#their loanwords are similar so maybe a mistake

[pocketmoose]

from 1 to 50 :)

Anooooon! Are you serious? Well, it’s not like I have anything else to do...

But I’ll put them under a cut because leeeeength.

What’s your native language?

German

How many languages do you speak?

I’m fluent in German and English, so I’m only comfortable saying 2, but I have a good basis in Swedish and know bits and pieces in several other languages.

What language(s) are you currently studying?

Swedish (mostly) and Arabic (sort of)

How many/which languages would you like to know in the future?

Already answered

Do your friends speak other languages?

All my German friends are at least decent at English, some of them also speak French and/or Russian to varying degrees, and my international friends speak too many languages to list here. I have very few monolingual friends, if any at all.

What’s the most difficult word for you to say in your native & target languages?

Already answered

How do you call your favorite animal in your target languages?

Älg and (apparently)  موظ in Arabic (so, just... moose?)

How long have you studied your target language(s)?

I don’t even know, Swedish maybe a total of 2 1/2 years? And Arabic for a couple of months.

What’s your favorite word in your target language(s)? Least favorite?

Oh man, I have so many favourite words in Swedish. I could just list an entire dictionary here. In Arabic it’s كتاب

No least favourite words in Arabic, but Swedish fartyg and parasoll can fuck right off.

What’s the funniest word in your target language(s)?

I don’t have one for Arabic, but one of the funniest Swedish words (still) is jordgubbe. Yip, earth old man. It means strawberry.

What’s the prettiest word in  your target language(s)? Ugliest?

Again, no words for Arabic, but one of the prettiest Swedish words is fjäril and one of te ugliest is fitta.

One thing you dislike about your target and/or native language?

I dislike some of the spellings of loanwords (especially French ones) in Swedish. It’s not that they don’t make sense, they just... look weird. In a similar vein, I don’t like that in German the plural of hobby is hobbys.

Do you have any international friends?

Lots.

Why are you learning your target language(s)?

Already anwered

Do you ever want to live somewhere where you’d speak your target language(s)?

I’m moving to Sweden soon!

What was/is the first language you want/ed to learn?

English

Have you ever made a friend speaking your target language(s)?

Already answered

Do you listen to music in your target language(s)? If so, who are your favorite artists?

I do listen to Melissa Horn, Lars Winnerbäck, and Freddy Wadling a lot (in Swedish).

Opinion on duolingo?

It’s great for getting started in a language, but if you’re serious about learning it should never be your only resource.

What’s your favorite method of studying?

A mix of textbooks, apps like Memrise, and bothering natives.

Have you ever played pokemon in yourtarget language(s)?

Nope.

Favorite blog in yourtarget language(s)?

All the blogs I follow.

Do you ever speak to yourself in your  target language(s)?

Sometimes.

Ever speak to your pets in yourtarget language(s)?

Already answered

Do you ever feel like your target language(s) is(are) under appreciated? Why/why not?

Already answered

How do people usually react when you mention that you’re studying your target language(s)? Do their reactions annoy you? Make you happy?

Already answered

How do natives react when they hear that you’re studying their language?

Already answered

Do you have any advice for someone who’s never studied a language before?

Keep at it even if it feels like you aren’t progressing, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Where are you from? What are popular/”useful” foreign languages in your area?

I’m from Germany, and in my corner of the country Slavic languages, especially Czech and Russian are pretty useful, as well as the standard English/Spanish/French and Arabic.

Are there dialects in your country? Do you speak one?

There are, but even though I grew up in a dialect-heavy environment I don’t have one myself.

Have you ever tried to learn a dialect for your target language(s)?

Nope, not yet.

Do you ever want to have a career in languages?

Maybe.

How has learning languages impacted your life?

It’s given me self-confidence and the insight that it’s okay to make mistakes, it’s made me more open-minded and curious towards other cultures, and it’s given me lots of new friends.

Do you have any big travel plans for the future?

I’m moving to Sweden, so, I guess?

