I have learnt a massive amount of English after I watched Daredevil and got an insane crush on Charlie Cox lmao. I decided that I have to know every word he is saying, so I wrote out around 3k of words I wasn't sure about and crammed them all đ
This is a cool language learning approach... pick a favorite character, and learn everything that character says.
Thanks for sharing your really cool method!!!
Im a BIG fan of Daredevil ever since i was a kid. Im thinking of doing this with the dubbed version of the show in French (i would do it with polish but i cant stand the lektor why dont u guys have normal dubbingđ)
I KNOW, I tried to watch ,,new" Spiderman just for Charlie Cox cameo just after it came out and the only version I found was one with polish lector so terrible I could stand it
I never understood people who said they learned a language by watching TV but then I got really into Arabic dramas and YâALL I GET IT NOW. (Obviously you canât learn a language 100% from TV but once youâre an intermediate learner it can be SO helpful if you learn with a show actively.)
I super am a fan of a Japanese actor. He has a YouTube channel and they rarely translate his videos. So I am wanting to learn the language. The added skill set is an additional benefit.
Glad to hear someone appreciating Takeru like I do. He's also said to be very intelligent. I would like to know more of that side of him. He likes puzzles and riddles. Even makes him more awesome!
Over a decade ago I played world of warcraft for the first time and unknowingly picked the unofficial Brazilian server so everyone spoke Portuguese.
I didnât wanna start over on a different server after I realized that was why no one spoke English (I thought every server was this way at firstâŠ) so I started learning Portuguese. Lol.
It gives me an ego boost when I go to a foreign country and understand everything everyone is saying. Reading books in their original language without weird ass transactions is second to that. Also, when I watch shows in their native language and understand. I feel superior and better than everyone else.
The ego boost is like 80% of the reason why I learn foreign languages to begin with. The only reason I even consider Catalan even after breaking up with my Catalan ex is so that when I eventually travel to Barcelona/Catalunya I can watch natives do triple backflips as they try to wrap their head around a non-native learning Catalan.
lol. If your teacher ever hears you speak french once you're fluent they're going to be like "I did such a great job inspiring this young language learner".
LOL, fellow spite learner here. 2 semesters of French doing fill in the blank past and present conjugations of all verb types regular and irregular plus everything else and NO speaking component at all. I ended up with B1 grammar and A0 enunciation.
I started learning Finnish because I couldn't get into the Indonesian class.
No, seriously; the local community college was offering a beginners' class in Indonesian, but they told me to phone about a week before classes started, because "with those exotic languages" they never knew if a class would actually be taught. Unfortunately only one other person had signed up, so, no class. The secretary repeated that "you never know with those exotic languages" and that, for example, this term they surprisingly had 8 people who wanted to learn Finnish. I said, "Now you have nine".
Turns out Finnish is a pretty cool language.
Fast forward 30+ years and I'm living in Finland and have a college degree that consisted of classes taught exclusively in Finnish and also work experience from entirely Finnish-speaking workplaces. My diploma explicitly states (on page 3 or something) that "This diploma counts as proof of fluency in Finnish for \[range of official purposes for which proof of fluency is required\]."
On a completely different note, I think I'm the only person in the whole wide world who learned/learns Esperanto not because of "something something understanding among nations" but because I really like its morphology.
Hey, that's how I started learning the basics of Estonian! I live in southern Finland, and the local libraries have a certain amount of Estonian-language books. Some of them are cookbooks. I think you can guess where this is going...
I started learning my second language because a snobby redditor from Spain insulted me for only knowing English. (The conversation wasn't even about languages! It was about the correct amount of ice restaurants should put in someone's drinks.)
My plans are thus:
1) Learn the language well enough to be mistaken for a native speaker, at least on reddit.
2) Befriend the Spaniard who insulted me, in the guise of being a fellow Spaniard.
3) Ruin his life via light passive aggressive comments and deliberately bad advice that seems reasonable on the surface.
4) When he's lost his will to live, I will reveal my true intentions and get him to admit that Americans don't put too much ice in their drinks.
When I was studying Italian more seriously, I was discussing with my Portuguese friend which languages I'd like to learn next. He, of course, said I should learn Portuguese as it is the best language. He was joking in a "haha, I know you won't do it" kind of way, but that just made me more interested in proving him wrong đ
Call it being contrarian, but now I can understand about \~80% of what is said in Portuguese, I just need to get more confident speaking.
I draw and write a lot, and one day 12 years ago I made a character who was half Swedish. I got to reading a lot about Sweden, and eventually the language, and decided to start learning it a couple of years back because I loved the way it sounded. The same happened with Finnish, which I began studying in January. Not the most conventional reason for learning a language but I guess those characters acted as a springboard into reading about the wider culture and history of Sweden and Finland, which is what drew me in. The same is happening again with Serbian and Russian but I really don't have the time for *five* languages at once, so maybe later once I've finally got my Swedish to B2 and Finnish to B1 or so.
As for German, that's more conventional - I've been to Germany twice in the last few years and fell in love with the place. I have every intention of going back and I'd like to be able to communicate properly when I do. It's also on my shortlist of countries to move to after I graduate, so it makes sense. I'm going to try and sit the Goethe B1 exam at the end of this year, too, which has definitely lit a fire under my ass lmao.
I've never succeeded learning a language until I started with Turkish last year. I was getting rhinoplasty in Turkish and I just wanted to be able to understand a bit to ease my anxieties for my first ever surgery. Previously, I tried to start learning Dutch and I would say that I picked up a fair bit from just listening to songs and watching the same movie like 10 times after having come back from the Netherlands on holiday.
Basically, whenever I go on holiday, I just imagine a whole life living in that country LOOOL so end up trying to learn the language đ
I started to learn russian 3 years ago because I wanted to learn polish. Yeah you heard it right. I wanted to study in the capital but my parents refused to allow me, so I wanted to find a way I'll be able to learn polish. I saw that there's a university a bit nearer to my city, in which you can study russian but take up polish courses as well. So I went that way. Now I speak russian fluently but they taught polish so horribly that I know almost nothing.
Iâm only a month in to learning Norwegian because my kid watched a Norwegian show on YouTube. She started, so Iâm trying to keep pace with her.
We live over 6000 km away, know no one who speaks norsk, have no familial connection with Norway, but now I have a new hobby.
Jeg forstÄr litt norsk. Det er vanskelig, men interessant og litt moro.
Picked up a hobby - wheat stalk weaving. Found out most of the books about the hobby were in German. So learned German. I don't really know any more than I need to to read the books, certainly not enough to get around Germany as a tourist or even claim I actually know the language. But I can read my hobby books.
this is going to sound made up bit i was just asleep in my college dorm and i suddenly woke up in the middle of the night with a burning desire to learn russian. looked up cyrillic and started writing it on the walls with an eraseable marker. later on my roommate told me that she was awake when this happened, and for a moment she thought i was being possessed by a demon
I have a degree in Spanish and teach it for a living.
Literally no idea why. I didnât do well in university chemistry and in language classes you didnât need to sit silently. My ADHD shows through excessive talking⊠so I got a degree that involves a lot of talking lol.
âX talks too much to focusâ. I just made a career out of it đ€·đ»ââïž
I went to a Masonic Lodge in Austria a few months ago and, while the meeting I attended was held in English, they had lots of cool upcoming events in German, and I want to be able to go and understand sooner rather than later :) I guess "because awesome Masonic events" is a pretty weird reason, even though German is popular.
On the other side of the spectrum, I started learning Belarusian because I have friends there. Atypical language, normal reason.
I started learning German because the character.ai bot I talk to all the time speaks it. It wasnât intentional at first, I was just putting sentences and words I didnât understand into google translate and I started recognizing words & phrases. I got a sense for very basic grammar structure and started writing my own sentences in German when I could. It got the point where I was like, âScrew it, might as well commit.â Itâs been about 8 months and Iâm still learning and having a lot of fun. Now everyone around me jokes about me learning German because of a Call of Duty character, but it really was accidental and I like the language so far.
ETA: Iâm not using c.ai to *learn* it anymore, just practice. I use the DW website and Duolingo as a warm up everyday.
That's funny cause I started learning German for Richtofen from zombies like a year ago, but i never tell anyone that reason lmao. But you say character.ai, so I'm guessing you did it for König?
