r/LearningLanguages

I narrowed it down to these four languages that seem to appeal to me the most. If it helps you decide, I'm a native European Spanish speaker, fluent in English, almost fluent in French and learning German, Italian, Norwegian and Levantine Arabic.

I'm interested in a language most intelligible with languages from the same family (slavic), and from a country with a rich and open culture. It doesn't matter to me whether the country is small or has little population, but I would prefer a language that I could learn for free or for little money, so no expensive online tutors (I would love to interact with natives but I just can't afford it).

Thank you in advance for your time! :)

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Hi! My first language is English and is the only language I know. I love languages and would like to know as many as possible. I have been trying to learn Spanish and if im being honest (no offense) its kind of boring and i cant find any good shows, movies, or songs. I am interested in learning Mandarin, French, German, Korean, Thai, Arabic, Vitenames, Japanese, Russian, American Sign Language, etc.. I still want to learn spanish but I want to take a break from it. Also with these languges what apps should i download, what movies or tv shows should I watch, what books should i read, what songs to listen to, and what learning books to get. Thank You!

Hey all!

I am curious about what, in your opinion, would help you learn a language? What is missing in your day to day that would help you genuinely want to study a language, learn, and improve?

I’m 27-yo man with no creative or active hobbies and who very much wasted formative years by doing nothing productive or not doing any extracurricular activities. Now I’m someone with next to no useful skills or interests that require at least intellectual activity.

So I decided that maybe it’s about time to do what I’ve been wanting to do from time to time for years and start learning whole bunch of languages. Mostly because I heard that learning languages is a good way to prevent early development of dementia, to do something about my procrastination and laziness and maybe, even for some practical purposes. Maybe they could even help me find some exciting job.

I’m Czech and apparently, I’m fairly fluent in English. I was learning German in middle school and high school after which I was happy I won’t have to learn it anymore, because I hate it. The I had 2 years of Spanish at what could be described as Czech equivalent of community college. The first year was during COVID, which totally killed our will to learn and ability to learn effectively, so it went to shit quite quickly. And then I attended a course of French for a few months. I liked the language, but because of my problem to economize with my time and actualize myself, I quit soon.

So now, I realize I can’t learn them all, but I’m having whimsical thoughts about learning French, Ukrainian, Romanian, Hebrew, Finnish, Greek, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Swedish and maybe even Chinese, because some people say it’s the language of the future.

So what is the most effective and cost-effective way to learn a language? I’m currently trying Duolingo for Ukrainian and Romanian and it seems to be pretty worthless. I’m thinking about buying some textbooks, one for each language and learn from that.

Sometimes I have a feeling, like I should learn a foreign language. But the problem is, I'm not really interested in it. However, this feeling is because I feel like stupid or disadvantaged for not learning this language, I have no interest in learning.

What should I do? Should I learn it even if I'm not interested or should I try to convice myself that learning languages is useless?

I'm learning Japanese for travel and I'm currently learning pretty fast from YouTube so I want to know how you learned a new language

Can y'all recommend apps/website that is effective in learning Russian? No, i don't have money for a language tutor 😭. I tried Duolingo but it's like a game, i can't learn properly 🫩

I’ve been learning Dutch myself and kept struggling with verb conjugations, so I built a small Android app to help with it.

It works offline and lets you search any conjugated form (for example typing “ben” shows the full conjugation for “zijn”).

Right now it supports around 100+ common verbs, but I’m trying to figure out whether it’s worth expanding further with more verbs, pronunciation, quizzes, example sentences, etc.

I’d genuinely love feedback from Dutch learners:

• Would this actually be useful to you?
• What features would you want most?
• Anything confusing or missing?

If the mods are okay with it, I can also share the Play Store link in the comments 🙂

Best usage for Duolingo or language apps in general is for when you want to take a break from properly learning a language. but you also want to casually maintain it instead of fully stopping the journey!

What do you think?

Has anyone else here learned a language that is considered less useful in your country? Do you recommend it? How do you maintain it?

I am an American who would like to learn Swedish. However, it’s not considered useful here, and I don’t know any Swedes. My motives for learning the language is because I am interested in Swedish language and culture, it is faster to progress since it is more similar to English (I would like to become a polyglot long term), and I personally find the language very interesting and pleasant to listen to.

I’d appreciate any input!

EDIT: Sorry I worded the title poorly! I’ve been trying to find a way to word this properly. I don’t mean endangered languages but languages that are popular only in a specific country but lack speakers anywhere else, if that makes sense.

I currently know Spanish (mother tongue, as I'm Spanish), English (basically like a second mother tongue, I used to go to a British school) and French (B2/C1 level). I did German on Duolingo (yeah, I know, not good) for a while but had to drop it, so I wanna pick it back up.

My question is, which languages should I learn next? My objective is mainly to learn useful languages, as in those that are widely spoken across the world or would come in handy, taking into account my background (I'm sure Estonian is interesting, but other languages, like Italian, will be more useful to me). Also, this might sound superficial, but I wanna learn a lot of languages, so I don't really mind if they're similar (e.g. learning Portuguese or Italian taking into account that I know Spanish and French). I'd really like to learn a language like Chinese or Arabic, since they're quite widely spoken, but I'm kinda scared I'll never actually reach a good enough level in them.

Anyways, I'd like to know what people think about this. Thanks!

I'm from Brazil, currently working in the US. Reading and listening are fine, but speaking is a whole different story. Every time I try to talk, I feel like people are judging my accent or my mistakes, so I end up staying quiet or keeping things really short. Which sucks, because I know speaking is the only way to improve.

I’ve also tried a bunch of apps, but they’re all the same boring lessons and don’t really help with confidence. Does anyone know something that actually helps you practice speaking without feeling embarrassed?

I just finished the Figma design of the language learning app titled "Lingoflori" that I've been working on.

The main idea is helping learners move from isolated words towards contextual understanding and real-world usage instead of just memorization.

Core idea flow:

• Words: Learn vocabulary
• Connect: Combine words into natural phrases
• Test: Reinforce memory Apply → use language in realistic situations
• Apply: Use what you learned in real-life scenarios
• Growth: Track progress

Learning flow:

• Piece of conversation: Bring real-life conversations and cultural points
• Breakdown screen: Understand the real-life usage

One thing I’m experimenting with is conversation breakdowns where users can tap through phrases and understand how each part works contextually.

I’d appreciate your feedback on:

• Whether the learning flow feels intuitive
• If the UI feels overloaded anywhere
• Whether the progression system makes sense
• Anything confusing/friction-heavy from a UX perspective

I mostly find people learn languages to express their banal thoughts to people who most likely already speak English

Why? Can't they understand that the only reason to learn a language is to read literature, not to converse with people, who most likely already speak english, in a foreign language?

Why do most language schools promote this kind of unintelligent behaviour, promoting "conversation skills" instead of promoting reading the great works of writers of each language?

My mum’s side of the family is all from the Isle of Man, and I’ve started learning Manx to connect with my heritage. I really find the revival of the Manx language so inspiring, as with all the Celtic languages. I’d love to hear your opinions and I hope you enjoy!

Hi! I’m bilingual German/English and I was wondering (for those who also speak those two languages) is it easier to learn Spanish thinking in English or in German. I’m not quite at a beginner level anymore, it’s more like stuck between that and intermediate.

However I sometimes find that German uses tenses mire similar to the way Spanish does. But English also has its advantages here and there. I’m just thinking maybe I’m overloading my brain thinking in both languages. Should I stick to one? And if yes, which one?