At what age did you start to learn foreign language? What was the reason for that? Did you like it or you felt forced to study it because of school / family? If you had some bad experience with your first foreign language studies, what happened that it changed and now you like languages?
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I started when I was 7 and I used Duolingo, but I didn’t learn that much. I didn’t get back into learning languages until I started learning Spanish at school. I’ve always liked learning them, but I found it much easier after I had a teacher that explained how the language worked.
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I began studying Spanish in high school. It was the choice that made sense for me, as my mom would randomly use a Spanish word at home. Note: she’s not bilingual, just liked a few Spanish words from her language classes in high school. I enjoyed Spanish very much, but didn’t continue with it after high school. I had a decent understanding of Latin, from being a biology nerd. I remember also having a great time studying my dad’s Greek lesson book from his time in college. I would really have to brush up, if I wanted to speak/read it now. It wasn’t until about 3 years ago that I picked languages up again. I chose to use Duolingo and started studying Spanish, German, Romanian and Japanese all at the same time. Each language has a reason for wanting to learn. So I suppose the age I truly started studying languages was 35 y.o.
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My first foreign language experience was in high school. I was kinda forced to learn English at an inhumanely fast pace because my parents sent me overseas to an English-speaking country to study. I had no choice back then other than to study English really hard, if not I cannot carry on with daily life as well as school life in a foreign country all alone. It wasn’t a great experience but that didn’t stop me from loving and learning languages. I love learning languages, but at my own pace and interest; not forced by circumstances or anyone.
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I was in high school. I took French because my brother had taken it, and I didn’t want to learn Spanish like everyone else. I took 4 years, whereas most people are required to only take 2 or 3.
In college, I took a quarter of Spanish in summer school because I needed credits.
It was not until I traveled for work did I start self learning of languages. I was scheduled to have a 4 month stay in Korea, so I tried to learn Korean on my own, but was too ambitious. At the time, I could not find good beginner resources. I had found a couple cassette tapes and a pamphlet where I could learn a bunch of Korean tourist phrases, a Korean English pocket dictionary, and also a book called “College Korean”, which was only in Korean (and I would look everything up word-for-word in the dictionary). Needless to say, it was the worst possible way to learn a language.
Subsequently, I worked in Switzerland, Sweden, Italy and Japan. My best level was German B1, but I learned it in Switzerland. I used a CD Rom in High German, plus a Berlitz grammar book. Most of the people I spoke with had Swiss German accents. For each country, I was there only for a few weeks, so I never achieved fluency.
I started on Spanish about 20 years ago, and sometimes I speak it a lot, sometimes not at all.
Within the last 3 years, I decided I want to converse in my languages on a B2 level. So I am taking a few months with each language to “get into conversation shape”. I spent 2 years on Italian, 10 months on Russian (which was new), and will spend a few months on Spanish. Then I’ll rotate studying them as I please.
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Your mum is so cute! I also do the same at home. I would just throw out random Thai words that were either learned during language classes or picked up from the Thai dramas that I watch and the Thai music that I listen to. Glad to know I’m not the only one!
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My mother tongue is German, the first foreign language I learned is English. I started at the age of 9 or 10, the last year of primary school here in Austria. I kept studying English throughout Junior and senior high school, but until senior high school it was just another subject for me to study because all the lessons were so grammar focused. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t particularly love it either.
Only in senior high school did I discover that I actually loved language learning (English became more interesting then, as the lesson style changed with the new teacher and I also started learning French).
4 years later at university I started learning Russian, but never was any good at it. I thought for a long time, that it’s just not my kind of language. I still think that sometimes, but here at this conference I found my motivation again for learning this language, too, and maybe it was just the wrong teacher and/or the wrong setting. … So, when I will have improved my French a bit again (hopefully in a few months), I think I will start looking for a Russian teacher I like and then I’ll give it another try.
I also started to learn Arabic and Spanish 5 years ago. I’m still actively studying Arabic and enjoy it very much. I put Spanish on a hold because I started this together with my fiance, who stopped after one year because he didn’t have enough time to study (in his opinion at least). I still enjoy Spanish and I try to at least keep the level I have reached back then. And yes, I do want to continue this language as well, but I’m still hoping that my fiance will find his motivation again and we can start learning it together again.
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@Jinyoung It must had been tough. It’s good that it didn’t scare you too much to give up on learning languages. 
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@PinAngel I hope that one day I will do the same with my future kids. Hopefully it will not scare them in way to not want to learn any language 
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I was 4 when I arrived in France
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@Johnny15 the age of 7 you started with Duolingo? wow How old are you now if I may ask. It’s amazing when this love for languages starts so early. I started with English at elementary school when I was 7 or 8, I kind of liked it, but nothing extraordinary at that time. My love for languages started fully only later.
@CHALO so you started to learn French because of moving in France, right? And at home you were speaking in Spanish (I am just guessing based on your name, but maybe I am mistaken).
totally right
then it was lookin my mums Russian dictionary & noticing as it was close to greek(first I thought it was written in secret code because of ya as reverse R:one day my mom found me at age 6 trying to read this Russian dictionary in front of a mirror)
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@Rina I understand your feeling with Russian. It might really be the type of study books or teacher that you had. Maybe you can “start” with some apps or YouTube videos. There are plenty of them. Maybe it would fit better for you.
