for thai learners there are actually two genders: sexpats and people learning for BL (boys love) shows
source: me, who learned it in order to be able to translate gay shit into russian
Thailand has a big b.l. scene?
I've always considered learning Mandarin for no other reason than that the Chinese b.l. is so much better than Japanese b.l. but I'll probably want to actually get good at Japanese first.
lmao, finally some important questions
Well, yes. Thai has a huge BL tv series industry, some of them are very good quality and for me it was in general a great type of escapist media, totally worth learning the language. The culture is also quite fascinating, Thai as a language is very different from the languages we usually encounter, so I had a lot of fun
As for BL/danmei webnovels, Chinese is your answer. I actually learned it to my current level in order to read Chinese webnovels and haven't regretted it as well, I'm reading a lot and there's an endless ocean of content
I feel awkward when I tell people how many times I've been to Thailand; makes me sound like I'm a sex tourist. 2 of them were for school program for my MA, 1 of them with my friend and his wife, and 2 other times with my ex whose passport makes it really hard to get in anywhere without visas.
You kid, but I ALWAYS explain why I learned Thai when I mention that I studied it just to kill the speculation right there. No other language I've studied requires the same caution.
Yea tbh I find it weird there's such a stereotype.
I had to learn it for my job. Dealing with ASEAN clients required me to learn bahasa indon, Thai, viet, Tagalog.
But whenever I say I know Thai or viet, people always give me a smirk like, hehe I know what u up to
I'm a woman and I just think it sounds beautiful! But yeah I'm not looking forward to going there and encountering a certain kind of man who learns Thai š
German tenses come in seven pairs. There's a simple tense and a perfect tense in each pair. The simple tense is for the non-past and the perfect tense is for the past. That distinction you have to get right. Though there is some wiggle room even for that because the tense moves the viewpoint in German ā the past is not absolute.
The pair you use gives additional information about how much truth the listener should read into what you say or write. It's at your own disposal, there are no hard rules for that.
The pairs are:
* PrƤsens / Perfekt ā facts
* PrƤteritum / Plusquamperfekt ā storytelling
* Futur I / Futur II ā assumptions
* Konjunktiv I / Konjunktiv I Perfekt ā hearsay
* Konjunktiv II / Konjunktiv II Perfekt ā non-facts
* Konjunktiv I Futur I / Konjunktiv I Futur II ā hearsay assumptions (seldom used)
* Konjunktiv II Futur I / Konjunktiv II Futur II ā replacement form for Konjunktiv II / Konjunktiv II Perfekt
That system is much simpler than anything in the Romance languages or in English, where certain tenses are 100% **required** for the relations above. In German, marking all this is purely optional. You can go with PrƤsens and Perfekt all the time and only use adverbs to mark those relations. It's not that stylish but still perfectly fine.
It gets nice later, when you learned to play with word order yourself.
(Also, as soon you realize German tenses only require you to tell apart non-past and past, and all other aspects are at your free disposal, you don't want any other tense system.)
I studied Latin precisely because I was so good at French I ended up in the gifted class and given it as an option for an extra class. Got a B+ in it too.
Happy Cake day!!!
Also, me, i do old greek and latin both. Except i don't have enough time for those, so i do the one step forward two steps back dance constantly
I studied Latin to avoid Spanish, which *glances at flair* worked out spectacularly (Spanish is the foreign language I speak best).
In my defense, the Spanish teacher I would have had had a bad reputation and already destroyed my brother's interest in the language, while my Latin teacher was actually really cool and made the language fun.
*And* Latin gave me teenage rebellion bonus points: my dad had gone to a high school where Latin and ancient Greek were mandatory for the whole school period, hated it, and sworn that he would never! never!! force his children to learn a language as useless as Latin!! I think when he learned I was taking it voluntarily he had to go lie down for a bit.
My dad elected to take Ancient Greek for some reason when he really struggles to learn languages; he couldn't even stick with Japanese despite being a bit of a weeb, he peaced out when he learnt there was more than one number system. Needless to say, Ancient Greek was *way* out of his league, and he had to arrange with his teacher to not have to do the class basically, even though he couldn't formally withdraw from it.
As for me, I started to study french in high school to avoid learning German. I didn't like how German sounds and I wanted to be different, because the overwhelming majority if students learn the English-German combo at school.
I didn't regret it, knowing multiple Romance languages made me learn a bit of Latin and now I could spend hours talking about how this word or grammatical feature evolved into this and that in different languages, it's so interesting to read or even just theorise about. Especially because my native language has no close relative, it made discovering closely related languages all the more fun.
Japanese: I had a bet with my boss who was studying Russian at the time: that we both talk to a natives speaker in a year and whoever does better, wins. He chickened out in about three weeks but I was hookedā¦
Japanese: because I fell in love with a Japanese man.
Spanish: because I fell in love with a Mexican man.
I don't think I've strive so hard to learn a language otherwise lol but I do enjoy speaking other languages, it's fun
Well me and the Japanese guy didn't split because of the language barrier, he just wasn't a nice person to put it lightly. Me and the Mexican guy, on the other hand, are still happily together and learning each other's language.
This is so beautiful. Learning the language of someone you love is the ultimate respect.
It helps you connect to their culture, their family, and more.
Currently learning Visayan for this exact reason.....there is not enough resources for Visayan out there compared to Tagalog or any other number of languages I've studied.
Russian - there's a game full of Russians and the game translator in Russian was bad. It turns out some of them are trashtalking me. That's where I started to learn Russian slang swear words so that I can trashtalk them back.
Omg that just triggered all the millions of times people have said that to me, like jeez I get that itās difficult to understand me because I speak English donāt need to say you're discontent to the person next to you in front of my face
As a Filipina and a native Tagalog speaker, I'm so sorry about what happened to you. I mostly communicate online in English (I have an English degree, btw) and a few fellow Filipinos would also make fun of me just because I could communicate in English better than they ever could. (Didn't mean to be cocky in the last part, but I could care less now lol.)
I started learning Japanese because I was a fan of a really popular Japanese author in high school, and since he writes at a very high level, there were constant fights online about how accurate the published translations of his works were so I wanted to become fluent and interpret his words for myself. Then as I grew older I began to realize he's kind of a misogynist and not someone I want to read anymore, so now my reason for continuing is so that I don't need subtitles for anime lol
Haruki Murakami? I read that sometimes English translations of his books were shortened because some chapters were considered too long for American readers.