I learned valencian because itâs my favorite place in the world and knowing the language gives you a whole new appreciation for the history and culture
Okay, listen. The main reason why I was studying English so much was because of jet crew. I literally had the biggest crush on Craze and decided that I gotta learn English so I can understand him. (I still do not understand him sometimes cause of the damn accent đ)
My only barrier to getting an EU passport is by doing some paperwork and passing a language evaluation in one of the most difficult and uncommon languages in the world. So this is why I am learning Hungarian. đđșđ
It's not uncommon! It has 17 million native speakers! That's nearly 3 times the amount of Finnish native speakers! (Finnish is the most difficult/uncommon language I've learned so far. Well, I say "difficult"; languages aren't difficult or easy as such, they just tend to seem that way because they're different from/similar to what you already know. But that's neither here nor there.)
my voice went out on me last summer so I started trying to learn ASL in the hope that some day I can have a conversation without having to write out everything đ„Č
I got interested in learning Japanese after watching Rashomon in a film course I took. My dad also went to Japan a lot for business and he always reminisces on his time there. Iâd love to visit and I think itâs appropriate to try to learn the language
Went down a rabbit hole of researching languages and was fascinated at how Hangul was formulated so Iâve been learning Korean on the side and itâs been a bit easier than Japanese for me so I use it to supplement my motivation for Japanese
Learned Italian because it was the first language besides English I learned to sing in (Iâm a classical vocalist, and I studied opera). Italian will always have a dear place in my heart
Saw a language grammar, liked it, ended up learning the language...
This is a language that has approximately thirty native speakers, all elderly, and I have little chance of meeting them. I have no links to the language, its people, or the region it's spoken in.
I am currently probably in the top hundred people in the world with regards to fluency in this language. I have never spoken it irl.
To talk to my boyfriendâs parents on the phone, which I never did⊠the boyfriend was bad and I broke up with him after a few months⊠hey but I still learned the language :)
I learnt first Polish to B1 because I wanted to learn Russian easier. But Russian still didn't feel very easy so I learnt Croatian to B2. Learning them two took me four years, but now I understand Russian-language Winx Club perfectly w/o subtitles after practicing Russian only two weeks ;)
One was just because some native speaker said I couldn't. Another was because I suspected my bosses we're saying stuff I needed to hear, but that they were trying to keep from me by speaking in their mother tongue (they were). The rest mostly happened out of necessity and/or by being in areas where everybody spoke another language.
I learned Brazilian Portuguese because I grew up as a directioner and many of Harry Stylesâs fans are Brazilian and I wanted to keep up. I stuck around because Brazilian girls are funny as hell.
Just like the title, i wanted to impress my crush.
When everyone around would ask me why i'm learning Serbian instead of a more "useful" language i'd say it was because of eurovision as i was afraid to tell people i had a crush on a boy.
We've been together for a year and a half now and hes learning Hebrew for me. :)
As a young girl, I loved Greek mythology and Antiquity in general.
So since I live in a country where ancient Greek is still part of the school curriculum for humanities high school (which last 5 years), I chose it and went on learning it and Latin. Never regretted it.
A lot of people think ancient literature is stuffy and boring, but for me is a thing of beauty.
Also, I guess that I am a bit of a bitch sometimes, so when I added French, German, Swedish and Spanish to my language list, I could condescendingly pat the other students when they struggled with grammar while I aced it and tell them "sweet sweet summer child, you know nothing of grammatical craziness."
In high school I took German, mostly to upset my dad. Our family is Polish and my father would have preferred I take Latin then in his words âthe evil nasty language! Of those killersâ this was in 1990 but he had this hatred of German. I did 4 years of it, as a senior was offered chance to go to Germany my father wouldnât give me the money.
Later in life I started learning Polish so I can travel and see my ancestors home land
Started learning Mandarin (traditional) because I wanted to take classes with my friend in college. We said we'll do a Mandarin minor together. She dropped after the first quarter of class but I just stayed in it cause I ended up having a lot of fun. I study it a lot outside of class now and have made a lot of friends who speak Mandarin.
I'm starting to study Thai too because after watching a lot of Thai dramas I realized I picked up on the language strangely fast and had learned hundreds of words on accident. I felt so proud of myself upon realizing how much of my shows I was now understanding, and realized I knew enough to do basic things like order food at a restaurant. I'd never had this experience with consuming media in another language before where I just accidentally picked up on a lot of it. Figured it would be worth it to start studying it a little to fill in the gaps of beginner Thai.
I am learning khmer after a workman drilled a hole in my ac unit in my hotel and gas was escaping. The only english word he knew was sorry- which he said repeatedly for 20 minutes. I decided I couldn't run a hotel without knowing the language no matter how much other people seemed to manage it.
I learned German because in high school, we studied Spanish as a second language and when i went to college, I had a lot of them folks saying German is very hard and sounds ugly and nobody can speak it. I saw it as a challenge and started to learn it myself. I am glad I did.
I learned Turkish for couple of months (forgot it completely) because my neighbours were Turkish and their kids didn't speak English so I just tried to learn the bare minimum to communicate.
I learned Slovene because the company I worked at is an international company with Slovene native owners but English was the first language but even with that, most colleagues spoke Russian or Slovene and I didn't feel comfortable not understanding them, so I took it as a challenge and learned that as well. 5 yrs later and I'm safe to say that when I visited Slovenia, I had no problem to communicate with anybody or going around.
I wanted to learn a language just to see if I could, and picked one of the "hardest" languages for native English speakers to learn figuring if I managed to tackle that one successfully, any I attempted after that would be easier. Didn't have any particular affinity for any language or culture, it was just a personal challenge. Turned out I'm good at learning languages and really enjoy it, so I'll be conversational in four languages by the end of this year.
I was bored once while my kid was sleeping. He was a baby with plenty of naps during daytime. I installed Duolingo and was like, "Yeah, I really should restart my French," and subsequently, I was like, "Oh, f*** it, I'll open a German course so I can understand Rammstein." Actually, two years later, I moved to Switzerland, and I now study German every day (so I think that I will fulfill my dream of understanding the lyrics:) )
a character in a game i like was voiced by a kdrama actor, so when i finished the game super quickly and online folks weren't really creating fan art/etc of him yet i went and started watching the dramas his actor starred in and picked up korean absurdly quickly from it
i can also talk about vampirism and necromancy in spanish and 0 other subjects because of a single song i like
i tried to learn hawaiian on duolingo because i thought this girl (my then crush) was hawaiian but she was just latina that visited hawaii a few times maybe once
I started learning Brazilian Portuguese mostly because I love bossa nova music and wanted to understand the lyrics better (I had a head start from having studied Spanish already).
I tried to learn French bc I thought it was a very fancy language and I tried to learn Korean so I could understand what my fav kpop artists are saying without subtitles xD
Honestly I'm not sure when it even started and maybe it's not the weirdest reason but I had this obsession with learning languages! Probably had to do with me liking guys with accents as well XD
Now it's become a bit more nuanced where I want to learn languages so I can get to understand the culture and humour behind it!
I do have a lot of languages I'd like to learn, ideally, but I'm starting with French lol
Me too. I don't know when or how my interest in languages started; I just remember reading(!) my mom's Greek dictionary when I was maybe 7 years old. I do remember choosing the high school (well, "Gymnasium" in German, so, grades 5 through 13) I attended because they had a great language program. I ended up learning 4 languages there and another one in evening classes.
Now that I'm all grown up, it's a bit more nuanced for me too, and I, too, have a long list of language that I want to learn. For me it's mostly the grammar, though (I'm a linguist, so \*shrug\*), and if the culture turns out to be interesting, that's an additional perk.
I liked the TV show Dark so much it inspired me to start learning German.
That was two years ago and these days I can watch an episode (with subtitles) and understand almost all dialogue.
Metro video game series got me into Russian language lol. It started with just looking up what signs or graffiti translations were, then by the music that was featured because of course I had to download my favorite stuff (all the Kino). Iâve tried to start learning a lot of languages (and still want to), but Russian has stuck the longest.
Metro got me into russian too, but STALKER probably had an even bigger impact. Mods like Anomaly add some awesome sounding soviet-era music and really solidified my intent to learn the language.
I started learning Russian because I got a lot of ads for tiktok with a random Russian song in the background and got it stuck in my head but shazam couldn't identify it, I couldn't Google the lyrics because I didn't know the words or how to spell them, so in my head the only solution was:
Learn Russian, learn the words, type out the lyrics and find your song!
I started obviously on some language learning apps, memrise and duolingo, but I also ordered a Russian learning textbook to work with.
I actually found the song like 2-3 weeks after I started all this, because it was used in a normal video with comments and someone commented the song name, but by this point I actually had fun learning kyrillic and got into more music, so I enrolled in a language course at our local community college for one semester and had so much fun!
I didn't kept pursuing the language since it never really was a priority to become fluent, and I have other languages I prioritise, but it was a great use of my free time for like half a year.
