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From:

yuuago

Ah, I see! Yeah, studying when you're on your own is very difficult... At least with a class, there is some structure. Whereas on your own, it's like - after work, the last thing I want to do is study, and it's hard to carve out the time for that.

Working on the ones that you already know might be good. Or it might be good to try something new. I guess it partly depends on what your relationship is with the ones that you have already learned. That is - do you enjoy them, are you interested in them, are there materials in that language that you would like to consume (books/movies/etc), that sort of thing. Because that can help a lot, but if you aren't enjoying it and aren't interested in it, then it can be frustrating. (Frustrating = my experience with French. I spent several years on it, but is a hate-hate relationship.)

What languages are you interested in trying?

(Also, pff. There is no need to worry about that; I mean, you come off as perfectly normal. And I like talking to people. But! If you prefer to be anon, that's okay.)

From: (Anonymous)

I have learned Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and German. I have gotten farthest in Spanish, and I definitely plan on working on that these days. I want to be able to read books, understand movies, and carry a meaningful conversation in Spanish without having to stop and pause too much. And yes, I definitely enjoy the Spanish language; I especially like how it sounds when sung (thank you, La Oreja de Van Gogh).

I heard that DuoLingo is a good free site to practice language.

new languages I'd like to learn:
Serbo-Croatian
Italian
Estonian
Latvian

But I also really want to master Mandarin (which my family speaks) and German first...

I listen to music in a bunch of languages, and when I listen to a lot of stuff in a particular language, I'm more likely to want to learn that language. And when I get a real job, I plan on studying singing. The interesting thing about singing is that pronunciation often has to adapt to fit the flow of the song as well as to get optimal vocal volume. And it's cool to see how that plays out in different languages.

From:

yuuago

Ah, Mandarin, German, and Spanish all sound great! And it's good that you have motivations and interest in pursuing that. Another advantage is that those languages have lots of resources available for them (at least, Spanish and German yes, I don't know about Mandarin but I would assume so?), whereas with some of the ones on your to-learn list, it might be hard to find materials.

I haven't tried DuoLingo myself, but some of my friends use it. It sounds like a great way to start, though from what they have said, eventually you hit a point where it is less useful and you'll have to turn to other methods (books etc).

Ahh you have a good point about listening to music in the languages too! That can definitely help. Though me, I have such a hard time understanding sung Norwegian, aldfkjkdff. Spoken in general, that's hard....

From: (Anonymous)

It sounds like a great way to start, though from what they have said, eventually you hit a point where it is less useful and you'll have to turn to other methods (books etc).

Oh. Maybe I'm beyond that point. But a refresher wouldn't hurt...

On another note, when I saw some Danish words/phrases/sentences, and listened to the pronunciations, these were thoughts that went through my mind:

"Did they skip over that g?"
"Why does that 'd' sound like an 'l'?"
"Okay...I'm trying to figure out the logic behind their numbers...I think this is making me dizzy."

From:

yuuago

Yeah, probably the best way to know for sure would be to try it and see where you can go with it. Since it's free, you won't lose anything. And at the very least, it'll be a useful refresher.

Also LOL yes, Danish is so... I don't even know what. In fact, in some ways it reminds me of French, because nothing is spelled the way that it sounds, and they seem to swallow a lot of the sounds. And the number system is... well. I'm glad I didn't try to learn Danish.

From: (Anonymous)

Yes! French was one of my first thoughts. hahahaha.

In fact, a team did this: http://infosthetics.com/archives/2012/06/silenc_highlighting_the_silent_letters_in_danish_english_and_french.html

where the silent letters are put in red. And then when viewed through red filters, those letters disappear. With Danish, 32% of the letters disappear.

From:

yuuago

Dude! That's cool. And visually interesting. I like it.

I think the "disappearing sounds" might be partly why French didn't click with me, and why I preferred Spanish (though I only studied it one year). Of course there are some silent sounds in Spanish too, but not so much that... disappears, at least not from what I remember.

From: (Anonymous)

btw, I haven't seen it in your posts as far as I've looked, but how do you pronounce your username?

From:

yuuago

It's "You-a go". (Sort of like "It's-a Me, Mario"). That's it. ;p

From: (Anonymous)

yeah, only the 'h' is silent in Spanish. If that project was done for Spanish, most of the text would remain intact!

I came across this video, which gives a hilarious 'explanation' of how Danish came about, from a Norwegian point of view. A 'funny, yet wildly inaccurate, history lesson', as he puts it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqgRC5sfCaQ

From:

yuuago

AHH I'd seen that 'history lesson' around but hadn't actually watched it until now. alksdjfkdfkffffff Oh, man. Yes, clearly that's the explanation: permanent slurring. ;p (I could actually understand some of the Norwegian, ahhhh I'm so happy.)

I should find a way to use this in a meme roleplay thread somehow.

From: (Anonymous)

Well, "Papaoutai" is "Papa où t'es" phonetically spelled. Now I'm wondering what if we phonetically spelled English titles as one word...

Years ago I really wanted to learn French; I thought it sounded really nice, but other priorities took place.

Oh, and I think I made some sense out of the Danish numbers from 50 to 99. Basically:

30 = 3x10
40 = 4x10
50 = 2.5x20
60 = 3x20
70 = 3.5x20
80 = 4x20
90 = 4.5x20

But then it begs the question of why the inconsistency? Why combine base 10 and base 20?

This is taking me back to my number theory days; I'm looking up different number base systems and just learned that there's even a negative base system!

From:

yuuago

If we phonetically spelled English titles as one word... Some of them would look really silly.

Occasionally I think about picking up French again but argh, I'm just not invested enough to bother.

As for Danish - yeahhh those numbers make sense, but I don't want to do any math just to count 8V

From: (Anonymous)

Sung English can be hard to understand. :P

A cool thing that some people have done is if there is the same song in more than one language, they sync them together, putting one on the left speaker and the other on the right speaker, so you hear both languages at once, in a duet, but they don't muddle each other up too much.

From: (Anonymous)

Guess what? I checked out a CD from my local library; it's the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Baltic Voices 1. They sing songs in Estonian, Latvian, English, German, and Spanish. :D

From:

yuuago

Neat!

The mention of Spanish threw me for a loop. It's not one I would have expected.

From: (Anonymous)

Well, those particular pieces were based off poems by Federico Garcia Lorca and the music was written by Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara.

I find that in classical styles of singing, sometimes all languages start sounding the same if I'm not paying close enough attention lol.