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I studied French in high school and it ended up being one of my majors in college. I have been out of school for longer than I'd like to admit but I still listen to a lot of French music. Find music in your chosen language and sing along even if you are a terrible singer. Most of my favorites these days are Canadian and they have such an interesting accent, especially in Nova Scotia. Sometimes I'll listen to a song 20 times to figure out what they're trying to say it's so thick, but it's always exciting even I suddenly get it.

I agree with Ammit that if you can find someone to talk to you it's very helpful. We had a lot of Japanese students at our university and you could sign up to be a speaking partner for them. You would just meet up once or twice a week and chat and it seemed very helpful for them, especially because there was such a large community of Japanese so they didn't always mingle and much as they could have with Americans. They said, I'm very introverted and I tend to see language in a weirdly analytical way so for me I really prefer French literature to talking to people. I read so much French in college. If you're interested in every checking out a little intro to French, watch the movie Amelie. It's really cute!

I spent one semester in France and it was awesome! I was there when 911 happened and the people were very supportive initially. We came home around Christmas so we weren't there when the political relations got really strained. We went to Burgundy and stayed with host families and did the grape harvest. Then we went to Paris and that was a blast! I feel like studying a very widely spoken language like French can help you learn about the whole world too. One semester we studied Africa and read African French literature. We went a bit into french culture in Asia and the Caribbean. There is so much to learn and you could never know it all!

I also studied German for 3 semesters and man I love the grammar of that language (ok I guess that qualifies me as a nerd). My professor was Austrian and to this day I think people who speak with a German accent sound funny.

I love languages and my other major was linguistics, which I thought was really fun. When you break it down into its smallest parts, language is basically math with rules and formulas and equations. You can break the grammatical structure of any language down into a formula. Senior year in college in order to graduate we had to do a linguistics workshop and every year the professor would bring in a foreign student who speaks a language that isn't commonly spoken in the US. The year I did it we worked with a student from Kyrgyzstan. We were supposed to basically learn the rules and vocabulary of Kyrgyzs by asking her questions. It was really fun! I still remember some phrases like men seni suyum means I love you and mushuq means cat. It's weird that I still remember that but even if you stop studying Irish certain things will stick with you! You'll expose yourself to different ideas and perspectives too and that's very valuable.

Edit: you've made me want to find a French audiobook to listen to.

I’m currently learning how to speak Spanish. I started learning because I have a lot of friends that speak that language, and I wanted to be able to have a conversation with them in Spanish. I stopped for a while though because I didn’t have time, but I started learning again recently in school.

I also use Duolingo! It’s best to try and learn a few words at least every other day, but if you don’t have time to do that, it’s alright if you miss a few days. For some people, it helps to use flash cards.

If you know someone else who is learning/knows the language, say what you know to them. You and the other person might learn something new! If you can’t do this, I try having a conversation with yourself. Hearing yourself say the words out loud can help with pronunciation.

I also know a little bit of Irish, Dutch, Greek, Japanese, and Hawaiian (and a few more), but I haven’t practiced in a while, and probably won’t try learning more about those languages until I’m comfortable speaking Spanish.

I took Spanish in High School but I don’t really remember much of it now. Do I dare say that was 26 years ago?!?! I do really want to learn ASL & also maybe take a refresher course in Spanish. I am no where near being fluent but I do still know how to say a few things in Spanish.

I love learning languages.

English is not my native, so I learned that at school, together with German and Spanish (of which I have forgotten most)

I have a BA in Russian, and studied in St Petersburg for some time, I looooooved it!
Now I am learning European Portuguese through Memrise, newspapers, TV-series and general use, since I have moved to Portugal.

I have also started to look at arabic (levantine dialect), just for fun. My goal is not to be fluent in it, just to have fun.

Hunt and Jump is a great tool for learning words, I name most of my horses after the words I need to learn.

Nightphoenix - my younger daughter has Asperger Syndrome. She wasn't diagnosed until she was 23 but thinking about it now a lot of things about her make sense. Like you, she also has trouble reading social cues such as body language and facial expressions. Since the diagnosis she has learned to cope pretty well and is holding down a job, has married and has a daughter of her own. I do worry about her though because life is sometimes hard for her. (I'm a mum and worry about both my daughters, but with her it's about specifics!) :)

German is considered a level 2 language for English speakers. Spanish/French/Italian and other romance languages are level 1 and considered the easiest.

Not sure what you mean by picture language? Bulgarian is a Slavic language like Russian and uses an almost identical alphabet.

https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty/

They have a different alphabet called Cyrillic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script#:~:text=The Cyrillic script (%2Fs%C9%AA,North%20Asia%20and%20East%20Asia.

Thank you pinkie and Ammit for the great information!

@OscarWildin- Wow, you lived in the Netherlands? That is pretty cool! Some of my grandparents were Dutch! I know a little bit of French and Spanish but I'm definitely not fluent in either of them! I want to learn a few more languages after I get near the end of my Irish course too! I can't believe how many people here are bilingual or learning a different language! :O

I took French from the 7th grade through HighSchool many many years ago ; and until recently went to Canada every summer and stay in Quebec for a few days ; even though now my European freinds say i have a " Canadian " accent when i speak with them lol at least i kept up the language.
I also learned Italian from my great grand parents and grand parents ; they were pretty strict about cussing in front of children ; so of course i learned the foul words first lol.
I used to work with Standard Bred Race horses and the family i worked for was Italian ,, so i kept that up
Now i am learning Spanish ; which is actually harder for me now becuase when i "swap" in my brain i tend to think in French first and since all 3 are considered " romance" languages and all 3 are based off of Latin many words are similar but different enough that the translations dont work from one to the other.

It's cool that so many people are working on additional languages! I've studied some French in school and am trying to improve it for work (I'm Canadian), mostly using a combination between things like Duolingo and reading some basic books for beginners/kids. I'm also planning to hunt down some audiobooks so I can hear the proper pronunciations too. Music is a good idea, might have to try that too.

I'm also hoping to add Mandarin and German to the mix someday when I have more time. I have several friends who can speak Mandarin and parts of my family are German, so I think it would be cool to be able to at least have some basics.

I find I'm usually ok at reading and writing languages but speaking and listening are pretty difficult for me. I'd agree with Forestshadow that while I like that Duolingo is more conversation-focused and good for listening to the words, I miss learning the basic grammar rules too. Plus they teach more France-French than Quebecois-French, which is a bit different. But overall, it's nice to have things broken up into short practice sessions you can do everyday even if you don't have much time.

Best of luck to everyone with their learning goals!

I grew up reading classical mythology from my father's sister's college mythology book, and was fascinated by it. I'm not at all certain how it ended up on my family's book shelf. When offered a choice of Latin or Spanish in 9th grade I naturally gravitated to Latin, especially since the word around my classes was "Take Spanish, it's easier," and I thought I'd had enough easy classes. *D*.

I studied Latin for 4 years in High School, falling in love with it during the first two weeks. I thought I'd like to teach it, and so took another 4 years in college. By the time I graduated, Latin had fallen out of favor (this was the sixties when the mantra was not to learn anything that wasn't "relevant," so studying a "dead" language went out of favor. I also had 3 years of French in high school and 1 semester of German in college.

All this time later--my college graduation was in 1967--I've forgotten most of my foreign languages.