I love languages

[Copyn]

I mean I kinda suck at them but they're so interesting!
currently I'm just tryin to focus on Japanese (with some Welsh cuz I like maintaining my streaks on DuoLingo and Memrise) so I can get real good with that but even languages I've never touched seem interesting!
actually I kinda wanna become a translator but don't let anyone know cuz spiders aren't normally allowed to do that

anyways what are some things y'all like about languages? whether it be specific quirks or just a really pretty orthography just have fun with it

[Silvian]

I’d say one of the best things about languages is how they impart at least some of the languages’ homelands’ culture through how the language uses different words.

In the same, way codes are really cool too.

[LFG]

I've had a fascination with languages ever since I learned to read, at the age of 3. I even co-invented a language with my brother when I was 8. Until I decided to translate "Dad" as "Elifnot," and my brother realized it was too similar to "Eliphant" and discarded the whole idea.

My brother went on to devise a new alphabet (which included all kinds of weird diacritics) which he shared with me.

I am bilingual since childhood, having been born in America but raised in Israel, and also have some knowledge of Yiddish and Aramaic.

Later I volunteered for a few years at PGDP (Project Guttenberg's Distributed Proofreaders), Proofing scanned books in order to make them available in text format. I started with English books, but at a certain stage that wasn't interesting enough so I tried my hand at other languages as well.

I discovered you don't need to understand what you are proofing, only to be able to read and pronounce it so you know when the text has scanning errors.

I work as a translator from Hebrew to English. I'd rather do the opposite, but my publisher has no use for English-to-Hebrew translations. I am also translating some works for the Hebrew Wikisource, for fun, but since I don't get paid for that, it goes slowly. I already did Kubla Khan (by S.T. Coleridge) and Cinderella (from the Blue Fairy Book), and am currently working on a Chess treatise (by J.R. Capablanca) and on Beauty and the Beast.

[lotte]

ah, languages, who doesn't love them?
personally Irish and Russian are my favourites, although I doubt you could find two languages less alike. I've been wanting to have a look at Scots, it never fails to make me smile

[Raskuly]

I've tried to learn Polish, French, and Spanish but have failed miserably attempting all 3. I wanted to learn Polish because of my fascination with the history of the Poles while I wanted to learn Spanish because of the large Spanish speaking population in my area. I wanted to learn French however because my boyfriend is from Quebec and while he is bilingual and most people in Quebec are I thought it'd be cool to learn it anyway.

The purpose of this reply is to say that while I think languages are really cool I find it incredibly difficult to learn them. I struggle to do anything beyond memorization and I wish I knew how to change that. The only time I've made any real progress is when my boyfriend teaches me some French. I apparently learn much better from him than an actual teacher or an app like Duolingo.