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No. 569079

Are you learning a language? Do you want to ask for/share tips? Want to vent about grammar and complicated writing systems?Wanna share a page of your notebook you’re proud of? Looking for a study buddy? Found an amazing textbook?
Well, here’s the place for all things language learning.
All languages welcome, even English!
PS: no dumb questions like "Do I need to know how to write and speak (insert language here)???" "Do I really have to make efforts??". You won’t get banned but you’ll sound like a retard. Don’t be a language retard.

No. 569080

what are the odd, I was literally just about to make this thread

No. 569095

File: 1591957557198.jpg (42.92 KB, 720x530, 1591748904454.jpg)

>>569079
Yay, I've wanted to see a thread about language learning for a while. Thank you OP.

I just recently (like a week ago) started learning Arabic and, oh boy, the alphabet is so complicated. My native language is Hebrew so I thought nothing could be worse than having no vowels but having multiple versions of the same letter based on location in the word really gets confusing. Hopefully after the lockdown completely ends I can find some classes and it'll be easier than learning on my own.

Oh, also, I'd really love a language learning buddy, not necessarily someone who is also learning Arabic but just someone that can I can talk about study tips and hold each other accountable in case we slack off or something like that.

No. 569097

>>569080
what language do you study?

No. 569104

>declensions
I'm triggered anon, I'll never forget how my german teachers never taught me this but expected me to know them because everytime they taught it at school I had appointments at the doctor's. Don't get me started on the useless latin classes. I should have picked up spanish classes in middle school, and I'm considering starting learning it on duolingo or a similar app for fun. Maybe I should pick up german again as well and learn it at my own pace this time.

>>569095
>I just recently (like a week ago) started learning Arabic and, oh boy, the alphabet is so complicated.
My mother's first language is Arabic, but it's a specific dialect not from the middle east at all. She told me that learning the actual standard Arabic at school was hell on earth. Good luck anon.

No. 569108

In school I had Latin for 5 years, English for 7 years, Spanish for 2 years and French for 3 years. Latin is literally dead and therefore useless, I forgot everything I learnt about Spanish and French and I still make many mistakes in English, so I'm fluent in none other than my mother tongue. There are several languages I would have an interest in but I'm just so burnt out from all that useless studying I did in my younger years… How do you go about learning a language as an adult? I graduate university soon, so I might have more time by then. Go to evening classes? I always felt that just sitting at home and studying with a textbook (or worse, on the internet) by yourself is the most difficult or the slowest way to go? I'm also worried about losing motivation or interest fast.

No. 569109

>>569079
finally. blessed be anon for creating this thread

No. 569111

All you anons reminded me of the absolute waste of time learning latin was for me. 6 years down the drain and I got nothing from it, not even bragging rights because I forgot everything. Not to mention that at a certain point we were allowed to use a dictionary for literally every test and exam so that was that.

No. 569119

>>569111
Kek, I had a latin professor who gave absolutely no fuck at all.
Taking latin was supposed to be an "elite" thing to do but all versions were graded by peer review, which meant just handing it to your class neighbor and winking so he would give you all the points and doing the same for him.
It was an absolute shit show.

No. 569120

File: 1591961234593.gif (90.93 KB, 200x200, 1589073909040.gif)

I spent 2 years learning Spanish at school and the only things I know today are insults, a few words here and there, how to greet people and tell them my name, and the infamous "en mi habitacion es una cama"

No. 569121

If anyone else is also learning French, I recommend checking out this channel. They interview random French people about a variety of topics and the videos are all subtitled. I found them very helpful

No. 569122

>>569119
Lol, I get the feeling nobody got anything out of learning latin. I only took it because my dumbass 6th grade self hated french and I had to live with that decision all highschool long. I could have gotten at least something useful out of it but no. I could go on such a rant right now.
>>569120
I love this gif, its so cute

No. 569123

File: 1591961694671.jpg (89.24 KB, 602x483, 1591624996-0 (1).jpg)

>>569079
Unless you live in the big cities learning multiple languages here is a necessity

No. 569124

>>569122
I mean it's a good base for learning other romance languages but other than that…yeah

No. 569125

I took spanish lessons for 6 months and I just finished them and now I'm so scared of forgetting everything. I don't have anyone to practice speaking with so I'm stuck with watching movies and reading. Thinking about buying some penguin clásicos of books I've already read in english for practice.

No. 569126

>>569125
Have you thought of getting a tandem partner?

No. 569129

>>569104
I studied declensions in Latin for a year and wanted to study German because I was into German rock for a bit in middle school…gave up on that real quick because I suck at grammar lmao.

>>569108
If studying on your own is a challenge rn, and you can actually drag yourself to night classes in the cold, then go for it! I gave up on Korean night classes because the previous teacher fucked up so we had to learn 80 words per week, and guess what the 6 grammar points meant…then somehow focus at 8pm after classes. I couldn’t do it lmao.
>>569125
try to self study and maybe find communities for fellow spanish learners? finding the happy medium between discipline and fun will help with self study. Personnally it took me a few attempts but I think I got it down for my personal goals. Good luck!!

No. 569131

>>569129
German grammar is a bitch to learn. As a native you can always tell when someone isnt native when they mess up declinisions a bit. Does not matter how good or fluid their speaking is.

No. 569137

>>569131
this is true lol i've been speaking german for 15 years now and even though i don't have an accent and can perfectly pronounce everything, i still make mistakes here and there .. will mich immer umbringen wenn das passiert

No. 569155

>>569137
chill anon, ich komme aus einer richtigen alman-familie und muss meine mutter manchmal korrigieren… ist eh alles halb so wild

No. 569163

S-Stop bullying latin

No. 569169

>>569079
Time to felx, of this map >>569123
I can speak Punjabi, Seraiiki, Urdu, English and Pashto

No. 569171

>>569163
Never!

No. 569173

File: 1591974940840.jpg (31.63 KB, 500x375, cry bitch.jpg)

>>569163
Fuck latin and fuck ancient greek.

No. 569200

>>569173
NOOOO! They're my support dead languages! Some people read about sieges to cope.

No. 569271

我学习汉语.我的老师说我是笨死了。

No. 569275

>>569271
你係聰明。

No. 569276

>>569169
Seraiiki is so cool to listen to. I can only speak Urdu and English fluently.

No. 569284

As per the government's laws, I learned French for 7 years but stopped because I didn't like the language. Despite all those years in French class, I didn't learn anything and all I can say are very basic sentences…. my accent is not too bad, though, surprisingly.

I took German for a year at uni and got decently good, but the higher level courses were online and online courses are shit, so I stopped German then.

I guess with all the time quarantine has given me, I could go back to these languages but goddamn German is so hard, though I love it. I forgot so much vocab/grammar. Atm I'm just casually learning Brazilian Portuguese because it sounds nice and I want to understand the comments Brazilians leave over the internet kek.

No. 569285

I'm learning German, I started learning by listening to music but I also like listening to German audiobooks. Unfortunately a lot of the languages I'm interested in are dead ones, like Welsh, old English and old Norse lol. But I also like Farsi, Hebrew, Arabic and Russian. I wish I could learn them all.

No. 569306

>>569126
never heard of that before but it looks interesting, thanks anon
>>569129
yeah i found a few, even some meme pages lol, also been watching some spanish lifestyle youtubers (at 0.75 speed lmao why do they talk so damn fast) and it's great practice and fun at the same time. Thanks anon!

No. 569348

God in the last few days I’ve basically reinvented myself as a studyblr/langblr girl, I’ve ordered fancy notebooks, pens, highlighters… I’m enrolling on an intensive language learning course soon (daily 9-5 + homework in the evenings) because I’ve been trying to self-teach for years but I really lack discipline. I’m looking forward to it!

>>569285
Sut mae anon, I’m learning welsh too! Tsk tsk, you shouldn’t call it a dead language though when there’s such a vibrant music and arts scene! I’ve gone to a lot of gigs in big venues where the crowd all speak cymraeg, not to mention all the english celebs who’ve started learning recently.
What made you want to learn welsh?

No. 569352

Currently learning French for when I eventually move to Canada. How do I stop sounding American when I speak French?

No. 569373

>>569352
You will most likely never stop sounding American. But if you want to better your accent, imo the best way is to hear a lot of French to really familiarise yourself with how it sounds. You don’t even have to actively listen; if you put on podcasts while you’re doing something else for example, you’ll get more used to hearing it and not only will it be easier for you to pick up on the words, you’ll be more familiar with how things are pronounced and it’ll make your pronounciation better. When we’re unfamiliar with a language we don’t necessarily pick up on the subtilities of the pronounciation at first.

No. 569394

My friend and I are trying to learn Japanese (using Japanese from Zero). I took a semester in college so it's mostly been review, so not too hard, but I know once I try to learn katakana again it's going to be much harder lol. I mostly just want to be able to communicate at least a little when I go to Japan

No. 569395

>>569348
you're right anon, sorry for calling it a dead language lol. I first heard of Welsh when I was learning about different language families and I learned about the Celtic language family, and then got more interested in it as I got into Welsh mythology and the king Arthur legend. then later I learned that Tolkien based some of his Evlish languages on Welsh which I thought was cool

No. 569398

>>569352
where in canada are u moving? just thought i would mention that if its ontario then theres not many french speaking ppl here unless u look for them, but french def helps for jobs… anyway, ive heard the quebec accent/some words etc are completely diff than regular french so maybe it would be good to look into that!!!

No. 569401

This isn’t a “new” language to me exactly but I speak Russian (terribly) and have been trying for most of my life to improve but have made very little true progress, most the gains I have made I recognize as regaining stuff I was able to say as a kid. My comprehension is about 75-85% percentage of all spoken word under normal circumstances and about 60% for “literary” Russian but my ability to speak is about 30-40% of my ability to express myself in English and I have to loan out English words constantly because I don’t know the word for “stick shift” or “nail extension” something. I don’t know how to proceed really because online classes are way too basic, even advanced classes are geared toward teaching people what is to me, basic things. On top of that I apparently still have a mild accent in English.

Any other secondary language fail cows out there?

No. 569419

>>569401
Sounds like you need proper immersion to improve. At a certain point you probably can't progress much without being surrounded by other people speaking Russian, or at least consuming Russian content constantly.