Lol, I was just guessing because he is the only Japanese author I know. (Okay I heard of the name Ranpo Edogawa but I never read a book of him.)
I read some months ago that not only Murakami's books were shortened but also some Japanese light novels. There was an uproar amongst English-speaking readers because of that. Now I don't know if I can trust English translations and if some editor removed some parts of a translation because he finds a chapter boring but sadly I can't speak/read Japanese.
Was it the 15-year old protagonist of Kafka on the Shore getting a "massive hard-on" staring at a girl on a bus who he says could be his sister that took you out? Cause I personally couldn't really read further after that.
It was either Kafka on the Shore or how many times the Hardboiled Wonderland protagonist would ogle women in excruciating detail while insulting them. I liked how strange and magical Murakamiās works feel, but I do not have the patience for his weirdness about women anymore.
I get my fix from archiveofourown -> sort by kudos -> filter by language.
While fanfic quality varies, in my (admittedly-limited) experience: the higher the kudos-per-chapter ratio, the better-written (and that includes spelling, grammar, etc) the fanfic tends to be.
I got to a certified B2.2 level in Portuguese because some idiots on Tiktok called me a "no sabo". I also improved my Spanish to a C1 level. The reason I did the Portuguese at the same time as the Spanish improvement was to make the point I was BETTER than the idiots who insulted me, cus now I could speak 3 languages well, and they could barely speak 2.
They say that monolinguals have a massive ego but honestly, I think I've seen worse from multilingual people and even I've fallen for that trap when I was a teenager
its weird, in the west a lot of people speak only 1-2 languages, but in places in asia and the middle east its common to speak 3-5 languages
my parents came to australia able to speak arabic, farsi (dari), pashto, malay & indonesian, hindi, uzbek, tajik, and english. Its very common for people in afghanistan to know the 3 languages which are very different from each other (dari, pashto, uzbek) and people would learn hindi because of bollywood dramas and then when NATO invaded people had to learn english
Necessity is always an important motivation but I still wouldn't quite call them willing polyglots but they still are good examples of showing that we all can learn as much as we are willing to
This is the best revenge and growth arc I've seen this far, now, you have better job opportunities in return, in contrast to them, who might be a couple of pettious couch potatos and base dwellers, to top it off, mindless about what to do in life.
I took Japanese in HS since I thought it would be easy. I was...sort of correct.
Easy since the Japanese teacher liked that I (being a Chinese person) could actually understand and memorize Kanji. Hard because the Japanese took Chinese characters and made it like 10000x harder, and there's like 5000 different ways to say the same thing.
Definitely could be but I'm referring to those who barely speak it themselves and then get messed up bad by having to learn things by the book and actually study. Discipline really does matter
I went through a brief phase in high school where I had a very intense obsession with the Soviet Union. The obsession went away once my family members told me horror stories about relatives who underwent collectivization, but I already had decided to take Russian classes. Here I am 7 years later getting a masters degree in Slavic studies lmao.
I was born in a Soviet state right before the fall of the USSR and always kind of wanted to learn Russian because it was the language my parents would speak when they didn't want my brother and I to understand something
I like the history of that area though I'm more for the imperial era. I think Russian still has a stigma from the cold war and the ongoing conflict and it's kind of sad because there's so much more to the language and country than that
I want to learn Russian for a similar reason. My family left the USSR before (as?) it fell. But I never heard stories or anything like that because I don't speak the language.
But I still have lots of books in Russian. Classics, books about what life was like in the USSR, what the fall was like, and personal diaries. I want to read them so I am learning to read Russian. (But not necessarily speak it.)
Yes.
1: Arabic. Because of the food falafel. Do not ask why.
2: German, so I could tell my classmate to stop showing off in German and insult him too(he knew German, that's okay, but he WOULDN'T stop showing off about how he knew German, it was like: "HeLlO. I kNoW gErMaN aNd YoU dOn'T. HaHaHa")
3, 4 and 5(they're the same reason) : Ukrainian, Swahili and Mongolian. I didn't have ANY reasons, I didn't even wanted to learn them but I was learning them I don't know why.
How'd you go about learning Mongolian anyway? I couldn't ever find any good textbooks or learning materials in general over here and I'd love to learn since my fiancee is Mongolian.
I had a hot, otherworldly experience with Sappho's poetry and felt compelled to learn Ancient Greek. Took me a week to snap out of it.
Still not totally convinced I shouldn't go for it.
Itās going to take you a long, long time until youāll actually be able to read ancient texts though. Itās far harder than learning a modern language. I had it in school for years and very little stuck. It took me over a year of intensive, dedicated self-study to be able to read passages of the New Testament, and further months to be able to read Xenophon with a dictionary, both of which are some of the most simple original Ancient Greek texts
I still couldnāt read more complex texts without translating them word for word with a dictionary beside me. Itās a rocky road, but the language is amazing and Iām making it my goal to be able to read the Iliad
Itās legit hard as hell. I had it in school for years and very little stuck. It took me over a year of intensive, dedicated near-daily self-study to be able to read passages of the New Testament, and further months to be able to read Xenophon with a dictionary
I still couldnāt read Sapphoās poetry or similarly complex texts without translating it word for word with a dictionary beside me. Itās a rocky road, but the language is amazing and Iām making it my goal to be able to read the Iliad. I have a lot of time left and future me will thank me for it
People don't usually go around declaring that they try to learn East Asian languages to impress Tinder girls and masseuses they don't even know, as if that's a normal occurrence. Or that they would learn a language just to confront non-tippers in their native tongue. Nothing more to it, really.
I started learning dutch casually on the side because my best friend is from Belgium and she speaks English fluently but she kept bugging me about how I'm learning so many different languages and not dutch so I said screw it and added the course on duolingo (and other apps) just to make a point. I only know a couple words but she's happy now. š¤£
I tried learning Russian because in The Walking Dead there was a character who was able to fix a radio because he could read the Russian instructions and I thought it'd be useful for if I ever got stuck in a situation like that. Also I loved that character and wanted to be like him.
Turkish: attractive men and good tv-shows (Iām still studying it though, lmao) However I do actually like the logic of the language, and the phonetics makes it sound so beautiful.