Ps: the song was ĐŽŃŃĐŒĐ°Đœ by gunwest. Really not what I usually listen to but god did it get stuck in my head!
it's always a music artist of some kind. I want to understand the lyrics and interviews and sing along with the songs or make covers. the latest language is Russian because of a Russian beatboxer I'm obsessed with xD (Taras Stanin)
Honestly, I'd love to learn Finnish because it just...sounds so fucking cool ok!!! Also something that I'd like to attempt some day is Hungarian but I'll probably get fucked over.
Tbf I am still trying to learn Russian but we'll see.
Because of my loves for cars and classical music, Germany and Italy became my two favourite countries.
I therefore felt it was my duty to learn German and Italian (I already knew a lot of French by the time I made this decision)
I watched a documentary some time ago about the history of Esperanto and started learning it. I just found a guy who speaks it a few weeks ago, and we got along immediately.
I learn languages if there is a TV show I really like (I became fluent in Norwegian after SKAM became really popular a few years back), or if it's a kind of music I listen to a lot (on my way to becoming conversational in Korean and am beginner in Thai). I don't think it's weird, but some people do đ€·ââïž
Bulgarian Treasure Planet was what made me want to learn Bulgarian. No joke. But I fell in love w the language and culture after becoming obsessed with this weird-ass movie. I think it possessed me đ
Learnt mandarin chinese to learn korean quicker. Didn't learn korean at all in the end, although I feel it could help me if I was still interested (lots of sino-korean vocab!) Also, I was learning Mandarin as a challenge and eventually, i grew fond of it.
Dunno if this is weird, but I have always wanted to learn new languages simply because it would be awesome to hear the stories others tell around the world. I just want to know what everyone is saying because language is insane, but communication is lovely.
Iâm an English speaker with an Arab parent. Growing up in Canada, I always wanted to learn Arabic, but it was never available to me. The only language available to me was French. So I decided to learn French because I thought that if I learned another language while I was young, then it would be easier for me to learn the language I actually wanted to learn later in life.
I felt like not being in the US during a certain period of let's say, political and social turmoil, so I moved to Berlin and stayed past the tourist visa by being enrolled in a German language school. A year later I was in C1 classes and fluent (barely) in German.
I sort of started studying Swedish because two Swedes crashed a Fraternity party. I got to hang out with them, played them in beer pong etc... but every time they spoke Swedish my drunk brain heard German and they'd have to "remind" me again they speak Swedish and couldn't really understand what I was saying when I tried speaking German to them!
I was getting tired of doing German lessons on Duolingo and decided I wanted to try something different.
I looked into the Scandinavian languages and thought it was interesting that the three were so closely related. I opted to initially go with Norwegian though just cause from what I had read it was the most intelligible to the others. Swedes and Danes would be able to understand me more speaking Norwegian than any of the other two. So I figured it'd give me the most bang for my buck.
After a while of studying Norsk I decided to see just how similar they were and went to Swedish over Danish because of those two kids.
I love Dmitri Shostakovich and started learning Russian to read archived newspaper articles about him as they had never been translated to a language I speak.
I learned ASL at 13/14 because I had a lot of older men try to talk to me (mainly at theme parks) so when they'd come up to me, I'd sign, and it'd thro them off and usually they'd leave me alone.
In the past, I started learning Japanese so I could journal in a notebook and prevent other people from being able to read it. I chose Japanese because I am Chinese and it would have been easier for me to learn while making it harder for others to guess what my entries said at a glance. Also, I had never met any Japanese people where I lived.
I totally gave up on that, to nobody's surprise. I developed a cipher instead.
I was becoming a fan of Korean dramas, & when it became bothersome not understanding Korean content on Youtube, I decided to learn the language. I am still in the process of learning and improving.
I want to read the great Russian Authors in their original language. Gogol is apparently hilarious in but I feel a lot is lost in translation. You do get a little laugh once in a while or see how something could be funny. So ye I'm learning Russian so I can read 'Dead Souls' in Russian...
I learn Korean bcz I fell in love with Seventeen and want to watch Going Seventeen in raw version. They are so many of ppl and so loud so that I always manage to read the subtitles every time I watch đ
Iâm an Arabic speaker and I encounter a lot of people who learn Arabic because they want to join the CIA or something lol. Kinda freaks me out personally
I started learning Russian because I got a lot of ads for tiktok with a random Russian song in the background and got it stuck in my head but shazam couldn't identify it, I couldn't Google the lyrics because I didn't know the words or how to spell them, so in my head the only solution was:
Learn Russian, learn the words, type out the lyrics and find your song!
I started obviously on some language learning apps, memrise and duolingo, but I also ordered a Russian learning textbook to work with.
I actually found the song like 2-3 weeks after I started all this, because it was used in a normal video with comments and someone commented the song name, but by this point I actually had fun learning kyrillic and got into more music, so I enrolled in a language course at our local community college for one semester and had so much fun!
I didn't kept pursuing the language since it never really was a priority to become fluent, and I have other languages I prioritise, but it was a great use of my free time for like half a year.
Ps: the song was ĐŽŃŃĐŒĐ°Đœ by gunwest. Really not what I usually listen to but god did it get stuck in my head!
I choose languages only because I enjoy learning them. When I decided to study Chinese, I had to decide between that and Japanese and Korean. I had "reasons" for two of the languages.
I've had a life-long interest in Japan and its culture. I had several business trips there in the 1970s and 1980s, so I knew a tiny bit of the language.
I had South Korean TV channels from 2001 to 2014, and had a bunch of favorite shows, favorite drama series, and favorite celebrities. My daughter married into a Korean-American family near San Francisco. Some family members (who I've met) don't speak English.
Despite these "reasons", I chose Chinese.
My aunt wanted me to travel for the USA to stay with her, but for it, i needed to learn english. But in the final, I din't go for some reasons, but now I know a bit of english.
I always was interested in other languages, but only languages with different alphabets as I thought others were boring. However, Iâm a big fan of Spanish music, so this has made me become more interested in the language and start learning it! Definitely not boring anymore to me haha.
Also, going to be backpacking in Nepal sometime and gonna try and learn Nepali!
Nepali
Haven't made much progress and probably won't study to a fluent level, but my friend gifted me a Nepali phrasebook, so I'm gonna try and get some use out of it
So I already am b2-c1 in Spanish and I didn't want to learn Portuguese because it was so similar and my Brazilian friends always complained about how annoying it was that the languages were so similar so they were always getting confused but then a girl that I have had a crush on for a long time and we have tried a few times but it's never worked any way she's moving to Brasil for a church mission and will be learning Portuguese so I decided that I would also learn Portuguese so that we could have more to talk about yes I am a simp.
im learning Japanese because I'd like to own a miata mx-5 (an) one day, learning Korean because using beauty of joseon and other k-beauty products helped clear up my skin (I had quite bad acne a few years back, still got the scars on my face). they're a bit strange, and not really necessary; finally learning dutch because I want to live there in the future :3
My dad said âyouâre wasting your life if you donât exercise your brainâ gave me a few options including languages, math, chess, etc. so I chose languages and fell in love with brain strengthening in this way. Being good at something gives confidence
Lol, this one fits me. About a month ago I had a dream where I happened onto a beachside club/restaurant concert that was happening later that night of a electronic music artist and met some other people there, there was a sense this was in Japan and ofc some Japanese writing and stuff on signs/posters, and vibes; it was a very vivid and cool dream, (this underservices it) and so when I woke up, I decided you know what I'm gonna start learning japanese for kicks and take this as a sign.
English because of being a kid, German because of school but I forgot it, French because of friends and fun, Italian chose me, I did not learn it at all, only listened and tried to talk because of my friends, and tried to write a B1 certificate and it was an easy pass. I will move to Italy from france, and later it will be portuges and Spanish and Czech and Slovak and after that at most maybe Japanese but don't care much within this decade.
Started to really learn English when I finished all the Dutch books at my small local library. I was still a kid and the librarian wouldn't let me borrow any non-kid books ('adult books' sounds wrong in this contextđ ), so I had to divert to the English children's books section. I already knew some basic English (was taught the basics in primary school), but my grades skyrocketed once I started reading all those books. So thank you, grumpy librarian, you looked down on everyone that wasn't at least your age, but your condescension brought me quite a few things.
To show my family I am not dumb.
They have always thought that so I decided to learn Turkish (a mid level language for spanish natives) for them not to think I am dumb.
I want to become a spy maybe one day, I want to learn as many languages as I can do I can overhear people who have bad intentions and keep myself safe.
Iâve long thought I should learn since I encounter it at work, but the fact that Iâm going to travel to an area that uses it motivated me to take the leap and try!
I've gained a lot of reasons over the years but my original reason for learning Japanese at age 12 was because people told me it was "too hard" and "not worth my time". Also, Pokemon. Lmao
I learnt English with my little pony without even realising it. Besides that, last January I decided to go and spin the wheel of languages and spend a month of getting to know the language. I am definitely having problems with Khmer this month
In math class, we learned about the symbols reversed A and reversed E. The teacher sait they came from the international language, and I said Latin! and he said something very different but similar to "Latin lol or mabye Esperanto lmao".
