I wish we as society could simply have one language to overcome language barriers, but that’s more of a content for my daydreaming.
I often encounter issues due to language barriers.
Mainly with 2 languages.
Since the start of war, I’ve been encountering lots of Ukrainians I can’t really speak with. Especially when I was on a dorm, where they were a great majority.
Not that I tend to talk with people, but I felt weird after a while.
Probably like someone who doesn’t speak Spanish in the US (at least I assume that’s fairly common over there).
And now searching for a job, I found many companies want you to know German.
Which I also encountered as “would’ve been useful now” a few times.
Seems like I should know an answer to this, as English isn’t my first language, but I have no fucking idea how I picked it up. I never made any serious attempt (i.e.: studying for more than a week) to learn it.
I started learning French when I was 12 which I’ve continued into adulthood.
What I’ve learned after leaving highschool and learning it on my own is that the book version of the language is very much not useful if you actually want to understand native speakers.
In real life people blend sounds together and use a bunch of slang and the books really don’t teach that, so when I started learning listening skills post-highschool, it kind of felt like I starting over from square one to a degree.
I really recommend that you start with listening and speaking skills first before moving on to reading and writing. That’s the order we all learned our first language in and it still works really well for learning your second or third. The way languages are taught in schools really feels backwards to me.
I’ve been learning little bits of Japanese here and there and starting with listening first feels so much easier. I also feel like it really helps with pronunciation as well since I’m copying native speakers.