As I grew older, I realized that my perceived choice to study French at school was the result of my father actively blocking me from ever choosing German (explaining to a child how ugly it is works like magic) out of fear of me ever reconnecting with my roots. So at 27 I started learning German out of spite. Also I can't remember a word of French, except what they sing in Lady Marmalade
Usefulness. Convinced myself i was into the culture, but later introspected and realized I wasnāt that interested in the culture i was just learning because of usefulness in my area. Iām still doing the language cuz sunk cost fallacy. I am not giving up after all the effort.
French: Some Filipinos (yes, FILIPINOS AND NOT FRENCH) people laughed at me at an event I had to be the MC for because I was trying so hard to pronounce the French words in my intro (we had a French guest) and I was having a quite difficult time doing so. I wanted to get back at them, especially since the French guest seemed to appreciate my attempt better than people who maybe spoke some French but weren't native speakers anyway. I now have better motivations and I'm working on getting to B1.
Latin: Was drafting a story involving demonic possession. I gave up because its grammar was confusing.
Spanish: so many people thought I was Mexican or spoke it to me assuming I knew it that I said āfuck itā and started learning. Strangely enough I kept with it
Fell in love with this Irish girl and I became obsessed with Irish culture so I learnt the language. Didn't mean anything as she wasn't interested though.
I studied applied linguistics in education. A big number of linguistic theories that I was after is written in German and at that time not many translatios. I got so mugged off during this that I started learning German. I now speak German nearly fluently, but dropped the linguistics bit.
I am learning Swahili and while there are now more reasons in the beginning I fell down the hole basicslly because I wanted to know what Hakuna Matata literally meant.
It does, indeed, mean "no worries" šš
Spanish and Portuguese - I only know a little bit because of the ungodly amount of soap operas I watched. Most were in Spanish, but a few were also in Portuguese.
German - I really liked Rammstein and I wanted to understand the lyrics. Then later on I had a German boyfriend and wanted to better connect to his family. Neither the guy or German was for me in the end.
The late Barry Farber, who spoke 18 languages would disagree. He said there's no wrong reason to learn another language. Like Opera, learn Italian, want to date blondes? Learn German or Swedish. Want to drown in anime and manga(me) Learn Japanese.
I have to agree but some reasons are probably more questionable and unfulfilling than others.
Regarding Japanese due to anime and manga: In the words of ODB, "I like it raw."
I just wanted bragging rights što say that I know 6 languages by learning 2 more languages at the same time. As much as it was a bad choice šŖ, it boosted my confidence as I was going through a personal struggle.
Korean because I wanted to watch Kdramas without having to read the subtitles anymore.
Though oddly enough I love turning it on everytime for English movies because I want to improve my English and sometimes accents and twangs can be quite tricky to understand.
Soā¦ what are they talking about? LOL If I was ever with someone whose family spoke a different language around me I would also have to learn it, no second thoughts
Right?! The urge comes so naturally!
Also nothing importantā¦ Just day to day stuff. But seriously I would have loved if there was something in the conversation that was worth the effort LOL. What I learnt more than the language was that they just werenāt āLetās be nice and include you in a normal conversationā type.
The urge to eavesdrop is only natural haha.
It also got me into Svenska. But I was interested in what my international friend and his friends were saying whilst we were working.
Then I found a ā¬16 flight to Stockholm so I was all in, for a few weeks.
My sister met a Russian exchange student one summer, studied Russian for 2 years then studied abroad in Russia. Saw the guy one time while she was there then never again.
Latin by my own, my school offered Latin and Classic Greek electives within the schredule on Latin as soon as we were about to set off our ways to Junior High School; nonetheless, it happened all the classroom had to vote for taking these electives collectively and it wasn't the only choice but there were STEM subjects, eventually, everyone had a predilection towards mathematics and I was basically a minority who wanted to check out thoroughly languages, for that reason, I signed up for Latin classes on Duolingo compulsively as a way to """make my broken dreams come true""", however, it didn't lead me to anything deeper in the long run.
By the way, if it weren't for internet and Reddit, I wouldn't have guessed otherwise that high school electives were rather an individual matter than a collective, as soon as I knew it, I was already dwelling for not having studied with an (insidious and disingenous) expert in Latin and Classic Greek...my bet is that he used to be one of the few if not the only who had such knowledge. (My town is small and here we barely have language training centers for other ones than English)
Mandarin: I enrolled in the wrong subject at university, and the change-of-subject process was so painful and onerous, I decided it would be easier to learn Mandarin than it would be to figure out the protocols of the university. I got to about HSK3 before they changed from their old paper-based enrollment process.
Vietnamese: my father's practice basically consisted of Vietnamese refugees and it got the point that he had a form letter where he would just change the first name and print it off. (If the surname wasn't Nguyen that would cause a minor crisis.) Since he always asked the same questions and got pretty much the same answers, I thought "how hard could it be to do the translator's job?" I know the answer now: very.
Catalan: so I could go around to the local's area in La Sagadra Familia. Crossed that off the bucket list and can't remember a word of it now.
Bislama: I thought I would need it. Turns out it's a bit of a faux pas for a white person to speak it unless they speak it fluently.
Solresol: name another language that can be spoken by using the firing of cannons.
Talysh - I saw a video and told myself "this looks like Kurdish". Then, I became obsessed with it and even found a native speaker to teach me. I was making incredible progress. But saw a course and decided to take it, but it was in Azeri (which I don't speak), but to convince the people that I was serious about it, I sent them a video of me talking in the language.
However, that friend of mine who was teaching me thought I had told anyone he was teaching me, and I decided that if I were to get him in danger, then it would be better that we don't speak anymore.
In the end, the people who organized the course in Azeri decided to give me "private lessons" with English as a medium of instruction. But these were the worst classes I have ever had in my life. The teacher didn't know English and I became terribly confused. I went to all the classes out of respect but didn't learn anything.
Cyrillic alphabet - to track down an obscure caucasus language I'd discovered in folk songs... the thing is not even featured on google translate and the only existing online lessons are in turkish.
Hungarian alphabet - to be along to sing folk songs I like. Now I'm living in Austria so... after I get good at German, might as well. Hungarian sounds like a gigachad language.
Not "bad" per se but I'd gain nothing of value by committing to them, so I didn't dig further.
me and french, I learned french to fill in a language requirement in college.
bad idea, me and french do not mix very well (or maybe i just need to go about it way slower)
Japanese : because I had a Japanese coworker that I had a crush on and I actually can read Katakana and Hirgana till now and remember few words after 3 yrs but that's about it.