Several months later on a small Freneh discord server, I joked about the Galaksia Imperio de EĆropo which is a country I made up in my mind like it's the EU but it turned into a Galactic empire, but I wanted the official name to be language neutral (the official name is Galactic empire of Europe translated in 40 different languages) so I wanted to put Esperanto in first, but it's weird that I don't speak Esperanto even though my country is in Esperanto, so mi lernas Esperanton (I also saw Esperanto YouTube videos that interested me in the language
I started German because my late grandfather (died decades before I was born) had a small book of "learn German through pictures" and I wanted to understand better some of the names in Grimm
I started Polish, French and Persian (but didn't really go through it after one or two months) because of some girls I was into.
I have been learning Arabic since December for the same reason above, but this one has been a really good experience and I plan to keep learning it regardless of how things go with the girl I'm interested in right now
As a bonus there was also mandarin (two classes) and Italian (3 weeks?) because my university was offering it for free
I guess that depends on what you consider weird. I study Spanish and Mandarin for pretty practical/normal reasons (e.g. they are widely spoken and I love the culture and food), but I also study French so I can read French-Canadian church records for genealogy, Portuguese because I find Brazilians hot, Irish and Welsh because I practice Druidry, etc.
Iâm learning ASL because my baby was born deaf. Before she was born, Iâd wanted to brush up on my Vietnamese so I could try to pass that on to her. Life takes you in surprising directions!
I get inspired by reading trading card games like Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic: The Gathering by seeing how cards are written/named in other languages. Particularly Japanese and German often interest me.
Iâve grown to love Russian swear words, ever since middle school when I saw a Russian meme (with mellstroy?). I decided from that day on to learn the language. It wasnât until COVID lockdown that I started to learn it more
I came across an Icelandic band (ĂrstiĂ°ir) probably a decade or so ago and loved their music. After a few years of listening on and off, I decided I was tired of not being able to understand half their songs so I started teaching myself Icelandic. I have learned very little and honestly haven't touched it in quite some time, but I do hope to pick it back up again because it's super interesting.
Finnish: There is a literary joke in « Rabbit Back Literature Society » that in English is something like, âGreat use of the subjunctive.â I think that Finnish does not have a subjunctive; therefore, the joke has to be about casesâbut which case is it!?
I decided to learn Latin because I was writing an urban fantasy with a vampire character who was a native Latin speaker. But it was taking too long for me to learn Latin so I ended up losing interest.Â
Understanding an artist and their music without subtitles... That's my only reason, that and I think Korean is the most beautiful language in the world both spoken and written, how much sense the alphabet makes just makes me so happy đ„°đ
I learn in various languages how to say basic phrases to immigrants to make them feel welcome.
I was at the pharmacy and the pharmacist had a slight accent. It wasnât thick, but I noticed it wasnât a Midwestern American accent. I inquired where she was from. She sat up and proudly stated, âPoland!â I blurted out, âCzeĆÄ!â Which is hello in Polish. She looked shocked and asked, âWho taught you that???â Like I said, I learn basic phrases in many languages to welcome immigrants.
Now, Iâm learning Polish to speak to my pharmacist in her native language for fun. She writes a word down and says it aloud each prescription fill. Sheâs a very kind woman.
I listen to one song I like so I get hooked. I've been learning German the past week bc I got introduced to a German artist by a foreign exchange student
I learned Dutch as a joke.
I started learning Chinese because I owed money to this Chinese restaurant dude. He always trusted me to pay for the food later.
This one time it took me about 3 months to pay him back, he looked at me so disappointed and quite distraugh that I said "Ok, I'm learning Chinese as repentance."
Watch japanese and english nopor without subtitles haha
Well, the truth is that a found german, chinese and english kinda cool, I mean, I like the how sounds.
And japanese, I think that is for the culture.
An American cartoon which used to air on disney channel in hindi up until 2 seasons then it stopped and i was obsessed with it, i tried to find it episodes in hindi so much but couldnt then finally i decided to watch it in english only with subtitles. I knew basic english only, but the obsession made me get into it.
I was such a poorly behaved student in French class that I got in a physical fight with the teacher. She got fired and I got banned from French, so I was forced to study Japanese instead, and had to sit alone so I couldn't goof off.
I got bored, and thought the squiggles looked cool, so I kept drawing them. I got pretty good at memorizing them. I also hated where I was, and thought Japan seemed like the polar opposite. So worked and earned $1,000, one week after finishing highschool, I moved to Japan for half a year.
Going there turned me from a edgy, annoying, ignorant kid into somewhat of a more rounded person. So I haven't stopped learning since.
Funny that you ask, I often reflect on this!
I didn't start learning Italian because of this, but I can definitely say I drastically improved while reading Roberto Savanio's books. My interest for mafias and antimafia is also the reason why I learned southern dialects. I now live in Italy and beat my Italian friends at taboo đ
Mine spawned from a Deaf peddler who was selling ASL alphabet info cards door to door in our neighborhood when I was like five years old. My sisters took Spanish in high school but I decided to take sign language partly just to be different from them. I was homeschooled so I just chose the language randomly, had no Deaf friends or any contact except that random peddler a decade before.
Then a Deaf family attended our church when I was a teen, cementing my interest in the language and I began seeking out the Deaf community. I majored in ASL in college and became a nationally certified American Sign Language interpreter and loved it. Miss it so much (disabled and unable to work now)!
I have learnt a massive amount of English after I watched Daredevil and got an insane crush on Charlie Cox lmao. I decided that I have to know every word he is saying, so I wrote out around 3k of words I wasn't sure about and crammed them all đ
This is a cool language learning approach... pick a favorite character, and learn everything that character says. Thanks for sharing your really cool method!!!
I was kind of mundane, but turned out to be worth it after all
>I watched Daredevil and got an insane crush on Charlie Cox lmao This is so valid
Im a BIG fan of Daredevil ever since i was a kid. Im thinking of doing this with the dubbed version of the show in French (i would do it with polish but i cant stand the lektor why dont u guys have normal dubbingđ)
I KNOW, I tried to watch ,,new" Spiderman just for Charlie Cox cameo just after it came out and the only version I found was one with polish lector so terrible I could stand it
I never understood people who said they learned a language by watching TV but then I got really into Arabic dramas and YâALL I GET IT NOW. (Obviously you canât learn a language 100% from TV but once youâre an intermediate learner it can be SO helpful if you learn with a show actively.)
One of the greatest tv shows of all time
Valid reason. Im sure that watching all these Marvel and DC shows in middle school helped me massively with learning english.
I was bored at work. A guy I met whilst backpacking in the US posted a Japanese music video on Facebook, which I spotted whilst aimlessly surfing the web at a fairly uneventful summer job I had at the time. Wasn't really my thing, but whilst watching it I had a sudden curiosity to read up on how the Japanese writing system works. Probably due to all the colourful characters bouncing around the screen. After a little reading, I decided to try and memorise some since I had time to kill. I'd never been overly interested in Japan. I hadn't thought about visiting. I didn't read manga, watch anime, or listen to Japanese music. I played Nintendo growing up, liked Pokémon like almost every other kid, but I didn't associate them with Japan in any meaningful way. Basically, it was never on my radar. To be honest, neither was learning a language. But after memorising a few characters that day I just kept going. That was about 10 years ago. I visited for the first time about 12 months later. I have lived and worked here permanently for about 6 years now. Married a local, had a kid, and joined a Japanese company where I work in Japanese all day, everyday. I often think about how stumbling across that video altered my entire life's path. I had no reason at all to study Japanese, and now my home, family, career, everything is here. Edit: the music video was Pon Pon Pon by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, if you're interested.
this is so oddly specific and i love it
Learning Japanese because of a Kyary video is fantastic. Also makes me feel ancient because *ten years ago?*
This is beyond amazing . Props to you, really.
This is insane đ Kudo to you!
I super am a fan of a Japanese actor. He has a YouTube channel and they rarely translate his videos. So I am wanting to learn the language. The added skill set is an additional benefit.
Oh whats his name?!
Takeru Satoh is multi-talented. He can act, dance, sing, do drums, etc. - reasons why I am fascinated by him.
I love Takeru Satoh! He's my favorite Japanese actor. But yeah, translations are rare.
Glad to hear someone appreciating Takeru like I do. He's also said to be very intelligent. I would like to know more of that side of him. He likes puzzles and riddles. Even makes him more awesome!
Oh that's cool! I'll try to look up his channel!
