Languages I speak and languages I want to learn.

• ♡ Portuguese: European Portuguese is my mother language.
• ♡ English: I am pretty fluent, however I make some spelling and grammar mistakes. I’m glad autocorrect exists.
• ♡ German: I have an intermediate knowledge of German. I can understand most of the written text, with exception of slang and very specialized terminology. I have a lot of difficulties understanding spoken German, speaking and even writing. It’s such a hard language for me.
• ♡ Spanish: I can understand basically almost everything in written form since it is so similar to Portuguese and because I had Spanish classes in high school. I can also understand most spoken Spanish, depending on the accent. However, I don’t have a lot of practice writing and speaking it.

• ♡ French: I studied French during middle school for five years, however it was middle school French, so not very advanced. I have forgotten a lot of it, but when I read a text in French I can still understand a few words, which was pretty useful when I was doing a traineeship in a French speaking country and in a partially French speaking workplace. I’d mostly say “Bonjour” and “Merci”. I don’t really intend on getting back into studying French, unless it will be useful for my career. Honestly, it’s not a language I like very much.
• ♡ Latvian: I lived one year in Latvia, so I know a few words, but I have forgotten a lot of them. I used to understand more spoken Latvian, since I was around a lot of people speaking it. The spoken rhythm of Latvian is quite slow, when compared to some other languages, so it was easy for me to understand. I did some online classes that consisted mostly of written exercises with vocabulary that was not very useful for daily life. Also the platform decided to change the layout and deleted all my progress right when I was finishing all the exercises. At the end of my stay in Latvia I did the platform’s language exam and got a B2 level.

• ♡ Russian: I’d like to learn a Slavic language, so I can claim that I know languages from the three biggest subfamilies of the languages of Europe. I’d preferably learn a language with a different alphabet, because I think it’s cool. Russian is widely spoken in Latvia so I was able to pick up some words and sentences when I was there. I also decided to teach myself the Cyrillic script, which is actually very easy to learn and not that different from the Latin alphabet.
  I am afraid that Slavic languages might be too hard to learn, but I think I should be ok with the fact that I don’t have to be fluent in every single language I try to learn. I actually had some free classes of Polish, but Polish pronunciation is crazy and the only thing I remember is “Cześć” and “Moja rodzina”.
• ♡ Italian: My best friend is Italian, so I could speak in Italian with him. Moreover Italian is a Romance language, so it’d be relatively easy for me to learn.
• ♡ Dutch: When I read Dutch I recognize so many words that are similar to German and English, so I think the vocabulary wouldn’t be hard to learn. However, the Dutch pronunciation seems so hard.
• ♡ Japanese: It would be interesting to learn a non-European language. I don’t think I’d want to become fluent, because it would be a lot of work, but I’d like to know some basic sentences and to be able to read some words. I already recognize some spoken words just from watching anime.
• ♡ Esperanto: I’d like to learn it just for curiosity. I think the idea of constructed languages is so interesting. Especially taking into account Esperanto’s creator goals of creating a language that was easy to learn and that would foster communication and international understanding, leading to world peace. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and the world was stage for two world wars right after the creation of the language.
  I really like the mix of Romance, Germanic, Slavic and Greek vocabulary, which gives a very interesting sound. Once, at a flea market in Riga, I saw a book to learn Esperanto and for a moment I thought about buying it, but it was a book for a Latvian speaker, so it would be hard for me to understand it. I’d have gotten it if it was in a language I know.