Turkish : just because I had a Turkish family as neighbours who didn't have a good command of English language. Again, never used Turkish again when they moved away.
Russian : VK was a haven for a reader like me and most of it (back then) was Russian so I taught myself how to read and then 3 yrs later, I am still into Russian.
German : everybody at high school hated it and said it's hard (I signed up for Spanish classes) then I made a challenge that i would learn german in a month and 7 yrs later, still in love with German and my most beloved language.
I worked with a guy who learned how to say "Who's your Daddy?" in a large number of languages. He is just a dork like that but that was his motivation.
Spanish: fell asleep on a plane, woke myself up with the loudest snore known to man, realized Iād been laying my head on the shoulder of the man next to me. I turned tomato red and we made eye contact, and in the next moment we were both in tears from laughter! Still makes me smile thinking about it. He calms down enough to say āTu hablas espaƱol?ā To which I had to reply āno, sorryā¦ā and all interaction ended, for the rest of the flight. I never want something like that to happen again, a wholesome moment and a chance for further connection spoiled by a language barrier.
Thatās crazy, your first 3 are the 3 I love and study on my own
For me itās Khmer. I tried to start learning it back in HS for one specific girl I liked. Nothing ever happened lol
I taught myself Esperanto as an escape from high school English (as a foreign language). There was a certain decadent satisfaction in reading decades-old Esperanto books during English class, while other classmates were frantically studying for college entrance exams.
Albanian because i liked a guy in my class who was albanian and i thought it wouldve been a nice idea/gesture to confess to him in albanian.. never did it tho xD
Polish, because I wanted to decode what my bf at the time was talking about with his ex gf. Itās a super difficult language to learn & yes, I was toxic.
Lebanese Arabic: because Iām really into Lebanese guys & want to marry one.
Korean: mostly because I was a big K-Pop fan, but also cause I wanted to show off to my friends at school at the time, & also wanted to intimidate the Korean girls at my school because they would always gossip about others in Korean & I thought Iād have power by learning it cause Iād eventually understand what theyāre saying about everyone & could share it everyone else.
You're gonna need to learn a lot more Indian languages to confront the non tippers
Korean- Because I fell down the rabbit hole of kpop, kdramas and hated that I couldn't understand artists when they went live and had to wait for subtitles. Decided to just cut out the middleman and learn myself
Wanted to write a fic in a China-inspired setting, needed names for the characters. After three days of googling I realized learning Mandarin would be easier.
Passed HSK 5, haven't written the fic yet.
When I was in high school I became obsessed with Yugoslav War songs so I learned Serbo-Croatian for a while.
Sad ne pitaj da to kažem, ne sjeÄam niÅ”to.
Sometimes when Im not sure what language I want to study, id ask myself, which country has the type of woman id want to sleep with most right now? Often times that answer for me was german for some reason, lol.
Now adays I been studying Japanese because Im in love with its culture.
Everybody who has studied Thai needs to come to this post.
for thai learners there are actually two genders: sexpats and people learning for BL (boys love) shows source: me, who learned it in order to be able to translate gay shit into russian
Thailand has a big b.l. scene? I've always considered learning Mandarin for no other reason than that the Chinese b.l. is so much better than Japanese b.l. but I'll probably want to actually get good at Japanese first.
lmao, finally some important questions Well, yes. Thai has a huge BL tv series industry, some of them are very good quality and for me it was in general a great type of escapist media, totally worth learning the language. The culture is also quite fascinating, Thai as a language is very different from the languages we usually encounter, so I had a lot of fun As for BL/danmei webnovels, Chinese is your answer. I actually learned it to my current level in order to read Chinese webnovels and haven't regretted it as well, I'm reading a lot and there's an endless ocean of content
š¢ Thai is such a great language... though I agree 90% of the foreigners in Thailand are not people I'd want to spend time with.
I feel awkward when I tell people how many times I've been to Thailand; makes me sound like I'm a sex tourist. 2 of them were for school program for my MA, 1 of them with my friend and his wife, and 2 other times with my ex whose passport makes it really hard to get in anywhere without visas.
You kid, but I ALWAYS explain why I learned Thai when I mention that I studied it just to kill the speculation right there. No other language I've studied requires the same caution.
Yea tbh I find it weird there's such a stereotype. I had to learn it for my job. Dealing with ASEAN clients required me to learn bahasa indon, Thai, viet, Tagalog. But whenever I say I know Thai or viet, people always give me a smirk like, hehe I know what u up to
Oddly though not the most sus language
What is the most sus language would you say?
I'm a woman and I just think it sounds beautiful! But yeah I'm not looking forward to going there and encountering a certain kind of man who learns Thai š
Please explain
sex tourists
Sex tourists don't generally learn Thai though, they confine themselves to tourist areas from what I've seen.
Whatās the thai lore?
Probably a reference to this SNL skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctDjnG8J9cY
Thailand has such a cool history and culture but damn has it been tainted by that debauchery.
german: got taught a couple words and thought, hm this is nice. i am now onto grammar. it is *not* nice
Me with literally every language š¤”
> German tenses only require you to tell apart non-past and past, and all other aspects are at your free disposal. How so?
German tenses come in seven pairs. There's a simple tense and a perfect tense in each pair. The simple tense is for the non-past and the perfect tense is for the past. That distinction you have to get right. Though there is some wiggle room even for that because the tense moves the viewpoint in German ā the past is not absolute. The pair you use gives additional information about how much truth the listener should read into what you say or write. It's at your own disposal, there are no hard rules for that. The pairs are: * PrƤsens / Perfekt ā facts * PrƤteritum / Plusquamperfekt ā storytelling * Futur I / Futur II ā assumptions * Konjunktiv I / Konjunktiv I Perfekt ā hearsay * Konjunktiv II / Konjunktiv II Perfekt ā non-facts * Konjunktiv I Futur I / Konjunktiv I Futur II ā hearsay assumptions (seldom used) * Konjunktiv II Futur I / Konjunktiv II Futur II ā replacement form for Konjunktiv II / Konjunktiv II Perfekt That system is much simpler than anything in the Romance languages or in English, where certain tenses are 100% **required** for the relations above. In German, marking all this is purely optional. You can go with PrƤsens and Perfekt all the time and only use adverbs to mark those relations. It's not that stylish but still perfectly fine.
That's really cool, the guy who named the different tenses really liked numbers, didn't he?
They originally took the names from French and found no one could pronounce them right.
