Languages you’ve enjoyed the most and/or were intuitive to learn?

[verdensrommet]

In other words, what languages have you enjoyed learning? And, which languages were easy for you to grasp and begin using quickly?

[IceVajal]

I'm just a beginner, but as a German native who speaks English Dutch is easy to understand. Listening to a podcast worked well right from the start and even reading news is easy. Sure, still lots of words I don't know, but I can get the meaning.

[LICA98]

Romanian is my fav

[SweNedGuy]

My experience with German is symmetrical from that one of IceVajal with (my native) Dutch. We had just one hour of German a week while in the last three years of secondary school. During my military service in Westfalen, I cranked up my German again. My speaking ability won't ever get beyond B1, but I can read anything I like or watch German TV.

On Duolingo learning Swedish was remarkably easy. The vast majority of words have either a Dutch, a German or an English cognate. Deciphering a written text gets easier by the day, but listening to spoken Swedish still is above my league, even with a golden tree.

[Chrisinom]

The answer is easy: That's Italian. I learned English at school, studied it at university, spent one year in Scotland (I also played soccer there and remember one match with a player of the other team saying to his mate: "There's a f****** Irishman playing for them." Later I taught English at school. I started to learn Italian in my thirties and arrived at something like C1 level within five years of evening classes. Somehow I got it into my ears, and later I had the chance to improve it even more by spending quite a lot of time in Italy and by teaching it myself. Today I would say that I'm equally familiar with both languages. At the moment I'm learning Spanish and find it more difficult than Italian.

[Explorer]

As a Spanish native speaker who also speaks Portuguese and some Catalan, I can understand other Romance languages with relative ease. It wasn't too hard to study French in highschool. I can also read any article in the Italian Wikipedia without using a dictionary.

[wayfarer]

The answer is easy: That's Italian. I learned English at school, studied it at university, spent one year in Scotland (I also played soccer there and remember one match with a player of the other team saying to his mate: "There's a f****** Irishman playing for them." Later I taught English at school. I started to learn Italian in my thirties and arrived at something like C1 level within five years of evening classes. Somehow I got it into my ears, and later I had the chance to improve it even more by spending quite a lot of time in Italy and by teaching it myself. Today I would say that I'm equally familiar with both languages. At the moment I'm learning Spanish and find it more difficult than Italian.

That's interesting. I had the opposite experience regarding Italian and Spanish. I tried to start learning Italian but found it quite a chore. Not difficult, as such (though the multiple articles threw me a bit), but just failing to capture my attention. I suspect the teaching had something to do with it.

For various reasons I had to give up that class and switched to Spanish which I took to right away, 'getting' it straight away and improving rapidly until I was way ahead of the others in the class. This meant I outgrew the class and so now am learning it on my own.

Good luck with your learning endeavours!

[MoniqueMaRie]

...I suspect the teaching had something to do with it.

For various reasons I had to give up that class and switched to Spanish which I took to right away, 'getting' it straight away and improving rapidly until I was way ahead of the others in the class. This meant I outgrew the class and so now am learning it on my own.

Good luck with your learning endeavours!

Ah yes. The teacher can be the reason for sticking to one language and giving up another.

That's how I ended up with Chinese instead of Spanish.

[Explorer]

English is the only foreign language that I was forced to learn in school. Unconsciously, I associate English with boring classes, homework, and the stress of the exams. Maybe that's why I still don't feel confident speaking this language. Nevertheless, as an adult, I have come to appreciate it a little more.

[uralicnomad]

As a kid in a heavily multicultural suburb in a distant land, a specific language wasn't anything interesting.. but collecting ways to say "F*** off" in other languages was a big priority and held much clout amongst friends

[cermak_rd]

For me I found Swedish extremely easy, even learning it from Spanish. Of course, this was after learning German and Dutch.
I've continued learning it by working through a memrise course (the last half of it it was like parts 4-7 I think) and am currently working through the Gilla Svenska Kurs D book.

[Deleted User 10747]

I think Spanish is a fun language for me! I learned French at school so that was a big help. However I am a beginner so I might be eating my words further down the track!
One that I found to be very non-intuitive was Scots Gaelic.
I just couldn't make it stick in my brain.

