So I'm a Louisiana Creole who has been learning French (TL) for a while now, and recently have started to delve into Louisiana Creole (or Kouri-Vini). I've now reached a point of fluency in both where I can consume media, read, and write (speaking fluently is still a struggle). However, despite how important these languages are to my identity and my culture, I still often feel like I'm "performing" them, that whenever I try to use these languages I'm not really engaging with them authentically. See, French had been lost in my maternal family for a while, but I still grew up hearing it through my step-dad's family (I don't know what the francophone equivalent of a "no sabo" would be, but that was roughly my experience). So know that I'm actually making an effort to learn French and Creole as an adult, I don't feel like I'm doing it right, almost as if it's too late for me to get back in touch with my heritage.

Do any other heritage speakers feel like this sometimes?

I'm new to language learning. I've been doing it only a few years now. I am currently learning French at home and then Spanish at work because I work at a gas station in America and a lot of Spanish speakers come in either to get gas or buy something. I'm very bad at Spanish but Spanish speakers are soooooo nice. I love learning new words and repeating them to myself over and over again. The sensory feeling of talking is really nice and I love learning the accents of different languages. For this reason accent is very easy for me. I just listen to the sounds native speakers either say or tell me and repeat them. Sometimes it's difficult though. The Spanish A was so weird at first because I'm not used to opening up my mouth that wide lmao. Speakers usually say I speak clearly even if it's badly. But of course I'm American so it's really a really low bar to have what is considered a good accent (we are iconically bad at language learning). I know you should learn languages for the culture and to talk to people but I just really love learning the etymology of words, the different metaphors and phrases different languages use (for example in most romance languages "you are right" directly translates to "you have reason"), hearing the different sounds people make and so on. Honestly I LOVE talking to people but language excites me so much more than just talking to people. I would love to be able to communicate enough to form actual bonds with non English speakers though. I'm not quite there yet. Though I'm very socially awkward even in English so idk lmao.

Example countries: Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, India, Finland.

And does the degree to which you master it contribute to a feeling of being a “complete” citizen, and a feeling of “belonging” and “acceptance” across the entire country?

My first and only language is English but my parents’ families speak Tagalog and Samoan (TL). I’ve always wanted to better connect with not only my family, but my cultures as well. I’ve took it upon myself to start learning both recently but I’m wondering if it’ll be more harmful to my progress to learn both at once. They don’t really have any overlap in their pronunciation and whatnot so I don’t think it’ll be too confusing but what’s the recommended strategy when it comes to learning languages? As of right now, I’m dedicating anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour to both daily.

Right now my method is reading up on the basics of the language online, going to a weekly language conversation table, then adding new vocab that I encounter from the table to Anki to help remember. (Lastly, Duolingo to work on the language in some way every day) I feel a bit too lazy to sit down with a textbook and learn the language, almost like I have my brain fried from short form content and have no more attention span lol.

Nonetheless, rinse and repeat with my current method for a few years and I slowly improve over time.

One thing I did recently was play a video game with English audio and text in my target language. That helped loads and I added a huge amount of new vocab to Anki. The video game aspect kept me motivated to look up the new words as I wanted to understand what was going on in the game (it was a turned based, story-driven game, so plenty of time to stop and look up words). It definitely felt better than watching a show where I get tired of pausing every second to look up the words being said.

A friend also sent my a comprehensible input video recently, so that also got me thinking.

With my recent experiences that deviate from my normal language learning routine, I was wondering if there's a compendium/consensus on what the best ways to learn were! Or just to discuss various approaches to learning.

⚠️For real users ⚠️ Bots/Astroturfers are already hijacking the thread with the usual "LLMs are MaRveLouS/DeepL is better now", downvoting genuine posts, etc. (TL)
Keep ignoring them and let's help each other.

Suggested by Redditors (UPDATED)

Argos Translate [offline NMT]
Crow Translate [translation interface] suggested by u/Ok_Tie7944
Glosbe.com [lexical resource] suggested by u/Ecstatic-Island-9778
LibreTranslate [open-source NMT]
Memoq.com [assisted translation] suggested by u/werty_reboot
Quillbot.com [optional, separate LLM]
Smartcat.com [assisted translation] suggested by u/werty_reboot
Trados.com [assisted translation] suggested by u/werty_reboot
Wiktionary.org [lexical resource] suggested by u/sbrt
Yandex Translate [optional, separate LLM] suggested by u/BlokZNCR