Languages you speak, are trying to learn/ improve

Not long ago I have noticed that the English word "beneath" may be translated by the Russian word "vnizu", for good example. 

Also, parallels like tree - derevo, or even road - doroga. 

There're no articles (like a/an/the) in Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech or Serbian. Copula is not usually used in the Present tense in Russian and classic Ukrainian. Thus, "I am an engineer" becomes simply Ya inzhen'Er in Russian. 

In Russian there're different letters for sounds i like in peel, [ih] like in this and [j] like in boy. And there's no collusion between them. Thus, the donkey named Eeyore in Winnie The Pooh is simply iA-iA (accent falls on a, that is) in Russian - for English-speaking brains it sounds like ya-ya, but for Russians it's just ee-AH ee-AH. 

There's a well-known Russian band Leningrad with one of their songs called Moi Khui (My d*cks), and the name doesn't read moy khuy (that would be singular, My d*ck). it reads muh-EE khoo-EE.

Then, kh doesn't read like k! The Russian sound that is transcribed in English as kh is a voiceless English h, but it's always voiceless and it's produced a bit differently than in English h. But it's evidently h, never k! 

On a global scale, all these features must symbolize something, reflect some special peculiarities of the people that invented, developed and use that language. 

Outside of music, movies, stand-up comedy, and interviews, I love language. Origins of words, cognates, how they were influenced, all that.

Native (American) English speaker. I took Spanish and German in school, and I spent college working with Mexicans, so I learned even more. I knew people who lived in Greece for a few years, so I asked if they could write the alphabet for me, and learned some basics. I spent a huge chunk of my 20s and early 30s (I'm still in my 30s) traveling overseas and learned a lot that way, when you're forced to talk, as opposed to just reading a book, or a few dictionaries I have. I can speak Aramaic well. My uncle married a Syrian woman, so I learned some Arabic. I've been to The Netherlands 6 times, so I learned some Dutch, but have a tendency to get German/Dutch confused, which is what happened after I started to learn Italian, getting it mixed up with Spanish.

I also love (older) foreign movies, but I just had someone say "We don't use that word anymore, except my grandpa", but it helps... When I was in Australia, I remember drinking a bottle of wine, and then being able to speak the best German in a conversation with friends I made in the hostel. I think its about inhibition, not overthinking or worrying about making mistakes... You can learn a lot just by listening, too, especially if you know the gist of the sentence, and basically filling in the blank, especially with the heavy influences of Latin and Greek.

It's a great thing to learn. For example, if you learn Spanish, you can communicate with a billion new people you couldn't speak with beforehand.