On that note I took Russian classes for like 6 months and studied a bit longer than that, and goddamn it is hard as balls even at the very beginner level lmao. The words are so long, cases are incomprehensible, pronunciation can be hard… I found it so fun to speak though, I'd love to learn it for real but I just don't have the energy after trying and failing with Japanese for so long (which I consider way easier to learn, esp because I get so much more exposure to it through pop culture).

No. 569437

>>569419
Yeah I’ve been watching Russian YouTube for about 2 years now, but I’ve reached a peak in what I can passively absorb I think.

I can’t imagine learning Russian as a adult, it honestly seems impossible to get fully native based on YouTube videos Ive seen.

No. 569480

Been learning Chinese on off for 9 years and I am still pretty shit imo. I can watch modern c drama like Love Designer without subtitles and understand most of it, but not the finer details, and the language is already basic. Historical dramas and real people are incomprehensible.

No. 569492

I was gonna learn a language then I remember I'm a FUCKING NEET and there's no reason to spend 200 hours learning to put together a few phrases only to never use it with anyone, ever. (Besides the 10 minutes total with the foreigners who take my food orders and then reply to me in English anyway and then tell me they're not Chinese nor is anyone who's working in the Panda Express)

No. 569503

i’m a baguette-speaker and i’ve been learning japanese in grade school and stiff for yeaaars but haven’t gotten serious about it since a few years ago. now i’m at an N2 level (european B2?).
anyone else on here at a higher level of japanese studying? i read news articles and i’m a few lessons away from being done with intermediate kanji book vol 2. i love kanji now, lmao.

shout out to everyone just starting out with japanese but i’m a little tired of seeing a sea of N5/N4 people in every jpn language community asking about goddamn genki textbooks…

No. 569511

>>569492
I'm in the same boat. I learned Cyrillic but gave up actually learning a language. Plus I can't roll my Rs, lol. I wish I could've held on to more Mandarin because I actually took classes in that but other than sort of pronouncing things, it's gone.

No. 569520

I have this love-hate relationship with French. I started learning it in high school on my own because I loved the way it sounded. That did not last long. Then I started learning it again in college but stopped again because it was way too hard. Since then I restarted and stopped multiple times. The grammar is hard, plus I can't for the love of god pronounce the R the way I'm supposed to

No. 569524

>>569520
my mom started studying french grammar through textbooks because she never learned it formally and was tired of making obvious mistakes when writing. whenever she’d explain grammar points to me i’d be so confused even though i barely make any of those mistakes myself. i hope you can find joy in learning that hell language eventually!
(also idk if this will work for you but to me the french R is like a soft spitting sound. y’know the gross sound people make in the back of their throat before spitting? that but really soft)

No. 569537

Bless whoever made this thread!
On the topic of pronunciation, I have a weird anecdote. Around 14/15 I decided I wanted to self-study japanese (tale as old as time), and while I didn’t get far, I did learn how to properly pronounce the Japanese soft r sound (which is almost halfway between sounding like an r and an l)
As it turns out, this helped me with my spanish pronunciation and the assistant teacher, who helped us with our speaking, commented that she was impressed I could do the right r sound in hablar etc.

Idk where I was going with this I just wanted to share

No. 569566

Living in Japan, and everyone wants to speak English at language exchange. Basically 90% English to 10% Japanese. Even the beginners don’t even attempt to speak Japanese. Then you have to advance learners who take over any group and the beginner can’t keep up, fook those ass hats. How I study is alone with my animu.

No. 569571

>>569352
Oi you better keep your american accent. It's hot

No. 569583

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How do I learn Urdu when the only language I know is English? I sorta know how words would be pronounced when I read them, but I have no clue what they mean, don't understand the grammar and I struggle to retain the meaning of words

No. 569605

>>569583
Why do you even wanna learn urdu anon? I guess the poetry is nice.
Hindi and Urdu has pretty similiar grammar and Hindi is more known so some of it's resources can help with Urdu too? Because I really haven't seen a lot of resources online for learning Urdu. Best would be to consume Urdu media and talk to some people who know the language. Judging from what you said you barely know the language so it would be a lot of effort because the structure of the sentences is totally different for example the subject and object come before the verb. Like,
I love you. (S-V-O)
میں آپ سے پیار کرتی ہوں۔. (S-O-V)
which is just one thing.
Good luck though anon!

No. 569627

>>569095
I speak fluent Arabic, anon. It's my second language. Let me know if you need any help or tips

No. 569631

File: 1592061581685.png (275.74 KB, 729x607, tumblr_o490d4MHzz1urttkeo1_128…)

scairt amach to the other gaeilgeoir anon I was chatting with a while back.

No. 569632

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No. 569644

>>569627
same. I can write and read almost fluently too. There are beginner books that I highly recommend that are smaller and more to the point if you want me to refer you to them.

No. 569661

File: 1592065699613.png (270.91 KB, 700x960, 6430576_preview.png)

Are there any good apps to re-learn Russian for someone that has forgotten it? I used to speak it fluently as a child but since then I've actively refused to use it out of sheer spite and now I've forgotten most of it apart from a few phrases and words. I never learned to read in it either since I wasn't raised in Russia.

No. 569665

>>569661
maybe just go through normal textbooks to learn russian? it may be boring at first since you could remember some grammar and words but since you don't know cyrillic you could use some practice reading. sometimes you also have to take the L and realize you forgot more than you care to admit.
this post was written by the I Forgot My Immigrant Parents' Language Gang. :(

No. 569676

HOW TF DO YOU PRONOUNCE PARLE?????????

No. 569677

>>569398
Hoping to move to somewhere in Quebec city. I'm pretty sure they speak mostly french there but it's such a beautiful city that I don't think I'd want to live anywhere else

No. 569686

>>569661
Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/russian/wiki/full_course !

Personally, I used Duolingo to start out with learning my target language, although a lot of people say that it's not very effective. I think it's fun though and pretty good to start out and learn the basics. It's usually recommend to start listening and reading stuff in your target language early, even if you don't understand a lot at first.
Look for resources for Russian beginners. It's good to have a vocabulary app like Anki to note down words you don't know and try to practice a bit everyday. Find ways to incorporate learning Russian into your daily routine in a fun way (like tv shows or music), so you don't get burnt out. You can also find a penpal (HelloTalk, interpals), get cheap Russian lessons (iTalki) or just talk to your Russian relatives of course.

>>569676
Pronouncing parle is easy to me, maybe because in my native language we pronounce "R" the same way as the French do? A lot of French learners struggle with that letter (especially anglophones), maybe that's the issue and if so, try practicing the letter on its own, there are quite a few Youtube videos that help with that.

No. 569836

What language has the best literature? I'm thinking either French or Russian. French is probably easier for a native English speaker to learn, but I adore the sound of Russian, it sounds so cool. Or are there any other languages with good literature that I might be sleeping on?

No. 569839

>>569836
i really like japanese and german literature

No. 569871

>>569079
As a Korean speaker, it hurts to see people mispronounce Kim Jong Un's name incorrectly.

(Kim Jong Un's name is romanized in McCune-Reinshaur (The romanization system North Korea uses, South Korea once used it, but they abandoned it for Revised Romanization of Korean in 1999), so you pronounce the "U" in "Un" as the "oo" in "good".)

No. 569872

>>569836
Perhaps Arabic/Persian if you want something "unconventional"

No. 569874

File: 1592099693847.png (260.22 KB, 600x516, render_graphic.png)

>>569839
>>569605
anon don't be discouraged, like 70% of Pakistanis can't even speak Urdu properly, its not native to the land and often people will have thick accents when speaking Urdu

No. 569899

>>569677
haha in that case u will definitely use french!! quebecers have a bit of a superiority complex so some actually will gawk at ppl who dont speak french there lol regardless i hear its very nice, so all the best!!

No. 570022

File: 1592123243665.jpeg (38.14 KB, 720x400, 6ABB9D5F-C8C4-4DB7-BC99-EC8954…)

reading japanese books hurts so much. i’m at a high level and yet all i can focus on is trying to understand the kanji while having trouble figuring out if i’m misinterpreting sentences or if the story really is like that. i’m reading shit from pre-war japan so maybe it’s my fault but god damn. i’m not an avid book reader either so :)

anyway i feel overwhelmed because i want to spend lots of time with my loved ones but i also want to do my daily kanji study and go back to portuguese and start on basque but it’s not happening as smoothly. when my bf was away for a little bit i did a bunch of kanji without a hitch and now i’ve studied 4 kanji in 4 days. i need a portal that allows me to go into a dimension where time doesn’t flow or something

No. 570031

>>569120
Spanish insults are very effective. It’s like the whole language is meant for swearing. I know some swear words even though I never studied any Spanish.

I’m struggling with Swedish at the moment. i know it’s not hard, especially if you figure it out using english. I’m Finnish and it’s mandatory pain in the ass in our country. I associate it with my elementary school years when I was struggling with my untreated ADHD and it was the subject I had most problems with.

No. 570041

>>570022
When you say "high level" you mean you've reach like the N2 or N1 at your JLPT test or you don't have problems speaking and understanding Japanese in your daily life, something like that?

No. 570044

>>570041
i hate studying for the jlpt but yeah i'm N2.

No. 570074

>>570022
I tried ever kanji book but couldn’t keep it in my head, so I tried to The remember the kanji books. It doesn’t teach you the reads just the kanji, how to write it, and a English prompt to go by(This method is training you to be like the Chinese Japanese learner since they know kanji before learn themselves.) finish the first book, and read manga with furigana to learn the reads. Kanji isn’t that difficult when you understand what the picture means.

No. 570085

>>570074
i'm currently studying with intermediate kanji book vol 2, i'm more than halfway done with it. i actually really like working with that and i basically learn what kanji roughly mean by simply reading stuff online. a lot of the kanji i'm learning rn is stuff i could already recognize but simply couldn't pronounce, write and/or translate 100% accurately.
i love kanji now but reading a novel, seeing words like 前垂れ, asking a japanese person what it means, getting a "idk lol" then finding out it's an old ass word that's been replaced by エプロン makes me want to tear my hair out lol. just a little vent because i love/hate these old ass books.
that's an interesting method though. might steal a pdf to see what it's like.

No. 570443

anyone here learning Greek? i'm having a lot of fun with learning how to read it, the alphabet is so cool. I'm using just Duolingo for Greek right now. I'm also trying to learn Irish Gaelic, but I don't really like the book I bought for it, so it's a bit tough.

