#I'm already 'studying' French Swedish Russian and Spanish there

[andthatisnotfake]

Nobody:

Absolute nobody:

Not a soul:

Me, at 2 a.m.: what if started Greek at Duolingo?

[benkyoubotto]

Hello 👋 I see many langblrs/studyblrs have intros so I thought I should write one too.

Heritage Languages: English and Spanish. Grew up in a Hispanic household and raised in the States.

Target Languages: Japanese and Korean. I've studied up to the N2 level in Japanese and debating if I should study the N1 content 🥺😵‍💫. I'm on level 9 of the TTMIK core grammar course. (6/23/2024)

Other Language Interests: Italian / Portuguese / French / Russian. Those are just my top interests but I also think Greek / Thai / Arabic / Turkish / Chinese / Hungarian / Polish / German / Swedish / Romanian would be cool to learn down the line.

Outside of languages here's a little about me:

I'm 26 and I have more interests than I do hobbies 😂 The biggest reason is my biggest hobby/career path has to do with languages lol. But anyway, I'm interested in ice skating, kpop choreo, baking, cooking. I like watching movies, tv series (english/spanish/japanese/korean), and anime. Trying to get back into reading again. I am a café girlie 🫠 I am on the hunt for the best matcha latte. I would love to travel more but I've been to Japan and Korea at least once already.

[iricathel]

can you tell us more about yourself admin?

OH WOW ANON I-- YOU JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE

Anyways--

Prepare to read a self-indulgent biography of myself bc I'm my biggest simp AHAHAHAHA

I'm kinda have such a big ass pride in my origins, so I will tell a little too much about it.

All the basic information I have about myself I have already published here in this small summary sheet, but I can go into more detail.

I think I've already made it quite clear many times that I'm Russian. I was born in Russia, I grew up there for a few years and my relatives are of the same origin, but in my family tree there are many more mixtures of nationalities (although I only have more knowledge on my mother's side). I basically have Polish, Ukrainian, French, Swedish (dad's side) and strong Spanish (Principality of Asturias and Castilla-León) ancestry (from which thanks to my great-grandmother, I inherited Spanish nationality despite not having been born there) + my origins are Cossacks, typical of my hometown Rostov-on-Don, which is located in the southwest of Russia, considering this city as the gates of the Caucasus.

My origins are also very poor since my ancestors were always victims of something and went through famine (My great-great grandmother was abandoned by her husband while she was pregnant and being an orphan and having no one else went to Spain to live on a farm; my great-grandfather was one of the soldiers who participated in the first squad of the war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany; another of my great-grandparents was caught by the Nazis and taken just 2 of his brothers to concentration camps [the older brother tried to escape with his wife but was caught and shot]; my great-grandmother, when she was 9 years old, was sent to Russia to live in an orphanage since the war in Spain was getting serious, since being from a republican-communist family they were persecuted by the dictator Francisco Franco) not to mention the brutal family dramas like my grandmother being chased by her mother-in-law with an ax because she suffered from dementia and hated her, or my grandfather being cursed by his own sister envying him (she put graveyard dirt on his shoulder for a funeral and the following year he died of a heart disease that still had no cure at that time).

With all of that being said, I think it's becoming a bit obvious where I took inspiration from to create the Owl clan.

Focusing on myself now, yeah, I was born into an Orthodox-Catholic family with strong beliefs and a very closed mind (which is why I'm not so open about my sexuality since they are able to send me to a psychiatric hospital). I am the product of a VERY toxic courtship that should have the honor of being the inspiration for a Lana del Rey song.

I grew up from the age of 5 in the south of Spain and 3 years ago I moved to the capital to live a much better life 💅

Even though I had a lot of problems with my father due to the abandonment wound he caused me, I was always the daddy's girl because despite his neglect, he spoiled me in a way that actually built a personality that doesn't settle for little. Tbh from a very young age I was only obsessed with boys to have something interesting in this life and then as soon as I got bored I would forget about them, however I have had serious relationships with a girl for 2 years and then with a boy for almost 4 years.

I have Adhd and a few other problems that I would prefer not to detail too much 🤸🏼‍♀️

I studied Fashion Design for almost 3 years, but I ended up leaving because I learned that for me it is more of a hobby than a job. Currently I'm still thinking about what to study, but honestly I don't dream of working.

Hhhhhh more things that I don't said before?

