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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: March 27th, 2025

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  • English: For me it’s been my first foreign language. English is so common in Europe the motivation is self-explanatory. However I learned most after finishing school when I had time to binch-watch English movies and series online.

    French: During high school level we learn a second foreign language. Most of the time, French, Russian and Spanish are available. Polish and Mandarin are rather rare. I haven’t heard of any more languages available in schools. French was most common when I had to choose.

    Mandarin: I started in university (90min per week, 100 zi). It’s not enough for HSK1. My motivation back then: “Fach-Chinesisch” (= domain specific chinese) is imagined by Germans as the most difficult language. If you hear two geeks exchange their thoughts and you don’t understand a word, you say they talk Fach-Chinesisch. My motivation now is that more and more software is documented in Mandarin only. However, there’s no pressure to learn about that software, so my process of learning Mandarin slowed way down. My realistic milestone on the way to Fach-Chinesisch is to be able to understand Chinese Sci-Fi movies some day.

    Spanish: My fiancé is interested in learning Spanish. So I generated her a 800MB spoonfed Anki-Deck. So I join her from time to time for testing purposes. But I’m not really interested otherwise.