I've always wanted a place to talk about this here, since we have people from all over the world. I know everybody here on the website speaks in English, but that's not the native language of most people here, I think. Aside (or including English), do you study a foreign language currently? And if so, how do you practice it throughout your daily life? Do you read texts, see videos, write comments on websites or/and have some sort of conversation club? I started learning French this semester and I tried using Duolingo for the first time to practice but I didn't like it. I hope I could practice it with anyone here that can speak it, so feel free to chat with me in French. That way I will be willing to practice it more.

This thread is a mix of me wanting to know your experiences with learning foreign language, me wanting a space here on VGChart for people to practice the foreign language they are learning currently and me letting people know that I am availabe for small exchanges in French, so that I can practice it more.

And if anyone is learning Portuguese and wants to practice it a little, eu posso ajudar!

I used to have a decent grasp of Japanese, enough to hold a conversation, but I've gotten very rusty over the years as I haven't used it as much since I finished high school.

Also know a little Mandarin as my girlfriend is Chinese.

I've been using Duolingo for learning Spanish for a while now, and Hello Chinese for... wait for it... French. Just kidding, it's actually Chinese! All this is going quite slowly, since I only have so much time, but it's something. I chose these languages pretty much because they have so many speakers across the world, so it's maximal benefit, in a way.

Duolingo feels really slow for learning though, so I should probably explore some alternatives at some point. Hello Chinese advances much more rapidly, which I like, but it's lacking practicing previously learned things. I mean, it has it, but you have to get out of your way to use it, and last I checked, it doesn't count towards the daily streak.

I am learning Spanish and Vietnamese. I am planning on going to Vietnam next year, and visit Spanish speaking countries soon. I already speak French and, obviously, English.

I'm learning japanese since 4 months now. I'm making good progress, but it's a hard language, lol. I'm doing a little Duolingo here and there, but mostly I rely on good old textbooks. On top of that I invest 30 minutes daily into anki for learning vocabulary and kanji. And I'm watching an episode of Sailor Moon every day. Sadly, I couldn't find a version with no subtitles or at least japanese subtitles. It's a little bit annoying, because it's really hard to ignore subtitles, when they are there. But whatever.

I'm highly motivated though because I will be in Yokohama in february and of course I want to get around there and everything. Plus there is just so much great japanese content, I'm honestly questioning myself why I didn't start learning much sooner. Like, if I had started with 18 or something, I would be fluent as heck by now. =D

I've wanted to learn French (or Spanish) since I finished my English course when I was 13. Now, I am 31 and I'm an English teacher for ESL students. I decided to finally enroll in a French course because I wanted to remember what is like to be learning a language you are not fluent. I want to know better my students' struggles. And it's been a very interesting experience. I can relate with my students in a lot of things. The embarrassment of trying to say a word you don't know the pronunciation, the struggle in creating a sentence you don't know all the words. I always tell my students they need to practice English outside the classrom, that the classroom is just 50% of the effort. And now I know how difficult it is to do that. There are weeks that I only rely on the classes and I don't study anything at home. I hope I get fluent in French in a medium/long term and remember more things about it is like to be in the student position

Quel est le plus difficile à ton avis: Français, Espagnol ou Vietnamese?

Le vietnamien, et de loin.

Le français j'ai appris comme une langue maternelle, et l'espagnol est très similaire au français du point de vue de grammaire. Aussi, beaucoup de mots se ressemblent entre le français et l'espagnol. J'utilise Duolingo pour les deux langues, et regarde des vidéos/Netflix des fois en espagnol.

Le vietnamien est difficile car beaucoup de mots sont écrits de la même manière (avec les mêmes lettres), avec seulement quelques accents de différents, donc il faut beaucoup de mémorisation et c'est facile de confondre des mots.

Un exemple de plusieurs mots vietnamiens écrits de la même manière avec juste des accents de différents.

Qu'est-ce qui t'as attiré à apprendre le français et le portugais?

I took four years of Spanish in high school and got to a conversational level for a while, but even living in areas with large Spanish speaking communities I still basically never used it and forgot most of it over the years. Sadly I think that would probably happen with any other language as well unless I deliberately made time not just to learn the language, but immerse myself in the culture and stay in it, too. This kinda rules out a number of languages I wouldn't mind learning as I have less interest in the immersion components. Still, I love watching videos from polyglots like Xiaomanyc and seeing people light up at being able to converse in their native tongue with a stranger. Maybe I'll find the motivation some day.

I'm fluent in Luxembourgish, English, French and German (C2 level for each of them), plus some Tagalog, Russian, Schwiizerdütsch, Spanish and Yenish.

Currently I'm not studying a foreign language, but actually my mother tongue. You see, Luxembourgish didn't get fully standardized until shortly before I went to school, and as such there were no teachers yet to teach the written form of our language, so that's what I'm doing now.

Also on the checklist is deeper understanding on Spanish and Tagalog due to my mother moving to Spain and my wife being Filipina.