What’s your least favorite language? Why? Favorite?

Already answered

Do you know any obscure/useless words in yourtarget language(s)?

I can’t think of any right now.

Was there ever a word you pronounced incorrectly until someone corrected you?

I PRONOUNCED SWORD INCORRECTLY FOR ABOUT 8 YEARS

What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you while studying yourtarget language(s)?

^ that

Have you ever eavesdropped on people speaking your target language(s) in public?

Every time I’m in Sweden, and also when I hear Arabic here on the streets.

Have you ever had a negative experience with a native?

Nope, except for the Swedish cashiers and store clerks who always switch to English. And that one time my boyfriend laughed at me

What’s the most positive experience you’ve had with a native?

Every time somebody complimented my Swedish.

Tell me about your best friend in your target language(s)

Min bästa vän är svensk och han är snäll och intelligent, alltid får han migatt skrattaoch hans kramar är det bästa i hela världen.

Have you ever put sticky notes all over your house before?

Nope.

Do you ever think in your target language(s)?

Rarely, but it has happened.

Are there any cognates between your native and target language(s)?

There are tons of cognates between Swedish and German.

Have you ever met a stranger in public with whom you spoke your target language(s)?

Apart from futile attempts in Sweden, nope.

Have you ever had an “I understand it now!” moment withyour target language(s)?

Oh yeah, but I can’t remember any right now.

Do you have any language pet peeves?

Not really.

Is there a language that you’ve tried to learn but could never stick with it or just weren’t interested?

I was forced to learn French in school, which made me dislike the language, and I dropped it as soon as I could. I’ve also started Spanish and Finnish at different times but couldn’t stick with it, less because of lack of interest but more because  I was lazy and had no discipline to learn languages on my own whatsoever.

[airlinepolyglot-blog]

another infrequent update

NOTE: a few links and whatnot are missing from this post, several YouTubes, etc. I will add them very shortly, and if I do not, then please remind me!

Hello everyone, I know it’s been awhile once again. It’s not that I haven’t been doing language things (quite the contrary), but rather that I don’t have time to tell you about them. A quick rundown of what I’ll be talking about here:

Travels and how language related:

-my trip to Toronto

-my trip to Hong Kong

-a brief mention of my trip to Cancun

What I have learned, language wise, since my last update:

-Norwegian

-German

-Welsh

-Hungarian

-Russian

-Turkish

I went to Toronto with my girlfriend Marisa since my last update. Toronto is of course an English majority city so there isn’t a ton to write about that, but it’s worth noting just how bilingual Canada is in many ways. Most people in Toronto can’t speak French, or rarely speak it, but it’s as prevalent as Spanish is in the US. Everything is cosigned in both languages, and of course the government enforces Canada’s bilingualism, which was extremely interesting. I’ll be interested to visit a really bilingual city in Canada, like Ottawa or Montreal, where everyone can speak both languages.

Hong Kong had been one of my top cities to visit after I got the airline job (and before that, too). There was obviously absolutely no way it was going to disappoint, and luckily it didn’t in the slightest. Definitely the best place I have been to to date (lovely English right there!), on so many levels. It’s extremely welcoming and inviting to an outsider, insanely easy to get around, very safe, etc. But to the world tourist, the level of English spoken in Hong Kong is extremely impressive. Literally everyone in Hong Kong spoke English that I spoke with, to a very good degree. Curiously, the Filipino domestic helpers spoke some of the poorest english (they stuck to Tagalog), and more obviously, the mainland tourists spoke very little (if any) English. I used Mandarin a few times, but interestingly I used German quite a bit (there’s apparently quite a bit of German expatriation in Hong Kong). I was caught off guard with the German, considering I was fairly out of practice (but usually made out just fine!), but I came armed with the Mandarin. Using HelloChinese and a few audio resources (Living Language) I had a conversational amount down, though I never used it to that degree (it would just be pointing someone in the right direction or making small talk), after really seeing Mainland Chinese in action in Hong Kong, I felt very motivated to really work on my Mandarin. Sadly, I haven’t much since my trip ended, but I’m sure I’ll pick it back up at some point - I love Mandarin and always preach how simple it is to everyone and tell people it’s far easier than people think. Because it is...once you accept that the characters are an “over time” thing. And as expected, the little Cantonese I spoke (“ni ho”, “mh’goi”, “ching”, etc) was received very well, but considering how widely English was spoken, it was just my sign of gratitude to the natives.

