General Introductions Post
Apr. 4th, 2010 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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language_learningWelcome to language_learning!
This is a general post where we can introduce ourselves and meet those who speak or are studying the languages we want to learn. As the community grows, I will add language-specific posts geared towards matching people up with conversation partners, but let's start here and find out who on DW is learning a language!
Suggested format (feel free to modify at will):
Name you prefer:
Location:
Home country:
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand:
Languages you have studied or are studying:
Current language learning goals:
Favorite language learning tool or resource:
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?:
language_learning! This is a general post where we can introduce ourselves and meet those who speak or are studying the languages we want to learn. As the community grows, I will add language-specific posts geared towards matching people up with conversation partners, but let's start here and find out who on DW is learning a language!
Suggested format (feel free to modify at will):
Name you prefer:
Location:
Home country:
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand:
Languages you have studied or are studying:
Current language learning goals:
Favorite language learning tool or resource:
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?:
no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 10:26 pm (UTC)Location: Baltimore, MD, USA
Home country: USA
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand: I am a native English speaker. I speak, read, and write French to a passable degree of fluency and I'm pretty good at German.
Languages you have studied or are studying: I studied French and German for about six years in high school/college. I did Russian for a year in college and forgot it all, so I'm trying to re-learn. I studied Turkish for three semesters in law school and am trying to keep that up. I taught myself ASL using an online course, though I'm afraid my ASL is more like SEE as I haven't had conversation practice, really. I'm also just starting Farsi and would like to continue Danish (I'm a super beginner) and Croatian (same). Languages I have studied and didn't continue include Irish, Occitan, Italian, Spanish, and Maori.
Current language learning goals: I want to keep up the languages I do speak by using online resources, improve the languages I'm so-so on, and actually learn those I've only just started. It's a challenge with so many!
Favorite language learning tool or resource: I am a huge fan of the WordReference.com dictionary. It's great at phrases, slang, and providing context markers for a number of languages (I believe French and Spanish are the most comprehensive dictionaries). There are also forums where you can ask questions.
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?: Please! I would especially love it if anyone who signs ASL would be interested in videochat. I have a decent sign vocabulary but I haven't really learned how to communicate naturally in ASL. If you sign, have videochat, and are willing to patiently help out an eager student, please let me know.
Fun facts: I am kind of a nerd about obscure and even made-up languages. I adore Quenya (I'm a big Tolkien fan) and when I'm writing fanfic I will definitely go into say, an Elvish or Vulcan grammar and dictionary, and figure out how to write a word or phrase correctly.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 12:11 am (UTC)Location: Medellín, Colombia
Home country: Colombia
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand: I am a native English speaker (I grew up in the US from a young age) and also speak Spanish fluently, I also have some understanding of French and Italian
Languages you have studied or are studying: French all through school and a couple course in college, ASL (though just very basic) and I've been wanting to learn German
Current language learning goals: Get back into French, I really would like to reach a high level of fluency - Learn some more German, and start back with Italian and maybe even Chinese
Favorite language learning tool or resource: I don't know - any language tools that I know of are for English, as I am an ESL/EFL teacher
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?: Sure! I don't mind helping anyone with what I can and I'd love to get more into my own target languages :D
no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 01:22 am (UTC)And I'm with you on that assumption, or maybe if they don't speak it - they understand it well enough.
Also - I love the community icon!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 01:01 am (UTC)Location: North Carolina, US
Home country: US
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand: English
Languages you have studied or are studying: Spanish
Current language learning goals: I've taken two semesters of Spanish in college, am not taking any this semester, but will need to take more starting next semester. I'd like brush up on my almost non-existent Spanish before then.
Favorite language learning tool or resource: Lang-8.com is cool. You post journal entries in your target language and correct entries in your language/s of expertise. Other people do the same.
