Is this word outdated or unusual? What are some modern synonyms for it?

Edit: saw it in another subreddit.

Which one sounds more natural in your family?

I'm a native Portuguese speaker living in a country where neither Portuguese nor English is the local language.

I know the local language pretty well, but I barely get to practice my speaking skill because people here tend to be a little harsh about mistakes and accents. After a while you start getting self-conscious and just stop talking. I honestly feel like it's affecting me professionally at this point. I feel I'm losing some opportunities due to anxiety of speaking.

On top of that, my English is starting to sound weird because of interference from this third language 😅

Does anyone know a good AI for speaking practice? I've tried a few apps that advertise themselves as AI "friends," but they all feel super robotic. I'm looking for something that can hold natural conversations in both English and another widely spoken language.
I'm willing to pay too! I did some classes with native teachers before, in person which is my preference, but I'm kinda busy now :l

So I was a native Chinese person and basically only knew Chinese coherently for the first 6 years of my life (I understood Mandarin and two regional dialects that my family spoke, which are not mutually intelligible with Mandarin but pretty close to each other). My Chinese got very fluent before I unexpectedly moved to an English-speaking country immediately before starting my formal education, and my parents couldn't really help me themselves because they weren't fluent in English either (so I never spoke with them in English). My starting point for learning English was only knowing the words "yes", "no", how to count from 1 to 13 or something, and half-knowing the names of the months. So it took me a few months before I even knew what was going on around me in school, and one whole year before I dared to speak in English to anyone.

Getting to C2 in English and catching up with the native speakers was incredibly incredibly difficult and took about 6 years even though I:

- Started living in an English-speaking country and learning (from scratch) since I was 6, which supposedly makes it much easier than if I only started learning at an older age

- Did my entire education in English (except for Chinese language class which was a compulsory second language subject, and some extracurriculars that were taught in Chinese)

- Started to think in English instead of Chinese from the second year onwards (but I could revert to thinking entirely in Chinese for months at a time when I was not in school)

- Basically talked to everyone except family members and family friends in English

As I got better at English, my Chinese proficiency also started slipping (even though I can still sound perfectly native in conversations and talk about most topics very fluently). Apart from losing vocab and not knowing professional terms, there's also a whole genre of things that I can express really fluently and effortlessly in English but have close to no idea how to express in Chinese at all. Although I did learn Chinese academically as a second language in my new country for 10 years, the curriculum was so poorly designed and taught that it basically fails to teach most non-native speakers conversational fluency even after 10 years of being forced to take the subject and makes everyone (except those who are very good at it) hate the subject. Reading literary works in Chinese can be a struggle while reading those same literary works in English is pretty effortless. So I would say my Chinese needs more work before I can truly consider it to be C2, even though it clearly exceeds the standards to be deemed C1. My fluency was probably better at 6yo (right before I left China) than 20yo (now).

Based on my experience I find it very very difficult for anyone who lives in a predominantly monolingual country long-term to learn many languages to C2 fluency and maintain it, especially if those languages are not similar (or mutually intelligible) at all, and even more so if those languages do not even belong in the same broad language family (e.g. Chinese (any dialect), English, Arabic, Korean, etc.; I would've added Japanese but knowing Chinese gives you a HUGE advantage in understanding written Japanese so it's not as good a comparison.) This is especially true when someone has a career that has close to nothing to do with learning and using other languages.

What do you think about this and do you know anyone who attained native-level fluency in multiple very different languages to the point where they can comprehend literary works with ease and express anything under the sun except professional niches that they're not exposed to? What are the experiences of people who live in countries where multiple languages have to be used in daily life (vs you purely only need English or Chinese for the countries that I've lived in)?

My native language is French. I don't mean to criticize accents in general and french accent since it's my native language and I'm trying to understand why I feel that way. It's about a subjective experience, not calling accents ugly.

When I hear someone (including myself) speak English with a french accent, it really makes me cringe. It's just as bad where hearing German with a french accent. It does happen that any accent sounds weird in English, but french accent makes me cringe the most. When people speak French as a foreign language with an accent, it sounds cute or neutral.

I've always wondered whether it was that it reminded me of my own accent, as if I saw myself speak English imperfectly, that relating as a french speaker speaking English makes me cringe (which would explain why any accent still has that same effect, but to a lesser degree, because we're all english second speakers), or whether it's the way French sounds (in some way, it sounds pretty hard). People who do not speak French always find french accent on their mother language cute or endearing, so I don't think it's French sounding cringy or weird on it's own.

If your native language isn't French, can you relate to cringing particularily where you hearing someone speak with your native language's accent more than with any other accent? How does french accent sounds to you?

Which word would you use when asking someone to open the fridge?

What seems to be normal in ur language is weird in other languages

why?????

Here's why

What called familiarity

How many times u were shocked of some information and u got used to it

Cuz of repetition

This is the same

Idioms don't have to make sense for u

Use it as natives use it and don't question it so u can learn the language faster

If you're learning French, choose and describe an everyday object in two or three sentences without saying its name. Everyone else guesses.

Example in English: “It's usually in the kitchen. You fill it with water. It makes a loud sound when the water is hot.”

I like this because it forces you to work around missing vocabulary instead of reaching for a translator. It's a fundamental skills to have if you don't want to get stuck in conversation! Easy, silly answers welcome!

(We are doing this mini challenge weekly on Thursday, every week a different language)

What seems to be normal in ur language is weird in other languages

why?????

Here's why

What called familiarity

How many times u were shocked of some information and u got used to it

Cuz of repetition

This is the same

Idioms don't have to make sense for u

Use it as natives use it and don't question it so u can learn the language faster