I'd really like to get a bit better at German – I did a three month internship there a couple years back and became fairly fluent, but now I'm afraid I've gone down in fluency a bit. knowing German is making it a lot easier to learn Dutch though.

No. 570488

>>569537
There are some sounds that those two languages share pretty well. Some pronuntiations will vary depending in wich part of latin america you are listening, of course. Not perfect, but definetly closer than english speakers.

I want to learn kana just to upgrade my weebness and not wait for official or fan translations. Just for reading, nothing more. Any book/app reccomendation? So far I'm playing around with Memrise (pc) and Kanji Study. I might pic some 4komas and try to translate them until I memorise every symbol.

No. 570496

Is it easier to learn languages that are related to ones you already speak ?

No. 570503

Are there any good resources for learning German on your own? I took French in university but graduated a year ago. I think I did well because I'm good at learning in a classroom setting and I want to learn German but I feel like it's much harder to do it independently.

For people who are learning languages outside of school alone just in general, do you have a specific routine/plan for learning in a structured way? I've tried Duolingo and other apps like that, but obviously I feel like they're better for reviewing when you're already familiar with a language than when you're starting fresh.

No. 570530

I study Japanese using mattVSjapan’s method of MIA. he’s an asshole with a elitist tendency, but he’s super helpful in trying to help people learn Japanese by making Anki Addons for studying. I use Anki, RTK, Japanese books, and anime/dramas to study Japanese.

No. 570540

>>570496
Well duh

No. 570560

>>570496
yeah, but having fun is what’s important. you won’t make any progress if you force yourself to learn an "easy" language. but the difficulty of learning a language completely unrelated to yours could also suck the fun right out.

No. 570869

i really dont like reading so i fucking gave up on kanji but on hindsight i should've started using anki to at least remember things but im just so sick and tired of kanji

i decided to pick up korean for now since i wanted to avoid kanji and god wow its so fucking fun to read and not understand anything

if any anons have recommendations on websites or apps for beginner korean i would love to know them thank you ;_;

No. 570870

>>570869
i dabbled in korean and did the first level of TTMIK, as well as half of the second level. i recommend the books they published on top of the website too!

No. 570896

I've been studying Japanese casually since late 2018. I attend a very small class taught by a Japanese native once a week. Past few months it has been online. It is pretty slow paced, I'm just getting to Genki 2 textbook.

I don't study much outside of class, I wish I could get more motivation for it because I would really like to be conversational. I have visited Japan once in 2019 and have plans to go back this xmas.

Right now I feel like I know enough so that if I was in a sticky situation I could at least express my basic needs with someone who only understand Japanese.

Anyways good luck to all you guys, keep it up! がんばって!

No. 570959

Is it possible to be too dumb to pick up a second language. I speak arabic averagely, and despite hearing it since I was little and being in my 20s now, i haven't been able to advance past basic conversation. It wasn't ingrained into my daily life as a child like some of my friends, my family spoke english for the most part. Now that I'm an adult, I feel like I don't have the brains for it anymore.

No. 570960

>>570959
It's possible to be too old

No. 570964

>>570960
On the other hand, learning new languages while you age helps to stave off dementia. So you might not get good but it's still worth doing.

No. 570972

I’ve tried to learn several languages and always got to a point where I could read and write well, but whenever I tried to speak to somebody I’d freeze. And then I’d be discouraged and give up. I feel like I’m too anxious to ever speak another language. Maybe I’ll just stick to reading books.

No. 571035

>>570972
i felt this way but eventually, through studying and listening to people talk (tv shows, youtube etc) my speaking caught up without much practice and i got over it…partially. don't give up!

No. 571144

>>570972
getting drunk while trying to talk to natives was the answer for me it just let all the nervousness go away

No. 571178

I'm currently learning Korean, and I have been trying to approach learning it to learning like a kindergartner if that makes sense. Like I started off with learning the alphabet, now I'm doing numbers and colors. My current goal is to be able to hold a conversation, but I don't think this will be effective for that. Idk even know how I'm going to get to the level where I'll be able to understand tv shows without subs.

No. 571180

I spent years learning Mandarin to communicate with my ex and his family. It sucked ass and didn't make them like me any better.
I think I will stop learning it and try Japanese again instead so I can read weeb books. I always mix up the pronunciation of the Kanji though and speak the pinyin instead.

No. 571206

Anyone learning MAndarin here ? What's your HSK level and how long have you been learning?

No. 571215

I was in a coma and went to coma rehab, it is difficult at times for me to make any sense and people think am ESl or drunk. I often skips words or use the wrong word. I don't think anything can be done about it. On this post I had to physically say each word as I was typing. That is so much effort for an imageboard, so I would rather be thought of as drunk on drugs ( I am not the Xanax anon) than spend ages typing out a post that people KNOW what I am trying to communicate but just make fun of the bad grammar. I know the rules of grammar I re learnt a lot of things, I would list what siw wrong with me but thenI will be known as munche anon. coma's are not like whatyou see on TV, it takes a while for speech etc to return.

No. 571216

>>571215
who gives a fuck. blog somewhere else.

No. 571220

>>571206
I'm somewhere between HSK 4 and 5. I studied it for 4 years in college, but I haven't actively studied it for a couple years now, so I've regressed a lot RIP.

>>570022
Just learn Chinese, anon.

No. 571221

>>571216
The degeneracy is strong on here lately. Anon has every right to post what she posted on here as per the thread description.

No. 571229

I'm just going to write what worked for me,

Apps:
>Duolingo
If you actually take the time, about 30 minutes a day on the app, I guarantee you'll be on a good writing/reading level. Duolingo is decent for grammar but not the best for it. Pro-tip, using the browser version is almost identical to using Duolingo Plus on the mobile without paying for it.
>Drops
I use this for vocabulary and learning the alphabet, it also allows you to draw the character with your finger. 5 minutes a day for the free version.
Media:
>Children Books
This is a good place to start after you've learned the alphabet and some basic words. It will help you with some sentence structures without being too difficult and frustrating to understand
>Movies/Drama/Anime
Immerse yourself in the culture, BUT instead of using subtitles, studies have shown if you use your learning language as subtitles you are more likely to learn something and retain the information. If you're watching anime and know the alphabet, use Japanese subtitles. I recommend "Learning Language with Netflix" google chrome extension if you click on the words you don't understand it'll bring you up definition for you.
>Twitter
This helps with seeing how native speakers naturally converse with one another. Speech within media is professional and robotic sometimes so this will help you if all you can muster is "Hello, how are you? I'm fine thank you."
>Singing
Sing songs! It's a fun way to get used to speak the language! Find a song you like try singing it in said language while learning each word/meaning.
Tips:
The above is mainly for reading and writing, however, I would also recommend you repeating whatever lines you hear/see, out loud. Vocalization is important to get used to speaking a new language. Familiarize yourself because yo tongue ain't ever move like this before. I'd also like to note that you should keep a diary in a different language, critical thinking will help the language stick while your creativity will help to ease the frustration.

No. 571230

>>571216
It is literally about learning a language

>>571215 sorry anon, i'm the one who thought you were esl, you've gone through a lot

No. 571238

>>571229
This is very helpful and mimics mostly what I do currently but way more informative. Thank you!!

No. 571243

>>571230
>>571221
Anon needing to relearn because of a coma isn't going to be useful for anyone here. People have brain changes after comas. The post is definitely off topic.

No. 571255

>>571243
>Want to vent about grammar and complicated writing systems?


Maybe you need to vent about this as well, considering you can't read? :(

No. 571257

>>571215
ignore the anon who attacked you. It can definitely be helped. I'm getting my masters to be a literacy specialist for kids/teens who read far below their grade level. retention in diction can be reworked through a combination of occupational therapy (if there is actually something permanently different about your brain after the coma) and working with a literacy specialist who can figure out where you need to start re-learning in order to retain the information/build on it.

No. 571261

>>571178
Hello fellow korean learner who just wants to watch shit without subs
A lot of variety shows have subs and if you're confident you might pick up some words that are used commonly used in daily conversations. If you learned the basic grammar it should be quite easy to pick and choose words.

No. 571293

>>570959
>>570960
The main thing about being 'too old' is that it's harder for your mouth to make the sounds of your target language (thus stronger accent w/o a lot of working at it). OP might have avoided this if they've been speaking it (even infrequently) since childhood.

Anyway, if op reads this: keep at it! The main thing is logging hours listening to your target language. Find a show you like or music to listen to. Your speaking will naturally get better the more you understand (more input leads to better output)

No. 571399

Does anyone listen to their target language while youre sleeping? I’ve done this for a year now and I can’t remember the words on the audio but my listening comprehension had gone up, does anyone else have the same results?

No. 571503

Hey german speaking anons, do you have any series, movies, singers/bands or youtubers recommendations?

No. 571544

>>571503
iblali and apecrime are one of the absolutely worst german youtubers to ever exist so you better not consume any of their cringy shit

No. 571580

File: 1592427025948.gif (301.72 KB, 358x268, 379.gif)

>>571399
I'm pretty sure these subconscious learning techniques are bs

No. 571587

>>571503
a co-worker recommended this song to me. it's nice. other than this I only know Rammstein songs lmao

No. 571669

>>571580
I kind of believed it because someone made a point that when someone calls your name while you’re sleeping you usually wake up depending on your sleep levels or when the body is in REM sleep. Their theory was you may not be listening 100% but you are listening. I’ve gotten to point where watching tv shows I am able separate words and syllables. It’s made the vocabulary I do easier to spot.

No. 571704

>>571669
It's probably just that you'd wake up to them making any loud sound lul.

No. 571840

>>571503
I'm only a learner, but I listen to OOMPH, Drangsal, Nina Hagen, AnnenMayKantereit, Einsturzende Neubauten, SPARKLING, Fehlfarben, Abwärts, NEU!, Messser, Aus Rotten, Pisse, Can,.. The list can go on and even further. It's a bit "everywhere", mostly post-punk, but maybe one of these artists can get you started to discovering new German ones.

Series are "Dark" (never seen it, but apparently good), "Freud" (it's okay imo, but I stopped watching it - the plot was too frustrating for me), and "How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast)" (never seen it) - All of which are on Netflix. "Babylon Berlin" and "Deutschland 83" are good, too, I've heard.

Movies - "The Lives of Others", "Goodbye Lenin", "Fack ju Göhte", "Lola Rennt", "Das Boot", "Er Ist Wieder Da", "Downfall", "A Coffee in Berlin", "Nowhere in Africa", and any Fritz Lang movie if you enjoy older films (i rec "M").