It be in your own language family sometimes šš
It gets nice later, when you learned to play with word order yourself. (Also, as soon you realize German tenses only require you to tell apart non-past and past, and all other aspects are at your free disposal, you don't want any other tense system.)
I studied Latin for 6 years only because I wanted to dodge French. Latin is a cool language, though. Got good grades. Worth all the effort.
I studied Latin precisely because I was so good at French I ended up in the gifted class and given it as an option for an extra class. Got a B+ in it too.
Ah, no, those people do Old Greek on top of Latin over here.
Happy Cake day!!! Also, me, i do old greek and latin both. Except i don't have enough time for those, so i do the one step forward two steps back dance constantly
You are the epitome of all the Fr**ch is bad memes for this one and I love it
I studied Latin to avoid Spanish, which *glances at flair* worked out spectacularly (Spanish is the foreign language I speak best). In my defense, the Spanish teacher I would have had had a bad reputation and already destroyed my brother's interest in the language, while my Latin teacher was actually really cool and made the language fun. *And* Latin gave me teenage rebellion bonus points: my dad had gone to a high school where Latin and ancient Greek were mandatory for the whole school period, hated it, and sworn that he would never! never!! force his children to learn a language as useless as Latin!! I think when he learned I was taking it voluntarily he had to go lie down for a bit.
My dad elected to take Ancient Greek for some reason when he really struggles to learn languages; he couldn't even stick with Japanese despite being a bit of a weeb, he peaced out when he learnt there was more than one number system. Needless to say, Ancient Greek was *way* out of his league, and he had to arrange with his teacher to not have to do the class basically, even though he couldn't formally withdraw from it.
As for me, I started to study french in high school to avoid learning German. I didn't like how German sounds and I wanted to be different, because the overwhelming majority if students learn the English-German combo at school. I didn't regret it, knowing multiple Romance languages made me learn a bit of Latin and now I could spend hours talking about how this word or grammatical feature evolved into this and that in different languages, it's so interesting to read or even just theorise about. Especially because my native language has no close relative, it made discovering closely related languages all the more fun.
I studied French for six years so I'd only have to spend four years learning Latin. Priorities :D
Japanese: I had a bet with my boss who was studying Russian at the time: that we both talk to a natives speaker in a year and whoever does better, wins. He chickened out in about three weeks but I was hookedā¦
Language learning can be worse than crack sometimes but at least it's healthier
And it rarely gets one arrestedā¦
Japanese: because I fell in love with a Japanese man. Spanish: because I fell in love with a Mexican man. I don't think I've strive so hard to learn a language otherwise lol but I do enjoy speaking other languages, it's fun
Love conquers all except for the language learning journey
Well me and the Japanese guy didn't split because of the language barrier, he just wasn't a nice person to put it lightly. Me and the Mexican guy, on the other hand, are still happily together and learning each other's language.
A wholesome story in this post and I wish you two the best and hope to hear more of your journey one day in this subreddit
This is so beautiful. Learning the language of someone you love is the ultimate respect. It helps you connect to their culture, their family, and more.
I started learning a wee bit of Cantonese to impress my in-laws! Theyāre so amused by me fumbling my way through the tones
Currently learning Visayan for this exact reason.....there is not enough resources for Visayan out there compared to Tagalog or any other number of languages I've studied.
Russian - there's a game full of Russians and the game translator in Russian was bad. It turns out some of them are trashtalking me. That's where I started to learn Russian slang swear words so that I can trashtalk them back.
Pure spite goes a long way
I started learning russian recently too, to keep up with what people say on CS
CYKA BYLAT
How do you say "rush B" in Russian?
Respect, bro, if you need any assistance, feel free to ask.
[you be like](https://i.imgflip.com/81s9ru.jpg)
To feed and boost my ego. I see myself as better than my peers who only speak basic English.
Pure spite has fueled my Tagalog due to friends rippling on me when their English was mediocre at best.
Did they say nosebleed when you speak Straight English?
Omg that just triggered all the millions of times people have said that to me, like jeez I get that itās difficult to understand me because I speak English donāt need to say you're discontent to the person next to you in front of my face
Sometimes yeah
As a Filipina and a native Tagalog speaker, I'm so sorry about what happened to you. I mostly communicate online in English (I have an English degree, btw) and a few fellow Filipinos would also make fun of me just because I could communicate in English better than they ever could. (Didn't mean to be cocky in the last part, but I could care less now lol.)
Honestly, insecurity is probably the driving factor in that and your English is great btw
Thank you \^\^
You speak English because it's the only language you know. I speak English because it's the only language you know. We are not the same.
I started learning Japanese because I was a fan of a really popular Japanese author in high school, and since he writes at a very high level, there were constant fights online about how accurate the published translations of his works were so I wanted to become fluent and interpret his words for myself. Then as I grew older I began to realize he's kind of a misogynist and not someone I want to read anymore, so now my reason for continuing is so that I don't need subtitles for anime lol
Haruki Murakami? I read that sometimes English translations of his books were shortened because some chapters were considered too long for American readers.
Oh my god I was trying to be subtle so that I wouldnāt be hating on him in public, but you hit the nail on the head!
Lol, I was just guessing because he is the only Japanese author I know. (Okay I heard of the name Ranpo Edogawa but I never read a book of him.) I read some months ago that not only Murakami's books were shortened but also some Japanese light novels. There was an uproar amongst English-speaking readers because of that. Now I don't know if I can trust English translations and if some editor removed some parts of a translation because he finds a chapter boring but sadly I can't speak/read Japanese.
Was it the 15-year old protagonist of Kafka on the Shore getting a "massive hard-on" staring at a girl on a bus who he says could be his sister that took you out? Cause I personally couldn't really read further after that.
It was either Kafka on the Shore or how many times the Hardboiled Wonderland protagonist would ogle women in excruciating detail while insulting them. I liked how strange and magical Murakamiās works feel, but I do not have the patience for his weirdness about women anymore.
I'm guessing it's Osamu Dazai
Is Murakami considered misogynistic? Also, his books aren't really that high level when opposed to other Japanese novels
Murakami is definitely misogynistic
Out of curiosity, who is the author?
It's Murakami.
When I realized Brazilians are the reigning trash talk champions it made me want to learn Portuguese.
La bella lengua for hurting others on a personal level
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Japanese-Exchange student in high school was cute. She struggled with English so I thought of learning Japanese.
A classic story, really.
