It does interest me.
My biggest regret is not studying other languages, just out of bloodyminded contrariness. I would loved to have made a career out of it, especially in translation.
I have a weird sticking point though, which I may be totally wrong about, but I don’t want to be merely passable and able to get by as a tourist, I want to be more than just fluent, but an expert.
Seeing that written down, I see how ridiculous and egotistical that notion is. But it exists in my head. I don’t want to be a heavily-accented foreigner who just about manages to communicate by making other people work hard to understand me. I want to be as good as my parents were at speaking other languages. Using words well is probably one of the few things I feel the slightest bit competitive about.
What a self-defeating attitude though, I should just bite the bullet and do it.
I think I have a similar-ish mental block about baking. My grandma was so good at it. I feel as though I can't measure up, so don't attempt to.
The thing with languages, though, or baking, or anything else for that matter, is that you can only get better at it with practice. You can't leapfrog from beginner to expert. You've got to go through the motions.
It's like when people talk about wanting to change career, but they're put off, because it will take 3-5 years to retrain, through doing a part-time or OU degree, or vocational courses or whatever. They think 'I'm 35/42/53/whatever, I can't spend 3-5 years studying/training, that's too long!' But the thing is, if you're 35/42/53, you're going to be 3-5 years older soon enough, and you can be 38/40 or 45/47 or 56/58 still thinking 'I wish I could do/be X, but 3-5 years is just too long' or you could start now and in 3-5 years from now, you could at least have made some progress rather than still being stuck on the starting line, still vaguely wishing that could speak a language fluently but not doing anything about it.
I started last year with a new year's resolution to improve my French, and I've gone from a level test at the Alliance Française that put me at the high end of A2 (which the tutor who spoke with me thought I might find too easy) and just about B1 (which she wondered aloud might be too challenging for someone who hadn't studied/spoken any French for a long time.
Because of timetabling, I started the eight week B1.1 course last January/February. I then went to Bordeaux to do a 12-week internship as a participant in the Turing Scheme (UK-government funded programme) late-April to mid-July, which helped a lot, admittedly in terms of having the confidence to have a go and waffle on.
Since returning, I've done the B1.2 and B1.3 courses and am just about to start B1.4 - it goes up to B1.5 and then B2.1-5. So within a year I've gone from upper beginner to more than half-way through lower intermediate. I'd have advanced through more of the courses if I hadn't gone to France, ironically.
I haven't been doing any homework in between classes (long hours in my jobs), but I have been doing some Duolingo every day. (And Duolingo recently restructured/relabelled their language pathways to track with the CEFR ie A1, A2, B1, B2, etc., and my Duolingo pathway, it transpires, is roughly where I'm up to in my Alliance Française courses.)
Originally, I found Duolingo easy peasy because it was simply refreshing my mind about lots of stuff I already knew from school. Then it started to get a bit harder, but it was still stuff I'd learned, albeit going beyond absolute beginner level, introducing more tenses, conjugation, and more vocabulary. And now it's reached a point where I'm learning new stuff, so it's harder going and I make more mistakes, but making slow progress.
And I've been watching some French series and movies on Netflix, etc., albeit with English subtitles.
I'm hoping to be starting the upper intermediate courses in September, so in a year and a half I'll have progressed from at the upper end of upper beginner level, to starting upper intermediate B2. And then hopefully next September, I'll be able to start C1. I think C1 is classed as proficient/fluent and C2 is like mother-tongue standard.
To give you an idea of functioning levels. To get a French residency card, you need to pass at least the B1 language test. To study at a UK university, you need at least B2 for a student visa/IELTS equivalent (although some might want higher).
But the only way to get there is to start learning now. Sign up for language apps like Duolingo or Memrise or Busuu, which all have free versions. And just do a little bit every day.
And then look into courses, maybe there's an Alliance Française or Instituto Cervantes or whatever where you can sign up for in-person evening classes, or maybe you can sign up for online courses or individual tuition. One of the good things about the pandemic was how a lot of learning switched online and they've retained a lot of those possibilities - although I prefer in person, because I think I've reached the age where my hearing's deteriorating a bit (maybe due to being a legal secretary in my twenties and doing so much audio transcribing with the volume high).
Anyway, up to you, but if you decide to give it a go, good luck with it, and you want to practice some basic French, holler.
Maybe you could persuade work to fund a basic BSL course, to help with equality and inclusion?
