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Joel Neff's avatar

Three thoughts:

1) I think people too often make the mistake of putting the cart before the horse when they think about language learning. What I try to tell people is that, while it's fine to have a goal or a reason to learn a language, you should also just learn languages to learn languages. All that other stuff - making friends, traveling, etc. - comes because you start learning the language and trying to use it.

2) Regarding Coming-of-Age, I grew up on the border of the U.S. and Mexico. A lot of my Mexican and Mexican-American friends celebrated their 15th birthdays with a party called a Quinceanera. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinceañera)

3) I have a question - one of the hardest parts of language learning for me is learning how to read. With Japanese, I still struggle with Kanji, with other non-alphabet languages, learning how to read the scripts seems to take me longer than it does everyone else. Any tips?

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