net, talk to people I meet in MMOs/forums and also because it gave me a nice relationship with my brother. Currently trying to learn Japs. It is going slow but it is ok, the only problem are kanji >_<

[zoom909]

I took German in high school, and managed to get one year of Italian in, in college.  Although it was primarily the usual academic approach, they did try to at least get some immersion in there...use English as little as possible during class, have exercises where you talk to your classmates, etc.  Needless to say, all that experience I gained is gone now.  However, at least I remember what it was I needed to learn and gained experience with all the grammatical terminlogy they throw at you.

 

With Japanese, I studied on my own and it was purely academic.  I was learning in order to read, that's all.  Still, I came much farther than I did with either of the languages I took in school.  You could almost say I learned Japanese the way people learn Latin, for reading only.  Although, due to years of exposure anime and games, I can understand speech to a reasonable degree.  But I am lousy at producing.  It's a different skillset, apparently, because it takes me forever to say anything.  It doesn't help matters that Japanese seems to start from the wrong end of the sentence :-)  This probably will only be fixed if I spend some decent time in Japan.  Due to my life circumstances, that will not happen anytime soon.

[Zalor]

God, you just touched upon my least favorite subjects, (I've had a terrible history with learning languages). One of the reasons I hate talking about foreign languages is because I wish I had the ability to learn them. Anyway here is my regrettable tale with languages:

 

From infancy until the age of 3 in a half I was learning German from my father, Ukrainian from my mother, and English from my environment. While I was raised in America, my mother is Ukrainian, and my father is a German professor. In any case at the age of three I wasn't speaking anything, and would only occasionally mix words from the three languages to attempt communication. And even then, I often completely mispronounced the few words I did use. So my parents ultimately decided when I was around 3 in a half to only speak English around me so I could start communicating with kids in my nursery school. 

 

I didn't take serious language courses until High School. I was enrolled in a Chinese class. At first I was eager to learn Chinese, it seemed like it would be a really important language to know. However, any eagerness and interest I had was quickly killed by my teacher. She demanded that within a month of classes that we would enter a 100% immersion program in the class. That's right, after a month of Chinese she would only allow us to speak in Chinese, and she would only communicate in Chinese. Good luck trying to communicate what you're confused about when she expects you to tell her what you're confused about in Chinese! What's more is that even if she granted you permission to ask in English (which was only rarely), she would only respond to your questions and confusion with Chinese. I think I established that the classes were brutal, but there is still more. She assigned essays for daily homework pretty frequently. Oh, and the essays had to be in traditional Chinese characters. She was not only a tough teacher, but she was a merciless one. She could tell that not only me, but around a quarter of the class was barely hanging on, but she still insisted on not reviewing complicated material she already covered. She just moved on at her brutal pace and only payed attention to the few brilliant students who managed to keep up with her.

 

Sorry for my rambling, but it was really this one Chinese class that has completely disenchanted me from ever learning another language ever again. Two years of that Hell is all the language learning I can take for an entire life time. I think I have post traumatic stress disorder from that class...

 

TLDR: The Horror, the horror.

 

EDIT: OP, I truly envy you for having a pleasant experience learning languages while mine have been nothing but miserable. 

[Mephisto]

Stuff to learn.

 

I was born in the United States, but my parents originally came from China, and since I was born while they were still in college, they sent me back to China for the first few years of my life. I personally don't remember anything about that time, but it may or may not have had an affect on my chinese ability.

 

When I was young, I attended Chinese classes, but since I was in that period of youth in which I considered learning anything a complete and utter chore, it wasn't long before I convinced my parents to stop sending me. This was honestly probably a huge mistake, as I quickly forgot most of my written chinese, as well as how to read it. The base images still are present in my mind I guess though, as I don't find kanji exceptionally difficult to learn. My spoken chinese is actually still okay, although the vocabulary is rather limited, due to how my family only speaks chinese in the house, as well as how all my parents friends are chinese. It may be because I'm older now, but I actually prefer to speak Chinese whenever I can, compared to English, despite how my english is much much better. It just has a natural and nice feel to it or something, I don't know. The kids of my parents friends however, mainly talk in english (they're younger than me).

 

I started learning Japanese after browsing this website about a year and a month ago, and honestly it was a pretty sudden and random decision. It was something along the lines of " I'm smart, I can learn japanese, lets do this", and then I signed up for this website and began the journey. Some possible impetus could have possibly been that I had recently been interested in Anime, and had just begun playing VNs, which have helped tremendously in my endeavor. Another possible motivation could have been for the social aspect, since most of the people I was around at my school were also in to anime and stuff (I went to a largely asian school), and Japanese was kind of just "cool".

 

Now, as for how I started japanese, I actually began with a LOT of misconceptions. I thought Japanese would be like Chinese, and if I just crammed kanji then I would be able to read Japanese. That was probably the biggest blunder I made, and simply put, I wasn't learning Japanese. I was learning kanji characters.