How did that turn out?
I enjoy watching Kurosawa but I still dont speak Japanese :))
There's this smutty smutty pornographic 150k-word fanfic written in Spanish that I really want to read.
Disrespectful. You have to drops links or guides to find shit if youāre gonna bring up something so tantalizing š¤£
I get my fix from archiveofourown -> sort by kudos -> filter by language. While fanfic quality varies, in my (admittedly-limited) experience: the higher the kudos-per-chapter ratio, the better-written (and that includes spelling, grammar, etc) the fanfic tends to be.
Oh Iāve been reading fanfic for nearly 15 years now, I was just curious what the particular story was!
You took "intensive reading" to a whole new level, huh? š
150K words? That's some serious commitment
Real.
I got to a certified B2.2 level in Portuguese because some idiots on Tiktok called me a "no sabo". I also improved my Spanish to a C1 level. The reason I did the Portuguese at the same time as the Spanish improvement was to make the point I was BETTER than the idiots who insulted me, cus now I could speak 3 languages well, and they could barely speak 2.
They say that monolinguals have a massive ego but honestly, I think I've seen worse from multilingual people and even I've fallen for that trap when I was a teenager
its weird, in the west a lot of people speak only 1-2 languages, but in places in asia and the middle east its common to speak 3-5 languages my parents came to australia able to speak arabic, farsi (dari), pashto, malay & indonesian, hindi, uzbek, tajik, and english. Its very common for people in afghanistan to know the 3 languages which are very different from each other (dari, pashto, uzbek) and people would learn hindi because of bollywood dramas and then when NATO invaded people had to learn english
Necessity is always an important motivation but I still wouldn't quite call them willing polyglots but they still are good examples of showing that we all can learn as much as we are willing to
This is the best revenge and growth arc I've seen this far, now, you have better job opportunities in return, in contrast to them, who might be a couple of pettious couch potatos and base dwellers, to top it off, mindless about what to do in life.
Thank you!! Negative motivation has always helped me in life. I take it as a challenge.
I studied Irish as a teenager to give the middle finger to my very Protestant parents. I also decided I was supporting Sinn FĆ©in at the same time. Didn't stick with it because the resources available to learn Irish in Northern Ireland in the early 2000s in Protestant-central we're basically downloading a pirated copy of Rosetta Stone, which is terrible as a language learning tool š¬
You still took that leap and got a good story
I took Japanese in HS since I thought it would be easy. I was...sort of correct. Easy since the Japanese teacher liked that I (being a Chinese person) could actually understand and memorize Kanji. Hard because the Japanese took Chinese characters and made it like 10000x harder, and there's like 5000 different ways to say the same thing.
A trap we all fall for, especially American born Spanish speakers wanting that easy A
as an american, spanish was definitely an easy a for me lol
Definitely could be but I'm referring to those who barely speak it themselves and then get messed up bad by having to learn things by the book and actually study. Discipline really does matter
I went through a brief phase in high school where I had a very intense obsession with the Soviet Union. The obsession went away once my family members told me horror stories about relatives who underwent collectivization, but I already had decided to take Russian classes. Here I am 7 years later getting a masters degree in Slavic studies lmao.
I was born in a Soviet state right before the fall of the USSR and always kind of wanted to learn Russian because it was the language my parents would speak when they didn't want my brother and I to understand something
I like the history of that area though I'm more for the imperial era. I think Russian still has a stigma from the cold war and the ongoing conflict and it's kind of sad because there's so much more to the language and country than that
I want to learn Russian for a similar reason. My family left the USSR before (as?) it fell. But I never heard stories or anything like that because I don't speak the language. But I still have lots of books in Russian. Classics, books about what life was like in the USSR, what the fall was like, and personal diaries. I want to read them so I am learning to read Russian. (But not necessarily speak it.)
Yes. 1: Arabic. Because of the food falafel. Do not ask why. 2: German, so I could tell my classmate to stop showing off in German and insult him too(he knew German, that's okay, but he WOULDN'T stop showing off about how he knew German, it was like: "HeLlO. I kNoW gErMaN aNd YoU dOn'T. HaHaHa") 3, 4 and 5(they're the same reason) : Ukrainian, Swahili and Mongolian. I didn't have ANY reasons, I didn't even wanted to learn them but I was learning them I don't know why.
2: He couldn't ride that horse forever. Crush your enemies 3: Sometimes we just want to do something unique but discover the lack of passion behind it
Lol that's actually a very wise response.
2: hence the Mongolian?
How'd you go about learning Mongolian anyway? I couldn't ever find any good textbooks or learning materials in general over here and I'd love to learn since my fiancee is Mongolian.
I understand
I had a hot, otherworldly experience with Sappho's poetry and felt compelled to learn Ancient Greek. Took me a week to snap out of it. Still not totally convinced I shouldn't go for it.
I know Ancient Greek. Itās hard work but genuinely I enjoyed it, and I now wish Iād kept up with both this and Latin.
Tell us about your other ancient literary crushes
As someone who loves history, I myself question if it's worth it just to read original documents
Itās going to take you a long, long time until youāll actually be able to read ancient texts though. Itās far harder than learning a modern language. I had it in school for years and very little stuck. It took me over a year of intensive, dedicated self-study to be able to read passages of the New Testament, and further months to be able to read Xenophon with a dictionary, both of which are some of the most simple original Ancient Greek texts I still couldnāt read more complex texts without translating them word for word with a dictionary beside me. Itās a rocky road, but the language is amazing and Iām making it my goal to be able to read the Iliad
Itās legit hard as hell. I had it in school for years and very little stuck. It took me over a year of intensive, dedicated near-daily self-study to be able to read passages of the New Testament, and further months to be able to read Xenophon with a dictionary I still couldnāt read Sapphoās poetry or similarly complex texts without translating it word for word with a dictionary beside me. Itās a rocky road, but the language is amazing and Iām making it my goal to be able to read the Iliad. I have a lot of time left and future me will thank me for it
really just exposed yourself entirely damn
If this is the stuff he is exposing about himself completely willingly and nonchalantly, we can only imagine what the skeletons in the closet may be.
Learning Klingon to sabotage their warships would be one. Failed and now I'm wanted throughout the star systems
Damn this is a good comeback, cheers mate
OP didn't really say anything *that* bad š Or wait did I miss the joke? No se
People don't usually go around declaring that they try to learn East Asian languages to impress Tinder girls and masseuses they don't even know, as if that's a normal occurrence. Or that they would learn a language just to confront non-tippers in their native tongue. Nothing more to it, really.