If anyone has any good German Youtube recommendations, I'd appreciate them.

No. 571867


No. 571868

>>571840
Personally not too much into "Youtube-Deutschland" but I like/liked Walulis (it's a bit like a late night talk show), Ultralativ (talking about trends in Germany in avery analytical matter), Okay (LGBT centered channel), Space Frogs (very conventional youtube comedy) and if you like that maybe check out Funk in general. It's the online presence of the public media in Germany.
And then there's the woman, the myth, the legend coldmirror who's just classic 2010s Youtube in a nutshell.
On music I think >>571840 already did a very good job but if post-punk isn't your thing check out Deichkind no bully I actually like them, Nena and Neue Deutsche Welle as a genre.

No. 571870

>>571868
samefag but if you're into rap you can check out alligatoah, Zugezogen maskulin, K.I.Z. and Trailerpark. And if you want to be like all the real middleaged germans you can start watching Tatort.

No. 571904

>>571870
>>571868
>>571867
Thank you all for the recommendations! You're all very lovely.

No. 572075

i'm learning korean. so i read online that learning languages like "english word" = "___ word" is not good for language learning. the subreddit suggested making anki flashcards with pictures and korean words only, because apparently associating the word with the picture is how to achieve fluency.

i'm hella lazy and have not been working on korean ever since then bc 1) discouragement and 2) laziness after discouragement. this is mainly bc if i was to do anki only i'd have to put in like 1000+ korean words with pictures based on my level of comprehension.

i wanna get out of my rut, can someone please provide some perspective? i know i'm stupid for falling into a rut bc of this anyway but any suggestions/advice would be great.

No. 572310

File: 1592573537532.png (57.72 KB, 663x547, Annotation 2020-06-19 063135.p…)

>>572075
The thing with star = byul, english = korean is that sometimes we have to go through our english brain to get to korean and that isn't every efficient. I think you should learn through objects instead of word to word.
>apparently associating the word with the picture is how to achieve fluency.
Yeah! Kids learn through seeing objects first before the words. So if you look at a computer don't think computer in korean is ___, but think that object is ___. Learn like how a kid would learn! association of words with objects not with the translation.
> 1) discouragement and 2) laziness after discouragement
It's about discipline just like any aspect of life, you do not get knew skills unless someone forces you or you take the time and have discipline to go through with it. discipline in and of itself is a learned skill, so I'd focus on doing that first. One tip I found is don't think about doing it but just go ahead and get through with it. If you think "man i have to water the garden, I'll do it at 12pm" it opens up for procrastination. You just need to get up out of your chair and get it done.

Personally for me I have trouble falling asleep because I tend to scroll through social media, before bed I take that time to open up duolingo, drops, memrise on my phone and that helps me fall asleep. It's not really healthy to learn this way, but it's what has been working okay for me.

No. 572367

>>572075
>>572310
agree with other anon, for basics, try to find anki flashcards already made by other people? i liked using quizlet for a while and there are public vocab lists for famous textbooks or random lists put together by fellow learners.

but for abstracts i don't recommend using drawings; words like "lawsuit" and "freedom of speech" are too annoying to even illustrate.

as for laziness and discouragement, you're gonna have to try and find your own routine.
i'm a nihon-ese learner and what works best for me at this point in time is almost-daily kanji practice and then one or two days a week where i do more work (exercises at the end of my kanji lesson, some grammar, maybe newspaper reading…). thinking i Have to get through N2 grammar every single week powered only by my motivation makes me want to do nothing at all, tbh.

No. 572583

>>572310
>>572367
thank you anons! to first anon (>>572310), do you have a rec for a memrise set for korean? i was using howtostudykorean's memrise but that was following the english = korean format and i wanna try it the other way.

No. 572679

>>572583
I always recommend duolingus and drops because im a simp for them

No. 572803

I've been learning Japanese for years and I started learning German this week. I did German for 6 years at school but then I didn't use it after school so I'm back to square one.

I have a long list of languages I want to learn. I find it so much fun

No. 572807

>>572803
good luck fellow japanese learner! i think i'm gonna study some basque tonight. anxiety Can be turned into motivation sometimes, wow.

No. 572815

>>572807
I had been struggling to motivate myself recently because I was going to do the JLPT in July, which got cancelled. And they are not having one in December now either. So I don't have a time limit anymore. It also didn't help that I would listen to podcasts and go over my flashcards on my commute which I don't have anymore because of lockdown.

I've got my motivation back and I'm back on the horse. So let's both do well 頑張って!

No. 572816

>>572815
man i feel that. a lot of my routine for more serious studying was to go to the library or to a cafe so it took me ages to feel ok with studying in my boring flat.

No. 572891

File: 1592690465322.jpg (46.66 KB, 1600x720, ana_gaijin.jpg)

I would like to learn Korean and/or Mandarin but I honestly think I'm too dumb for the latter (plus stuff like >>571180 is pretty demotivating).

I was a weeb when I was younger and therefore went for Japanese but I gave up after 2 years of half-assed studying, mainly because I was too busy and lost interest in Japan in general but also because my progress was so slow, I just couldn't memorize kanji. I regret wasting time on useless romance languages as a kid, now my brain is just working so much slower lol
I read that the korean alphabet is supposedly very easy to learn, can anybody confirm? I don't think I want to take up Japanese again, so what would you advise me to choose?

No. 572905

>>572891
Yeah Hangul is easier as you only have to learn one set of characters. However Korean has very difficult grammar on par with Japanese. Mandarin has easier grammar but then you have the writing system which is like Kanji.

Honestly it's up to you. No language is going to be easy and asian languages are a lot harder than romance or germanic ones for english speakers, but you can make it easier when you find a method of learning that works for you. Consistency is key and it will take a while to get good.

No. 572948

It’s been 3 years since I stopped studying Mandarin Chinese. I’ve been trying to study it again so I’m just starting with memorizing HSK 1 vocabulary since I don’t even remember majority of the characters anymore. Really wish I had the self discipline back then to continue studying because I was at HSK level 4. Hopefully I can diligently continue and my brain can still memorize characters.

No. 572982

I’m one year into Mandarin (HSK 2) and even though I live in China, I don’t take it too seriously and have gotten pretty far into it. My teacher lets me pick topics and we spend more time on random interesting things like light novels or poetry than textbooks, it’s gotten me farther ahead than my peers who are sticking to textbooks.

No. 573029

>>572905
>Japanese grammar
>difficult
How

No. 573036

>>572891
well, mandarin is all kanji with more difficult pronunciation. the usual pace at my school (cant speak for anywhere else) was 20~25 kanji a week (+ vocab for each one) while for chinese it was 50+ hanzi a week. japanese was the easy one because hiragana/furigana are a thing.

so go for korean. korean grammar is more difficult than mandarin and japanese but it’s not german-declensions-level of mind breaking.

No. 573043

>>573029
The only difficult part of Japanese grammar is Keigo. Even some Japanese people don’t know how to use Keigo. Some Middleage Japanese lady at my job asked our younger Japanese boss which Keigo to us with a costumer.

No. 573048

>>573043
Keigo is so unintuitive and confusing. Sucks because it's more useful than a lot of basic Japanese if you're just a casual learner wanting to understand a bit for travel. Like, chances are you'll interact with staff on a holiday more than anyone else in the country and it helps if you understand them.

No. 573227

>>573029
In the same way Koran is difficult. Its grammar is incredibly similar to Korean. So the difficult parts being particles and the four conditionals that exist but have such small nuances between them, just to name a few things.

No. 575117

I took French classes in high school for 3 years. I did remember some stuff and can mostly read it sicne I have a good memory but I cannot speak or write it as well as I would like.

Because of the covid quarantine I had nothing to do, so I installed Duolingo as a joke. I've been using it for two months, and can now understand conversations and write from the top of my head. I can't believe I learned more on a "meme" app than in high school. Then again in High school our techer mostly wrote aand made us remember stuff for tests, but never let us listen to people speaking French etc etc.

No. 580493

I've studied mandarin for over 6 years, and I enjoy it a lot. I've tried to learn Japanese and I have everything nailed down but I just can't for the life of me keep up with the grammar. My brain hurts.

No. 580508

File: 1594098580070.jpg (40.42 KB, 428x500, 2fa33ceb457c5a48bac73c23a40d36…)

I'm a huge shill for the old Pimsleur audio tapes: I recommend them to everyone. Not the newer stuff, mind you–that's more of a subscription-based service–the old stuff ripped from audio tapes that you can find torrents of all over the place. The Pimsleur method itself is very simple: spaced repetition and a strong distinction between written and spoken language, but it's consistently effective throughout the entirety of the program.
I'm not saying you don't need to supplement it with tools like Anki, more formal education, and just consuming media in general, but it's very good as an educational tool for getting thoroughly acquanted with a foriegn language, once or twice a day (between 9-hour periods, as per spaced repetition theory) is just as good as if not better than reading a textbook and assembling flash cards on Anki, in contrast with scams like Duolingo and Rosetta Stone that only superficially observe language learning techniques.

No. 580532

>>580493
girl how do you have "everything nailed down" but can't follow the baby grammar

>>580508
i'm a french speaker so idk about any material but if they actually teach the difference between written and spoken french, that's really good. i feel so bad when i have to inform a learner that what they learned in class is both correct and extremely unnatural…

No. 580535

>>571206
I'm only HSK3 after four years, feels real fuckin bad. I swear, once or twice a year some bullshit gets in the way and I drop it for a month or two, end up forgetting absolutely everything and have to start from scratch. Plus, I can't speak/comprehend for shit but I'm too autistic and ashamed to find a language partner. I've tried so many different apps/clubs but I'm beyond helpless each time. I really do want to learn but I'm just so tired of feeling like I'm not getting anywhere. That's all.