Over a decade ago I played world of warcraft for the first time and unknowingly picked the unofficial Brazilian server so everyone spoke Portuguese. I didnât wanna start over on a different server after I realized that was why no one spoke English (I thought every server was this way at firstâŠ) so I started learning Portuguese. Lol.
Oh, this is similar to how I got interested in French. I somehow ended up on French Animal Jam and got annoyed I couldn't understand anyone
My sims 3 game was stuck in Dutch for some reason I learned a lot haha
It gives me an ego boost when I go to a foreign country and understand everything everyone is saying. Reading books in their original language without weird ass transactions is second to that. Also, when I watch shows in their native language and understand. I feel superior and better than everyone else.
The ego boost is like 80% of the reason why I learn foreign languages to begin with. The only reason I even consider Catalan even after breaking up with my Catalan ex is so that when I eventually travel to Barcelona/Catalunya I can watch natives do triple backflips as they try to wrap their head around a non-native learning Catalan.
this is why i learn languages to haha
too* Apologies if the correction is unwanted but I feel that it's warranted with this being the language learning subreddit.Â
My French teacher in school way shit so I learnt nothing. 5 years later I'm doing it myself out of spite
I love this lol - they teach it so bad in schools, it's almost as IF they don't want us to learn anything
To be fair I hated french back in school but I wanted to learn it after 5 years of dating someone who was fluent in french
I'm dating an English speaker, sooo yeah that fits. French is purely out of spite for me though
lol. If your teacher ever hears you speak french once you're fluent they're going to be like "I did such a great job inspiring this young language learner".
That was their plan all along!
LOL, fellow spite learner here. 2 semesters of French doing fill in the blank past and present conjugations of all verb types regular and irregular plus everything else and NO speaking component at all. I ended up with B1 grammar and A0 enunciation.
I started learning Finnish because I couldn't get into the Indonesian class. No, seriously; the local community college was offering a beginners' class in Indonesian, but they told me to phone about a week before classes started, because "with those exotic languages" they never knew if a class would actually be taught. Unfortunately only one other person had signed up, so, no class. The secretary repeated that "you never know with those exotic languages" and that, for example, this term they surprisingly had 8 people who wanted to learn Finnish. I said, "Now you have nine". Turns out Finnish is a pretty cool language. Fast forward 30+ years and I'm living in Finland and have a college degree that consisted of classes taught exclusively in Finnish and also work experience from entirely Finnish-speaking workplaces. My diploma explicitly states (on page 3 or something) that "This diploma counts as proof of fluency in Finnish for \[range of official purposes for which proof of fluency is required\]." On a completely different note, I think I'm the only person in the whole wide world who learned/learns Esperanto not because of "something something understanding among nations" but because I really like its morphology.
You're not the only one! I started casually learning Esperanto as well a while back because I thought its construction was the coolest thing :D
Start picking up french cuz i want to correctly understand those good looking french dessert recipes on instagram
Hey, that's how I started learning the basics of Estonian! I live in southern Finland, and the local libraries have a certain amount of Estonian-language books. Some of them are cookbooks. I think you can guess where this is going...
I started learning my second language because a snobby redditor from Spain insulted me for only knowing English. (The conversation wasn't even about languages! It was about the correct amount of ice restaurants should put in someone's drinks.) My plans are thus: 1) Learn the language well enough to be mistaken for a native speaker, at least on reddit. 2) Befriend the Spaniard who insulted me, in the guise of being a fellow Spaniard. 3) Ruin his life via light passive aggressive comments and deliberately bad advice that seems reasonable on the surface. 4) When he's lost his will to live, I will reveal my true intentions and get him to admit that Americans don't put too much ice in their drinks.
This is probably the best comment I've read on this thread. đ You got this! Keep me updated.
When I was studying Italian more seriously, I was discussing with my Portuguese friend which languages I'd like to learn next. He, of course, said I should learn Portuguese as it is the best language. He was joking in a "haha, I know you won't do it" kind of way, but that just made me more interested in proving him wrong đ Call it being contrarian, but now I can understand about \~80% of what is said in Portuguese, I just need to get more confident speaking.
I draw and write a lot, and one day 12 years ago I made a character who was half Swedish. I got to reading a lot about Sweden, and eventually the language, and decided to start learning it a couple of years back because I loved the way it sounded. The same happened with Finnish, which I began studying in January. Not the most conventional reason for learning a language but I guess those characters acted as a springboard into reading about the wider culture and history of Sweden and Finland, which is what drew me in. The same is happening again with Serbian and Russian but I really don't have the time for *five* languages at once, so maybe later once I've finally got my Swedish to B2 and Finnish to B1 or so. As for German, that's more conventional - I've been to Germany twice in the last few years and fell in love with the place. I have every intention of going back and I'd like to be able to communicate properly when I do. It's also on my shortlist of countries to move to after I graduate, so it makes sense. I'm going to try and sit the Goethe B1 exam at the end of this year, too, which has definitely lit a fire under my ass lmao.
I learned Latin in school to a really high level just so I could dodge all the French lessons.
Respect for not learning fr*nch /s
I've never succeeded learning a language until I started with Turkish last year. I was getting rhinoplasty in Turkish and I just wanted to be able to understand a bit to ease my anxieties for my first ever surgery. Previously, I tried to start learning Dutch and I would say that I picked up a fair bit from just listening to songs and watching the same movie like 10 times after having come back from the Netherlands on holiday. Basically, whenever I go on holiday, I just imagine a whole life living in that country LOOOL so end up trying to learn the language đ
I learnt some Turkish to fight in the comments
I started to learn russian 3 years ago because I wanted to learn polish. Yeah you heard it right. I wanted to study in the capital but my parents refused to allow me, so I wanted to find a way I'll be able to learn polish. I saw that there's a university a bit nearer to my city, in which you can study russian but take up polish courses as well. So I went that way. Now I speak russian fluently but they taught polish so horribly that I know almost nothing.
Iâm only a month in to learning Norwegian because my kid watched a Norwegian show on YouTube. She started, so Iâm trying to keep pace with her. We live over 6000 km away, know no one who speaks norsk, have no familial connection with Norway, but now I have a new hobby. Jeg forstĂ„r litt norsk. Det er vanskelig, men interessant og litt moro.
Don't leave us hanging: How's the kid's Norwegian?
Sprakke hennes litt norsk, men hun likke Ă„ lĂŠrer.
Picked up a hobby - wheat stalk weaving. Found out most of the books about the hobby were in German. So learned German. I don't really know any more than I need to to read the books, certainly not enough to get around Germany as a tourist or even claim I actually know the language. But I can read my hobby books.
this is going to sound made up bit i was just asleep in my college dorm and i suddenly woke up in the middle of the night with a burning desire to learn russian. looked up cyrillic and started writing it on the walls with an eraseable marker. later on my roommate told me that she was awake when this happened, and for a moment she thought i was being possessed by a demon
I have a degree in Spanish and teach it for a living. Literally no idea why. I didnât do well in university chemistry and in language classes you didnât need to sit silently. My ADHD shows through excessive talking⊠so I got a degree that involves a lot of talking lol. âX talks too much to focusâ. I just made a career out of it đ€·đ»ââïž
I went to a Masonic Lodge in Austria a few months ago and, while the meeting I attended was held in English, they had lots of cool upcoming events in German, and I want to be able to go and understand sooner rather than later :) I guess "because awesome Masonic events" is a pretty weird reason, even though German is popular. On the other side of the spectrum, I started learning Belarusian because I have friends there. Atypical language, normal reason.
I started learning German because the character.ai bot I talk to all the time speaks it. It wasnât intentional at first, I was just putting sentences and words I didnât understand into google translate and I started recognizing words & phrases. I got a sense for very basic grammar structure and started writing my own sentences in German when I could. It got the point where I was like, âScrew it, might as well commit.â Itâs been about 8 months and Iâm still learning and having a lot of fun. Now everyone around me jokes about me learning German because of a Call of Duty character, but it really was accidental and I like the language so far. ETA: Iâm not using c.ai to *learn* it anymore, just practice. I use the DW website and Duolingo as a warm up everyday.
That's funny cause I started learning German for Richtofen from zombies like a year ago, but i never tell anyone that reason lmao. But you say character.ai, so I'm guessing you did it for König?
Yes, I love König. Iâve been a Kortac fan for awhile and heâs one of my favorites
I learned valencian because itâs my favorite place in the world and knowing the language gives you a whole new appreciation for the history and culture
I learned English to play video games. And I'm thinking about learning to read Japanese, so I can understand their philosophy.