I did visit Cancun, Mexico with Marisa as well, because it was affordable, accessible, and warm. While it wasn’t great (we had a good time together though), I’ll of course cover the language situation there. Largely of course English to cater to tourists, a few people did indeed lead with Spanish, which was surprising. I had an Uber driver who only spoke Spanish and so he and I pieced through a conversation together, and he was helping me learn. But still, the Spanish language and I don’t really click sadly. A shame, as I want to visit Madrid, Colombia (any city), Santiago de Chile, and of course return to Buenos Aires. But luckily Marisa knows and likes Spanish, so she can come with me and help out with that until I’m back on track.

Okay, now an update on my language study stuff. I could post Duolingo stats but eh I don’t think those give as accurate an estimation as me describing my progress. So, I’ve been focusing on Norwegian a lot recently, which is without question my favorite language. I’ve been really focused on finishing the tree, and am at Level 17 on Duolingo. Admittedly, Duolingo is the only resource I’m using for Norwegian right now. No books, no YouTube, no audio, just Duolingo. So the terrible robot voice that Duo uses is my only way of hearing the language at the moment, but I’m doing that on purpose. Going to finish the tree and really have this language down, and then see how quickly I really pick up on it when I hear it spoken by actual people. It’s such a simple and logical language on almost every level that it’s amazing. The grammar is just so much more simple than any other language. The verb conjugations (or relative lack thereof), definite articles (which are suffixes), word order, negation (just “ikke”) just all make so much sense. The amazing Paul (Langfocus) did an awesome video about Norwegian and its relation to Swedish and Danish, with a lesser extent Faroese and Icelandic (both of which are far more complicated grammatically than the other three). In an ideal world, the Vikings and their successors would’ve pushed for Norwegian (or Swedish, but I like Norwegian and the culture of Norway just a bit more) to be the universal language of the world instead of English. Norwegian is an easier and better language than English, and it’s far more logical in ways (grammatically and pronounced) than English ever could be. It (as well as Swedish and Danish) also lacks the case system that comes along with German, which makes it much easier to learn than the main language of its family. Through Norwegian, you can almost fully understand Swedish. I haven’t done Swedish on Duolingo at all, but I can read Swedish text incredibly well, point out and translate words in IKEA, and breeze through Memrise and Tinycards decks, thanks to my understanding of Norwegian. I can understand written Danish to the same degree, but it’s a wildly different language when spoken. I haven’t studied Danish much, but I’m sure once you’re used to how they pronounce things (like Spanish/Portuguese differences), you’ll be in great shape. I can’t wait to hopefully visit Oslo this summer, as I still have not gotten to speak Norwegian in real life at all yet, but am confident I can do so….well, confidently. We will find out soon.

I am returning to Germany in a few weeks, and in preparation I’m of course going through my German resources again. Reguilding Duolingo, going through some advanced levels on Memrise, playing around on Babadum, and things like that. German is annoyingly difficult/tricky in so many ways (and after learning one of the North Germanic languages, it will frustrate you more once you’ve learned just how simple it all can be!!!), but I’m convinced the language runs through my blood and is almost second nature to me at this point, which I’m extremely grateful for. I can jump into conversations often, understand it when I hear it (even Swiss German!), and generally carry myself along. I just wish it wasn’t so difficult for new learners who aren’t picking it up in a classroom setting - it really is a difficult language to teach yourself, especially if you’ve never dealt with a three gender language AND one that has a case system, no less. Plus, “sie” can mean she/formal you/they, which I’m sure can certainly trip anyone up. That’s just a bit impractical, but luckily I have that advantage I guess.