No. 580701

File: 1594136265462.jpg (4.19 KB, 225x224, sdsdsss.jpg)

how hard is it to learn french? I did a couple of lessons on it on duolingo and never picked it up again because of laziness. At most I can uhhh just introduce myself with a funny accent And i'm looking for other resources to learn it when I eventually move out lol

and whats the difference between the canadian french and like…french french? i dont know if that made sense

No. 580822

>>580701
canadian french has some very ugly accents and a lot of english influence (using "bienvenue" which means welcome to say "you're welcome", for example) and french french doesn't kek. english is pretty similar to it so once you got the basic vocabulary down it's not too hard to understand. actually speaking it is more difficult obviously

No. 580998

>>580532
Failing to emphasize inflections imo is probably the biggest failing of language education. Every highschool has unfortunate teenagers memorizing massive amounts of vocabulary they have no concept of (and poorly, for that matter) without even teaching the IPA or even the concept of phonics. And then they read while the teacher
(or, more likely, some video) speaks and end up relying on their native-language's conventions as a crutch to comprehend the curriculum. Pimsleur gives you the opportunity to exercize your listening skills, while also letting you be more attentive to pronounciation and pacing.

I learned Esperanto with one of those "Teach Yourself" books just a few months ago, and I remember struggling to understand the audio tapes included for about two days after I started, because I'd only really followed the writing in the book. I even struggled to kick the habit of mispronouncing things for a day because I only relied on the written material. Fortunately, Esperanto is designed to be easy to learn, but you can imagine how that scales for a real language with a massive vocabulary, illogical grammar, and arbitrary grammatical conventions.

Honestly pathetic to think that something we humans can naturally pick up as adolescents under the right circumstance is still not reproducible in a formal setting.

No. 580999

How does one start with a dead language like Latin? Do you just, like, read books? Or do you start out with something related to it like Italian?

No. 581101

>>580999
Do you want to speak it or just understand it?

I had to learn latin in high school but the approach wasn't like other living languages. We started with chunks of texts, where the teacher would just show us the basic tenses and grammar that shows up in the text and then we'd use the dictionary to translate word by word. And we'd work our way up to more difficult grammar.
We never learned phrases like thank you, hello and such.

No. 581193

>>580999
Maybe pick up a text book in your language? The way we did it in highschool was by having a certain set of vocab and then a small text made up of said vocab. At the end there would be a small section about grammar. Maybe start with learning the type of declension of your vocab, declensions itself and then work your way up to Verbs, their types and lastly tenses which are the worst shit about latin imo and special grammatical structures. I personally don't think it would be helpful to start with Italian if you just want to learn latin. It would just be confusing.

No. 582776

File: 1594496651118.png (176.33 KB, 442x442, unnamed.png)

I keep forgetting basic phrases and it's starting to really annoy me
can memory even be improved? I wish I were one of those people who can just pack in knowledge at extreme amounts and be able to just recall it on a whim, must be nice. wouldnt be surprised if I had low IQ

No. 582793

>>582776
I have this too anon. I don't even do drugs but I forget words for every day objects as badly as an elderly dementia patient does.
If it's bothering you, those "brain training" games really do help with your memory, like daily word puzzles and sudoku etc.

No. 593799

File: 1596192670728.jpg (236.84 KB, 650x330, wabisabi.jpg)

I'm trying to get to a better level in a 4th language and so far I'm pretty motivated, more-so than I've ever been for any language learning. I feel like I don't need a teacher to kick my ass for this one.
But school's starting in September so I don't know if I'll be able to stay motivated. I'll probably finish my homework and just lay down in bed for 5 hours scrolling through LCF and KF. I hate myself. Pic unrelated

No. 600579

I learned German til I was 18 at school (that was over a decade ago now though) and this weekend decided to give duolingo a go to brush up… I think I’m getting addicted.

No. 601766

Really dislike Urdu here in Pakistan, literally no one but a small % of people can even speak it properly and it's not even native to Pakistan, also incel muhajirs try to argue that it's somehow a turkic language cause their ashamed it came from Central India are just laughable

No. 601780

I feel like a retard for not knowing how to progress in my Japanese studies. Pretty much every guide is like "just do Genki 1 and 2!" and no further advice. My French progressed much faster in a shorter amount of time simply because I learned it in hs and my growth was guided. Keigo is a struggle too, since no one around me speaks Japanese, leaving me with only pop culture and literature, both of which don't always use keigo.
I want to eventually try to reach N2. Is the best solution just to consume more nihongo media?

No. 601791

>>601780
the easiest way to learn better is immersion, but since you can't do that, translating things is really helpful. start with a subject you know in your language pretty well to make the context easier and then go from there. do a mix of both written and spoken content to get more out of it. also a really simple thing is reading children's books, i always suggest that and i can't stress it enough. the furigana really helps you to remember how kanji works.

No. 601832

>>601791
>translating things
That's a really good idea. Thank you!

No. 602744

>>601780
I feel you. But remember, Japanese has nothing in common with English. It's gonna be harder to progress unless you're one of those people who live and breathe Japanese everything and don't mind immersing 24/7. Even then, it takes longer than learning Spanish as a French speaker etc. Good luck anon!

No. 602880

Anons, anyone knows a good and affordable site to learn British English/RP English speaking skills? (Yes, I'm a Britaboo don't judge! But I also need to level up my sad ESL-self) Preferably one's that actually have one-on-one interactions?

No. 602886

>>602880
not sure what RP english is unless you mean roleplay but italki has tutors for any language so you'll probably find brits with affordable rates who are willing to correct your accent.

No. 602889

>>602886

"RP" means Received Pronunciation, basically your 'typically British' accent sound. Thanks for rec anon. Will check it out.

No. 603905

File: 1597358026686.jpg (5.23 KB, 300x168, images.jpg)

I speak a few languages already but it's been my lifelong dream to learn Japanese. It wasn't an option for me to learn at school so I feel like I've missed out on those crucial years when your mind picks up languages more easily. I wish I could turn back time. I've tried learning apps like Duolingo and some workbooks that I've ordered online but I really struggle with picking up a new alphabet.

Wah I just want to watch anime without subtitles!

No. 608218

maybe silly but i always wanted to learn another language and dabbled in it, i think its great to know a second language but for me i dont really know which language i wanna learn. like ik it shouldn't be rocket science and just learn what culture interests you or what may be helpful career wise but im not sure what language i want to learn., i just dont fuck with one single place a lot.

No. 608232

>>608218
Well, you don't have to learn a one-country-language and even in a particular country you'll find many sub-cultures that will keep the things interesting.
Assuming english is your mother language, you could learn spanish and inmerse yourself in 21 different countries' cultures, and inside each country there are different accents, dialects, slangs and variations from the same language.
Languages are so beautiful, I hope you find one you really like and enjoy your experience!

No. 608688

>>603905
You can do it, anon! Japanese has a high learning curve but once you're over that hill you'll start picking things up a lot quicker. Some friends of mine (all adults) actually set out to learn hiragana/katakana a couple months ago and now they know all the characters! Very proud of them. Just be consistent and practice. What really helped me when I was first learning was using mnemonics, so associating certain characters with English words and images (for example き kinda looks like an upside-down key, and is pronounced "ki"). After you know the alphabets it's so much easier to get through learning materials.

No. 608724

>>608688
Nta but do you have any advice for what to focus on after the alphabets? I am now confident in reading and writing kana, but I have no idea what is best to work on first out of verb conjugation, adjectives, particles, vocab, etc… I learned the reading through duolingo alone with some sites to help with stroke order.

No. 608746

>>608724
Japanese doesn't have an alphabet.It has syllabaries

No. 608757

>>608724
The most commonly recommended workbook is Genki, but I've seen some of it and personally I find the way it's organized a little odd. There are some really incredible free resources that do a much better job building on knowledge and provide more thorough explanations on grammar points.

My favorite would be IMABI (https://www.imabi.net), probably start at Beginners I - Kanji Intro and then go through everything from there. I still use the site today; it can take you to the point of holding basic conversations very easily in conjunction with studying vocab.

Another one I like is Maggie Sensei (http://maggiesensei.com/index-main-lessons). She's less organized in that the site is a broad collection of grammar points, but she has tons of them (useful for looking up a format you don't recognize), and as a native speaker she's able to comment on what sounds the most natural rather than some of the stilted, more formal language you tend to learn from workbooks.

No. 608762

File: 1597867074376.jpg (31.38 KB, 700x700, FD6MTDLK20QC0D5.jpg)


No. 608895

>>608688
holy shit do not recommend mnemonics for japanese.

No. 608940

>>608757
Thank you! I'll check these out. I've heard good things about Tae Kim's guide as well.

>>608895
Why not?

No. 609222

File: 1597914378415.jpg (52.9 KB, 400x502, unefillegitane.jpg)

>>569079
This is a bit of a general ask, but I honestly am curious. For those of you who've learned more than 2 languages, how do you retain a memory of them all? Especially when you know languages with very different grammar rules, characters, speech, etc.

No. 609236

>>608895
people i know who started with mnemonics hardly get past the intermediate level in kanji (even as intermediate learners they're lacking a lot) and they always see kanji as big messes of strokes, rather than seeing that kanji are made of radicals.
but then again i wonder if they needed mnemonics because they just suck at kanji or if mnemonics fucked them up.

kana isn't difficult, just learn them. don't think of them as little animals or whatever.
as for kanji, 木 does look like a tree but 頭 sure doesn't look like a head.

>>609222
compelling imput. music, shows, social media, youtube, whatever it is, on top of actually using the language.

No. 609617

>>609236
I don't know why you have such a distaste for mnemonics solely because a few people you know don't make good use of them. That doesn't mean they're ineffective for everyone. It's a proven technique that's been used to help people remember a broad variety of things and very useful to beginners. I don't use the key → き pathway in my mind to this day, now I just know the character itself, but it certainly helped when I first needed to digest 92 characters. Not everyone is good at brute force memorization.

The IMABI page expressly covers radicals, but I believe mnemonics can be helpful there as well. Many kanji are literally pictograms, but you can make your own associations. It's true 頭 doesn't look like a head, but 頁 is the "big shell" radical and so you could remember that turtles have a shell that can cover their "head."

No. 609627

>>609236
There's nothing wrong with using mnemonics as a complete beginner, it just can't be a crutch forever. I used mnemonics for hiragana/katakana when I started learning Japanese (i.e. back when my ability to read hiragana/katakana was still clunky af) and it was good to get me started.
Ofc it doesn't work for high-level learning but if you're at that point, you should be able to read basic characters with ease and at least have some knowledge of radicals and what kanji they were derived from.

No. 609632

>>609222
Using it a lot. I am an immigrant in a big city and hang out with other immigrants a lot (well, used to before covid), so I get to practice with my friends. For languages I don't use, even if I speak them well by myself and write them well on paper I'm always extremely nervous and slow when talking and get stage fright when I have to speak them.

