Language Learners!

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I have an interest in learning languages. I can speak Spanish at a pretty proficient level and am currently learning Chinese.

I actually never really planned to learn Chinese until I found out I was going to China. I was studying Korean at the time but have had drop it once I've been living in China because there isn't a lot of use of it for me here. But I still plan to learn it and I wanted to learn Russian afterwards because my brother decided to study that at university and our grandfather is Russian.

I think my favorite way is to learn song lyrics. This was a lot easier in Spanish because there's a lot of great rock music I like in Spanish and it branched off into a lot of the more interesting pop songs from Latin America as well. I had a harder time finding music I like from Korea until I finally embraced K-pop because, honestly, a lot of the music I normally listen to actually has a lot of similarities to K-pop. This would be great if I were learning Korean because I've probably listened to too much K-pop by now, probably more than most music.

Finding songs I like in Chinese has been really difficult. Every once in a while, I'll hear a song I like, not to the level I'll like a Spanish rock song, or a K-pop something, but it's better than nothing most of the time. Chinese people tend to like the slow, soft, ballady kind of music that's really hard for me to listen to, so some songs with any sort of dynamics is a welcomed change for me.

My biggest obstacle is that even though I like languages, I really don't like talking to people

I already have a hard enough time finding people I like to talk to in my own language. The most common topics I've heard in the languages I understand are the weather, the weather in other locations, how the weather was in the past, how they hope the weather will improve in the future, how they hope the weather won't get worse in the future, how weather is currently nice, how the weather is currently not nice, and how delicious the food they are currently eating is.

Really insightful topics, guys...

I guess it doesn't help that I already have a pretty anti-social or misanthropic personality, so maybe I don't know how to lead into conversations about things I do like talking about from the normal small talk. I have no ability to increase small talk into medium talk.

But there have been more than a couple of times where I could have a conversation with someone and I'm not completely bored by it. It's just that these times are irregular and regular practice is what needed to reach a proficient level. Conversations I feel better about seem to be about how we're learning each other's languages, some really weird differences or things about different countries.

Chinese people seem really proud about using chop sticks and they like to bring that up as a major cultural difference(they are so surprised, every time, when they see a foreigner using chop sticks regardless of how long the foreigner has lived there), but I've found it more interesting to talk about how I think it's weird that a lot of foreigners come to live in China but no one really expects them to learn Chinese while there are a lot of immigrants in the US and Americans get really mad if they don't learn English.

That's my experience with languages, I guess. Does any one else here like to learn languages? What do you like to do and what are some of the challenges you face?

I like languages...but I seem to have difficulty learning them.

This is a very interesting topic—-as in cultural differences between those who tolerate those who don’t learn the native language, and those who have difficulty in tolerating that.

By the way, the weather is one of my special interests.

I imagine since it's your special interest, you'd have something way more interesting to say about it than most people. Like, maybe you can say something people would learn about other than "Wow!It's so cold today!" Yes, I know...because I'm experiencing the same weather...and it's winter, why are you surprised....

If your still interested, there are a lot of resources that are really good. I started with Duolingo on Spanish. For me, it was the best way to learn the many conjugations they have. I think I have found that the best way is to memorize a list of words and if you hear them or see them in conversations, it's easy to see how they are used. I kind of find that nice about languages, it's almost like learning math equations.