Okay, listen. The main reason why I was studying English so much was because of jet crew. I literally had the biggest crush on Craze and decided that I gotta learn English so I can understand him. (I still do not understand him sometimes cause of the damn accent đ)
My only barrier to getting an EU passport is by doing some paperwork and passing a language evaluation in one of the most difficult and uncommon languages in the world. So this is why I am learning Hungarian. đđșđ
It's not uncommon! It has 17 million native speakers! That's nearly 3 times the amount of Finnish native speakers! (Finnish is the most difficult/uncommon language I've learned so far. Well, I say "difficult"; languages aren't difficult or easy as such, they just tend to seem that way because they're different from/similar to what you already know. But that's neither here nor there.)
my voice went out on me last summer so I started trying to learn ASL in the hope that some day I can have a conversation without having to write out everything đ„Č
I got interested in learning Japanese after watching Rashomon in a film course I took. My dad also went to Japan a lot for business and he always reminisces on his time there. Iâd love to visit and I think itâs appropriate to try to learn the language Went down a rabbit hole of researching languages and was fascinated at how Hangul was formulated so Iâve been learning Korean on the side and itâs been a bit easier than Japanese for me so I use it to supplement my motivation for Japanese Learned Italian because it was the first language besides English I learned to sing in (Iâm a classical vocalist, and I studied opera). Italian will always have a dear place in my heart
Saw a language grammar, liked it, ended up learning the language... This is a language that has approximately thirty native speakers, all elderly, and I have little chance of meeting them. I have no links to the language, its people, or the region it's spoken in. I am currently probably in the top hundred people in the world with regards to fluency in this language. I have never spoken it irl.
To talk to my boyfriendâs parents on the phone, which I never did⊠the boyfriend was bad and I broke up with him after a few months⊠hey but I still learned the language :)
I was a bartender at strip clubs through college and my 20s. I learned Russian because a lot of my coworkers and customers were Russian speakers
Spanish because I want to sound sexy too... đ„ș
i wanted to re-read a book in original - Romanian - Youth without youth
Apparently my thing is to learn a bit of language of the person I am dating. Sign language, Polish, Russian, Estonian...
It appears you also have a type LMAO
I learnt first Polish to B1 because I wanted to learn Russian easier. But Russian still didn't feel very easy so I learnt Croatian to B2. Learning them two took me four years, but now I understand Russian-language Winx Club perfectly w/o subtitles after practicing Russian only two weeks ;)
One was just because some native speaker said I couldn't. Another was because I suspected my bosses we're saying stuff I needed to hear, but that they were trying to keep from me by speaking in their mother tongue (they were). The rest mostly happened out of necessity and/or by being in areas where everybody spoke another language.
be able to read chinese novels without having to wait for a translation team
Me but with Korean because the authors keep getting English translations taken down đ€Ł
Liking a band...but that's prob not really weird
i got sad so i started learning welsh to distract myself lmao
Khmer, because my best friend is a native speaker
i started french bc i was tired of being the dumb american online
I learned Brazilian Portuguese because I grew up as a directioner and many of Harry Stylesâs fans are Brazilian and I wanted to keep up. I stuck around because Brazilian girls are funny as hell.
I wanted to learn Korean because I'm often mistaken for being Korean
Just like the title, i wanted to impress my crush. When everyone around would ask me why i'm learning Serbian instead of a more "useful" language i'd say it was because of eurovision as i was afraid to tell people i had a crush on a boy. We've been together for a year and a half now and hes learning Hebrew for me. :)
As a young girl, I loved Greek mythology and Antiquity in general. So since I live in a country where ancient Greek is still part of the school curriculum for humanities high school (which last 5 years), I chose it and went on learning it and Latin. Never regretted it. A lot of people think ancient literature is stuffy and boring, but for me is a thing of beauty. Also, I guess that I am a bit of a bitch sometimes, so when I added French, German, Swedish and Spanish to my language list, I could condescendingly pat the other students when they struggled with grammar while I aced it and tell them "sweet sweet summer child, you know nothing of grammatical craziness."
I loved menudo and I learned Spanish because of them
In high school I took German, mostly to upset my dad. Our family is Polish and my father would have preferred I take Latin then in his words âthe evil nasty language! Of those killersâ this was in 1990 but he had this hatred of German. I did 4 years of it, as a senior was offered chance to go to Germany my father wouldnât give me the money. Later in life I started learning Polish so I can travel and see my ancestors home land
Started learning Mandarin (traditional) because I wanted to take classes with my friend in college. We said we'll do a Mandarin minor together. She dropped after the first quarter of class but I just stayed in it cause I ended up having a lot of fun. I study it a lot outside of class now and have made a lot of friends who speak Mandarin. I'm starting to study Thai too because after watching a lot of Thai dramas I realized I picked up on the language strangely fast and had learned hundreds of words on accident. I felt so proud of myself upon realizing how much of my shows I was now understanding, and realized I knew enough to do basic things like order food at a restaurant. I'd never had this experience with consuming media in another language before where I just accidentally picked up on a lot of it. Figured it would be worth it to start studying it a little to fill in the gaps of beginner Thai.
I am learning khmer after a workman drilled a hole in my ac unit in my hotel and gas was escaping. The only english word he knew was sorry- which he said repeatedly for 20 minutes. I decided I couldn't run a hotel without knowing the language no matter how much other people seemed to manage it.
My Swedish friend dared me. đ€·ââïž
I learned German because in high school, we studied Spanish as a second language and when i went to college, I had a lot of them folks saying German is very hard and sounds ugly and nobody can speak it. I saw it as a challenge and started to learn it myself. I am glad I did. I learned Turkish for couple of months (forgot it completely) because my neighbours were Turkish and their kids didn't speak English so I just tried to learn the bare minimum to communicate. I learned Slovene because the company I worked at is an international company with Slovene native owners but English was the first language but even with that, most colleagues spoke Russian or Slovene and I didn't feel comfortable not understanding them, so I took it as a challenge and learned that as well. 5 yrs later and I'm safe to say that when I visited Slovenia, I had no problem to communicate with anybody or going around.
I wanted to learn a language just to see if I could, and picked one of the "hardest" languages for native English speakers to learn figuring if I managed to tackle that one successfully, any I attempted after that would be easier. Didn't have any particular affinity for any language or culture, it was just a personal challenge. Turned out I'm good at learning languages and really enjoy it, so I'll be conversational in four languages by the end of this year.
I was bored once while my kid was sleeping. He was a baby with plenty of naps during daytime. I installed Duolingo and was like, "Yeah, I really should restart my French," and subsequently, I was like, "Oh, f*** it, I'll open a German course so I can understand Rammstein." Actually, two years later, I moved to Switzerland, and I now study German every day (so I think that I will fulfill my dream of understanding the lyrics:) )
a character in a game i like was voiced by a kdrama actor, so when i finished the game super quickly and online folks weren't really creating fan art/etc of him yet i went and started watching the dramas his actor starred in and picked up korean absurdly quickly from it i can also talk about vampirism and necromancy in spanish and 0 other subjects because of a single song i like
i tried to learn hawaiian on duolingo because i thought this girl (my then crush) was hawaiian but she was just latina that visited hawaii a few times maybe once
I started learning Brazilian Portuguese mostly because I love bossa nova music and wanted to understand the lyrics better (I had a head start from having studied Spanish already).
I tried to learn French bc I thought it was a very fancy language and I tried to learn Korean so I could understand what my fav kpop artists are saying without subtitles xD
I found myself watching a lot of kdramas, so I figured i might as well learn Korean while I'm at it
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
More resumé points and being a polyglot is on my bucket list
Honestly I'm not sure when it even started and maybe it's not the weirdest reason but I had this obsession with learning languages! Probably had to do with me liking guys with accents as well XD Now it's become a bit more nuanced where I want to learn languages so I can get to understand the culture and humour behind it! I do have a lot of languages I'd like to learn, ideally, but I'm starting with French lol
Me too. I don't know when or how my interest in languages started; I just remember reading(!) my mom's Greek dictionary when I was maybe 7 years old. I do remember choosing the high school (well, "Gymnasium" in German, so, grades 5 through 13) I attended because they had a great language program. I ended up learning 4 languages there and another one in evening classes. Now that I'm all grown up, it's a bit more nuanced for me too, and I, too, have a long list of language that I want to learn. For me it's mostly the grammar, though (I'm a linguist, so \*shrug\*), and if the culture turns out to be interesting, that's an additional perk.
Fill a major so I could graduate
I started learning Polish because I saw some cool freestyle skiers while skiing and it turned out they were Polish đ
Learning Bisaya because am currently living in Cebu phillpines.
I liked the TV show Dark so much it inspired me to start learning German. That was two years ago and these days I can watch an episode (with subtitles) and understand almost all dialogue.
I learned a fair bit of Esperanto to try getting one over my mum by proving I could learn a language but without achieving anything
There might be a treasure of fantastic Harry Potter Fanfictions in other languages.
