I’m speak basic Spanish (can watch TV, understand some conversations), but I wish to become so fluent that I can express myself eloquently. I’m also learning Huichol, an indigenous Mexican language that has no resources except for linguistic papers on it in Spanish, so I’m reading those and writing a textbook on it.
Anyone else like learning foreign languages/speak any?
My Italian is passable. I haven’t really used it other than cursing out my brother-in-law under my breath and trying to converse with other Italian people I meet…there aren’t many here in central Illinois. I was trying to learn Romanian, but like so many things in my life, I just gave up.
Where did you learn Italian? In school?
I used to be fluent in French, but am proficient at best these days thanks to living in a part of the country where I don’t get much opportunity to use it beyond practice in front of a mirror.
Pixel.
The trick is to make all your TV, movie, and music consumption strictly French. That’s how I do it with Spanish. It’s hard, but it works.
Italian is actually my first language. My dad spoke only in Italian to me until I was 5. My mom didn’t appreciate that because it set me back in school. I went on to be an English major in school anyway. In all honesty, I hate English…too many goddamn rules. When you really sit down and think about it, writing a grammatically perfect sentence in English can be quite a challenge. It’s hard for me to come on here and not play “Grammar Nazi.” My dad died when I was 19, and my Italian has suffered ever since.
That assumes I can get the remote away from Mrs. Pixel. We watch a steady diet of ‘Britcoms’, and, well, all things British. She won’t admit it, but she’s mainly watching so she can sigh over the old homes and the gardens.
So, no, not too many opportunities. I do make a point of reading a fair amount of news in French and also French translations of popular novels (e.g. The Hunger Games).
Pixel.
I’m into languages too. I studied French as one of my subjects at university for a few years and spent a year abroad in a Francophone country to work on it, but now days I’ve lost much of my French ability because I haven’t really used it since then a few years back
I used to be able to speak French,spanish, and read Latin.
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