I was born with copper hair, but in a few days I began to have very curly blonde hair and eyes as gray as iron resembling goldilocks, in addition to my skin tanning to a golden hue. From the age of 6 my eyes changed and now they are hazel color with a predominant green, at 12 years old due to the fact that I suffered a strong anemia that lasted for even more years, my skin stopped taking color and remained quite white plus my hair darkened to a chocolate-copper color, also, I am still treating my hair so that it is completely healthy again and I can have my curls back.

My color preferences in clothing always varied a lot, but since I was little I was very fashionable and adored luxuries, so it is normal that today I love to look good, groom myself and take care of myself to look resplendent. Nowadays my outfits are quite dark ngl

I can speak russian, spanish, english, a liiiittle bit of school's french 🤏🏻 and I wanna try german and japanese someday

Fun fact: When I speak Russian I pronounce the л in a different way (like Latin L, similar sounds but in Russian the tip of the tongue is placed just below the front teeth almost as if you were going to bite it) so my grandmother says that I seem to have a bit of a Polish accent.

[kendrene]

Just wanted to give you a virtual pat on the back for learning all those languages! Languages have always been hard for me so I applaud anyone who is even remotely bi or multi-lingual. Mind me asking what the 10 languages are and which new ones you’re working on learning? Also you have any good sources or tips for someone interested in learning new languages but isn’t necessarily good at it?

Okay so aside from italian I speak German (my grandma and school) english (obvs), french (ew- sorry french moots I love to read in french but not speak it). I have master's degree in chinese and I took japanese as a secondary language in college (just one year though mind you). Then I speak some spanish, czech, slovak, and the tiniest bits of serbian and polish. Enough to get me around and ask basic things like directions, food, help, read the news or simple books in those languages.

Because I speak german and english I can understand Dutch in written form, as its so closely related to both but I'm not counting it among the languages I "know" really because I'm sure if my Dutch friends heard me try to talk they'd laugh their pants off. And it's the same with Korean. Like I can sort of recognize a few words here and there because their chinese/japanese equivalent is similar.

I want to learn some nordic languages next, like finnish/swedish and pick up gaelic again. I'd also love to study russian as I already know the alphabet...but that grammar... "cries in language studies".

I think for someone who wants to learn new stuff both duolingo and babbel can be great help as you have that sense of playfulness to the learning of a language and reward when you complete a task. And they teach you basic grammar as you learn the words (although I still believe in the trusty buy a grammar book for the language you want to learn rule as well. It helps me to have something I can go to for references)

PS: did latin in school too but I don't know if it counts. Although I will say this, if you are in school still and want to learn Romance Languages and you have access to latin... it's a chore but take it. It helps with modern languages that inherited some of its structures... am I right, German?

PPS: you put me in a country for two weeks I will come back speaking a basic form of their language it's my superpower. Same with accents/dialects here in Italy.

[larrydoinglaundry]

Language anon here!

Oh okay yeah that makes total sense 🤦🏼‍♀️

I'm Austrian! But it was at my higher education. I was at a school with focus on economics (kind of hard to explain lol) and then I could also specialize in a few things (it was some IT stuff, economic english or taking Spanish) so I took Spanish. French was already mandatory in that specific school, as well as English. English is pretty much mandatory in austrian schools. I think I also started learning it with 9 years.

French i started learning with 14, Spanish with 16.

And I live at the hungarian border, literally 5 min away from the nearest hungarian village so it totally makes sense to learn it but it was not mandatory in school. I started learning it with 10 years and stopped with 14, and then in Uni I took an extention curricula in Hungarian history, culture and literature and had some courses about hungarian grammar (without learning the language which is actually quite funny)

But I have to say it sounds way more impressive then it was, i am quite bad at learning languages 😂

Ah, I see !! I thought it was like a primary school thing and I was like waaaaait.

Learning languges is always impressive imo! But I feel you, me with English, Swedish, Russian, Spanish and French in addition to Finnish sounded impressive too but I'm only fluent in Finnish (mother tongue) and English.

But I wish I was fluent in Swedish and at least in Spanish too! Swedish was also part of my college studies. You just can't escape it in Finland, it'll always find you lmao.

