Obviously this is a pretty international forum, and a comrade asked before which languages we speak, but which languages are you working on? Which ones do you aspire to learn someday even if you aren’t learning it now? I’m a Yank so I know English and took about 5 years of Spanish in HS, I was in the advanced classes, but it was years ago so I can understand Spanish, but I can’t speak it really. I’m learning Russian now because I’ve sorta been learning it informally my whole life, my grandma being born in early 30s rural Belarus meant she always wanted to pass that on to me, she spoke an Eastern dialect of Polish but knew Belarussian and spoke fluent Russian. I just knew basic basic Russian as a kid like Принесите Пожалуйста and Спасибо mixed with other phrases that were very local to her. In the past 2-3 years I decided to officially learn Russian bc the rest of my family is very American (I don’t blame them, that’s where we live and consume the vast vast majority of our entertainment/content from) the Irish side of my family doesn’t give a shit about the history of Ireland nor do any of them speak any word of Gaelic Irish, so at least by learning Russian I can communicate to a few cousins from the old country and my grandma. Realistically speaking Spanish would be most useful to me, being in the US, but if I finish learning Russian I wanna learn Arabic. I want to learn Chinese but goddamn thats one of the toughest ones to learn. I feel like Arabic would be cool to learn. What are yall thinking?
I’m learning Portuguese right now, a mix of European and Brazilian. My family is European Portuguese but Brazilian is more accessible in terms of lessons and I like some of the pronunciations better. Both my parents were born in Portugal and thus it was their first language. Even though my mom was raised in Canada, English is her second language. So even with a family of immigrants my first language is English, I grew up knowing some Portuguese words but I could never speak it. It makes me sad that I wasn’t raised to speak both proficiently; English at school, Portuguese at home. So now that I’m an adult I’m trying to learn to speak it, which is surprisingly difficult despite having Portuguese speakers around constantly. I mean, the Portuguese news station is always on TV and I’ve been watching shows and movies and TikTok’s with Portuguese subtitles to try and immerse myself more.
It seems we are in a somewhat similar boat comrade. We both know a bit of the language of our ancestors and seek to learn more, all the best to you!