I dabbled briefly in Welsh on Duolingo. A very fun and surprisingly simple language, I put it on hold temporarily due to my desire to focus on other languages. Nonetheless, I found it super interesting, though of course often difficult to pronounce. The “dd” sound in Welsh is maybe the most difficult thing I’ve ever attempted to pronounce, and I’m convinced only natives will ever master it. I want to see this language kept alive, so certainly give it a shot - the Duolingo course is wonderful and very well designed, and this YouTube video (linked within the course) will teach you how to pronounce the language very well.

My last three languages I’ll sort of talk about together. They are Russian, Hungarian, and Turkish. Three languages from different families (but I guess a similar part of the world), but damn are they a lot of fun to me. I’m actually glad I waited a week to write this post, as I attempted to look at Turkish again last night for the first time in ages and it suddenly made tons of sense to me - being an agglutinative language and all, just like Hungarian and to a lesser extent Russian. All three of these languages are pretty “out there” for an English speaker, and I’ll agree, some of the trickiest for an English speaker to learn, as they have a lot of rules. But honestly that’s a lot of the fun, once you get the rules down and can form sentences and work with the case system (all three languages feature a case system), you feel really accomplished speaking these beautiful languages. Russian always tends to amaze me, the amount of loanwords and similar vocabulary in Russian will really surprise you. Once you master the Cyrillic alphabet, I bet you could look at a Russian text and point out so many words that are similar to the Romance or Germanic languages. This makes for fun learning once you figure out the Slavic twist to put on each word. The lack of articles in Russian and verb “to be” is of course a massive advantage - once you dig into the language you realize just how much of a blessing this is. I’m really enjoying Russian, and while I still make plenty of grammar mistakes and still struggle to pronounce some things, I can’t wait to really get this language down and be able to speak it with confidence. While I won’t be able to speak Hungarian with sure confidence probably for a long time, it’s an extremely fun language to me. It has something like 15 cases - definitely an extreme amount, and not a language for the faint of heart, but if you’re really into this kind of thing you may want to look into it. The alphabet and pronunciation are quite simple once you get them down, and word order is very free thanks to the case system (similar to Russian!). Plus, the Hungarian people are great and amazed anyone attempts to learn their very hard language. I’m going to see for myself when I go to Budapest next month and attempt to drag some Hungarian out (they’re also attempting to learn English widespread, as tourism in Hungary amongst Europeans is climbing), and we’ll see if the rumors are true about how happy Hungarians are that we even let out a “szia” (hello/goodbye) or a “köszönöm” (thank you) in conversation. If you’re scared off by Russian’s foreign alphabet and Hungarian’s crazy amount of cases, then maybe Turkish is a good place to start if you’re interested in an agglutinative language that differs wildly from English and the languages similar (romance/germanic). Turkish follows a Subject+Object+Verb order which is kind of fun because you know the action is always at the end, and the vocabulary is very cool (and apparently features tons of Persian and Arabic loanwords). While I haven’t dove too deep into Turkish, by the time my next update rolls around, I believe I will have more to tell you, as I plan to get right back to Turkish on Duolingo once I’ve posted this. While neither Turkey (political situation) nor Russia (complicated visa issues) would be suitable to visit now, Azerbaijan would be a good place I think, as a large part of the population still speaks Russian, a lot speak English (thanks to all the expats), and their native language, Azerbaijani (or Azeri Turkish) is apparently very close to Turkish, so someone who knows Turkish well can quickly pick up on Azerbaijani. I wonder if the differences are as close as Norwegian to Swedish or more like Spanish to Italian. Maybe I’ll know by the time I write here next.

I also am attempting to learn the Greek alphabet because why not (the lowercase letters are throwing me off big time - why must they be different from the uppercase?!) and of course still looking at Italian, French, etc from time to time. I don’t have any decent observations on these developments.

Hopefully I’ll write to you all again soon. Follow me on Instagram or something if you’d like more frequent updates about my life.