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?: Sure! I'm still very new and relatively bad at Spanish, but I'd be happy to take any help I can get.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 01:13 am (UTC)Hey, NC, cool, I'm from Raleigh originally :-) Good luck with your Spanish! I'm guessing that'll be a popular language around these parts, and we've already got one fluent speaker *points up*
no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 06:59 am (UTC)Location: Wales
Home country: England
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand: English
Languages you have studied or are studying: Welsh (did learn French and German at school but can't say I remember much of either)
Current language learning goals: I want to get more confident at reading and talking Welsh, and improve my vocab. I'm fairly good at the grammar side of things
Favorite language learning tool or resource: BBC Learn Welsh
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?: Most definitely!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 12:30 pm (UTC)Martyna's Intro post
Date: 2010-04-05 09:24 am (UTC)Location:Paris, France
Home country: Germany/Poland (depends on definition)
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand: German (Deutsch), Polish (Polski), English, French (Français), Japanese (日本語)
Languages you are ACTIVELY studying: Japanese, (Spanish)
Current language learning goals: Reach a respectable level in Japanese
Favorite language learning tool or resource: Lang-8, http://languagelearners.myfastforum.org/index.php
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?: Yes, sure, go aheadｍ you're welcome!
Re: Martyna's Intro post
Date: 2010-04-05 12:31 pm (UTC)Re: Martyna's Intro post
Date: 2010-04-05 01:57 pm (UTC)Well, maybe I am. *laughs* What's crazy about liking languages?
Re: Martyna's Intro post
Date: 2010-04-05 02:04 pm (UTC)Re: Martyna's Intro post
Date: 2010-04-05 02:12 pm (UTC)Is it a paraox that I love language learning but hate the grammar part? :x
Re: Martyna's Intro post
Date: 2010-04-05 02:17 pm (UTC)Re: Martyna's Intro post
Date: 2010-04-05 02:25 pm (UTC)Re: Martyna's Intro post
Date: 2010-04-05 05:56 pm (UTC)(Post-unrelated)
Date: 2010-04-05 09:25 am (UTC)Re: (Post-unrelated)
Date: 2010-04-05 11:15 am (UTC)Re: (Post-unrelated)
Date: 2010-04-05 11:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-06 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-06 12:24 am (UTC)Location: Scotland
Home country: Scotland
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand: Native English speaker, I can speak/understand French and German to a half decent extent (ie people don't automatically respond in English when I say something in German to them). I'm a beginner Gaelic speaker.
Languages you have studied or are studying: I've got highers in French and German from school (5 years of study basically), and I've kept them up reasonably. I've tried to teach myself Russian, Japanese and Gaelic at various points to very little success. I did a Gaelic night class last year and I'm trying to keep that up and learn properly now that that's over.
Current language learning goals: I do media production stuff as a job, I'd like to get fluent enough to be able to work in Gaelic language media.
Favorite language learning tool or resource: I see
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?: Definitely, I'm craving fellow learners.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-06 01:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-07 07:18 am (UTC)Location: Hannover, Lower Saxony, Germany
Home country: Germany
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand: I'm a native German speaker and I'm pretty fluent in English
Languages you have studied or are studying: I learned English, French and Spanish in school but only remember a couple of words in French and Spanish
Current language learning goals: Get even more fluent in English and I'd like to re-learn Spanish
Favorite language learning tool or resource: I like the magazines from Spotlight. They offer magazines for learning English, Spanish, Italian, French and people who're learning German (the website is in German)
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?:Sure :-)
no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-09 04:24 pm (UTC)Location: Örebro, Sweden
Home country: Canada
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand: English (raised in Canada thus am first an english speaker), French (studied 12 years in school, used to be fluent but must try a bit harder now) and Swedish (completely fluent since moving here 4 years ago).
Languages you have studied or are studying:
I kind of answered this above. I learned French over the course of 12 years in school in Canada, so its Canadian French not Parisian French. And then age 26 I moved to Sweden, studied Swedish for 10 months after marrying my Swede husband and am now fully fluent. Frankly nobody can believe I learned so fast as Swedish is a fairly difficult language to learn (in the top 10 I read somewhere for native English speakers).