I was thinking about studying French together with my boyfriend, but he is Greek, I am Czech, we would have to go for some strictly French classes with no Czech explanation and I guess he would anyway give up quickly. So in your case it’s already nice, that you two at least tried to do it together. Maybe if you start to watch some videos in Spanish, he will be more into it. In our case he is even lazy to study Czech. He can speak a little bit, but he doesn’t want to really adapt even if he wants to stay in Czech Rep. Last year he subscribed for some online classes for one semester. He did literally 1 lesson and then he gave up.
@CHALO hahaha that reminds me that my parents were actually writing the list of gifts that they wanted to buy for me and my brother for Christmas in Russian alphabet, so we would not understand. They knew Russian, as previously we were in Soviet Union, and so they were forced to study it at school. Me and my brother are already from a newer generation, so we didn’t know how to read it.
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@Bando I think this is the best approach. When learning languages, it must be pleasant, not stressful. So if you feel like studying Spanish now and tomorrow you prefer some other language - why not. We do it to feel happy, right? For me it’s kind of antistress in this bad period now
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Yes, that may be a way to start. I already have Babbel for French and Spanish and I know that app has Russian as well.
If your boyfriend and you don’t mind online lessons, then I’d recommend looking for a tutor on iTalki. There is a great choice of tutors and maybe you could even find one that speaks Greek and Czech or at least Greek and English, if you yourself don’t mind studying in English? Then you could study with the same tutor 
Yeah, we tried it. It was actually his idea because he was interested in the language. We found an online tutor via Glovico (unfortunately that page doesn’t exist anymore) who speaks fluently German but is a native from Bolivia.
Problem with my fiance isn’t lazyness but he’s a perfectionist. If he feels he can’t do something 100%, he’d rather not do it at all 
which is completely contrary to my approach in most things. I feel it’s better to do a little bit, than to do nothing. In this case: if I can get in only 5 minutes of study time in a language then I’ll do the 5 minutes. Even if it’s not much, it is something. He’s more the type who wants to get 1 hour or more study time, and preferably each day. If he can’t do it perfectly (in his opinion at least), then he won’t do it.
As for lazyness: A friend of mine (Jordanian, lives in Austria and speaks a couple of languages fluently) married a woman from Poland. She moved to live with him in Austria. And while she did a German course, she always preferred to speak English with him… Until he learned Polish. Ever since, they’ve been speaking Polish with each other and she never improved her German beyond the basics while he has become fluent in Polish pretty quickly. Now, every time we meet them either we all speak English or he is translating for her
So, you’re not alone there, but I think unless a person really NEEDS to learn the language, they probably won’t, if they’re not interested in it in some other way. If they can get by, by using whatever language they know, then they will probably keep doing it like this, because it’s easier for them.
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Yeah you are right. Anytime he speaks in English and people reply, he is fine with that. So he doesn’t want to improve his Czech. To be honest because of understanding him better, I started with Greek last semester, but the teacher was not so good. I mean she was super kind and nice with us, but I need some more structure of lessons and we didn’t even have a good study book. It was kind of random stuff and if on the first lesson you are going to teach me alphabet and then immediately two types of conjugation (even if we learnt just like 5 new words or so), then I will loose my motivation. I tried to continue by myself but every time when I asked my boyfriend for some help, he wasn’t able to explain it to me and sometimes he was pushing to much with the corrections and didn’t let me speak, so I gave up and lost my motivation. I can only understand sometimes some parts of his conversation with his mother and that makes me slightly want to continue to learn it bcs I saw that I would probably be able to learn it up to B1 at least (of course after some long time)… but I don’t see that support that I would need, so for now I stopped and we will see if I will ever get back to that.
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Maybe if you started again with a different teacher? Maybe even with an online tutor?
If those courses are anything like the courses here at our local community colleges, then the quality is very teacher dependent. I’ve been doing Arabic courses here for the past 5 years with 2 different teachers. The first one focused very much on talking and used a textbook that used transcription instead of the Arabic scrip for the first couple of units (which I didn’t linke very much).
The 2nd teacher now uses a better textbook, but she’s very grammar focused and we don’t get to speak much during the lessons. So, now during Covid 19 as the classes were cancelled anyways I’ve started conversation classes with an iTalki tutor and despite only doing them for a couple of weeks now, I’ve gained more speaking practice and confidence, than in all those 5 years of community college courses
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I started learning English when I was 7, simply because I liked the language and wanted to learn it. At the time my parents could only afford a short online course, but I liked it so much that even after I finished that, I kept learning English on my own through song lyrics (I had other opportunities to learn English more “formally” after that)
Later on I had to learn Spanish because we moved to Chile, and even though I was kinda forced to learn it (otherwise I would understand nothing at school), it was still great because I was completely immersed in the language
Both experiences were really good and made me realize how much I love languages 
The downside is that since I was young and it all happened so naturally, it seems like I have to put more conscious effort into learning languages now and it doesn’t seem as easy as it used to be
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