[XeO3]

Oddly, Finnish has been smooth sailing for me. It just seems so logical & the phonetics easy. And fun - I've learned lots of profanities from watching Finnish TV. Icelandic & Faroese have been brutal for me & they are (not that closely) related to my native language (English).

[Deleted User 10974]

In all my language dabbling, for some reason Swedish seemed to really resonate with me.
I have a background in German which of course helps, but for some reason I felt very comfortable with it.
Danish and Norwegian went out the door. No interest there at all, strange given the apparent similarities between the three.
Swedish is one of those languages that I think, "When I've got the time I'm going to really sit down and focus on this!"

[ararat-tempest]

hmm, this is a good question. I've already told pieces of my story here, let me say in detail. viewtopic.php?p=68619-what-s-your-purpo ... g-duolingo
I started to learn English at the age of 7 like other Chinese kids, but my "learning road" seemed like a bit "short" cuz I blazed through the courses easily and passed the exam of PETS-2 when I was 12. (this level equals Chinese high school graduates' English level.) so I started to realize that I have a good 相性 on English or maybe Germanic languages in general. then I spent my time strengthen my English level and learnt Japanese casually until I studied Japanese "officially" at university. many Japanese learners in China complain about how difficult Japanese was, but I never have that feeling and I passed NSS-4 exam easily when I was a sophomore (which means I could graduate already as some of my teachers told me).
1- I feel like home learning Norwegian Bokmål and Danish at the same time. that's not just because I've been a metalhead for two decades and I enjoy listening to extreme metal bands from Norway and Denmark. why I didn't choose to learn those two languages when I was in high school? because I love animes! well, also because I don't have that chance to learn those languages at university, unless I got higher grades in the College Entrance Examination. my grades of politics and Chinese history are kinda bad and dragged me into the mud of "level 2 universities"... sigh why I have to learn the subjects I won't use in the future or not interested...
2- as a fan of Nordic countries as you can expect, Swedish is my next choice and I love it too. some of my favorite bands who play melodic black metal are also Swedish. they have Swedish lyrics too. and some words and grammar rules are very similar to Norwegian and Danish, so not a problem.
3- Finnish was my next target, no surprise. I have a friend who's also a Finnish learner and he had a hard time learning the "infamous" "case system". I had a little trouble at first, but it makes sense. at least, remembering Finnish words are enjoyable for me.
4- I have no clear idea why I started to learn Dutch when I just graduated from the university. but I wanna know more about the world of "grammatical gender" and get some information about it, in case I could learn a Romance language easier. and some youtubers of retrogaming I love speak Dutch. it's not that hard to learn as I've already learnt English for a decade or so at that point.
5- Indonesia is a good country if talking about brutal death metal music, so I also started to learn Indonesian when I was an English and Japanese teacher. I know many metal bands who love to write lyrics in English, but not the same case of Indonesian brutal death metal bands. they tend to write in bahasa indonesia a lot. I was into Starcraft matches at that time too, and there are tons of matches hosted in bahasa indonesia, so I decided to learn Indonesian. I love this language without tense marker on the verb and the "easiness" is almost at the "Esperanto-level".
6- I heard that Esperanto can be a bridge of learning many languages, so why not? I have to say it surely is easy to blast, sometimes even Toki Pona couldn't compare. Learning Esperanto is like having a rest in the world of language learning.
7- I had a hard time learning Czech. my initial purpose of learning Czech is just playing some video games. these games only released in Czech or Slovak. as I only have Czech version, so I have to learn a bit. I'm not that person who complains and requires other people to translate but rather learn the language. it seems like I have a "lower sense" of Czech language, but I still enjoy it anyway.
8- Haitian Creole, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian are very interesting. nothing beats lexical comparison of language learning for me, but learning these languages are just my 気まぐれ... I'm also curious about French, since Haitian Creole is based on French, I'd better have some knowledge of it. but French grammar is super weird lol.
as for Modern Latin, Turkish, Vietnamese, Yiddish, these are just in my curiosity. I learn them really casually. Korean is no exception, but I watch Korean animes. some of them have no subtitles, so, yeah.
I don't like learning only one or two languages that deeply. I prefer having knowledge of various languages. even though I won't have a chance to get to the level above B1 perhaps. that's why I often complain that I haven't enough time in my limited life.

thanks to Duolingo, I could learn these language easily and have fun.
and maybe thanks to Esperanto so that I could learn many languages without problems by only reading grammar books and looking up dictionaries.

