to ask if you speak a foreign language, why you chose that one..

[Messyisthenewtidy]

was it to travel to / live in that country, because of a spouse, etc?

Also, do you find it easy? And how are the locals when you speak to them in their language?

I'm trying to get some inspiration to learn a foreign language but I'm not sure which one to choose.

Spanish
I’d always had an attachment to the country and always will. Maybe I was a Spaniard in a previous life.
Spanish is fairly easy and the grammar makes sense. It’s quite intuitive.
People are chuffed if you try and altho it feels cringeworthy I’ve never had a negative reaction
However some people especially in Catalunya willl speak to you in English even if you speak decent Spanish

I learnt French at school but didn't really speak it properly until I moved to France.

I started learning Norwegian long ago, though I never progressed past the "holiday" stage.

Norwegian is not far from Swedish, Danish and Icelandic, (in fact a U.S. university I briefly attended on exchange taught a course leading to a reading ability in the first 3), and being "Germanic" gives you a foundation that wouldn't be totally useless for German and Dutch.

At school I studied French and Latin - this has meant it's been easy to pick up phrases and vocabulary for holidays in other Romance languages - Spanish, Italian, Catalan.

I learnt to speak Mandarin Chinese because I lived there for a few years for work. I have to say it's incredibly hard and now I no longer live there it is also difficult to keep it up. The people in China are really friendly and it's really helpful to speak it if you are travelling there it is so useful because apart from big citiies a lot of people don't speak English.

I learnt Finnish because I spent part of my nurse training in Finland and I found immersion to be a better way of learning than any I had previously tried. The language is also very beautiful and makes me feel like I am an elf from Lord of the Rings!

That said, while I spoke enough to get by I wasn't fully fluent because it is also a very hard language!

I speak Khmer (Cambodian) after living there for a few years. Being immersed in the language was definitely the best way to learn and I loved it! Most of the people we were in contact with there were too poor to have had any English lessons, so it was a case of speaking their language or dragging an interpreter round with us all the time. Some of the wealthier people we met spoke English to some extent.

When I started to learn the locals thought my efforts quite hysterical, but kept going and they accepted it. When I met new people who did not expect me to be able to speak their language they were shocked and encouraging.

I was older going out there - 46 years old and dreaded having to learn it, but absolutely loved learning and, for me, it started a love of learning and when I returned home I studied for a career change, which was the first study I had done for 25 years!

French because I grew up in a French speaking country, and Spanish because we had to learn an additional language at school and my mum speaks Spanish. My brother also speaks Polish, as his two best friends of many years are Polish. My dad spoke Portuguese and Dutch too.

Spanish. Learned at school, we didn’t study French. Did a degree and included Catalan.
Learning Irish at the moment as I spend a bit of time there. I find it fascinating.

I learnt French at school and was spent a few months in France and Switzerland as a teenager. I acquired a good accent and some fluency really quickly but apart from one or two BBC4 dramas, I hadn't dabbled for decades. Last year, in an Aldi car park, a French-speaking gentleman asked me for information and it all came flooding back. He asked me if I was French - a great compliment.

I learnt how to read Classical Latin as an adult studying with the OU. I haven't used it very much.

Recently, I started learning Welsh and I love it. The country is next door, there is ready access to S4C and the Welsh appreciate your efforts.

Spajish, done it at school for GCSE. Visit mainland Spain/Menorca a lot now as an adult so refreshing myself. I love Spanish. Encouraging my children to learn with me as well. I like being able to speak with locals

My DH's first language is Arabic so I've picked up quite a bit. I lived in Oman before children too.

Started learning it properly 2 years ago with a teacher - from Syria. I love it, it's a great language. I get frustrated though that I don't use it enough and perhaps when I am older and the DC are at uni or even after that, I would like to go back to the ME for a year to teach again.

I have opportunities at work to speak it a bit too.

Also, speak some Japanese as I lived there for 2 years. Loved that too. Phonetic so fairly easy to pick up and write.

German. Because I lived there for a while and I find it quite a straightforward language.

I learned French at school and progressed to near-fluency during endless holidays there (love the place). Admittedly French with a Derbyshire accent isn't ideal (!!) but they're very tolerant and usually manage to avoid wincing

One of those holidays was a month in a very rural area, and on the last day I struggled to explain something to the village grocer, whose ears I'd assaulted with my accent for weeks. He helped me out in a torrent of perfect English, so of course I blushed and asked why he hadn't said he could speak it

With a perfect gallic shrug he asked "pourquoi?"

Forgive the slight derail but I thought your mother tongue was the language of the country you were born in rather than the language your family may speak. E.g someone born in the uk has English as a mother tongue even if their parents are also native speakers of another language?

zwellers
The clue is in the name
Mother tongue is the language your mother speaks to you
Native tongue or native langage is the language of the country you were born in
Usually mother tongue and native tongue are the same but obviously not always

I am learning French so I can work in the EU you need English or French plus one other of the languages spoken in the EU. It is early days so they would probably laugh at my attempts

Who told you that?

I've worked in the "EU" and nobody asked me what languages I could speak.

About the dreaming - I dream in the language of the other person in the dream. There are lots of people in life I never speak English to so it would be weird to speak English with in a dream.

On the other hand I had a lovely dream about Colin Farrell the other night & we were definitely speaking English

I heard Korean was fairly difficult... so naturally that's the one I'd like to learn :).
I used to speak Spanish almost fluently. I can still read that (& French). But speaking them is pretty awful.

Did German and French at O level; French to A level. French useful a bit, but now live in Belgium, and in the Flemish region, so only English and Flemish really used here. Have tried to learn Flemish, did two years of classes, but find it hard to speak. Can read it better than I speak it.

Oh god , remembering my year abroad in Granada. We were all so delighted and poncetastic when we had our first dream in Spanish 😂
Now I only do it when I’m on holiday and back in the language.

I learnt French because it was that or Japanese on offer when I was at school and I enjoyed French better. I also learnt a local language of the place we went to every holidays, and where I now live. Only about 1000 people speak it, so it doesn't have much use outside the local community.

Spanish. It's a very common language here.

Modern Greek, because I want to live in Greece when I retire - I teach the ancient language along with Latin, and it's amazing how many words (though not pronunciation) are pretty much the same 2500 years later.

Korean. Spouse (and now son!). Was much better years ago when I lived there, improving again now our boy is here and I'm being exposed to more.

I speak nine languages, including the difficult ones like Vietnamese. The first floor, I learned because I wanted to work as an interpreter for the UN. And then I moved to Asia, so I learn Vietnamese, Thai, Mandarin, and then last year, no sorry two years ago I learned Greek because my dentist was Greek and I was afraid to go to the dentist. Sorry, in a loud café and I'm using dictation as I am visually impaired Sorry for the mistakes