re: Learning another language

I had avoided foreign languages throughout high school and intended to do so in college until LSU politely informed me that I would not be receiving a political science degree without so many semester hours of foreign language study. I figured I'd take German. It'll be just like English with different words. Boy! Was I ever WRONG! It was a total pain in the arse! But it got me interested in learning a different language, so while I continued in German, I added Russian to my studies and went in with the mindset of "I don't know nuthin'. Teach me."

Low and behold, Russian came easily when I kept that mindset. It also helped with my studies in German.

Years later, having gone into commercial construction management, I found Spanish to be relatively easy to learn and extremely useful. Then an opportunity arose to study Koine Greek (New Testament Greek) so I could hardly turn that down.

Suffice it to say that the more languages you know, the easier it is to pick up another one. Also, speaking a foreign language fluently requires a completely different mindset and thought process. That an advantage not only to speaking another language, but for looking for different solutions to problems that arise.

I'm always glad that I was forced to take that step in order to graduate.

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I figured I'd take German. It'll be just like English with different words. Boy! Was I ever WRONG! It was a total pain in the arse!

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Have you ever read Mark Twain's accounts of his travels in Europe? He goes off on a rant about the German language. Even 150 years later, it's still hilarious. I was cracking up reading it.

I took 2 years of French that was required in high school many, many years ago. The grammar kicked my butt, but I still recall a good bit of the vocabulary. Enough that I can read signs and get the gist of a conversation.

I'm currently studying Spanish on Duolingo. And again, I'm finding the vocabulary to be easier than the verb conjugations. But it's fun.

Used to be fluent in French, learned in school but didn't get conversational until going to France a couple times.

Currently learning Spanish. Duolingo is a good free app that makes learning have a gamification aspect. I use that some and an online course I like that. Also there's an app called Tandem where you can do language exchange with people around the world.

Check out “My German Teacher” on YouTube. Coffeebreak German podcast is legit too. Good for general conversation and basic grammar explanations

Wo néng shuo liúlì de zhongwén. Wo cóng ala ba ma zhou bìyè hòu zài féng jia dàxué xuéxíle san nián.




Since Chicken’s hamsters can’t handle Chinese characters, I had to use pin-yin

Spoke Norwegian with my parents every day growing up. Almost fluent in Italian thanks to the Mrs. but it’s taken me nearly 3 years to get there. Can hear and converse in Italian better than I can read it funnily enough.


Would definitely recommend watching Tv/Movies in French, that helped me hear Italian much better when I was learning

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I’m now satisfied with being a jingoistic American.

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Not that there's anything wrong with this, but it always amazes me how a refugee from a third world country can be fluent in several languages, but Americans who have access to every learning software in the world can only speak English.