

Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn? - pankratiev


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lsb
I read Latin and Greek, want to know more French, and am intrigued by Sanskrit
and Japanese.

I wanted to read more Latin and have more fun reading, and I decided that
looking words up in a dictionary was an easy step to circumvent, so I made a
website nodictionaries.com --- if you read Latin, check out
<http://nodictionaries.com/vergil/aeneid-1/1-7> if you want to read twice as
fast.

~~~
yread
I really like the website! Would it be possible to add more languages and
allow users to enter text - stem it and add the dictionary entries
automatically?

~~~
lsb
nodictionaries.com/novifex

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tokenadult
Chinese (various Sinitic languages, but especially Modern Standard Chinese),
German, Japanese, Russian, the original languages of the Bible, samplings of
Latin and of various Romance languages, interesting conlangs, and others.

Here's a link to language-learning advice:

<http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html>

Here's one of my favorite links about one conlang:

<http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/>

~~~
wisty
Chinese too. I've found Mnemosyne (a flash card app) quite useful, for
learning lots of characters, though I already knew a lot about radicals, and
how to combine them.

My personal project (not working yet) is a language learning web app. I think
there's actually a couple of more advanced language web apps by HNers too.

~~~
mattm
Check out Remembering the Hanzi by Heisig

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bartonfink
I speak English fluently. At one point I spoke Latin fluently, but that has
tapered off due to lack of practice (I still read very well). I speak
conversational German, and just a smidge of Italian.

One of these days my wife is going to pester me to learn Japanese because she
studies early Japanese culture and wants to share.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
" _One of these days my wife is going to pester me to learn Japanese_ "

You should do it, for the beauty and expressiveness of the writing system
alone.

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angus77
Mother tongue is English. Been studying Japanese for 15 years and living in
Japan for 13. Was doing Esperanto for a few years, but since I've had kids I
had to ditch at least one of my hobbies. Been recently trying to pick up
French, because I'm Canadian and always got good marks in French in school,
and I regret ditching it after I finished grade 9 (the last year it was
mandatory).

Over the years, I've taken stabs at German, Latin, Chinese, Spanish and
Lojban. Same story each time---a few weeks of initial enthusiasm, and then I
got bored and never returned to Language X. I don't know what kept me glued to
Japanese. With Esperanto, I was about to move on when I discovered there were
actually people in my town who spoke it and met every week. It added
unexpected depth to what I had been approaching as a novelty language.

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der_ketzer
I'm spanisch native speaker. Began learning german at age of 5 for 17 years,
english at 12 for 8 years, french at 15 for 3 years (barely remember
something).

Sadly my written englisch is not as good as it should (altough I have no
problem reading it or with conversational englisch. My father doesnt speak
englisch, so when technicians from the US came to repair his machines (CNC) I
was the translator).

And with german I dont have any problems, I try to read books and watch movies
so I dont forget much. And of course german ebm/dark music =)

Being in a german school (Abitur) and living 2 years in Germany helped me a
lot in my career =)

~~~
asymmetric
FYI, it's spelled Spanish/English :)

~~~
der_ketzer
Oh sorry, sometimes I mixed languages. In German it's with sch. Sorry =)

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mbesto
Very little conversational German, Swedish and took Latin/Spanish growing up.

Hur är läget? Alles klar? Todos bien?

Quite frankly the only languages you really need in the western world (aside
from English) are French and Spanish (and possibly Portugese). Germans and
Scandinavians mostly speak perfect English and for the most part don't
tolerate my broken attempt at their language. (although they very much
appreciate it)

French and Spanish are probably the most valuable because they tend to be less
inclined to master English and both have very large native speaker bases.
Other useful languages would be Mandarin, Russian and Arabic.

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atgm
English and Japanese. I also studied Latin for quite a long time, which means
I have a decent stepping stone for all of the Romance languages and can read
many of them with a bit of thinking. I've also studied a bit of Mandarin. I
also learned American Sign Language for a bit and am learning some Japanese
Sign Language now as well.

I'd like to study Arabic and Welsh sometime.

I generally study languages based on how much I'd like to learn that language
and how different it is from English. I have a lot of friends that study based
on business (Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin being the big ones), but that
doesn't really appeal to me.

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SarioAlvey
I am native German and learned English and Latin in school. I value both
languages very highly. I started with Esperanto, but got bored fast and left
it again. Later in school I added Russian, which I really liked, but have
forgotten by now, because I never get to pratice. I picked up Finnish at
university, which really is a beautiful language and I can only recommend (not
much use, but nice to learn^^). At the moment I am learning Swedish as I will
move to Sweden in a few months. On my still-to-learn-list reside Arabic on
top, closely followed by Japanese. I just love learning a few more scripts.

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furyg3
Dutch.

I moved to Holland from California several years ago, and have picked up the
language after taking a few courses. You don't need it here, but it sure helps
you break out of the expat scene.