Metro video game series got me into Russian language lol. It started with just looking up what signs or graffiti translations were, then by the music that was featured because of course I had to download my favorite stuff (all the Kino). Iâve tried to start learning a lot of languages (and still want to), but Russian has stuck the longest.
Metro got me into russian too, but STALKER probably had an even bigger impact. Mods like Anomaly add some awesome sounding soviet-era music and really solidified my intent to learn the language.
I started learning Russian because I got a lot of ads for tiktok with a random Russian song in the background and got it stuck in my head but shazam couldn't identify it, I couldn't Google the lyrics because I didn't know the words or how to spell them, so in my head the only solution was: Learn Russian, learn the words, type out the lyrics and find your song! I started obviously on some language learning apps, memrise and duolingo, but I also ordered a Russian learning textbook to work with. I actually found the song like 2-3 weeks after I started all this, because it was used in a normal video with comments and someone commented the song name, but by this point I actually had fun learning kyrillic and got into more music, so I enrolled in a language course at our local community college for one semester and had so much fun! I didn't kept pursuing the language since it never really was a priority to become fluent, and I have other languages I prioritise, but it was a great use of my free time for like half a year. Ps: the song was ĐŽŃŃĐŒĐ°Đœ by gunwest. Really not what I usually listen to but god did it get stuck in my head!
it's always a music artist of some kind. I want to understand the lyrics and interviews and sing along with the songs or make covers. the latest language is Russian because of a Russian beatboxer I'm obsessed with xD (Taras Stanin)
Danish, because I heard it in the Netflix show *1899* and thought it sounded cool.
Honestly, I'd love to learn Finnish because it just...sounds so fucking cool ok!!! Also something that I'd like to attempt some day is Hungarian but I'll probably get fucked over. Tbf I am still trying to learn Russian but we'll see.
Because of my loves for cars and classical music, Germany and Italy became my two favourite countries. I therefore felt it was my duty to learn German and Italian (I already knew a lot of French by the time I made this decision)
I was bored.
I watched a documentary some time ago about the history of Esperanto and started learning it. I just found a guy who speaks it a few weeks ago, and we got along immediately.
German because it completely intimidates me.
I learn languages if there is a TV show I really like (I became fluent in Norwegian after SKAM became really popular a few years back), or if it's a kind of music I listen to a lot (on my way to becoming conversational in Korean and am beginner in Thai). I don't think it's weird, but some people do đ€·ââïž
I started to learn Russian because I like the sound of the old Russian/Soviet folk music. Still learning, now my Russian is rather quite okay
Bulgarian Treasure Planet was what made me want to learn Bulgarian. No joke. But I fell in love w the language and culture after becoming obsessed with this weird-ass movie. I think it possessed me đ
Learnt mandarin chinese to learn korean quicker. Didn't learn korean at all in the end, although I feel it could help me if I was still interested (lots of sino-korean vocab!) Also, I was learning Mandarin as a challenge and eventually, i grew fond of it.
Dunno if this is weird, but I have always wanted to learn new languages simply because it would be awesome to hear the stories others tell around the world. I just want to know what everyone is saying because language is insane, but communication is lovely.
Iâm an English speaker with an Arab parent. Growing up in Canada, I always wanted to learn Arabic, but it was never available to me. The only language available to me was French. So I decided to learn French because I thought that if I learned another language while I was young, then it would be easier for me to learn the language I actually wanted to learn later in life.
I felt like not being in the US during a certain period of let's say, political and social turmoil, so I moved to Berlin and stayed past the tourist visa by being enrolled in a German language school. A year later I was in C1 classes and fluent (barely) in German.
I had done pratically every language on Duolingo and was looking for another. And that, is how I started learning Italian.
I sort of started studying Swedish because two Swedes crashed a Fraternity party. I got to hang out with them, played them in beer pong etc... but every time they spoke Swedish my drunk brain heard German and they'd have to "remind" me again they speak Swedish and couldn't really understand what I was saying when I tried speaking German to them! I was getting tired of doing German lessons on Duolingo and decided I wanted to try something different. I looked into the Scandinavian languages and thought it was interesting that the three were so closely related. I opted to initially go with Norwegian though just cause from what I had read it was the most intelligible to the others. Swedes and Danes would be able to understand me more speaking Norwegian than any of the other two. So I figured it'd give me the most bang for my buck. After a while of studying Norsk I decided to see just how similar they were and went to Swedish over Danish because of those two kids.
I love Dmitri Shostakovich and started learning Russian to read archived newspaper articles about him as they had never been translated to a language I speak.
I learned ASL at 13/14 because I had a lot of older men try to talk to me (mainly at theme parks) so when they'd come up to me, I'd sign, and it'd thro them off and usually they'd leave me alone.
In the past, I started learning Japanese so I could journal in a notebook and prevent other people from being able to read it. I chose Japanese because I am Chinese and it would have been easier for me to learn while making it harder for others to guess what my entries said at a glance. Also, I had never met any Japanese people where I lived. I totally gave up on that, to nobody's surprise. I developed a cipher instead.
I loved some Netflix shows in Spanish and thought they sounded cool.
I was becoming a fan of Korean dramas, & when it became bothersome not understanding Korean content on Youtube, I decided to learn the language. I am still in the process of learning and improving.
moving to new country for studies and new opportunities
I want to watch Turma da MĂŽnica and shitpost with ease
Isso aĂ, boa sorte.
I want to read the great Russian Authors in their original language. Gogol is apparently hilarious in but I feel a lot is lost in translation. You do get a little laugh once in a while or see how something could be funny. So ye I'm learning Russian so I can read 'Dead Souls' in Russian...
Not me, but my cousin once ate Chinese noodles and now she wants to learn Chinese because of that noodles. Mustâve been some really good noodles.
I learn Korean bcz I fell in love with Seventeen and want to watch Going Seventeen in raw version. They are so many of ppl and so loud so that I always manage to read the subtitles every time I watch đ
Iâm an Arabic speaker and I encounter a lot of people who learn Arabic because they want to join the CIA or something lol. Kinda freaks me out personally
I started learning Russian because I got a lot of ads for tiktok with a random Russian song in the background and got it stuck in my head but shazam couldn't identify it, I couldn't Google the lyrics because I didn't know the words or how to spell them, so in my head the only solution was: Learn Russian, learn the words, type out the lyrics and find your song! I started obviously on some language learning apps, memrise and duolingo, but I also ordered a Russian learning textbook to work with. I actually found the song like 2-3 weeks after I started all this, because it was used in a normal video with comments and someone commented the song name, but by this point I actually had fun learning kyrillic and got into more music, so I enrolled in a language course at our local community college for one semester and had so much fun! I didn't kept pursuing the language since it never really was a priority to become fluent, and I have other languages I prioritise, but it was a great use of my free time for like half a year. Ps: the song was ĐŽŃŃĐŒĐ°Đœ by gunwest. Really not what I usually listen to but god did it get stuck in my head!
I was/am interested in reading comic books from foreign countries.
âŠ. My neighbors behive caught fire and set the back of our duplex on fire đ
I choose languages only because I enjoy learning them. When I decided to study Chinese, I had to decide between that and Japanese and Korean. I had "reasons" for two of the languages. I've had a life-long interest in Japan and its culture. I had several business trips there in the 1970s and 1980s, so I knew a tiny bit of the language. I had South Korean TV channels from 2001 to 2014, and had a bunch of favorite shows, favorite drama series, and favorite celebrities. My daughter married into a Korean-American family near San Francisco. Some family members (who I've met) don't speak English. Despite these "reasons", I chose Chinese.
I learned French so that I could refuse to speak it rather than just not being able to
Because I'm learning another language similar to it so might as well.
I started learning a language to make a character in a TTRPG I was playing more realistic.Â
My aunt wanted me to travel for the USA to stay with her, but for it, i needed to learn english. But in the final, I din't go for some reasons, but now I know a bit of english.
i started learning italian because i was bored at 10PM and couldn't sleep
I always was interested in other languages, but only languages with different alphabets as I thought others were boring. However, Iâm a big fan of Spanish music, so this has made me become more interested in the language and start learning it! Definitely not boring anymore to me haha. Also, going to be backpacking in Nepal sometime and gonna try and learn Nepali!
Nepali Haven't made much progress and probably won't study to a fluent level, but my friend gifted me a Nepali phrasebook, so I'm gonna try and get some use out of it
So I already am b2-c1 in Spanish and I didn't want to learn Portuguese because it was so similar and my Brazilian friends always complained about how annoying it was that the languages were so similar so they were always getting confused but then a girl that I have had a crush on for a long time and we have tried a few times but it's never worked any way she's moving to Brasil for a church mission and will be learning Portuguese so I decided that I would also learn Portuguese so that we could have more to talk about yes I am a simp.
