For me it was Hebrew and it’s cool writing system, then ithkuil and how alien it seems. It lead me down a deep rabbithole to where i now make writing systems.

  • FinalBoy1975@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Spanish because in high school it was either that or French. Although there were some French speaking towns in the area, I figured Spanish would be more useful to me since I planned on moving away to go to college. I got so into it I got a PhD in it.

    • Darthjaffacake@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Yeah same, learned french for 4 years but couldn’t pick up a word. Spanish personally was just a more fun language and i have more investment in actually learning it.

  • ken_cleanairsystems@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    Spanish, when I was very young, basically because it was the only other language (besides English) that I knew existed. I grew up in an extremely white/homogenous place, so Sesame Street was pretty much the only reason I even knew Spanish existed.

    • Darthjaffacake@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Exposure to a language is always very important, and i think Spanish is pretty common as a second language in Britain and the USA since Spain and Mexico are quite close

  • Savto@feddit.it
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    1 year ago

    I’m Italian. My first was English because it was the only foreign language you could learn in the elementary school. Now I’m learning Polish.

    • Darthjaffacake@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Nah i tried learning it when i was like 14 and made a pretty poor attempt of it. Rn i can only remember some of the alephbet and pretty much no words. Great that you can find people online who are willing to speak such an amazing language though!

  • SealeWithIt@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    French, because it was the only language offered at my school as a second additional language (English is my native language, and Afrikaans was my first additional language).

    This year, though, Ukrainian was my main focus. I finished the Duolingo course and I’ve been listening to Ukrainian podcasts and reading articles.

    • Darthjaffacake@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Ukrainian and Afrikaans are really interesting! I didn’t know there was a duo course for it so that’s really good.

      • SealeWithIt@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The course is really short :( I’m going through the French one now and it has so many more activities and lessons.

        It took me a long time to wrap my head around the “case” system for Ukrainian, and I still really struggle to pronounce “И” 🤣