No. 609636

>>609632
Also samefag, but I'll add that immersion (at least for me) does very little compared to having an actual conversation in the language. Watching movies, videos etc is passive learning, speaking in front of a mirror is also passive since you don't get feedback. The only way I improved was forcing my friends to correct me every time and embarrassing myself in front of them every day as I learned.

No. 609638

So uhh, i wanna learn Arabic, because my partner is arab but idk where to start. Does anyone know what would be a good start to learning it? ik its a hard language but i really desperately wanna learn it.

No. 609644

>>609638
The honest truth about arabic, and only arabic, is that you can't speak it the way it's taught in textbooks. Textbooks teach you something called "fus-ha" which means formal language. if you spoke that way in regular every day conversation, you'd be laughed at. Learn basic grammar like pronoun usage and basic nouns like school, store, etc. The rest needs to be done verbally. If your boyfriend speaks arabic, have him speak it with you.


Also, watch arabic tv shows.

Memrise is a good, free website to learn basic phrases and words.

No. 609653

>>609638
Arabic is known as the hardest language. Most people who learn it forget it because they're not actively using it on a day to day basis. You have to make sure you're surrounding yourself in the language if you want it to be worth it.

No. 609658

>>609638
You can learn MSA (what the other anon referee to as fusha but honestly it’s not useful at all apart from in an academic sense. Like the other anon said, learn MSA basics then try to learn your boyfriends dialect. If he speaks a common dialect eg Egyptian or Syrian, should be fairly easy to find media to consume eg tv dramas, movies ect but if he speaks a more uncommon dialect you’re gonna have to rely on him and maybe his family if they’re willing to help to teach you. I reccomend watching a lot of arabic dubbed cartoons too whilst you start learning.

No. 609660

>>609658
samefag sorry I kept saying boyfriend even though you didn’t specify

No. 610504

I want to learn German but I have trouble with the pronunciation. I don’t know if I could effectively learn from a video or if I should just get a teacher to make sure I’m saying things right

No. 610554

>>610504
It took me 3 years in HS and a german degree in college to get pronunciation. Don't be hard on yourself. Just know that they pronounce things differently depending on whatever part of Germany you are in (don't get me started on Liechtenstein dialect)

No. 610563

>>610504
try shadowing and watching videos while paying attention to the sounds.
tbh pronunciation for any language is both easier and more difficult than it seems. getting the general sounds right is not impossible but everyone struggled with intonation. practice and time make perfect! good luck anon.

No. 614586

Which one is harder, Japanese or Korean? And which is more useful?

No. 614597

>>614586
Grammar wise their difficulty level is pretty much the same. Kanji makes Japanese harder to improve at in comparison. Japanese is more widely spoken. Both are useful

No. 620696

File: 1598984439230.png (125.98 KB, 254x346, 2020-09-01_13-06-07.png)

>>608724
I've been in a weekly class for the past 2 years and we started with this book, it is an extremely friendly intro for those who know basically no Japanese:
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Busy-People-Romanized-Version/dp/1568363842

They have accompanying video/audio exercises you can follow along with in the book. It comes with a "CD" - whatever that is - but you can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp9O6yynrjo&list=PLjukS9Q50PXo9kbNZC157lZzPF1LNhWFs

I know people may disagree but I personally would recommend the romanized version since the focus is more on the basic building blocks and if you're a new learner it can be difficult to have to decode on top of that.

No. 624155

File: 1599406169716.jpg (3.54 MB, 3000x1876, irish-flag2.jpg)

I started Irish/Gaeilge for almost no reason.
The pronunciation is super fun, I have absolutely no expectations to keep learning it and it's a lesser known language so any enthusiasm for it is probably good.
Dunno if I'll even keep it up but it's a fun pass time rn.
I might get to go next year though. Can't wait to say "Dia dhuit" in a pub and immediately switch back to English.

No. 624212

>>624155
Irish anon here. That's really cute that you decided to learn Irish, are you doing it through Duolingo or?
I presume you know that Irish isn't really spoken much in Ireland, which is really unfortunate. There are small pockets in Ireland called 'Gaeltacht' areas (usually around the west coast of Ireland) who are fluent speakers and use it as their primary language, so if you do get to visit in the future hopefully you can put your 'cúpla focal' to good use.
Just some tips, I don't know where you're from, but we have an Irish TV station called TG4 and afaik you can watch their content on their iplayer from all over the world. Also you should check out some gearrscannain (short films) that are on Youtube.'Caca Millis' which stars a younger Brendan Gleeson and 'Yu Ming Is Aimn Dom' are classics which we watched in school.

Go n-éirí leat.

No. 624224

>>624212
Ay! Using Duolingo but I quickly got tired of the lack of grammar and…anything truly useful so I'm using a couple of other websites as well for grammar and additional pronunciation input.
Speaking of TG4, the way "4" is pronounced in Irish is 40% of why I decided to check it out more seriously. It sounds so cool!

Go raibh maith agat for the tips!

No. 624226

>>624224
Tá failte.

No. 624234

>>624155
I had to take an Irish course in uni because I needed the credits and I've always considered myself good at learning languages but holy shit, this felt impossible. Everything from the pronounciation to the grammar was painfully difficult for me lol. Go n-éirí leat, anon

No. 624264

>>624234
I love practicing the pronunciation (thank god, it's complicated indeed) but the grammar seems…daunting. I'll try not to die.

No. 624850

>>571229
holy shit thank you so much honestly!! this is legit specially the duolingo browser thing, life saver right there, thanks again anon!

No. 706558

Sorry for not saging but no one's going to see this if I sage.

There used to be a HUGE masterlist for (pirated) downloads of learning material of many different languages and levels somewhere on reddit. I can't find it anymore. Does anyone happen to know what I'm talking about and can provide me with a link?

No. 706564

tfw you want to learn your mom's native language and she won't be of any help so you gotta do it yourself but most of the resources are in french so you gotta brush up on your french too

No. 706568

>>706558
was it a MEGA folder? what languages did it have? i remember seeing one on tumblr, idk if it was linked on reddit too, but it was taken down.

No. 706569

There was an anon somewhere on here unable to roll their r's. Just keep practicing, because it suddenly just happened one day for me after annoying everyone in my household for months.
I'm wanting to learn Hungarian, but I'm afraid of getting ahold of materials that are overly stiff and formal, or have so many words that aren't even used anymore. My idea was to get educational materials meant to teach Hungarian children English and go from there for practice.

No. 706576

>>706568
That's not the one I was thinking about, mine was a huge list of individual links but I also remember a huuuuuuuge folder from tumblr that had everything from popular languages like french japanese german spanish etc. to some more obscure languages. That one would also have been great to have, bummer it was taken down..

No. 706708

>>706569
Why hungarian of all languages? Is it just because of ancestry? If you look at any material from the last 50 years, I doubt you could find language that is too different from today's, our language is not that dynamic.

No. 706807

>>706708
I've got relatives there, plus if shit goes South here, it's an optional escape hatch.

No. 707451

File: 1609649417554.jpg (9.53 KB, 275x183, 1560005553235.jpg)

>>706558
Not going to lie I was going to bump the thread to ask if people have continued to learn their target languages past quarantine season. Because not gonna lie, I've been fucking slacking.
I do not know that mega though, I'm sorry. I'd say try your luck finding resources for your target language on 4chan's /t/ but I don't know the board culture well, I don't know what asking will result.
Here's a japanese resource masterlist for those interested though:
https://djtguide.neocities.org/cor.html#study

No. 708297

I'm >>706558
I ended up finding the pdfs for what I needed on this website: www.academia.edu
You can't download the pdfs with a free account but honestly it works just fine viewing the pdf embedded on the website. Just leaving this here in case anyone else is looking for specific books.

No. 712303

I picked up japanese again. I signed up for weekly courses and doing a little preparation already. The motivation came from one of the treads here where some anon mentioned how far they could’ve been with their goal if they actually would’ve sticked by it. I tried several courses before lol but I’m really motivated this time. The fact that the course is online makes my anxiety a bit less intense so yea I wish I could skip that awkward beginners phase and already understand a little. I only know kana so far and maybe 20 kanji but nothing to understand a text really

No. 712324

>>712303
Japanese is so much fun, I also wish I sticked with it, I stopped in 2016, if I hadn't I'd probably be fully fluent by now. Don't give up this time anon!

I'm learning Swedish rn idek why, I like how it sounds and I think I'd like to live in Sweden? Maybe? Anyways I'm using Memrise to practice vocabulary, 10/10. The web version is friendlier than the app, for some stupid reason the app only lets you find courses in your phone's language and the courses in Spanish are terrible

No. 712327

>>712324
>sticked with it
girl work on your english first

No. 712401

>>712327
いいえ

No. 712424

>>712327
Lmao yeah I felt icky but went with it. Phrasal verbs can be tricky

No. 712434

>>712327
Teach us how to stick anon

No. 735809

>>706558
im sorry that this may not be the masterlist that everyone is talking about but if you are trying to learn chinese or japanese i found this tumblr mini masterlist for those. It has pdf links to genki textbooks and workbooks as well as japanese for busy people. I hope this helps someone. Im sorry its not the big one
>>706576
https://moonprincess.tumblr.com/languageresources

No. 740045

>>735809
Thanks anon! I'm officially learning Japanese, I'm tired of seeing all these webcomics I can't read.

No. 740073

>>740045
Bruh. It's cringe but I started learning Japanese years ago just to read raws of BL. I believe in you, sis.

No. 740187

Guy I’m also studying Japanese and it’s really tough right now because I can’t be assed to study. It’s really busy at work right now so after I’m home I just want to lay down. How do you motivate yourself to study and stick to it?

No. 740851

File: 1613498028000.png (904.01 KB, 703x703, fishe.png)

Just cyberbullied someone in Finnish! Stay winning queens! #girlboss

No. 740854

>>740187
Unironically let it go and don’t pressure yourself. You’ll do it when you’re ready. Also use Duolingo or another language game because it’s fun

No. 740858

>>740851
Omg what did you say, queen.

No. 740921

>>740854
I’m in a course though. I don’t wanna quit.

No. 740937

>>740187
I try to make the study something part of I already do daily without thinking. Listening to podcasts, videos (even if you can't understand most of the dialogue) about topics I like. Games are good too if you're at that level. Because when you play you're not slacking, you're actively studying. The only content I seem to miss with this technique is content with furigana of topics that I enjoy, it feels like I only find reading content at my level (N5) in books.
Make studying part of winding down, it'll feel more relaxing and natural the more you get used to it.