 

It appears a large part of learning a language involves learning the culture behind the language, and honestly, to learn a language properly you need to learn how to use it, not learn definitions of various things in the language. To present an example in english, if you learned the words "Mom", "Hospital" , "work", "used", "to", "in" "a" "when" she" "was" "younger", you still wouldn't understand the sentence "My mom used to work in a hospital when she was younger".  First of all, how would you even define the word used? The dictionary definition of using and conjugating it to past doesn't even work here, since it's in combination with "to" to make the phrase "used to", which indicates something that one did in the past, but no longer does.

 

So yeah, after grinding about 500 kanji, most of what I've forgotten by now, I began reading Tae Kim's grammar guide. After about a week kind of learning Hirigana and Katakana, I actually began progressing by attempting to read stuff. Signs in anime, advertisements, anything really. From there I really began to develop and I honestly read pretty damn fast, as long as I can recognize the kanji.

 

Cut the ending a bit short but I'm out of time, need to go do some stuff.

[OriginalRen]

I was born in Russia and my family moved to Canada when I was 4, then back when I was 10, back to Canada when I was 16 and I've stayed here since. As a result I am fluent in both Russian and English.

 

It makes sense why you are in love with Kud. Perchance you are an astrologer or the like? Also, I love seeing your Canadian speech heh. Learnt. Man that bugs me.

 

Being able to communicate with people, and also to get information I wouldn't be able to get if I didn't speak another language. Most of the information on the net is in English, so knowing how to read/speak it is very useful, not to mention lots of stuff gets translated from X language to English, so there's that too.

English isn't my native language but I'm decently good at it. I started playing games from a young age so I *had* to know English in order to know what to do next, where to go and all that. That was my main and only purpose at the time. I actually "leeched" knowledge of the language from my older brother. He did all the research from English to Spanish and, because we only had one gaming console, I usually watched him play for hours, often asking him "what does that mean?". I like to think that he helped me as much as I did to him, because I often asked stuff that even he wasn't that sure of. He's studying to become an English teacher because he loved the language.

So yeah, English means a lot to me because I understand a lot of information on the net, talk to people I meet in MMOs/forums and also because it gave me a nice relationship with my brother. Currently trying to learn Japs. It is going slow but it is ok, the only problem are kanji >_<

 

It's interesting you say that VNs and games contributed a lot to your English. The SMS used in forums would make me feel like people aren't understand the English as well, but this seems to counter that argument.

 

Stuff to learn.

 

I was born in the United States, but my parents originally came from China, and since I was born while they were still in college, they sent me back to China for the first few years of my life. I personally don't remember anything about that time, but it may or may not have had an affect on my chinese ability.

 

When I was young, I attended Chinese classes, but since I was in that period of youth in which I considered learning anything a complete and utter chore, it wasn't long before I convinced my parents to stop sending me. This was honestly probably a huge mistake, as I quickly forgot most of my written chinese, as well as how to read it. The base images still are present in my mind I guess though, as I don't find kanji exceptionally difficult to learn. My spoken chinese is actually still okay, although the vocabulary is rather limited, due to how my family only speaks chinese in the house, as well as how all my parents friends are chinese. It may be because I'm older now, but I actually prefer to speak Chinese whenever I can, compared to English, despite how my english is much much better. It just has a natural and nice feel to it or something, I don't know. The kids of my parents friends however, mainly talk in english (they're younger than me).

 

I started learning Japanese after browsing this website about a year and a month ago, and honestly it was a pretty sudden and random decision. It was something along the lines of " I'm smart, I can learn japanese, lets do this", and then I signed up for this website and began the journey. Some possible impetus could have possibly been that I had recently been interested in Anime, and had just begun playing VNs, which have helped tremendously in my endeavor. Another possible motivation could have been for the social aspect, since most of the people I was around at my school were also in to anime and stuff (I went to a largely asian school), and Japanese was kind of just "cool".

 

Now, as for how I started japanese, I actually began with a LOT of misconceptions. I thought Japanese would be like Chinese, and if I just crammed kanji then I would be able to read Japanese. That was probably the biggest blunder I made, and simply put, I wasn't learning Japanese. I was learning kanji characters.

 

It appears a large part of learning a language involves learning the culture behind the language, and honestly, to learn a language properly you need to learn how to use it, not learn definitions of various things in the language. To present an example in english, if you learned the words "Mom", "Hospital" , "work", "used", "to", "in" "a" "when" she" "was" "younger", you still wouldn't understand the sentence "My mom used to work in a hospital when she was younger".  First of all, how would you even define the word used? The dictionary definition of using and conjugating it to past doesn't even work here, since it's in combination with "to" to make the phrase "used to", which indicates something that one did in the past, but no longer does.

 

So yeah, after grinding about 500 kanji, most of what I've forgotten by now, I began reading Tae Kim's grammar guide. After about a week kind of learning Hirigana and Katakana, I actually began progressing by attempting to read stuff. Signs in anime, advertisements, anything really. From there I really began to develop and I honestly read pretty damn fast, as long as I can recognize the kanji.

