English
Background on my languages:
- English - native: This is the language I spoke at home and in school while growing up. In addition, 99% of the media I consumed was in English; from books to movies to music.
- Filipino - native: Also grew up speaking and hearing Filipino however, I was strongly discouraged from speaking outside of Filipino class as well as watching telenovelas. Moreover, I hated reading in Tagalog because it was so difficult and annoying haha. Filipino songs and movies were also not something I enjoyed since I gravitated to English and Japanese media. However, I am bilingual since my caretakers (yayas) and other relatives (aside from my parents) spoke to me in Filipino.
- Japanese - beginner: High beginner level I'd say because I had 3 semesters of Japanese language in university (4 semesters should be enough for N5 JLPT) but I dropped out and never took the exam. I've restarted studying it again using the same textbook that was used in class as well as Duolingo, watching anime with Japanese subtitles, listening and singing along to Japanese music.
- Lithuanian - beginner: Absolutely basic level since I just started a few months ago. It's been mostly following a free online course created by a friend (https://ikindalikelanguages.com/learn/Lithuanian), reading Harry Potter in Lithuanian (just trying to pronounce the words correctly without much care as to whether I understand the vocabulary or the grammar), shadowing podcasts and of course, singing along to Disney songs in Lithuanian particularly Frozen, Tangled, and Moana ahhahaha. My partner is Lithuanian so I just inundate him with audio recordings of butchered Lithuanian haha better than nothing I suppose XD.
- Spanish - beginner: Basic level, perhaps a bit better than Lithuanian because Filipino tends to have similar words to Spanish as well as English so it's going well but it's just Duolingo, some songs, and Netflix Spongebob with Spanish audio and subtitles.
- Latin - beginner: Absolute basic - just Duolingo - for funsies haha.
- German - beginner: Ahhhh german big sigh. I studied A1 level with the Goethe-Institut Philippinen but then I stopped due to lack of motivation. I first started studying it right before I went to Germany for a 3-week summer school program. When I was there, I could mostly just say bitte and danke schon ahaha. I resolved to learn more when I get back home and I did for a short while, hence the online A1 course, but of course, life got complicated and I wasn't sure if I was ever going to go back. Plus, my Austrian friend isn't that helpful with German since he prefers to talk to me in English as I am the only person that he can practice that with haha. Basically, German learning is on a standstill since I'm focusing on the 4 above.
All in all, aside from my two native languages, everything is extremely slow but steady. I do maybe 5-15 mins a day for all combined of focused "study" (yes, I include Duolingo in this) and random hours of podcasts, anime, Youtube, Spongebob, books, music, movies, etc throughout the day. Main priority is listening comprehension and speaking ability but in an extremely loose chillax sense since I don't have a hard goal to reach.
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I also grew up preferring to watch things in English and thought reading/writing my parents' native language was too hard. I really regret it now... I have classmates whose skills are 10x better than mine even though we had similar schooling. And that's so cool that you did a summer school program in Germany. 3 weeks seems so short though! Was the program for a specific subject or field of study?
Hahahah the struggle of the bilingual life xD I managed to get high grades in mandatory Filipino research classes so it was alright (still struggled a ton cause I didn't know a lot of the deep vocabulary but I managed - most of it was relying on the "this doesn't sound right" instinct). But no worries, you can relearn Cantonese again :). It was my first time being so far away from home so it was super fun! :D It was just a summer program for business and economics; it's called the International Summer School Schmalkalden (https://www.hs-schmalkalden.de/en.html).