Learning a Foreign Language

[Quantum Sailor]

I've been learning Japanese off and on for a few years now and recently found that fountain pens work great for practicing the writing. I think I got the idea to try it from the post of another member. So I wanted to find out if other people are learning foreign languages and if we happen to be learning the same languages we could try a letter/email/whatever exchange to practice. I know there are some sites dedicated to such endeavors but I thought it couldn't hurt to start one here as well.

[Sailor Kenshin]

I've been learning Japanese off and on for a few years now and recently found that fountain pens work great for practicing the writing. I think I got the idea to try it from the post of another member. So I wanted to find out if other people are learning foreign languages and if we happen to be learning the same languages we could try a letter/email/whatever exchange to practice. I know there are some sites dedicated to such endeavors but I thought it couldn't hurt to start one here as well.


Heh...I've been struggling with Japanese myself for far too long than I care to mention. While I can write some kana, I'm terrible at writing kanji, especially the ones with eight or more strokes.

[Quantum Sailor]

I just learned how to switch my keyboard on my mac to the various alphabets. So that has made some more interesting possibilities open up. Like surfing the web in japan.

[ethernautrix]

I have been learning Polish. Wow, it's hard. Sometimes, a friend will tell me a word, and I'll just make sounds, obviously goofing around, and then I'll be told, "Perfect!" Then I'm all... what sounds did I just make? How are they spelled?! Usually, though, I'll try to repeat the word(s)... and then have to try five or six times before I'm close.

The grammar is cray-cray, but the pronunciation is so different from English; my mouth muscles are learning Polish as much as my brain is.

[mhosea]

The grammar is cray-cray, but the pronunciation is so different from English; my mouth muscles are learning Polish as much as my brain is.

My wife is bilingual, English and Spanish. She lived in Germany as a child, learned a little bit of Russian in college, is of course familiar with the sounds of many languages, but somehow Polish had escaped her notice. We were young, still in our twenties then, but at an apartment complex she was watching our youngest as he played in a sandbox. A small boy who lived in an apartment across the courtyard came over and started talking to her, but nothing he said made any sense. It sounded like nothing she had ever heard before. She actually said it "freaked her out". It was only years later that she realized it was Polish.

[VertOlive]

Well, Spanish, Latin, and some Japanese....focusing on Latin right now.

[velo]

Polish wow. I had a couple of Polish ex-girlfriends so I got to learn the not so nice words pretty quickly. Most of the time I just played dumb. ;)

In highschool I took French and Japanese but didn't do much afterwards. A holiday in Japan last year had me brushing up on very basic phrases. The problem was I knew them so well that the locals would keep on going and I'd be standing there with a daft look on my face. I found it smoother to just use English greetings.

I'm trying to revisit French so I've bought a few apps and audio courses but procrastination is winning out again. It would be great to learn a lot more languages.

[Empty_of_Clouds]

I like to freak out native Mandarin speakers by responding with a few words in Shanghainese, which is a wholly unrelated language! I don't know much though.

[RuiFromUK]

Let us see:

Fluently: English, Portuguese and Spanish
Enough to get by: French
Almost enough to get by: German
Unfortunately I forgot most of it due to 40 years of lack of practice: Greek

Planning to learn Italian (that should not be too difficult) or Mandarin (as a challenge).

The only I probaly will have fun with a XEF fountain pen nib would of course be Mandarin.

[Sammyo]

I am learning Japanese... as my wife is Japanese and our daughter is fluent, I'm getting left behind!!!!

I can write all Kana (Hira- and Kata-), and a FEW kanji. If my wife tells me what to write, I can write it, read it back, but not always understand it ;)

I would love to challenge myself and drive myself to do better, and working with fellow pen enthusiasts sharing inks on paper and the like might be really good for me!

[velo]

Let us see:

Fluently: English, Portuguese and Spanish
Enough to get by: French
Almost enough to get by: German
Unfortunately I forgot most of it due to 40 years of lack of practice: Greek

Planning to learn Italian (that should not be too difficult) or Mandarin (as a challenge).

The only I probaly will have fun with a XEF fountain pen nib would of course be Mandarin.

I thought you might be Portuguese. I had a coworker named Rui who was a big Benfica supporter.

[RuiFromUK]

Let us see:

Fluently: English, Portuguese and Spanish
Enough to get by: French
Almost enough to get by: German
Unfortunately I forgot most of it due to 40 years of lack of practice: Greek

Planning to learn Italian (that should not be too difficult) or Mandarin (as a challenge).

The only I probaly will have fun with a XEF fountain pen nib would of course be Mandarin.

I thought you might be Portuguese. I had a coworker named Rui who was a big Benfica supporter.

You are right, I am Portuguese. But I could also have been Chinese, Rui (瑞) is also a Chinese name and it means 'lucky' or 'propitious' but it also means thunder(storm) in Cantonese. Usually it is used with two characters but I forgot which is the second one.

Since I am a very serious tea lover, here is a tea which was prepared by someone who is also called 'Rui' - http://www.white2tea.com/tea-shop/2007-rui-chang-xiang-yiwu/ - actually this tea comes from my favourite region of pu'er teas i.e. Yiwu mountain.