 

Cut the ending a bit short but I'm out of time, need to go do some stuff.

 

Your example about the "used to" reminds me of how many questions I got like that when teaching Japanese students. English is a bitch.

[Flutterz]

It makes sense why you are in love with Kud. Perchance you are an astrologer or the like? Also, I love seeing your Canadian speech heh. Learnt. Man that bugs me.

That's part of the reason, guilty as charged. 

 

And if you mean astronomy not astrology, then I am really interested in it, but I haven't actually done it I'm afraid. That is also part of the reason, by the way.

[wattstax]

First thing: I am German, so I had to learn English in school. It is still far from perfect but I can listen, read and speak it without much problems which I am proud of. I like watching TV-Shows with English Audio (have issues with hard accents though, esp. Britain ones) or with English subtitles. I even go so far as prefering the english version despite the fact, that Germany has great synchronisation. But after watching so much Asian Movies and such I grew fond of the different pronounciation which just fitted some mimic and gestic more than a dubbed voice could.

Learning in school wasn't a problem for me as I developed an private interest in the English language at the time. I often translated lyrics from my favourite bands, with the help of a dictionary and started my first adventures in watching subtitled movies and animes, which had no german counterpart. This was a big positive for my acquiring of skils. It helped also that in school the focus was on hearing - comprehension as the whole class had to speak english the whole time.

This became apparent while learning Latin later on. It is a dead language and you only studied it by reading a latin text and tryed to translate it with all of its grammatical hurdles. Here I really failed to grasp anything, neither vocabulary nor grammatic as I couldn't build a feeling for the language. Different with English: I never bothered much with the grammatic either but through listening I got a feel for sentence building. I speak and write now without contemplating what grammatic Would be the right choice and so on. This is important for me: being able to talk and think fluent in a foreign language, without taking too much care. And I hope you agree that someone can still understand my uttering despite the mistakes in it.

What I find bad in learning asian languages: They always demand, that you also learn the written alphabet and be able to read it. This is counterproductive in my opinion. I once started learning korean, later japanese but discontinued my studies as I just wanted to speak/understand it. Later I wouldn't have minded to begin reading. But the speaking ability comes first for me and should be the basic. You never expect from a baby, that it will start writing when speaking its first words.

[OriginalRen]

That's part of the reason, guilty as charged. 

 

And if you mean astronomy not astrology, then I am really interested in it, but I haven't actually done it I'm afraid. That is also part of the reason, by the way.

 

I did mean astronomy, however I wanted to type astrophysics but had a brain fart and couldn't spell it so I gave up and wrote the wrong word lol.

[Katatsumuri]

Language is a way to understand.

 

While I learned almost everything about english by playing games (in fact, I have always gotten superb grades in english without even trying (Unfortunately, it has led me to becoming increasingly sloppy while using it)), I have never been that keen on learning the languages in themselves. When I try to learn a language, it has always been to understand. As a native swedish speaker, the only thing that swedish is useful for to me, is understanding conversations and text in swedish, and to understand languages similar to it. I don't care much about the language beyond that.

 

You could also say that Japanese is the ONLY language that I have taken the time and effort to attempt learn without actually having use for it in my everyday life (if you don't count VNs, Manga, Anime, and other japanese texts, of course)...  

[Beato]

I love languages, especially grammar but everything else is also interesting. I love breaking up sentences. Understandingisn't enough if I can't understand how the individual parts work with each other, if I can't build new sentences with them, it's all meaningless.

Right now I'm studying English and French (with a bit of Japanese on the side) but I would love to learn a lot more.

[jeftai]

language is something that is used to communicate with 1 another.

 

some random history in tl;dr; form

people got high and mighty they wanted to build a tower to the heavens (tower of babylon)

god got angry punished the humans by splitting them by making everyone speaking different languages

 

to me its just something used to talk to 1 another.

iam from a chinese family both my dad and mom are chinese they moved to the netherlands before i was born.

my mom talked chinese to me constantly but i never picked it up.

my dad dousnt really talk to me nor to my sister.

i learned dutch pretty easy english same thing games and movies and the like is great for learning (even my english teacher in middle school said that it was great way to learn english)

i got mandatory french lessons from school i never picked up any of it.

i understood more of german then french cuz i lived close to the border near germany so i heard more of it then french.

i noticed that i learned better when i got to hear and see the person talk then learning about it then reading about it in a textbook.

people also told me that i point out and move my hands to make a example whenever iam talking.

 

all in all i think iam more of a person that stays silent and if i have to explain i would like to use examples of what iam talking about.

[Flutterz]

I did mean astronomy, however I wanted to type astrophysics but had a brain fart and couldn't spell it so I gave up and wrote the wrong word lol.

Are you sure you're an English teacher?

[OriginalRen]

Are you sure you're an English teacher?

 

Spelling is hard.