Hey everyone, I’m going to write in English as I suppose it’s the language most of us share. My name is Mateo, I am Uruguayan, and I’ve been learning languages since around age 10, when I had to move to the U.S, so I had to learn English.
As I study international relations, many people suggested I learn Mandarin. I tried, and grew frustrated since I didn’t really know much about how to go about it and I failed (I tried a pure-audio method that’s quite well known). Not satisfied with that, I decided to take on an easier language, Portuguese. I’d always loved the sounds of the language, and the music (bossa nova) was familiar to me. I signed up for a language exchange and began reading and watching interesting things. It went extremely well.
I keep trying and stumbling with Mandarin. I hope to some day reach an intermediate level and take it from there. I’ve noticed that once you reach that intermediate level, everything becomes a little easier, even if you can reach plateaus. I am aware that my failiure is likely due to lack of listening practice and most of all comprehensible input.
Without wanting to bore with a lot more, I’ll just say that I lated took up French in a very similar way to Portuguese. Took it up in high-school even if lots of people told me it would be a “waste of time”. High school education wasn’t nearly enough and I wasn’t too motivated at the time, but after learning PR, I began with French and it has been really great. I don’t have favorites, but if I did, French would be it 
If there’s anyone from Uruguay, don’t hesitate to reach out, and lastly, I just want to briefly mention that as a native Spanish speaker, I do feel a little “guilty” for having an easy time learning latin-based languages, as I have. I’m also learning Italian, but that’s enough for now. Thanks for reading! I’m hoping to meet interesting and like-minded people, as this is my first Polyglot Conference 
