Have you ever taught yourself a language?

Percy Thrillington

Percy Thrillington

The Mad Hatter
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    • Seen Jan 1, 2023
    Title explains it all, I guess. Have you ever wanted to learn a language and acted upon it by teaching it to yourself? I know we all have to learn languages in school, but I'm talking more about independent learning. And without the help you'd get in school, how did you efficiently teach yourself? How well do you say you can get by with that language now?

    When I was twelve, I tried to learn Latin because I just learned that a lot of names in science, law and medicine were all of a Latin descent. Found out Wikipedia wasn't the best teacher ever and gave up shortly after.

    Now, though, I'm trying to teach myself French seeing as my teacher in school is just awful. Mainly consists of me writing down whatever I can find or saying phrases/vocabulary/verbs/rules to myself repeatedly.
     
    You can learn a language by yourself if you have someone to practice with. That's how I used to improve my english online (I'm still kind of doing it, but I don't spend much effort anymore), sometimes I post here and in other forums. I had english classes in my life, but they were really cheesy. Of course one'll hardly be fluent this way, but I have a decent knowledge which will make slightly easier the process.
     
    I taught myself some Hindi, because I was tired of watching Bollywood movies with subs.
     
    I actually made a good stab at Esperanto, to the point of understanding some basic sentences, but my effort just... whittled away. ._. I'm like that, there's not much I ever see through to the end; and it's hard to find an especially motivating reason when I'm a native English speaker who knows no matter where I go in the world, someone will understand me.
     
    I've tended to go crazy in this regard, trying to teach myself Russian & French. I did take a lot of French in elementary school, but they never really focused on translation. So I went and bought a book at the bookstore, and I can say with relative certainty that I learned more from than book that in 9 years of school. >_>

    As for Russian, I basically just learned the alphabet and a few common phrases. I'd have to agree on saying it's better if you have someone fluent to bounce your learning skills off of though. ^^
     
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