I love learning languages as well, and I am constantly diving into one language learning book or another. I only really get practice in Spanish, as there are a lot of Spanish speakers at my work (in Texas), but I always try and seek out material or find a meetup or something for my other languages if I am intent on getting some sort of speaking practice.
- Spanish (1, 2, 3, AP, AP Lit in high school; practice at work with native speakers nearly every day)
- Chinese (major in college, lived in China for about 7 months in both Beijing and Sichuan and keep up with friends as well as watching movies in Chinese and reading)
- Esperanto (self taught in 1 month, practice through online forums and correspondence, as well as reading)
- Swedish (self taught using books + duolingo, practice through reading books like the Millenium series)
- Japanese (self taught using Genki series, practice by reading both manga and books on Shinto, etc. Speaking practice is hard...)
- American Sign Language (self taught through books + a YouTube course called ASL University; practice only with a deaf colleague at work)
That's really impressive. My goal for this year was to be able to read a short fantasy anthology book for teens that I bought in Germany eleven years ago, but I still can't do it. I can mostly read the
Peanuts book I bought, mostly because I'm familiar enough with
Peanuts to know the context of the jokes already.
-German: It is my best secondary language, so it is the one that I would like to improve the most, but it also hard to find learning materials that fit into my level of proficiency. They're either too easy (and thus boring) or too advanced (to the point of frustration).
-French: Since I already have a base for French and it sounds beautiful, I sometimes practice it on Duolingo, but my pronunciation is rather awful. I'm not sure if I like it enough to pursue it, but I think the grammar is attractive (only two genders and no case endings).
-Russian: I dabbled in it years ago and still remember a few phrases, but my understanding is that it has an even worse case and inflection system than German.
-Japanese: I also dabbled in it years ago and remember a few phrases, but I'm not interested enough to pursue it, especially since the writing system is so hard.
I've recently been curious about Danish since I've been watching the TV show
Vorbrydelsen. I recognize some German words when I hear it, but the spelling and pronunciation are supposedly atrocious (at least compared to Swedish). I'm also probably much less likely to encounter Danes than Germans for French people anyway.