[ververa]

I really like it! I started this year so I have about 3 more years to go. I'm really interested in cyber security and game developing. I wanted to be a police officer so that I can protect people, but unfortunately didn't get into the academy. So I guess by knowing and or focusing my steeds to cyber security I can still protect people's bank accounts, identities etc.😆

I think knowing languages is always useful. I speak English, Swedish and little bit French in addition to my mother's tongue. Especially like Russia, English and maybe Spanish too bwcause those languages are very widely spoken and everything is getting global now. Do you think you'll be teaching those languages or maybe working as a translator in the future? -❄

That's great! I think the most important thing is to like what you do in the first place, because then you have the motivation to face all the obstacles. All this sounds wonderful and the fact that you want to protect people?? This is very sweet 😍 I actually wanted to be a doctor, so that I could help people, so I feel you with that. In my case it's because of my teacher - my biology teacher hated me for some reason and because of her I gave up on that dream of mine. Though in the end I don't regret it. You know what people say - where one door shuts, another opens. And I'm sure you'll be able to achieve whatever you want and get to protect people too. Also making sure their bank accounts and identities are safe is as valid as being a police officer. Plus it's less possible that you'll get hurt, which makes it even better. At least I think so 😅

Agreed! Knowing languages is really useful and the process of learning can be a lot of fun, but it's really demanding too. I basically don't have life outside of the uni, especially now that all my classes are online and apparently our professors think we're some kind of robots who should do nothing but study or rather deal with all the assignments they give us 😔 You know Swedish and French?! That's amazing!! I used to study French (and German) in the middle school, but unfortunately I don't really know it. I was considering taking one more subject - Ukrainian language next year, but I already have too many things to deal with and I still need to sleep and eat, so I guess I'll have to wait a bit longer before actually opting for it. Just for the sake of my own health 😅

Well, honestly I don't know. At first I wanted to be a teacher, because I wanted to do something about the education system which sucks in my opinion. Like I truly want to make it easier and enjoyable for students. I've been working with kids and even people my age, not to mention that in high school I was basically doing my teacher's job, because she was useless and someone needed to help other students, but it's really hard. I mean there was one boy, who actually wanted to cooperate and learn, while the rest was literally just sitting and not even paying attention to what I was saying, expecting I'd do everything for them, which was frustrating. And I got discouraged, because how long can you keep on making an idiot of yourself trying to be funny and teach them in an unconventional way? Also my former English teacher, who made me study languages, keeps telling me that I cannot waste my potential working with children 😂 But translating isn't any better. It's hard too, especially translating from Russian. Ever week I spend about 5 hours, 1-2 of which is actually translating, while the rest is spent on dealing with accents and reading, because otherwise I won't pass this particular subject, since my professor is an asshole. But I got into a special course in Business English and Russian, so I guess translating is what I'm aiming at now. I mean after all translation is how my adventure with linguistics began. I translated some poem from old English into modern English and into Polish and it made me feel so content and empowered that I decided it's something I want to do 😅 I was considering doing both at the same time as well, but these professions are rather demanding, so I'm not sure if it'll work.

[dragonagecompanions]

I love your blog! It makes me very happy! I'm studying to become a linguist, so I wonder, what modern day languages DAI companions and advisors would want to learn and why? How about you guys, mods?

Cassandra- Spanish/French/Italian Reason being is that these are considered languages of ‘love’ (also depending on WHICH version of Spanish ie Mexican, Puerto Rico, or Spain) I see her having an attraction towards these for their rather ‘soft’ spoken-ness.

Varric and Cullen- Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic) while not a ‘common’ language it still has its speakers. I see them both being attracted to a more rustic way of speaking.

Solas- Modern Greek/ Latin (yes I know Latin is a dead language) but I see him being drawn in by the age of both languages and the history behind each.

Blackwall- German this comes from a personal head canon of mine that Ostwick is Germany or some form of it but I see him as a speaker of it. Idk

Iron Bull- Russian. I see him liking how rough and deep the language sounds and being hooked on it because of that.

Dorian- Italian. Another Latin based language and another language of love. Like Cassandra he’d be drawn in by the way words can flow off the tongue when you speak it and of the way we describe it.

Vivienne- French. I know that Orlais is already France but I don’t see her studying any other language.

Sera- Any ‘Viking’ like language. (Norwegian/Swedish etc.) I feel like she be drawn in by how rough the words sound and by the history of the people that speak said language.

Leliana- Portuguese. Idk why to be quite honest but I can see her being drawn in by the history of the people who speak it.

Josephine- Spanish. Of course a language of love given that she seems to be a hopeless romantic. She’d be drawn in by the way words are pronounced and how they sound when the right people say it.

Cole- Any soft sounding language. Picking a language for Cole was really hard but I feel like he’d enjoy softer sounding ones rather than the throaty rough ones.

As for me I’d like to understand the ‘Mexican’ version of Spanish more. I have a small understanding of it and living in a border city where most people come from Juarez and only speak Spanish is tough. I’d also want to learn Latin despite it being a ‘dead’ language.

-Mod Other