This is the first language I've really 'learned' to a good conversational
level, and I am really fascinated by the process. I didn't get far with
Spanish in high school, but since the process of Dutch has been so wonderful I
plan on revisiting it soon, possibly other languages as well.

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IvarTJ
As a non-native speaker (Norwegian), I give a lot of attention to my written
English skills. I learnt some German in school, but haven’t maintained what I
learnt.

I learnt the Korean alphabet through Wikibooks when I wanted to try out input
methods. The writing system seems to be easier to learn than other CJK
languages, and I might learn more of the language as the Nation of Samsung
seems pretty interesting.

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VuongN
I would like to learn French and Chinese. Being Vietnamese and trying to
understand more about Vietnam's history, I know that there are a lot of
ancient tomes written in French and Chinese (Vietnam had 1000+ years of
Chinese occupation and about 200 years of French). My hope is to some day read
those original tomes in their full context and meaning rather than translated
ones.

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Symmetry
I learned Spanish in high school, and while I can still read it ok spoken
Spanish is usually to fast for me to follow.

I can also speak basic Japanese (started learning in college and continued on
my own), but while I learned the syllabaries I only know a very few
characters, so I can't write it.

Between the two, that's one whole language at a basic level.

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funkfellas
My native is Ukrainian, fluent in Russian. Converstional Polish and Slovakian.
Just passed exam in Danish, wanna start German and Dutch. Some time ago I
tried to learn Japanese, but it was quite difficult without any plactical
application... Finnish would be intereting, as it's one of 3 non-indoeuropean
languages in Europe;)

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BasDirks
I speak Dutch and English fluently (minus the odd expression) and am able to
read Flaubert's French and Nietzsche's German. I remember only part of the
Greek I picked up reading Homer. I'd like to learn Italian and Chinese, and
I'm pretty sure I'll get around to it.

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ThatOneKid
I took 4 years of Spanish in high school, and during my fourth year I also
took a year of Arabic. It was very interesting going directly from one to the
other, as well as seeing the similarities (and the many differences) between
the two.

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wccrawford
Japanese and Esperanto.

I took Spanish in highschool, but haven't been using it, so it's pretty much
lost. I can understand little bits.

I would love to learn a lot of other languages including German, French and
Irish Gaelic.

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scottseaward
German - I'm moving to Berlin in a few weeks and want to cram as much language
learning into that time as possible.

Can any of you talented polyglots recommend techniques for learning lots of
vocabulary quickly?

~~~
barry-cotter
The quickest dirty hack is using Anki or another spaced repitition sytem
program. If you download Anki you can get at the shared decks and there rea
some very nice ones for German vocabulary.

For speaking/understanding speech I've heard great things about Pimsleur. Once
you have the rudiments of the language listen to podcasts all the time.

Learn the grammar. You are unlikely to pick up more than the utter basics by
osmosis. Good luck!

~~~
scottseaward
Excellent, thanks for the recommendations!

~~~
barry-cotter
You're welcome. The Volkshochschule have ridiculously cheap evening classes
for all levels of German ability. In the unlikely event that you're at a loose
end for weeks at a time the Integrationskurse are ~free. Google 'em for more
info.

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robflynn
I used to study Spanish but have become quite rusty at it due to lack of use
over the last 10 years. Quite interested in picking up either German or
Russian (I like both, I just haven't settled on one yet).

~~~
doublez
As a native Russian speaker, may I advise German. Russian has all the
grammatical complexity of German + non-Roman phonetics + Cyrillic alphabet +
word order that's not prescribed, but has stylistic meaning.

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amix
I am currently learning Spanish and can speak Danish, Bosnian, English and
German (conversational). Would be interested in tips/articles/tools on how to
learn Spanish fast (or any language for that matter).

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flomincucci
I'm fluent in English, learning Esperanto (mother tongue: spanish). Took 3
years of Portuguese at high school. I'm learning sign language too (i'm not
deaf), does that count as a natural language?

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VMG
As a German, I'm learning English (passively through reading and writing on
the internet). I pondered relearning Russian (parents are from Russia) but I
decided it would be a waste of time.

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adjwilli
Spanish, mostly because my wife is from Argentina. Also, some Italian I
learned from an ex-girlfriend.

I took four years of Japanese in high school and one at university.

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wlievens
I speak Dutch (actually Flemish; my mother tongue), English and French. I've
had Latin in school but that's long forgotten. Learning Spanish since
recently.

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knowtheory
i speak somewhat Mandarin, i understand some Shanghai (Wei dialect) Chinese,
took latin in school, and Japanese in university. I understand smidgeons of
romance languages, particularly French.

~~~
gastlygem
I believe it's called Wu dialect.

Native Chinese here, been living near Shanghai for 6 years, but never really
understand the dialect.

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cafard
French, then Latin, some German, some Greek, some Italian

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splat
Esperanto and French.

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naughtysriram
I know Tamil, Sanskrit, English(a mix of US,UK and Ind), Hindi, French(a bit)

