Currently using Busuu for Spanish, German, French, and Russian and would like advice on other languages to take up learning whether Busuu has them or if not I’ll then use Tandem.
Currently using Busuu for Spanish, German, French, and Russian and would like advice on other languages to take up learning whether Busuu has them or if not I’ll then use Tandem.
Swede here, at school I learned both English and Spanish, I consider myself to be Swedish/English bilingual, but even after six years of proper in-school Spanish classes I have only a brief surface level knowledge of the language, it is about 20 years since I last took classes in Spanish, and I never used it outside of class.
My English however, I have used that daily for the last 20+ years, both at work and at home, over the years I have learned common expressions and slang, and have been told several times that I speak excellent English.
My point is that I would recommend prioritizing learning one or at most two languages outside of your native language, but learning them well, rather than trying to cram in as many languages as possible.
One thing that has served me well however, is understanding pronunciation of foreign names, pronouncing other people’s names properly when other’s wont bother to will grant you a lot of respect and help you work together.
Can’t agree with this enough! This is not exactly what you’re talking about, but similar: I (in US) work with people all over the world, and I’ve found that folks not from my home country are more likely to call me by an abbreviated version of my name instead of the name I introduced myself as. Like if I said, “Hi, my name is Michael.” They will almost always call me “Mike.” Annoys the crap out of me. Because of this, I try to make it a point to ask if I’m not sure how to properly pronounce a person’s name.