Mutsumi no

Language Learning

This is one of my longest lasting hobbies. The earliest I can remember being interested is around age 8 when I was absolutely fascinated by some French we'd been taught at school, but I didn't get the chance to start learning a language properly until age 11.

I don't need languages for work or my daily life, but I love using them on holiday, when talking to people, reading books or watching films, and just generally discovering a little bit about a different culture.

Languages from strongest to weakest Level
Japanese C1 - comfortable with pretty much anything, lacking specialised knowledge
French B1-B2 - I feel rusty in speaking but my understanding is good enough for novels
Portuguese B1 - basic chitchat, reading middle-grade books
Spanish A1-A2 - survival level, can understand quite a bit just from Portuguese knowledge
Cantonese A0-A1 - Studied this for almost two years. I can recognise when Cantonese is being spoken and my technical knowledge for tones/grammer is okay, but I can only recall a few phrases if I try to speak now
Mandarin, Bengali, German, Dutch, Latin A0 - at some point I was studying these but I've basically forgotten almost all of it except some phrases and some of the writing systems

Languages from earliest to most recent Age/Time
French First language I learned in high school
Latin Second language in high school
German Moved high school and this was the second language
Bengali Tried to learn it as a teenager
Japanese Took and evening class and never stopped learning it!
Cantonese Decided I wanted to be able to learn the most commonly spoken Chinese language in the UK
Mandarin Took some basic group lessons but I was too focused on Japanese to continue
Russian Took an evening class for fun before realising inflections were hard
Spanish Half-heartedly tried to learn this by myself
Portuguese Started learning in preparation for a holiday and it's been 2 years still learning!
Dutch Did a few lessons by myself but I'm too busy and not motivated enough to continue right now