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Feb. 1st, 2022 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariLanguage Meme from Livejournal, cause I'm not feeling well.
1st foreign language learned
Spanish. Sorta. I never learned it well.
1st language you self studied
Japanese. Sorta. I never learned it correctly.
Language you wished was your native language
Spanish. It should be my native language, honestly, but I never learned it well.
Language you wish you studied more
Japanese. My Japanese is literally catchphrases and terminology I learned from anime, which is TOTALLY not the way to learn a language.
Language you wish wasn't so hard
Chinese. Chinese is one of the languages I attempted to learn to read, simply because I learned to read it alongside Japanese to learn Japanese kanji. But spoken Chinese is rough, since every word has four tones, and each tone changes the word. The tones kill me.
Language you have officially quit
Chinese: See above.
Language you wish you could speak everyday
As much as I'd like to know everyday Japanese, around these parts, everyday Spanish is much more useful. As my roomies saw the other day, my Spanish is rough at best.
Language that everyone speaks but you never want to try
I think learning new languages is neat, so I can't imagine one I wouldn't want to try. I may have quit Chinese, but I at least tried it.
Language everyone speaks and you want to try
Japanese. I have a very very basic grasp of it.
Language that makes you nervous
Latin. For someone who is writing a character from Ancient Rome, I'm super ignorant of Latin. That said, I've heard spoken Latin, and it really does manage to translate in my head thanks to Spanish.
Language that feels soothing
French. Silky, sexy and that accent.
Language that feels like a businessman in a suit
German.
Language that feels like grandma's home cooking
Spanish, of course.
Language that feels like a mad scientist’s experiment
English. Once you realize how much of it is a Frankenstein's monster of German, French and Latin, you realize what a crazy language it is.
Language you think is overrated
French. It may have been the "Lingua Franca" of years ago, but it's been supplanted by English. And of all the latin languages, it's the hardest to understand for me.
Language you think is underrated
Japanese. In the US Spanish is probably the most useful language, and on the west coast Chinese is right up there. But Japanese comes in as a useful third.
Language with the hardest pronunciation
For me, it was Chinese, mainly because I couldn't wrap my head around the tones. French mainly because of the "sliding" pronunciations as well.
Language with the easiest pronunciation
Spanish. Hands down.
Language with the easiest grammar
Of the ones I know? Probably Chinese. It's fairly simple and straight forward, using a lot of context where others use conjugation.
Language with the hardest grammar
Spanish for me. TO go: Yo voy, tu vas, usted va, nosotros vamos, vosotros vais, ellos van. Six words for one action depending on who is saying it. If they're speaking in the present. If it's in the past, start adding a bunch of acccents and switching vowels around.
Language with the best writing system
I'm partial to any Latin alphabet based language, but Korean is supposedly "Our words are literally the shape your mouth makes when you say it."
Language with the worst writing system
Chinese. It's all ideograms, heavily stylized images of what they're supposed to be (Horse is really pretty and still looks like horse moving from right to left: 馬), but more complex words are just smashed together and you have to guess at the meanings if you don't know it by rote. (Woman: 女, Child: 子 ... put them together and you get...good? 好) It's probably easier if it's your first language, but after several years of learning Chinese, I learned maybe 100 characters, and I was still functionally illiterate.
Your language learning guilty pleasure
I pretend I know more Spanish than I do, and it's bitten me in the butt a few times.
Language you would like to learn, but haven't
Latin
1st foreign language learned
Spanish. Sorta. I never learned it well.
1st language you self studied
Japanese. Sorta. I never learned it correctly.
Language you wished was your native language
Spanish. It should be my native language, honestly, but I never learned it well.
Language you wish you studied more
Japanese. My Japanese is literally catchphrases and terminology I learned from anime, which is TOTALLY not the way to learn a language.
Language you wish wasn't so hard
Chinese. Chinese is one of the languages I attempted to learn to read, simply because I learned to read it alongside Japanese to learn Japanese kanji. But spoken Chinese is rough, since every word has four tones, and each tone changes the word. The tones kill me.
Language you have officially quit
Chinese: See above.
Language you wish you could speak everyday
As much as I'd like to know everyday Japanese, around these parts, everyday Spanish is much more useful. As my roomies saw the other day, my Spanish is rough at best.
Language that everyone speaks but you never want to try
I think learning new languages is neat, so I can't imagine one I wouldn't want to try. I may have quit Chinese, but I at least tried it.
Language everyone speaks and you want to try
Japanese. I have a very very basic grasp of it.
Language that makes you nervous
Latin. For someone who is writing a character from Ancient Rome, I'm super ignorant of Latin. That said, I've heard spoken Latin, and it really does manage to translate in my head thanks to Spanish.
Language that feels soothing
French. Silky, sexy and that accent.
Language that feels like a businessman in a suit
German.
Language that feels like grandma's home cooking
Spanish, of course.
Language that feels like a mad scientist’s experiment
English. Once you realize how much of it is a Frankenstein's monster of German, French and Latin, you realize what a crazy language it is.
Language you think is overrated
French. It may have been the "Lingua Franca" of years ago, but it's been supplanted by English. And of all the latin languages, it's the hardest to understand for me.
Language you think is underrated
Japanese. In the US Spanish is probably the most useful language, and on the west coast Chinese is right up there. But Japanese comes in as a useful third.
Language with the hardest pronunciation
For me, it was Chinese, mainly because I couldn't wrap my head around the tones. French mainly because of the "sliding" pronunciations as well.
Language with the easiest pronunciation
Spanish. Hands down.
Language with the easiest grammar
Of the ones I know? Probably Chinese. It's fairly simple and straight forward, using a lot of context where others use conjugation.
Language with the hardest grammar
Spanish for me. TO go: Yo voy, tu vas, usted va, nosotros vamos, vosotros vais, ellos van. Six words for one action depending on who is saying it. If they're speaking in the present. If it's in the past, start adding a bunch of acccents and switching vowels around.
Language with the best writing system
I'm partial to any Latin alphabet based language, but Korean is supposedly "Our words are literally the shape your mouth makes when you say it."
Language with the worst writing system
Chinese. It's all ideograms, heavily stylized images of what they're supposed to be (Horse is really pretty and still looks like horse moving from right to left: 馬), but more complex words are just smashed together and you have to guess at the meanings if you don't know it by rote. (Woman: 女, Child: 子 ... put them together and you get...good? 好) It's probably easier if it's your first language, but after several years of learning Chinese, I learned maybe 100 characters, and I was still functionally illiterate.
Your language learning guilty pleasure
I pretend I know more Spanish than I do, and it's bitten me in the butt a few times.
Language you would like to learn, but haven't
Latin