[IceVajal]

@ararat-tempest I guess, you know the book The Loom Of Languages by Frederick Boomer?

If not, it might be interesting for you.... Even if some parts sound odd as it was written about 80+ years ago.

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.283471

[ararat-tempest]

@ararat-tempest I guess, you know the book The Loom Of Languages by Frederick Boomer?

If not, it might be interesting for you.... Even if some parts sound odd as it was written about 80+ years ago.

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.283471

thanks for the recommendation! I've read "Routledge Language Family Series" btw.
I'll grab a copy of "An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages".

[Deleted User 10974]

@ararat-tempest Just reading your post made me reach for my smelling salts.
I guess when one joins a forum one always runs the risk of meeting insane insanely brilliant people!
By the way, I guess if we want Duo to add a new language, we bypass Luis and his Green Avian and contact you?

Edit: Actually I thought Duolingo was banned in China, but it seems that it's allowed in certain places?

[IceVajal]

@ararat-tempest I guess, you know the book The Loom Of Languages by Frederick Boomer?

Ifk not, it might be interesting for you.... Even if some parts sound odd as it was written about 80+ years ago.

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.283471

thanks for the recommendation! I've read "Routledge Language Family Series" btw.
I'll grab a copy of "An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages".

Bodmer is surely a good addition to your books. I was lucky to get a printed German version 2nd hand which I have at home and I read the PDF on bus rides. Bodmer has a lot of tables where he compares Romance languages or Germanic languages. Quite handy for one who learns several languages of one family or who just want to take a look at the similarities.

[ararat-tempest]

@ararat-tempest Just reading your post made me reach for my smelling salts.
I guess when one joins a forum one always runs the risk of meeting insane insanely brilliant people!
By the way, I guess if we want Duo to add a new language, we bypass Luis and his Green Avian and contact you?

Edit: Actually I thought Duolingo was banned in China, but it seems that it's allowed in certain places?

haha, that's an overpraise of me. I just happened to love learning languages, like other people love to watch movies or go to the concerts, etc. in their spare time. but in contradiction, I'm not a fan of social contact, and languages are ways to communicate with others. hmm, maybe the reason is that I regard languages as another sort of art.
um, unfortunately I'm not a member of Duolingo team. if they ask me about language course addition, I'll definitely give a hand though.
no, Duolingo wasn't banned in China, heck there's even a "branch" in Shanghai.

[ararat-tempest]

Bodmer is surely a good addition to your books. I was lucky to get a printed German version 2nd hand which I have at home and I read the PDF on bus rides. Bodmer has a lot of tables where he compares Romance languages or Germanic languages. Quite handy for one who learns several languages of one family or who just want to take a look at the similarities.

oh, how nice! I've got the English version and will have a read after finishing reading "土族语简志".

[IceVajal]

Actually due to the comparisons I thought you will like it.

[ararat-tempest]

Actually due to the comparisons I thought you will like it.

books on multilingual stuffs are kinda rare, especially in China. at least I've never seen one from Chinese bookstores unless textbooks... and the main foreign language bookstores in Changchun bankrupted, plus I prefer reading books not in Chinese......

[Deleted User 10974]

@ararat-tempest Just reading your post made me reach for my smelling salts.
I guess when one joins a forum one always runs the risk of meeting insane insanely brilliant people!
By the way, I guess if we want Duo to add a new language, we bypass Luis and his Green Avian and contact you?

Edit: Actually I thought Duolingo was banned in China, but it seems that it's allowed in certain places?

haha, that's an overpraise of me. I just happened to love learning languages, like other people love to watch movies or go to the concerts, etc. in their spare time. but in contradiction, I'm not a fan of social contact, and languages are ways to communicate with others. hmm, maybe the reason is that I regard languages as another sort of art.
um, unfortunately I'm not a member of Duolingo team. if they ask me about language course addition, I'll definitely give a hand though.
no, Duolingo wasn't banned in China, heck there's even a "branch" in Shanghai.

Sorry, blame my misinformation on Google. I had no idea the owl had a "branch" in Shanghai!
Comparing language to "art" is a beautiful thing. I guess the more languages one learns, the ability to connect the human experience through thought and sounds expands.
I you were given the power to determine future languages on Duo, what would you choose - and why?