No. 741243

>>740851
dont leave us hanging anon! what did you say? what did they say? im finnish and need to know the details immadietly

No. 741347

>>741243
I said oletko vauva? and also Haistan transsukupuolisia ihmisiä täällä on those lines? But got banned from club penguin for that :(

No. 741351

>>740073
NTA but I'm (mostly) doing it for untranslated otome games kek

No. 741354

>>741347
Actually not bad, oletko vauva is kinda meh and i would go with transuja next time but good word order! It can be difficult especially when you want that bitchy tone, well done queen!

No. 741644

>>741354
Just looked up 'transuja' and am AMUSED kiitos queen :)

No. 741656

Stupid rant incoming, i just feel like i gotta drop this somewhere. Why the fuck do people recommend duolingo? This app sucks so fucking much and i regret pretty much every second i spent on it thinking it would get better. There are no explainations, no context, no nothing, it's all just rote memorization. The lives system is retarded. And there isn't even a seperate vocabulary list.
I'm honestly starting to think that people who like it have never learned any foreign language beyond A1.

No. 741659

>>741656
You're not wrong but I think the main appeal of Duolingo is that people tend to get really motivated to keep up with it, maintaining their streak etc. Studying consistently and not giving up is more of a priority for beginners than actually studying effectively.

No. 741663

>>741656
I don’t think it’s the greatest but see some value in it. Of course if you only ever use Duolingo then you’re going to be very limited in your progress - it should only be used as a supplement to your main study. It’s good in that it’s free, the game elements can be motivating, and it’s a quick way of practising if you’re short on time. It has improved in the past couple of years in that it offers some grammar tips (after you’ve made a mistake) and the stories show you what a real conversation could be like.

Personally I like the approach of (kinda) learning through immersion. Grammar charts and vocab lists are necessary at times but I learn better seeing/hearing words in use over and over again until it feels natural. That’s how kids learn, and even completely illiterate ones make relatively few mistakes when speaking (and those they do make are usually learned from their family). Observing natives speaking is best but Duolingo is an okay substitute.

Yeah it’s not going to get you fluent, and they shouldn’t be claiming that 30 hours on the app is the same as a semester of uni language class. But it has benefits as a study aid.

No. 741742

>>741656
No anon I agree. Why the fuck do I get life points. I want to learn sth new obviously I’m going to make mistakes! I stopped using it really it was for for leaning hiragana and katakana but that’s about it. I think hi native or babbel are just as good although I don’t have much experience with those.

No. 741813

File: 1613578329633.jpg (80.68 KB, 992x744, DQ9FjpxX0AYAmEc.jpg)

I want to learn the made-up language, Europanto, because it seems fun, but i cant even find where to learn it.

I heard Esperanto its close to it, but i looked at some prhases and it doesn't feel the same…


Someone has any advice for any of this two?

No. 741830

>>741813
I have never heard of Europanto but this was so much fun to read!! I understood everything

No. 741836

>>741813
This is just how I string together all the languages I speak, looks fucking fun

No. 741848

>>741813
>http://www.europanto.be/europanto.html#top
>In conclusion, although it is not a language as such, Europanto does exist. But it is, as yet, rather amorphous and any attempt to try and describe the language and write down its grammatical rules would be rather like planting a seed and wanting to take a photograph of the tree. Instead of wasting time on this futile pursuit, it is far more useful at present to observe the development of the language and leave the analysis of its forms until later. As in the case of all other languages: the language comes first and the rules follow.

It's a mock language. He basically just wanted to capture the way european people end up talking when in an international environment, you can pretty much just use any word that you think most will understand in any language (and that's usually because they have latin or old greek origins anyway), it's all on his old site, as well as a bunch of texts he created. You're better off with Esperanto, since that at least has actual rules and grammar as far as I know.


Here's a video of Diego Marani using it:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdlgqj

No. 742399

File: 1613644732792.png (16.22 KB, 969x249, Capture d’écran 2021-02-18 101…)

>>706558
Just discovered this thread, are you talking about this ?

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1y9iMHcJBe_4_GgSaZ2xIkQp1MBQ6YCAy

It has materials for a shit ton of languages, even programming ones and dead ones
found it on tumblr recently, knock yourselves out nonnies

I sifted through the thread quickly and I want to fight the anon who said that the Quebec French accent is ugly. I'm from France and it sounds cute and funny af shut up

No. 744537

File: 1613867732407.jpg (19.12 KB, 410x273, _95279965_4abb443d-1c90-4f4f-9…)

>>742399
THANKS mommy you have truly provided for us :)

No. 744660

I want to learn german. any recommendations for movies/shows in german I could watch?

No. 744665

File: 1613884492277.jpg (110.36 KB, 1200x630, fml.jpg)

Kinda OT but do people (including you guys) assume you're a Koreaboo if you're learning Korean voluntarily? I'm curious bc my dedication to learn the language only emerged after becoming interested in the country itself and its relation to my personal research. I don't wanna live there but I'd love to have an internship there for my research at most. I also don't mind the benefit of knowing the language because I like keeping updated in their current events and also casually like a new-ish kpop group, which I'm not vocal about it at all; in fact I pretended to have little to no idea about kpop when I visited Korea because I didn't wanna be one of those. Nowadays even though my commitment lies in my studies/research on Korea and it's my motivation to even learn the language I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I'm learning Korean bc I people automatically will think of me as a Koreaboo. I've been asked if I'm a Koreaboo in America at least even though I look nothing like a kpop fan and give off no signs except saying "I'm learning Korean". It's particularly bad with Asian men because they seem to think as a foreign woman that your interest in the language and culture is solely because you have yellow fever. The popularity of videos like picrel are just one of many reasons for why foreign women are seen as only having yellow fever.

No. 744720

Anyone else learning Russian? I feel like I’m the worst in my class, I’m so bad at it. I have two Russian friends on a language app, who I can talk to but i can barely form sentences without first checking vocabulary because I always forget the verbs. It’s just ughhhh no progress at all

No. 744724

>>744665
Perhaps in certain communities, maybe. However your average normie will not connect learning Korean to this "koreaboo" archetype. Mostly because they have no idea what that means.. especially for people over the age of like 30.

Even the yellow fever thing, which is pretty rare in women, sounds more like the projected perversions of the person you're taking to.

No. 744734

>>744720
Я. It’s been a gradual process for me, listening to a lot of Russian songs and reading a bunch of stuff.

No. 744735

I've been trying to learn japanese for years but it's so difficult when it comes to kanji. I learn some and then forget the ones I learned before. The super complicated ones are also hard to memorize.

No. 744741

>>744735
I'm not sure how far you are with the language but I've found that composing sentences, where you have to read and fully understand the kanji within context, to be really helpful. Making sentences over and over and over is where most of the learning happens, for me at least.

I'm still on the Genki books but kanji like 食、女、男、行、時、金 are effectively burned into my memory just from how often they are encountered in grammar practice.

Hand writing them out, having that ability, might not be as important these days considering how much of our communication is through text. I think it is probably enough to just be able to read and pronounce them. But if it's important to you to be able to hand write them well I sympathize with you there. It's really quite the challenge to memorize all that.

No. 744744

>>744734
What stuff do you read? I tried reading manga in Russian but it’s so hard for me because of the different fonts lmao

No. 744745

>>744735
Maybe you could do RTK, it's meant to be good for memorising and differentiating kanji. Super time consuming and doesn't teach vocab/readings though, which is why I haven't done it, but if it's your weak point it might be worthwhile. I'm also still probably under <1000 kanji so it's not too overwhelming yet.

Kanji is weird because it's so hard to know if you've actually learned it. You might know the meaning but not the readings or vice versa, you might recognise it in certain words and not in others, you might know a character in context but easily mix it up with similar kanji that has one different radical. And it's totally random which ones I can easily remember and which ones I can't, sometimes complicated ones are easier than simple ones. It's a weird learning process.

No. 744785

>>744720
Can recommend listening to Кино.

Also, don't stress about it too much. Russian is pretty tough, especially the pronunciation/ natural melody of the language. My old Russian teacher would taunt us with how irregular it was and how we'll never be able to apply strict rules like in Polish (where the emphasis is literally always on the second last syllable which probably sounds ridiculous to Russians.)

No. 744787

>>744735
study with flashcards. download anki on your pc or phone, make flashcard of the kanji you learned, and revise everyday. it takes only a few minutes.

No. 744812

>>741656
It's for people who want to deceive themselves into thinking they're studying a language but want to put 0 real effort into it. I think I'll roll in my grave if I see it being recommended once more, it has no added value for anyone who's serious about learning a language.

>>744660
I'm studying German too. I've been watching some German tv, listening to the German podcasts 'Slow German' and 'News in slow German' and a couple of movies and tv-sjpws I had already watched before but German dubbed instead.

If you want to pick up a studybook, I've been using Menschen kursbuch and arbeitsbuch, I believe it's what they use at the Goethe institute too. I'm working through B1.1 right now and it's quite nice.

No. 745662

>>744812
Exactly. Maybe it has potential if you haven't practiced in a really long time and just want to dip your toes in a language again before resuming serious study of said language,or just check what basics you remember but otherwise it sucks ass. There are so many apps that are more complete and don't make you repeat weird, unconjugated sentences kek

No. 771165

I already posted this is the Dumbass shit thread, but I'll post this here too since this honestly felt like finding a pot of gold. The first link is to a very large google doc of resources for basically every language. There is also folders for programming languages and sign Language. There is one folder for Culture History, a Intro folder with books about Hieroglyphs, Cryptography and Kabballah, and another for Short Stories. All of the short stories are in English, so perhaps it's for ESL learners? Anyway, the second link is just a link to the tumblr account that created it.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JHRdrCDGgBQOSF1Zy4xZXfXt4MReXUdY
https://salvadorbonaparte.tumblr.com/post/641040383619547136/hey-did-you-know-i-keep-a-google-drive-folder-with

No. 771167

>>771165
Samefag, but I also wanted to add that it also has folders for conlangs like Klingon and Lojban, and linguistics books.

No. 771963

Does anyone here know good, free platforms to learn english in spanish? Youtube channels, pdfs, anything

No. 771970

>>771963
http://www.mansioningles.com/ejercicios00.htm
I liked this one, I think it has been of use for the basics and such.
https://www.ejerciciosinglesonline.com/
This one seems nice as well.
I hope you like them!