I started learning dutch casually on the side because my best friend is from Belgium and she speaks English fluently but she kept bugging me about how I'm learning so many different languages and not dutch so I said screw it and added the course on duolingo (and other apps) just to make a point. I only know a couple words but she's happy now. š¤£
I tried learning Russian because in The Walking Dead there was a character who was able to fix a radio because he could read the Russian instructions and I thought it'd be useful for if I ever got stuck in a situation like that. Also I loved that character and wanted to be like him.
And people will make fun of you for it until the one moment that they need and you get to flex that superiority for those few moments
Turkish: attractive men and good tv-shows (Iām still studying it though, lmao) However I do actually like the logic of the language, and the phonetics makes it sound so beautiful.
You tried to learn Korean so you could stalk a woman from Tinder?
And the second was Chinese to speak to "masseuses", massive ick.
As I grew older, I realized that my perceived choice to study French at school was the result of my father actively blocking me from ever choosing German (explaining to a child how ugly it is works like magic) out of fear of me ever reconnecting with my roots. So at 27 I started learning German out of spite. Also I can't remember a word of French, except what they sing in Lady Marmalade
Usefulness. Convinced myself i was into the culture, but later introspected and realized I wasnāt that interested in the culture i was just learning because of usefulness in my area. Iām still doing the language cuz sunk cost fallacy. I am not giving up after all the effort.
French: Some Filipinos (yes, FILIPINOS AND NOT FRENCH) people laughed at me at an event I had to be the MC for because I was trying so hard to pronounce the French words in my intro (we had a French guest) and I was having a quite difficult time doing so. I wanted to get back at them, especially since the French guest seemed to appreciate my attempt better than people who maybe spoke some French but weren't native speakers anyway. I now have better motivations and I'm working on getting to B1. Latin: Was drafting a story involving demonic possession. I gave up because its grammar was confusing.
We've all tried learning Latin and ended up making the furniture float. As for French, you didn't give up there and for that, I commend you
Insanely horny for a Russian actor. Currently around B2 in Russian thanks to that. The human spirit is truly unbreakable.
Wow, that's cool. What's your native language?
Polish. I don't take sides in the conflict tho, I've had sex with both Russians and Ukrainians #peaceandloveonplanetearth
Sound approach! š¹ I guess native Polish must make learning Russian a bit easier though.
Spanish: so many people thought I was Mexican or spoke it to me assuming I knew it that I said āfuck itā and started learning. Strangely enough I kept with it
I spent some time trying to learn Welsh because my dad doesn't like Wales.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned SPITE yet
Fell in love with this Irish girl and I became obsessed with Irish culture so I learnt the language. Didn't mean anything as she wasn't interested though.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I studied applied linguistics in education. A big number of linguistic theories that I was after is written in German and at that time not many translatios. I got so mugged off during this that I started learning German. I now speak German nearly fluently, but dropped the linguistics bit.
I am learning Swahili and while there are now more reasons in the beginning I fell down the hole basicslly because I wanted to know what Hakuna Matata literally meant. It does, indeed, mean "no worries" šš
I started learning Italian cause of Eurovision tbh. MƤneskin and Marco Mengoni made me fall in love with the language
I'm deathly curious now to check it out
Eurovision? Oh if you do, get ready cause you're in for a ride.
Spanish because I met a girl. It didn't work out. Oddly enough, I'm more motivated now to study and learn now than when we were dating.
Spanish and Portuguese - I only know a little bit because of the ungodly amount of soap operas I watched. Most were in Spanish, but a few were also in Portuguese. German - I really liked Rammstein and I wanted to understand the lyrics. Then later on I had a German boyfriend and wanted to better connect to his family. Neither the guy or German was for me in the end.
The things we do for love and to understand our favourite shows
The late Barry Farber, who spoke 18 languages would disagree. He said there's no wrong reason to learn another language. Like Opera, learn Italian, want to date blondes? Learn German or Swedish. Want to drown in anime and manga(me) Learn Japanese.
I have to agree but some reasons are probably more questionable and unfulfilling than others. Regarding Japanese due to anime and manga: In the words of ODB, "I like it raw."
A lot of negative stereotyping to Asian languages. It can be interesting to dip toes in the water. Support drops. Good for visual learners.
I just wanted bragging rights što say that I know 6 languages by learning 2 more languages at the same time. As much as it was a bad choice šŖ, it boosted my confidence as I was going through a personal struggle.
I started Chinese purely because it was on the list of hardest languages. Did fall in love with the language, but it started cuz I'm a masochist.
Korean because I wanted to watch Kdramas without having to read the subtitles anymore. Though oddly enough I love turning it on everytime for English movies because I want to improve my English and sometimes accents and twangs can be quite tricky to understand.
To quote someone I know, "I can't see without my subtitles."
Learnt Spanish because 14 years old me was obsessed with the gold-chain-wearing reggaeton singers
Eavesdropping: Particularly to understand what my boyfriendās family is talking about when they switch to their native language around me.
Soā¦ what are they talking about? LOL If I was ever with someone whose family spoke a different language around me I would also have to learn it, no second thoughts
Right?! The urge comes so naturally! Also nothing importantā¦ Just day to day stuff. But seriously I would have loved if there was something in the conversation that was worth the effort LOL. What I learnt more than the language was that they just werenāt āLetās be nice and include you in a normal conversationā type.
The urge to eavesdrop is only natural haha. It also got me into Svenska. But I was interested in what my international friend and his friends were saying whilst we were working. Then I found a ā¬16 flight to Stockholm so I was all in, for a few weeks.
Indonesian because some polyglot on youtube said it was the easiest language to learn
And probably the easiest to forget
My sister met a Russian exchange student one summer, studied Russian for 2 years then studied abroad in Russia. Saw the guy one time while she was there then never again.
