<p>When you're home does your family ever ask you things like, "Can you really speak <strong><em>?" "Can you say _</em></strong>__ in __________?" </p>
<p>My family does it to me all the time and I think it's embarrassing, so after three years of learning Japanese, my mom hasn't heard more than five minutes of it and my brother, sister, and dad haven't heard a word. It's just weird. You're not going to know what I'm saying so why ask?</p>
<p>IDK.</p>
<p>I have AP homework to do which is why I'm here.</p>
<p>I also feel like learning a foreign language makes me think about how I can obviously speak English but I don't understand it... I have no idea what conjugating a verb, different cases, and other syntaxy whatevery phrases mean in the context of English, but in Japanese it all makes sense.</p>
<p>For your last paragraph, I actually feel the opposite. For example, when I learned about the subjunctive mood in Spanish, it gave me a deeper understanding of its usage in English and make me think “Hm, we use this frequently in English and yet we don’t even know what it is!”.</p>
<p>And things like irregular verbs - there’s a few that don’t behave like others in Japanese, but I would never be able to figure out which English verbs are irregular.</p>
<p>Haha I had no idea what present progressive or infinitives or gerunds were until Spanish…</p>
<p>Subjunctive mood in Spanish is the most awesome thing ever, particularly when it’s in the future tense.</p>
<p>oh gosh yes. Everytime there is a french name, they’re like, 'HEY! Since you’re in FRENCH? How do you pronounce it?"</p>
<p>:D</p>
<p>Nope. I take Latin!</p>
<p>Although it is fun to notice all the mistakes at my (“Roman” Catholic) church.</p>
<p>Spanish at my school is so dumbed down (so that more people can pass) that it is difficult if not impossible to truly learn the language. Ever since realizing this, I’ve pretty much just studied to the test and haven’t been putting much effort into it. Is anyway out there able to actually like learn a language from four years of HS? I’m curious.</p>
<p>@cheerioswithmilk: That’s how it was at my school for Spanish I and II. That’s because you need 2 foreign language credits to graduate, and most people figure Spanish is the easiest, so they just kinda take it without really caring about the language. But it gets better once you get to Spanish III and beyond.</p>
<p>Funny how people think spanish is the easiest. I guess we all been watching too much Dora the Explorer. But if there was a Korean or Japanese class I would have definelty taken those. And it funny learning spanish. You got to learn some stuffs from english (that they never taught us) like imperfect, present progressive, to ways to use “to know” and “to be”. Of course if you paid attention you’ll get it. </p>
<p>People never asked me to translate something in spanish, I guess I’ll get more question later in life.
@cheerios: it just like learning english again.</p>
<p>I get the feeling. My parents ask me to translate all the time when we’re speaking to Spanish-only folks. I’m sitting there stuttering along thinking which tense is applicable and whether the phrases are idiomatic or not.</p>