For the first time ever, I’ve started dabbling in a language other than English. As a native Japanese speaker whose language doesn’t share any Latin DNA, I’m finally appreciating just how brutal learning English really was!
And now, I’m learning French, and for once it actually feels like easy mode🙌
Japanese Folks here, I highly recommend taking a 3rd language (Latin) too.
I tried German in college. I thought German was just a dialect of English, so I skipped all the classes and just took the exam. I realized that with an English translation German would make perfect sense without studying. But that exam didn’t have one so yea.
Well, if you put it that way, German and English are like chatting with a distant country side relatives you see every few years — and only catching about a third of what they say😆”
I really like the sound of French😊
I studied Chinese Mandarin before, but it was easy to learn because I was learning English.
“Totally! I love how French and Mandarin sound so musical too. Maybe it’s less about Latin roots and more about how once you get past that first foreign-language hurdle, the rest feel easier!
As a bilingual, I also studied French, Spanish, and German, but out of all of them my personal favorite is German. But in all honesty, all these European languages with gender attached to their words are so much harder to study compared to English....
You’re technically a polyglot😳
Amazing!! And yeah, masculine and feminine nouns can be tricky. But I actually enjoy how every noun has its own gender… Isn’t it intriguing how giving objects a feminine noun adds a kind of narrative quality to them?
But its more and the articles/ adjectives /sometimes even verbs — have to change along with it. Pretty complicated, but just like French ppl & culture. ( in a good way)
I was especially surprised to find out that cars are feminine. la voiture 😂 It’s interesting , but I know it’s going to be tough to get used to all those changes. Any tips from a language master?
I think what makes it worse for German is that you also have Neuter (basically no gender). But yeah it definitely is intriguing.
I personally did not enjoy learning French. Just something about the language did not click with my brain 😭 Because I studied in the UK, French is a required foreign language you have to study until highschool and I hated every second of it lol.
But in order to study the gender, I used to make small cards with the words on the front with the gender written on the back, and used to flick through them everyday. I know it sounds very analog and boring, but it's the quickest way to do it imho.
I wonder when we will have gender equality to all these words.
Indeed! US English already nailed it (prolly CA voters 🙌) — fireman → firefighter.
Thanks for the tips! Love the flash card idea — maybe I could even turn it into a board game card💡
That’s pretty neat. What makes German your favorite language?
It's not necessarily just the language itself but also the culture, food, and other things that make up Germany. But as for the language itself I like the way it's structured as it's pretty logical, and speaking it is honestly fun😊
I tried Spanish and Italian after learning English, but I could just be a bilingual of English and Japanese in the end.
For me, they were much more difficult than learning English because of not having Latin mindset.