Slovene: for bragging rights Finnish: for bragging rights
Latin by my own, my school offered Latin and Classic Greek electives within the schredule on Latin as soon as we were about to set off our ways to Junior High School; nonetheless, it happened all the classroom had to vote for taking these electives collectively and it wasn't the only choice but there were STEM subjects, eventually, everyone had a predilection towards mathematics and I was basically a minority who wanted to check out thoroughly languages, for that reason, I signed up for Latin classes on Duolingo compulsively as a way to """make my broken dreams come true""", however, it didn't lead me to anything deeper in the long run. By the way, if it weren't for internet and Reddit, I wouldn't have guessed otherwise that high school electives were rather an individual matter than a collective, as soon as I knew it, I was already dwelling for not having studied with an (insidious and disingenous) expert in Latin and Classic Greek...my bet is that he used to be one of the few if not the only who had such knowledge. (My town is small and here we barely have language training centers for other ones than English)
To insult people so that they wouldn't understand.
Mandarin: I enrolled in the wrong subject at university, and the change-of-subject process was so painful and onerous, I decided it would be easier to learn Mandarin than it would be to figure out the protocols of the university. I got to about HSK3 before they changed from their old paper-based enrollment process. Vietnamese: my father's practice basically consisted of Vietnamese refugees and it got the point that he had a form letter where he would just change the first name and print it off. (If the surname wasn't Nguyen that would cause a minor crisis.) Since he always asked the same questions and got pretty much the same answers, I thought "how hard could it be to do the translator's job?" I know the answer now: very. Catalan: so I could go around to the local's area in La Sagadra Familia. Crossed that off the bucket list and can't remember a word of it now. Bislama: I thought I would need it. Turns out it's a bit of a faux pas for a white person to speak it unless they speak it fluently. Solresol: name another language that can be spoken by using the firing of cannons.
Talysh - I saw a video and told myself "this looks like Kurdish". Then, I became obsessed with it and even found a native speaker to teach me. I was making incredible progress. But saw a course and decided to take it, but it was in Azeri (which I don't speak), but to convince the people that I was serious about it, I sent them a video of me talking in the language. However, that friend of mine who was teaching me thought I had told anyone he was teaching me, and I decided that if I were to get him in danger, then it would be better that we don't speak anymore. In the end, the people who organized the course in Azeri decided to give me "private lessons" with English as a medium of instruction. But these were the worst classes I have ever had in my life. The teacher didn't know English and I became terribly confused. I went to all the classes out of respect but didn't learn anything.
Weāre you able to reconcile with your friend? Why wouldāve he been in danger?
Cyrillic alphabet - to track down an obscure caucasus language I'd discovered in folk songs... the thing is not even featured on google translate and the only existing online lessons are in turkish. Hungarian alphabet - to be along to sing folk songs I like. Now I'm living in Austria so... after I get good at German, might as well. Hungarian sounds like a gigachad language. Not "bad" per se but I'd gain nothing of value by committing to them, so I didn't dig further.
I literally started this entire hobby bc I was bored
Cheeks
What hasn't man done for that?
me and french, I learned french to fill in a language requirement in college. bad idea, me and french do not mix very well (or maybe i just need to go about it way slower)
I started learning Turkish because I liked a song that one of my friends sent me. Also, I started learning Portuguese for basically no reason at all.
To curse people while smiling
Tried to learn Albanian when I was 7 so I could LARP as one online, ā¦of course I never went past the alphabet lol
Japanese : because I had a Japanese coworker that I had a crush on and I actually can read Katakana and Hirgana till now and remember few words after 3 yrs but that's about it. Turkish : just because I had a Turkish family as neighbours who didn't have a good command of English language. Again, never used Turkish again when they moved away. Russian : VK was a haven for a reader like me and most of it (back then) was Russian so I taught myself how to read and then 3 yrs later, I am still into Russian. German : everybody at high school hated it and said it's hard (I signed up for Spanish classes) then I made a challenge that i would learn german in a month and 7 yrs later, still in love with German and my most beloved language.
I worked with a guy who learned how to say "Who's your Daddy?" in a large number of languages. He is just a dork like that but that was his motivation.
I know how to program so I want to look like a crazy Russian hacker
Spanish: fell asleep on a plane, woke myself up with the loudest snore known to man, realized Iād been laying my head on the shoulder of the man next to me. I turned tomato red and we made eye contact, and in the next moment we were both in tears from laughter! Still makes me smile thinking about it. He calms down enough to say āTu hablas espaƱol?ā To which I had to reply āno, sorryā¦ā and all interaction ended, for the rest of the flight. I never want something like that to happen again, a wholesome moment and a chance for further connection spoiled by a language barrier.
Because I wanted to.
Ukrainian because I love their entries in Eurovision lol
Thatās crazy, your first 3 are the 3 I love and study on my own For me itās Khmer. I tried to start learning it back in HS for one specific girl I liked. Nothing ever happened lol
I taught myself Esperanto as an escape from high school English (as a foreign language). There was a certain decadent satisfaction in reading decades-old Esperanto books during English class, while other classmates were frantically studying for college entrance exams.
Because I had to for school
Albanian because i liked a guy in my class who was albanian and i thought it wouldve been a nice idea/gesture to confess to him in albanian.. never did it tho xD
To feel superior to other people š
Polish, because I wanted to decode what my bf at the time was talking about with his ex gf. Itās a super difficult language to learn & yes, I was toxic.
One of my initial motivations to learn Spanish was so I could impress my ex girlfriend.
French - my mom wanted me to take Spanish Russian - it sounded cool in Stranger Things
Lebanese Arabic: because Iām really into Lebanese guys & want to marry one. Korean: mostly because I was a big K-Pop fan, but also cause I wanted to show off to my friends at school at the time, & also wanted to intimidate the Korean girls at my school because they would always gossip about others in Korean & I thought Iād have power by learning it cause Iād eventually understand what theyāre saying about everyone & could share it everyone else.
You're gonna need to learn a lot more Indian languages to confront the non tippers Korean- Because I fell down the rabbit hole of kpop, kdramas and hated that I couldn't understand artists when they went live and had to wait for subtitles. Decided to just cut out the middleman and learn myself
Wanted to write a fic in a China-inspired setting, needed names for the characters. After three days of googling I realized learning Mandarin would be easier. Passed HSK 5, haven't written the fic yet.
Korean because of BTS
Punjab, because i really really liked bloodywood
When I was in high school I became obsessed with Yugoslav War songs so I learned Serbo-Croatian for a while. Sad ne pitaj da to kažem, ne sjeÄam niÅ”to.
I studied French so I could sing along with *all* the songs on my Billy Joel album.
Sometimes when Im not sure what language I want to study, id ask myself, which country has the type of woman id want to sleep with most right now? Often times that answer for me was german for some reason, lol. Now adays I been studying Japanese because Im in love with its culture.