• RiverGhost@slrpnk.net
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    7 months ago

    I get it. I have only succeeded at learning languages I’ve been sort of forced to learn, even when I’ve also genuinely wanted to learn them.

    I wanted to study an undergraduate degree that is only given in Swedish, so I went to school specifically to learn Swedish before that.

    I work with programming so I’d get away only with English but somehow I’ve managed to reach a point where people mostly speak to me in Swedish, even though I don’t look Scandinavian. I have a coworker that keeps talking to me in English and I reply to him in Swedish and sometimes it takes him a while to notice we’re speaking different languages.

    It does require a sustained effort and I slip when I’m lazy or tired. Also, having to use a language that doesn’t let me project the best of me can be challenging as an adult.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      All of that is very much how it went for me, even down to the whole extra difficulty to look and sound articulate and knowledgeable when one is has the extra barrier of speaking a language when one is far from mastering.