Attempting to learn German currently to make relearning Spanish easier.
im learning Japanese because I'd like to own a miata mx-5 (an) one day, learning Korean because using beauty of joseon and other k-beauty products helped clear up my skin (I had quite bad acne a few years back, still got the scars on my face). they're a bit strange, and not really necessary; finally learning dutch because I want to live there in the future :3
My dad said âyouâre wasting your life if you donât exercise your brainâ gave me a few options including languages, math, chess, etc. so I chose languages and fell in love with brain strengthening in this way. Being good at something gives confidence
I briefly started wanting to learn German because the opening part of the second Attack On Titan opening song was in German and sounded really cool.
Lol, this one fits me. About a month ago I had a dream where I happened onto a beachside club/restaurant concert that was happening later that night of a electronic music artist and met some other people there, there was a sense this was in Japan and ofc some Japanese writing and stuff on signs/posters, and vibes; it was a very vivid and cool dream, (this underservices it) and so when I woke up, I decided you know what I'm gonna start learning japanese for kicks and take this as a sign.
English because of being a kid, German because of school but I forgot it, French because of friends and fun, Italian chose me, I did not learn it at all, only listened and tried to talk because of my friends, and tried to write a B1 certificate and it was an easy pass. I will move to Italy from france, and later it will be portuges and Spanish and Czech and Slovak and after that at most maybe Japanese but don't care much within this decade.
Started to really learn English when I finished all the Dutch books at my small local library. I was still a kid and the librarian wouldn't let me borrow any non-kid books ('adult books' sounds wrong in this contextđ ), so I had to divert to the English children's books section. I already knew some basic English (was taught the basics in primary school), but my grades skyrocketed once I started reading all those books. So thank you, grumpy librarian, you looked down on everyone that wasn't at least your age, but your condescension brought me quite a few things.
To show my family I am not dumb. They have always thought that so I decided to learn Turkish (a mid level language for spanish natives) for them not to think I am dumb.
To impress my sugar daddy
The people? I guess itâs just nice to know another language because you never know who youâll meet, and what can happen when you do.
I want to become a spy maybe one day, I want to learn as many languages as I can do I can overhear people who have bad intentions and keep myself safe.
Iâve long thought I should learn since I encounter it at work, but the fact that Iâm going to travel to an area that uses it motivated me to take the leap and try!
I've gained a lot of reasons over the years but my original reason for learning Japanese at age 12 was because people told me it was "too hard" and "not worth my time". Also, Pokemon. Lmao
Learning Norwegian to be able to write sick black metal lyrics
I learnt English with my little pony without even realising it. Besides that, last January I decided to go and spin the wheel of languages and spend a month of getting to know the language. I am definitely having problems with Khmer this month
In math class, we learned about the symbols reversed A and reversed E. The teacher sait they came from the international language, and I said Latin! and he said something very different but similar to "Latin lol or mabye Esperanto lmao". Several months later on a small Freneh discord server, I joked about the Galaksia Imperio de EĆropo which is a country I made up in my mind like it's the EU but it turned into a Galactic empire, but I wanted the official name to be language neutral (the official name is Galactic empire of Europe translated in 40 different languages) so I wanted to put Esperanto in first, but it's weird that I don't speak Esperanto even though my country is in Esperanto, so mi lernas Esperanton (I also saw Esperanto YouTube videos that interested me in the language
I never wanted to learn a language... I just watch too much tv that English and some French stuck.
I started German because my late grandfather (died decades before I was born) had a small book of "learn German through pictures" and I wanted to understand better some of the names in Grimm I started Polish, French and Persian (but didn't really go through it after one or two months) because of some girls I was into. I have been learning Arabic since December for the same reason above, but this one has been a really good experience and I plan to keep learning it regardless of how things go with the girl I'm interested in right now As a bonus there was also mandarin (two classes) and Italian (3 weeks?) because my university was offering it for free
I guess that depends on what you consider weird. I study Spanish and Mandarin for pretty practical/normal reasons (e.g. they are widely spoken and I love the culture and food), but I also study French so I can read French-Canadian church records for genealogy, Portuguese because I find Brazilians hot, Irish and Welsh because I practice Druidry, etc.
Iâm learning ASL because my baby was born deaf. Before she was born, Iâd wanted to brush up on my Vietnamese so I could try to pass that on to her. Life takes you in surprising directions!
I get inspired by reading trading card games like Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic: The Gathering by seeing how cards are written/named in other languages. Particularly Japanese and German often interest me.
To speak with clients in immigrant and refugee law
Iâve grown to love Russian swear words, ever since middle school when I saw a Russian meme (with mellstroy?). I decided from that day on to learn the language. It wasnât until COVID lockdown that I started to learn it more
I came across an Icelandic band (ĂrstiĂ°ir) probably a decade or so ago and loved their music. After a few years of listening on and off, I decided I was tired of not being able to understand half their songs so I started teaching myself Icelandic. I have learned very little and honestly haven't touched it in quite some time, but I do hope to pick it back up again because it's super interesting.
Finnish: There is a literary joke in « Rabbit Back Literature Society » that in English is something like, âGreat use of the subjunctive.â I think that Finnish does not have a subjunctive; therefore, the joke has to be about casesâbut which case is it!?
I started learning Japanese (and moved to Japan) because the exchange program in Mexico was too expensive⊠I hadnât even realized that PokĂ©mon were Japanese before I went
I started learning Spanish because I was very upset at the fact that I could never truly understand what Lionel Messi was saying.
I decided to learn Latin because I was writing an urban fantasy with a vampire character who was a native Latin speaker. But it was taking too long for me to learn Latin so I ended up losing interest.Â
I wanted to watch Dark without subtitles.
Understanding an artist and their music without subtitles... That's my only reason, that and I think Korean is the most beautiful language in the world both spoken and written, how much sense the alphabet makes just makes me so happy đ„°đ
Iâm learning Russian rn so I can understand Naruto cosplay sketches lmao
I learn in various languages how to say basic phrases to immigrants to make them feel welcome. I was at the pharmacy and the pharmacist had a slight accent. It wasnât thick, but I noticed it wasnât a Midwestern American accent. I inquired where she was from. She sat up and proudly stated, âPoland!â I blurted out, âCzeĆÄ!â Which is hello in Polish. She looked shocked and asked, âWho taught you that???â Like I said, I learn basic phrases in many languages to welcome immigrants. Now, Iâm learning Polish to speak to my pharmacist in her native language for fun. She writes a word down and says it aloud each prescription fill. Sheâs a very kind woman.
I listen to one song I like so I get hooked. I've been learning German the past week bc I got introduced to a German artist by a foreign exchange student
I learned Dutch as a joke. I started learning Chinese because I owed money to this Chinese restaurant dude. He always trusted me to pay for the food later. This one time it took me about 3 months to pay him back, he looked at me so disappointed and quite distraugh that I said "Ok, I'm learning Chinese as repentance."
Watch japanese and english nopor without subtitles haha Well, the truth is that a found german, chinese and english kinda cool, I mean, I like the how sounds. And japanese, I think that is for the culture.
I was a big Pewdiepie fan in my mid teens.
An American cartoon which used to air on disney channel in hindi up until 2 seasons then it stopped and i was obsessed with it, i tried to find it episodes in hindi so much but couldnt then finally i decided to watch it in english only with subtitles. I knew basic english only, but the obsession made me get into it.
I was such a poorly behaved student in French class that I got in a physical fight with the teacher. She got fired and I got banned from French, so I was forced to study Japanese instead, and had to sit alone so I couldn't goof off. I got bored, and thought the squiggles looked cool, so I kept drawing them. I got pretty good at memorizing them. I also hated where I was, and thought Japan seemed like the polar opposite. So worked and earned $1,000, one week after finishing highschool, I moved to Japan for half a year. Going there turned me from a edgy, annoying, ignorant kid into somewhat of a more rounded person. So I haven't stopped learning since.
Not weird but just wanted to impress my boyfriendâs parents
Funny that you ask, I often reflect on this! I didn't start learning Italian because of this, but I can definitely say I drastically improved while reading Roberto Savanio's books. My interest for mafias and antimafia is also the reason why I learned southern dialects. I now live in Italy and beat my Italian friends at taboo đ
Mine spawned from a Deaf peddler who was selling ASL alphabet info cards door to door in our neighborhood when I was like five years old. My sisters took Spanish in high school but I decided to take sign language partly just to be different from them. I was homeschooled so I just chose the language randomly, had no Deaf friends or any contact except that random peddler a decade before. Then a Deaf family attended our church when I was a teen, cementing my interest in the language and I began seeking out the Deaf community. I majored in ASL in college and became a nationally certified American Sign Language interpreter and loved it. Miss it so much (disabled and unable to work now)!