Current language learning goals: Improve my Swedish as much as possible so I can someday write a book in Swedish as well as English, and to get back all the French I lost when I learned Swedish.
Favorite language learning tool or resource: Its absolutely the Lexin, for quick translations from about 15 languages into Swedish found here: http://lexin2.nada.kth.se/sve-eng.html (translates from among many: english, albanian, arabic, bosnian, finnish, greek, croatian, persian, russian, serbian, spanish and more)
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?: Theyre 100% welcome and invited to contact me about anything and all things English or Swedish, not so much in French, I think I am losing my touch there.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-23 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-17 04:42 pm (UTC)Location: Texas
Home country: USA
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand: English, some Latin
Languages you have studied or are studying: French (which I have mostly forgotten), Latin, and next semester I'll be learning German and Japanese as well as Latin.
Current language learning goals: fluency in Latin
Favorite language learning tool or resource: my Latin book, Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, is completely awesome. For figuring out Latin translations of modern words, Wikipedia and Wiktionary between them do a halfway-decent job.
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?: that would be awesome!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-17 05:11 pm (UTC)Aliyah or Lia.
Location:
Trinidad until August and then New Orleans.
Home country:
Trinidad.
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand:
English is my native language (in a manner of speaking) and I'm pretty proficient in French, albeit not fluent. I can read and understand some Spanish, but I can't produce any!
Languages you have studied or are studying:
In August, I'll be starting a PhD program in French Studies, so there's that. I have to achieve reading fluency in another language, which might end up being Arabic or Haitian Creole-- who knows. I'm casually studying Spanish as I find the time.
Current language learning goals:
I would like to have complete fluency in French at some point. Basically I'm interested in languages because I like talking to people, and the more languages I know, the more people I can talk to.
Favorite language learning tool or resource:
The message boards at wordreference are lovely!
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?:
Sure!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-23 05:15 pm (UTC)Location: Norrtälje, Sweden
Home country: England
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand: English, and basic Swedish.
Languages you have studied or are studying: I'm about to start formally learning Swedish through the government scheme for new immigrants, SFI. In the past I've studied French, German and ancient Greek, all of which are now long gone, although stray words sometimes wander in when I'm trying to find the right one in Swedish, just to be a nuisance.
Current language learning goals: Mostly to actually speak more. I think that my reading skills are coming along reasonably fast, and my listening skills are still wobbly but getting a lot better, but having the confidence to start using the language more myself is really important.
Favorite language learning tool or resource: I use three online dictionaries in combination to get a few different angles on tricky words:
- Tyda.se is my first stop in most cases, because it shows different forms of words together, which is helpful for me right now.
- Norstedts ord is better on phrases, and provides a lot of examples of words in context, though I use them cautiously.
- Lexin I use less, but sometimes throws up something the others miss.
And all of these in combination with a paper dictionary from prisma. Uh, yes, I do have a slight mistrust of dictionaries and like to cross-check as much as possible.
My favourite thing right now otherwise is to use children's picture books, though I think I'll move on to more text-heavy ones soon. But how it works is that I read them aloud to my partner to practice speaking without having to also think of the words at the same time, for pronunciation mostly, and then I try to translate them as we go as well. I'm particularly fond of the Pettson & Findus books by Sven Nordqvist.
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?: Do feel free!
no subject
Date: 2012-01-14 02:08 pm (UTC)Location: Indonesia
Home country: Indonesia
Languages you speak/sign/read/understand: Indonesian native speaker and English
Languages you have studied or are studying: Norwegian - Learning, Russian - Learning, German - Learning. But I'm currently active on Norwegian
Current language learning goals: At least understand the basic grammars and everyday phrases
Favorite language learning tool or resource: There's a LJ community for my Norwegian learning resources and some help from Skype friends.
Would you like others who are learning or speak your target languages to add/contact you?: Sure why not, just ask me :)