Sienna Chen

i 🧡 learning languages! inbox and dms open!!

[sololangs]

HELLO!

My name is Sienna, I’m a film student who loves to learn languages. Currently I am studying Chinese, French, and Russian. I am most fluent in French, as I am highly committed to immersing myself in the music, news, films, etc. My Chinese is very rusty from a year of no use (although my family is ethnically Taiwanese) and I just started Russian.

I self study at the moment, but I have participated in language learning schools like Alliance Française, and CEA CAPA Education Abroad. However I am trying to stray away from these programs as they are quite expensive. 💸😭

I just started this blog in order to meet other people who enjoy learning languages, and to maybe update my progress/any major breakthroughs I have.

As of now, Fall 2025, I am planning to take a semester of Introductory Russian and also I am hoping to take the DELF every Spring, aiming to climb to a B1 level in French.

Other interests:

- I love French animation and Russian film. (I love Iranian New Wave as well, if I had time to learn Persian I would)! If you also love Andrei Tarkovsky or Mohsen Makhmalbaf, I love you!!

- I also love watching professional tennis 🎾 (Andrei Rublev and Carlos Alcaraz are my favorites)

- And professional chess ♟️(especially videos about historical games, thank you GothamChess).

- I love music, especially Aphex Twin, Kino, Joy Division, Frank Ocean, Weyes Blood and pinkpantheress :) Got really into Bossa Nova and Jazz at one point, and I am trying to expand my taste into house and minimalist techno right now, as well as producing my own music. I also am a fan of classical, Mozart and Rachmaninoff especially.

- Books! I’m reading Tolstoy’s childhood memoir « Childhood, Boyhood, Youth » at the moment. I also love Nabokov and Dostoevsky, they inspired me in part to learn Russian. I hope to one day also read Sartre in French but fiction is quite hard in another language, so i may start with his theory instead!

[sololangs]

i am taking intensive russian next semester it’s official !!

[rozzed]

why not have the reader re-read a sentence now and then? it won't hurt him....

[sololangs]

la seul raison pour laquelle j’étudie la philosophie à la fac c’est pour rendre mes personnages qui font des études de philosophie plus marrant lol

j’adore les gens qui parlent comme ça genre oui utilise tout le vocabulaire dont tu disposes

[sololangs]

j’ai passé mon examen delf (niveau A2) ; juste les sectios compréhension écrite, production écrite et compréhension orale. j’ai mon examen de la production orale ce samedi

dis moi pourquoi à chaque fois je fais la production écrite, je toujours écris des conneries 😭 « envoyer un email à un ami » « oooohhh oui bonjour je peux pas t’aider avec ton déménagement parce que je dois aller chez mes grands-parents pour leur préparer le déjeuner…. mais si tu veux je peux appeler mes frères si t’as besoin plus d’une personne pour porter les meubles… bisous !! » mais qu’est ce que je raconte .. . je mens juste aucune raison 🤕

[sololangs]

J’AI RÉUSSI MON EXAMEN DELF HOURAAAAA

[sololangs]

j’ai passé mon examen delf (niveau A2) ; juste les sectios compréhension écrite, production écrite et compréhension orale. j’ai mon examen de la production orale ce samedi

dis moi pourquoi à chaque fois je fais la production écrite, je toujours écris des conneries 😭 « envoyer un email à un ami » « oooohhh oui bonjour je peux pas t’aider avec ton déménagement parce que je dois aller chez mes grands-parents pour leur préparer le déjeuner…. mais si tu veux je peux appeler mes frères si t’as besoin plus d’une personne pour porter les meubles… bisous !! » mais qu’est ce que je raconte .. . je mens juste aucune raison 🤕

[sololangs]

je suis bête

carrefour il signifie "crossroads" en français, pas "foursquare" comme le jeu pour enfants.

comme ça, j'ai pensé :

je croyais aussi que le logo de carrefour était un forme abstrait comme ♠️, mais non c'est un "C" dans un losange avec les couleurs du drapeau français. je suis pas intelligente.

[sololangs]

c’est vraiment trop sympa de dessiner dans le style de emilie tronche … je crains de ne pas pouvoir revenir à mon style habituel

[sololangs]

An update, March 26, 2026

I decided to attend Middlebury Language Program for the French School. I am frightened by the tuition costs, but I think I can afford it and make it worth it if I use this as an opportunity to bring my French level to speaking fluency (b1/b2). It starts in mid-June and I hope to update about my opinions of the program + my progress which perhaps might help someone looking for information about Middlebury. If you are hesitant and in the position of applying within the next year, I can be your guinea pig.

I also spent around 10 hours fully subtitling Samuel (2024) so my family and friends (who cannot speak French) could watch it. I found that this was a great exercise because often with translation, you aren't trying to translate word-by-word or even phrase-by-phrase, but instead you are trying to convey meaning and story. Samuel's characters also talk incredibly different from textbook French; for example the question "Quelle musique écoutes-tu ?" might be "T'ecoutes quoi, comme musique ?" instead. So I found it very helpful to pick up some 'langage idiomatique et courant'. My pronunciation also improved marginally because I would speak the dialogue softly to myself to make sure the meaning I translated was correct.

bonus: I drew me and my sister in Emilie Tronche's style (it's so cute)

[sololangs]

continuer à faire des BDs pour m’aider à apprendre le français

i imagine my characters all living in nice for the time being because it’s one of my favorite french cities

si certains sont ici pour étudier , d’autres sont ici pour s’évader ..

[sololangs]

is there a word equivalent to "chimera" in other languages; specifically with the definition: "a thing which is hoped for but is illusory or impossible to achieve"? (i'm not proficient enough in other languages to answer my own question.) I'm just surprised to see this term used in translations of early epistemology or metaphysics, it's interesting to see which western philosophy papers are working from a basis of myths.

[sololangs]

ahh j’sais pas c’est quoi cette bd là … je simplement dessine et j’écris des mots …

[sienyaa]

I like to say that we should study languages because languages are the only thing worth knowing even poorly... Solely in the world of languages is the amateur of value. Well-intentioned sentences full of mistakes can still build bridges between people.

- Kató Lomb, Polyglot, 2008

[sololangs]

J’AI REGARDÉ SAMUELLL AAAAHHHHHHH JE PLEURE C’EST PAS OK

🥹🥹🙁🙁🙁🙁😭😭😭😭😭😭

[antonymeanonyme]

viens on écrit sur les murs

[sololangs]

I’m writing a 3000 word essay for a competition held by my school. They want submissions that use language and multiple modes of communication to challenge conventional scholarly writing. Yesterday I did all my research; today I sat down and typed my way through my outline. Reading it back I realized I absolutely did not challenge conventional scholarly writing; this is the most painfully conventional paper I’ve ever written. Now I’m going to bed. Tomorrow I’m going to try to save it through the edit. Dear God please let me salvage this. It’s due at midnight, I’m so fucked

[sololangs]

I did it! It’s so ass, but I’m proud of myself. tomorrow I’m going to wake up early to watch the sun rise, and I have to draw an illustration for the student newspaper and do some voice acting, very nice change of pace

[sololangs]

I’m writing a 3000 word essay for a competition held by my school. They want submissions that use language and multiple modes of communication to challenge conventional scholarly writing. Yesterday I did all my research; today I sat down and typed my way through my outline. Reading it back I realized I absolutely did not challenge conventional scholarly writing; this is the most painfully conventional paper I’ve ever written. Now I’m going to bed. Tomorrow I’m going to try to save it through the edit. Dear God please let me salvage this. It’s due at midnight, I’m so fucked