Multilingual people of Lemmy who learned a language (or multiple) as adults, how did you do it? (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 18 hours ago by user224@lemmy.sdf.org to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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I wish we as society could simply have one language to overcome language barriers, but that's more of a content for my daydreaming.

I often encounter issues due to language barriers.
Mainly with 2 languages.

Since the start of war, I've been encountering lots of Ukrainians I can't really speak with. Especially when I was on a dorm, where they were a great majority.
Not that I tend to talk with people, but I felt weird after a while.
Probably like someone who doesn't speak Spanish in the US (at least I assume that's fairly common over there).

And now searching for a job, I found many companies want you to know German.
Which I also encountered as "would've been useful now" a few times.

Seems like I should know an answer to this, as English isn't my first language, but I have no fucking idea how I picked it up. I never made any serious attempt (i.e.: studying for more than a week) to learn it.

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[-] Witchfire@lemmy.world 4 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I grew up bilingual (Spanish & English) but now am well into learning French. It helps that I live in a country with a lot of French speakers. I got to B1 (conversational) in about 2 years but it took a loooot of work on top of knowing a similar language. You really need to be around native or advanced speakers in order to learn it, otherwise you'll just learn to read and understand it but won't have the confidence to communicate with it

Another thing to understand is that learning a language is a marathon, not a sprint. It's a lifelong commitment. As long as you're learning at least one thing a day and retaining it, you're doing well

Alors, j'ai trouvé que cette langue est vraiment jolie. Je trouve l'expérience d'apprentissage très agréable (mais pas sans difficulté), et j'adore que j'ai une nouvelle chaîne pour parler avec mes amis. C'est quelque chose de spécial!

this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026

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