[ararat-tempest]

Comparing language to "art" is a beautiful thing. I guess the more languages one learns, the ability to connect the human experience through thought and sounds expands.
I you were given the power to determine future languages on Duo, what would you choose - and why?

I think the language is like a complex form of art. it's made from grammar, lexicon, pronunciation, inherence (sth. like cultural background, native users, etc.) and every element is indispensable.
well, another good question. the following courses should be in English.
1- Kriolu (aka Cape Verdean Creole). we only have Haitian Creole here, and it's French based. why not add a Portuguese based one? creole and pidgin languages have their own unique charms, culturally and linguistically and that's the point linguistic researchers all know.
2- Papiamento (aka Papiamentu). if Duo don't add Kriolu, this would be another great choice. there are only few languages like this which are based on multiple languages from two language branches.
3- Catalan. Duo has Spanish→Catalan, but there are still non-Spanish speakers who wanna learn. Add Valencian too if possible! that would be a good chance to compare the two languages.
4- Ainu. I've read several books about Ainu languages in Japanese. the addition of this course would be meaningful to let people know more about language isolates. there are a few textbooks only in Japanese, so this must be helpful if the course is in English.
5- Basque. another example of language isolates. if Duo don't add Ainu course, please add Basque course at least.
6- Zhuang or Bouyei. tonal language learning is tricky. for Tai-Kaidai language family, it's more complicated comparing with the course Duo already have——Vietnamese. and learning another script system isn't that friendly for beginners, so Zhuang and Bouyei are good choices comparing with Thai or Lao if talking about popularity. also, they have fewer than 9 tones, and many of their words are borrowed from Chinese.
7- Filipino. you can't deny Philippine culture's influence, and there are many Asian people who are learning Filipino, especially Indonesians and Malays. that's a huge population.
8- Toki Pona. need I tell the reason? you all know it.
9- Marshallese. this is a typical Micronesian language, and it's the official language of Marshall Islands. that would be a good comparison with Hawaiian, a Polynesian language in the same family of Austronesian languages.
10- Farsi, Pashto or Dari. there are plenty of people who are interested in Persian and Afghan culture. there are also many people, who are or aren't Arabic speakers, who have curiosity about the country Afghanistan. the three languages have many things in common.

Icelandic, Faroese, Estonian, Latvian courses would be my personal addition without other reasons.

[IceVajal]

@ararat-tempest, do you know QLango? It's not like Duolingo, more like a basic version of Clozemaster... You can learn single words or words in context. But no grammar explained, so you would still need a grammar book or website.

I'm not sure how much you can use for free... But lifetime subscription was offered for 40€ for all languages, at least for awhile.

Anyway they offer these languages:
Discover the joy of language learning with Qlango! Our innovative platform offers a wide range of languages for you to explore, including Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (British and American), Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (European and Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.

At least some of the ones you named.

[ararat-tempest]

@ararat-tempest, do you know QLango? It's not like Duolingo, more like a basic version of Clozemaster... You can learn single words or words in context. But no grammar explained, so you would still need a grammar book or website.

I'm not sure how much you can use for free... But lifetime subscription was offered for 40€ for all languages, at least for awhile.

Anyway they offer these languages:
Discover the joy of language learning with Qlango! Our innovative platform offers a wide range of languages for you to explore, including Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (British and American), Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (European and Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.

At least some of the ones you named.

thx for the recommendation. but I had a hard time to visit the website lol. it took me several minutes to get-go......

[IceVajal]

QLango is, if memory serves, a Estonian company, so that's why you find some Slavic and Nordic languages there. I think it's interesting, because they choose languages which can't be found in many apps. Sure, some of the most studied they have, too.

[ararat-tempest]

QLango is, if memory serves, a Estonian company, so that's why you find some Slavic and Nordic languages there. I think it's interesting, because they choose languages which can't be found in many apps. Sure, some of the most studied they have, too.

bad news, QLango is totally blocked in China. I can't even register, nor login as a guest.
also, there are only a handful of language learning applications in Chinese appstore (not google) including Duolingo (shrunk version, many functions aren't here)
heck, my Clozemaster is even an outdated version downloaded unofficially......

[IceVajal]

@ararat-tempest, that's a pity. I haven't thought of the restrictions.