discussion What languages have you studied / want to study in 2025?

[sugarysunflower]

My goal is to get stuck into one of or a combo of German, Mandarin, M/S Arabic and/or Russian. Started German and Arabic in 2023 and dropped them, in favour of Italian and Spanish. 
 

How about yourself? (computer languages included) 
 

Interested to see responses particularly from those who've learned ab initio as opposed acquisition due to your mother tongue or country you live in.

 

(I should have done a poll or some sort, but nearly all the responses are Russian, French and Japanese. Particularly the latter. I wonder why that is). 

Edited 12 hours ago by sugarysunflower

[Attitude]

I want to catch up on my Japanese. 

[swifthino]

i'll try to perfect my accent while speaking english and also i want to get back to learning japanese

[dumbsparce]

I've kinda mastered english, french and russian. I don't think I have the patience and capacity for another one right now. I might give japanese a shot though 

[Escape]

Japanese

[aotearoa]

french 

 

 

[Taste of Honey]

I majored in a Romance language back in college but really got back into it recently.  I am probably C1+ so was def at a place where I got pretty lazy about it since I can understand most of the media I like. I want to pick up studying another Romance language, and also get back to studying Korean and Japanese one day. 

[Swine]

I already have C2 in English, but I've decided that trying to improve it much further is actually way more useful for me than trying to learn a third language. There's still quite some English words I come across while reading articles or books that I don't know. Words like paragon, nostrum, perforce, senescence. I look them up and save them in Anki, a flashcard app based on a spaced repetition algorithm. After 4 months I have 273 words on my list, which tbh is quite a lot. If it keeps going at this rate I could learn thousands of new English words in the span of multiple years without taking this too seriously.

 

I'm also still learning Russian, though it's just really difficult to learn a language when you're not actually constantly exposed to it, and I'm not sure if learning a new language is as useful to me as, say, learning a programming language, or getting better at investing.

[Wicked]

Haitian Creole and Japanese so I can finally communicate with my in laws in their native languages lol

[sugarysunflower]

10 minutes ago, Swine said:

I already have C2 in English, but I've decided that trying to improve it much further is actually way more useful for me than trying to learn a third language. There's still quite some English words I come across while reading articles or books that I don't know. Words like paragon, nostrum, perforce, senescence. I look them up and save them in Anki, a flashcard app based on a spaced repetition algorithm. After 4 months I have 273 words on my list, which tbh is quite a lot. If it keeps going at this rate I could learn thousands of new English words in the span of multiple years without taking this too seriously.

 

I'm also still learning Russian, though it's just really difficult to learn a language when you're not actually constantly exposed to it, and I'm not sure if learning a new language is as useful to me as, say, learning a programming language, or getting better at investing.

As a native English speaker I've never encountered the word 'perforce' before. That's an interesting process you're describing. Do you have an objective in mind to solidify your fluency beyond what I would consider a native's stretched capacity or do you do this for leisure? 
 

Investing is as easy or as complex as you want it to be: either through lower-risk passive investment options or taking an active investment approach which is more high-risk but perhaps higher-gain. 
 

and I asked programming due to it's current and future alongside AI-models running computer programs. 

[toast]

Studied French for 5 years then had a 10 year gap of formal lessons. Started practicing again w Duolingo like a month ago and want to keep it up in 2025. Also want to start Spanish.

[Jotham]

I've been studying Spanish and I want to intensify my studying next year by watching Spanish movies and listening to Spanish podcasts.

 

I'm also considering learning Latin as a fun little side project. I took it in middle school but haven't studied it since, but I have been curious about studying it again because I find the language fascinating plus it's been pretty useful for learning Romance languages.

[Swine]

1 hour ago, sugarysunflower said:

As a native English speaker I've never encountered the word 'perforce' before. That's an interesting process you're describing. Do you have an objective in mind to solidify your fluency beyond what I would consider a native's stretched capacity or do you do this for leisure? 
 

Investing is as easy or as complex as you want it to be: either through lower-risk passive investment options or taking an active investment approach which is more high-risk but perhaps higher-gain. 
 

and I asked programming due to it's current and future alongside AI-models running computer programs. 

I just enjoy learning new things and having a complete understanding of things. I sometimes enjoy reading slightly more archaic or wordy texts (i.e. primary readings from philosophers, books written by 20th century economists), and I've noticed there's a lot of words that I thought I had an idea of what they meant but actually don't. I also do think that all words have their own nuance, and a wider vocabulary gives you the tools to think about topics (and about yourself) with more depth and more precision. But overall I don't even expect to use these words myself, they have little utility unless I want to show off. It's mostly just a nice way to expand my vocabulary "on the side" and work on language acquisition that doesn't feel as purposeless as learning a new language usually does for me.

Edited 11 hours ago by Swine

[sugarysunflower]

28 minutes ago, Jotham said:

I've been studying Spanish and I want to intensify my studying next year by watching Spanish movies and listening to Spanish podcasts.

 

I'm also considering learning Latin as a fun little side project. I took it in middle school but haven't studied it since, but I have been curious about studying it again because I find the language fascinating plus it's been pretty useful for learning Romance languages.

I studied Latin in school as well. It's been such a massive help for English, French and Italian, especially the latter. 

[Princess Aurora]

As a native Italian speaker, I studied English, French, Spanish, and Swedish. 

[gatito]

ya'll should learn spanish 

 

i went to japan back in 2017 and even though i had a wonderful time and english was pretty useful i know it would be even better if i could master the language to get to know the people and the culture more in depth 

[Hollywood.]

Been learning Chinese/Mandarin. This is probably the one I've taken the most serious, with textbooks and even took some classes. 

 

Also dabbled into Korean and have grown interested in learning Thai. 

[Letters From Adi]

I have elementary skills in Castellano, learning Arabic and Turkish atm.

Tried learning Mandarin, that **** be nightmare Max 100000 

[commander]

I tried to learn Japanese for a while. I got to a point where a learned both the hiragana and katakana alphabet fairly well and also some basic kanji but once I started learning grammar and vocabulary my brain simply gave up on me. You need to be in a very specific headspace to learn Japanese, sadly.

[Alldeezy]

I want to learn Korean in the new year but it will be kinda hard since I even struggle in my own language.