Hello everyone, I've been thinking for a long time that I'd really like to learn several languages. Here in Canada they teach kids French starting very early and is mandatory until they reach high school. Then it's their choice if they want to continue. I always really hated French classes because I didn't like the way I was tested, and the method of teaching the language always felt so long and drawn out. So I never retained anything.

Now that I'm older I've started to pick French back up on my own time. I'm picking it up surprisingly fast! I'm really enjoying it. But since I travel a lot, many of the countries I've visited speak Spanish. So I figure once I'm comfortable with French I'll try my hand at Spanish. I've largely only used DuoLingo as an introductory way of getting back into French. But I've since started to investigate other apps, and more in depth ways of learning languages.

Anyways, I've always been drawn to learning languages, and I have a list of several that I'd like to learn. These things take time, but I think now that I'm older I can appreciate it. I'm finally willing to take the time to learn them, I fully expect to put in a years worth of time and more, and expect that it's a never ending process of learning. I'd like to reach fluency in French, and perhaps intermediate to advanced Spanish. The other languages I'm interested in would not be easily applied to my daily life right now, so I'd have to put considerable work into learning them. So right now my focus is on French and then later transitioning to Spanish.

And finally, after reading up a bit there's some words used for multiple language speakers. By definition taken off Google:

- Multilingual: A person who speaks more than two languages, but used often for four languages or more (3% of world population speak more than 4 languages)
- Polyglot: Someone with a high degree of proficiency in several languages (less than 1‰ of world population speak 5 languages fluently)

Anyways, I just think this stuff is really cool.

Have you ever wanted to learn a language?
How many do you speak?
Ever heard of a polyglot?
Anything else?

I went to a high school that taught German. Even many years later I still retain some of the language. I want to pick it back up though and I was thinking of using Duolingo for it. The high school I was at after that one taught Spanish and French and I took Spanish and had a rough time learning the language.

I speak three languages fluently, English as you can see, French because I'm French and Japanese because I live in Japan.

The irony is that I've been learning German for as long as I remember and yet, of all the languages I've ever studied, it's the only one that I just can't seem to pick up.
I wish I could be fluent in it as well so I'm trying to get back into it but it's hard to get in the mood when I already live in another language.

I speak 3 languages fluently, I was raised bilingual so that helps a lot!
I love learning new languages and wish I had more time for it!

I took four years of Spanish in middle school and high school then a year of Japanese in college. Then I started learning a little bit of ASL with some videos after college. I don't remember much of them though. So it's just English for me.

I can only speak and read English fluently. I took two years of Spanish in high school which was a disaster because my first year I had a teacher that didn't really teach us that well. She retired that year and we got a different teacher who thought we would be fluent right away in Spanish which didn't help me at all. I can still understand a few words if I read them, but if someone came up to me speaking it I will have no clue what they are saying.

Also have been attempting self-teaching myself Japanese for over 10 years. Never get that far, always have to relearn the basics. Someday I might get a little proficient at it.

I am only fluent in English, though technically the first language I ever spoke was Mandarin Chinese. After American preschool got ahold of me I lost more and more of my ability to speak though, and after my grandmother (who had lived with us) passed away when I was in middle school I don't really have the need to speak to anyone in Mandarin anymore, so it's gotten even worse...I can still understand some basic everyday stuff like when my parents talk to each other about their days, but I can't watch Chinese dramas without subtitles, so I guess I really don't understand much at all. And I am really, really bad at speaking because I really can't think of the words I need. I took one class after college, but it was strange because I already could understand 90% of the stuff being taught in the beginner course, but really still couldn't speak well.

It's my language priority when I have more time to learn a language though, and it would be awesome if I could one day learn to read and type too (i.e. type in pinyin and the computer would spit out the character--I kinda don't think I'll ever be able to write it by hand--I tried writing my Chinese name and...it was pretty bad)!

I also understand a very tiny bit of Cantonese because my mom's side of the family speak it to each other! But VERY little bit.

Then I took Spanish on and off from elementary school and high school--3 years in high school made up the most important part, but I've forgotten most of it...though I can sort of understand sometimes and can try my best to speak. I also took Latin in high school and Ancient Greek in college, but those aren't really that practical hehe.

Reading you talking about Mandarin Chinese I feel like I'm reading my own experience, but with German ^^

Being unable to think of the words I need is so frustrating, I hate that so I don't even try to speak it anymore. (That and it's not like I have a chance to do it ^^)

I'm working on learning Norwegian, then I plan on learning Swedish, then German, French, Russian, and a few other languages if I feel like it. I mainly use Memrise. DuoLingo was anxiety-triggering for me.