I'm a Systems Reliability and DevOps engineer for Netdata Inc. When not working, I enjoy studying linguistics and history, playing video games, and cooking all kinds of international cuisine.
I would love to be fluently bilingual (or even trilingual). I've studied a lot of comparative linguistics as a hobby, so I know a small assortment of words and phrases in dozens of languages, but none of it is enough to even have a rudimentary conversation. I'd love to get to the point I could converse normally with someone who has a different native language than me without having to force them to use English.
Right now, I'm working on Swedish (for a long complicated list of minor reasons), but unfortunately have essentially no way to practice anything other than listening comprehension and reading. If I ever get to the point that I'm comfortably fluent in Swedish, I'll probably start on Spanish again (took one year of Spanish in high school, I can kind of read it and recite it from written form, but can't really speak it) as it's a lot more practical than Swedish.
There are all kinds of other little things I'd love to do (start a band, learn to draw, improve my marksmanship to the point of being able to make money off of competitions...), but multilingualism is really the big thing (and honestly makes me sad I wasn't born in Europe, people look at you like you're crazy here in the US when you say you want to learn a foreign language other than Spanish for any reason other than going to live in a country where it's the native language).
I speak four languages:
Haitian Creole: Native
French: Since kindergarten (the other official language in Haiti)
English: Since high school (but I improved it on my own)
Spanish: Since high school (I can not speak it well, but I can understand it most of the time)
Now I'm trying to perfect my Spanish and learning German on the side.
I'm a Systems Reliability and DevOps engineer for Netdata Inc. When not working, I enjoy studying linguistics and history, playing video games, and cooking all kinds of international cuisine.
Unfortunately not very mobile. I'm working on saving up for a two week long trip to Stockholm some time within the next few years though, and plan to eventually visit a couple other places in Sweden (at least Falun and Göteborg) as well as some other places in Scandinavia (part of my family is from Finland with Swedish heritage).
On the plus side, most of the issue for me with not being able to practice much is that while I do fine remembering the grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, I have trouble putting together sentences on the spot, so I end up speaking rather slowly but can still usually get my point across. My listening comprehension has gotten pretty good though thanks to listening to SR International (they've got a specific program designed for beginners who are just starting to learn Swedish which has been a wonderful help).
This is something I've wanted to do and just haven't committed any time to. Props for working on a language that's difficult to immerse yourself in! In addition to what Ry suggested, maybe you could get a friend to learn along too so there's someone to chat with :)
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I would love to be fluently bilingual (or even trilingual). I've studied a lot of comparative linguistics as a hobby, so I know a small assortment of words and phrases in dozens of languages, but none of it is enough to even have a rudimentary conversation. I'd love to get to the point I could converse normally with someone who has a different native language than me without having to force them to use English.
Right now, I'm working on Swedish (for a long complicated list of minor reasons), but unfortunately have essentially no way to practice anything other than listening comprehension and reading. If I ever get to the point that I'm comfortably fluent in Swedish, I'll probably start on Spanish again (took one year of Spanish in high school, I can kind of read it and recite it from written form, but can't really speak it) as it's a lot more practical than Swedish.
There are all kinds of other little things I'd love to do (start a band, learn to draw, improve my marksmanship to the point of being able to make money off of competitions...), but multilingualism is really the big thing (and honestly makes me sad I wasn't born in Europe, people look at you like you're crazy here in the US when you say you want to learn a foreign language other than Spanish for any reason other than going to live in a country where it's the native language).
I speak four languages:
Haitian Creole: Native
French: Since kindergarten (the other official language in Haiti)
English: Since high school (but I improved it on my own)
Spanish: Since high school (I can not speak it well, but I can understand it most of the time)
Now I'm trying to perfect my Spanish and learning German on the side.
How mobile is current position? Could you work from home and move to Sweden for full immersion?
Unfortunately not very mobile. I'm working on saving up for a two week long trip to Stockholm some time within the next few years though, and plan to eventually visit a couple other places in Sweden (at least Falun and Göteborg) as well as some other places in Scandinavia (part of my family is from Finland with Swedish heritage).
On the plus side, most of the issue for me with not being able to practice much is that while I do fine remembering the grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, I have trouble putting together sentences on the spot, so I end up speaking rather slowly but can still usually get my point across. My listening comprehension has gotten pretty good though thanks to listening to SR International (they've got a specific program designed for beginners who are just starting to learn Swedish which has been a wonderful help).
This is something I've wanted to do and just haven't committed any time to. Props for working on a language that's difficult to immerse yourself in! In addition to what Ry suggested, maybe you could get a friend to learn along too so there's someone to chat with :)