No. 772014

>>771970
Thank you so much! It's for my mum, we can't afford to pay online classes so I offered her to search for other platforms and that I could help her with any questions, so these are very helpful!

No. 772082

File: 1617038171778.jpg (21.38 KB, 348x499, 41GB3qHLeTL._SX346_BO1,204,203…)

For any Swedish speakers learning Japanese I highly recommend picrel for grammar, it's specifically made for ppl having Swedish as a reference point. My only complaint is that many sample sentences are outdated (book was published in the 90's).

No. 772100

How to stay more consistent? I’ve been studying Spanish and whenever I get a grip on the language, I drop it and forget everything I’ve learned. Then the cycle repeats. Only reason Im feeling stressed is cos I want to learn other languages but getting pass the beginner stage of Spanish is rlly hindering me.

No. 772101

Do you all have any good resources for word memorization with pictures instead of just direct translations to English? I've tried Anki but I haven't found many good decks to use. I'm learning Korean btw.

No. 772140

>>772101
drops! its an app that uses pictures and audio to help memorise words. I use it for japanese but they have a korean option too. I ended up paying for the full app which i believe is like 30 for the year if you are interested in the full app

No. 772246

>>772100 Make a playlist of good ass music. Listen to it. It'll keep you in the know for a bit at least.

No. 772543

>>772100
You have to find a reason to use it. I've forgotten all the Spanish I learned in high school because I never used it, but I use my Japanese knowledge every day even if it's just watching a Youtube video.

>>772101
Try to find a frequency list and make the cards yourself. It helps with the memorization.

No. 772566

>>772100
try to change your mindset about learning the language. i tend to give up on languages if i'm taking a non-credit class or putting school-like pressure on myself to reach x chapter by x time. accepting that i'll sometimes spend two weeks not learning a single point of grammar helped me, cuz then i just make time for quicky vocab review and take it easy until i wanna open my textbook again.
i agree with the other anon: listen to spanish music, or any other exposure you might like.

>>772101
you could make the cards yourself. i know quizlet lets you use pictures instead of words.

No. 772981

>>772140
I have Drops and paid for it as well! How do you like it?
>>772543
>>772566
Thanks anons, I think I'll just try the frequency list thing and keep up with Anki.

I just downloaded Lingodeer and it's really neat. Right off of the bat they have you watch a video and answer questions which is much more immersive than Duolingo is. Also for anyone learning Korean there's the Quick Korean courses on Youtube that are excellent with teaching grammar. Though their vocab kind of comes out of left field if you're just watching the videos.

No. 773078

>>772981
Same anon, I take back what I said about LingoDeer. They have one free lesson and then you have to pay to do everything else. I'm just going to use Anki to learn vocab.

No. 778957

>>569079
>Wanna share a page of your notebook you’re proud of?
Not really a notebook. I commissioned a French translation for one of my short stories. My French isn't good enough to do this on my own, but I still learned from it and talking with the translator.

https://likho.neocities.org/pages/skinless.html

https://likho.neocities.org/pages/skinless_fr.html

No. 779198

>>778957
I wouldn't say the translation flows super naturally, some of the sentences are spot on and other are a bit weird and wouldn't be used in native French (but I don't know much about the art of translation, it might be normal but it strikes me as odd), and there is some truly bizarre time coordination (use of imperfect then simple past then compound past ?). You might want to get it checked again !

No. 779203

>>779198
Well I reread it more carefully and the time coordination error that threw me for a loop is actually only in the first paragraph : "Par le passé, Rye a été abandonné dans les bidonvilles" it should definitely be "avait été" to make it coordinate with imperfect in the rest of the sentence. Or you can use "a été" but then the rest of the sentence should be present.

And the rest of it is fine, it alternates imperfect and past simple which is the standard way to tell stories (althought beware the use of imperfect or past simple really changes the meaning of a sentence, like "Quand les autres enfants s’étaient séparés de lui" means he's been left alone for a long time whereas "Quand les autres enfants se furent séparés de lui" denotes that it is a temporary action and the man took opportunity of Rye's sudden solitude to contact him. I can't really tell what you meant to say in the original text).

No. 779594

>>779198
I get the sense of time might be strange because I wrote the short as a supplement to the main story where the character is an adult. The short is meant to be a independently readable, yet the additional information about the character isn't part of it.

I hope that didn't impact the rest of the translation beyond "Par le passe, …". (That sentence was actually my bad because the translator used a different word processor and I had to manually paste some changes.)

>but I don't know much about the art of translation

I don't really know either, but I understand translation is rarely perfect and never 1:1. This was my first try commissioning one. I'd like the text to be as good as possible. There were some parts where I asked for accuracy e.g "cheveux noirs" as noted, and some other parts where I let the differences slide.

No. 801547

Has anyone had success with language exchanges online?

I really like the idea of getting conversational practice and I don't know anyone IRL who speaks my target language, but whenever I find someone who wants to do a language exchange, it never works out. I get people who only want to speak English, scrotes who want to be my e-bf and people who drop off the map after half of a conversation.

No. 803017

>>801547
Idgi either. I'm learning Korean and would highly prefer to have a feminist as my language buddy bc feminists there are so based. For anons who know: do I not put any pictures of me up on the profile? Should I mention I'm a feminist in a bio even if it makes Korean men REEEE, screenshot, and share my profile to ilbe or w/e?

No. 808608

File: 1621217970070.jpg (45.99 KB, 530x530, 1620822965800.jpg)

Is anyone else at this stupid in-between level where you understand everything you read and hear but for the life of yours can't talk? It's actually kinda fine when I'm talking all to myself (probably because I don't notice my mistakes), but when it comes to talking to others (or rather, somewhere where native speakers could see it) I'm overthinking everything and then will only say single-word sentences… I guess this means this is just some kind of stage fright I'll have to overcome and I reaaaally don't want to, even if I know I have to.

No. 809311

>>808608
Yes, it's normal to be able to find constructing sentences harder than understanding them. I think you'll get there soon enough, if you have anyone you know speaking your target language that helps, at least talking to french speaking family helped me a lot.
Also wtf is the picture you just dropped kek

No. 809379

File: 1621285396703.png (405.8 KB, 690x733, HgGuslR.png)

I started learning Finnish a few weeks back and I'd be lying if I said that decision wasn't at least a little bit influenced by the notoriety of Finnish posters here. Anyway, I just think it's a cool language, but it definitely is intimidating. The written form is difficult when it comes to grammar, and from what I heard the spoken/casual form of Finnish appears to be very different from the written/formal form? I'm afraid that I'll put a ton of effort into learning to read it on a basic level, only to find out I still can't hold or understand a normal conversation.
Any other anons here have tips for learning Finnish?

>>808608
I have the same issue rn with French, but with Japanese I was able to overcome it a while back. Honestly, the one thing that helps is booze. A few years back I was at a bar and tipsy me just talked to this guy in Japanese for maybe 5 hours on end. Sure, afterwards I was cringing about the grammatical mistakes I probably made and how clunky I might have been, but in the end I felt great actually having done it without restraint and I haven't been nervous about it since. Not saying you have to get drunk or anything, but basically the more relaxed you are the better.

Question to people ITT: do you ever dream about speaking a certain language (that you aren't fluent in)? How does it go? I frequently have dreams where I'm in a different country and have to communicate in a language I'm still learning. When I wake up and think back it always surprises me that the things other people and I said are mostly completely correct and make sense in that language, even though I don't speak it fluently. Almost feels like I'm practicing it in my sleep.

No. 809441

>>809379
Finnish is hard because it's basically the only alive language in its family besides Estonian which sounds similar but they're mutually mostly unintelligible. Don't know about good tips but the many grammatical cases are usually the toughest part for people learning the language so that's an important one to study. One thing that makes it a bit merciful is that the language isn't gendered at all so no memorizing the genders for words and that irregular verbs don't exist, all verbs are considered regular and follow the same form of conjugation.
>the spoken/casual form of Finnish appears to be very different from the written/formal form
Somewhat, but it's more comparable to someone speaking casual English internet speak vs. prim and proper English. Depends on how deep of a dialect/slang the speaker has but if you know textbook Finnish then you'll understand the casual form just fine. Some of the anons in the Finnish thread are typing in an exaggerated, obfuscated form on purpose as they don't want Anglofags to be able to Google translate. I wish you luck on your journey, I've met plenty of foreign people who have learned Finnish.

No. 809448

File: 1621290246405.png (92.39 KB, 640x399, a278flegiei51.png)

>>809379
doubleposting but YAYA we're both learning Finnish that's so cool! You seem to be doing a higher level than me but I also started a few weeks back, I like leaving post it notes on objects to remember their name.
Which resources are you using to learn? Are there any recommendable textbooks? I really like this language but I fear it may be difficult to learn and next to useless oops. If you've already learned Japanese you must be a pretty good learner with languages, I hear it's super hard.

No. 810773

To those who're learning a language just for fun, how did you decide what language?

No. 810811

>>810773
I don't know if "for the hell of it" is how I'd describe it, I want to learn japanese just so I'm not reliant on fan translators who might not pick up series or do a poor job of translating stuff I'm interested in, but it's not like I'm one of those /jp/fags who want to move to Japan or have scalding asian fever for japanese men/women like some people I interacted with. But I honestly don't get people that identify as "polyglot" and go on meetings or establish clubs based on it, and want to "collect" languages like trading cards, it always rubbed me the wrong way, even though I grew up bilingual.

No. 810837

File: 1621450065267.jpeg (523.67 KB, 1200x1013, 0697CBFD-EBBC-4F23-97F1-43B848…)

>>810773
I think it depends on my hobbies.
I do a lot of work with textiles, stains/paints and little notions here and there. Generally speaking, It's good to assume a bulk purchase from France, ordered from a french catalogue/shoddily translated, will not be money squandered. You can find a lot of stuff on the english speaking web, but I decided it was a better idea to really understand what was going on "under the hood" there.
I'd usually relate it to xyz hobby. If there's an artist/creator of x nationality you admire, there's always a million more interviews in that native language. There's more tutorials. I know I've seen some farmers say Japanese craft tutorials are usually better produced and often have better results. I think you just go off of what it is you like to do and work from there.
Definitely factor in a learning curve, too, especially if you are easily intimidated or particularly busy.

No. 810897

>>810773 Secunding other anons, i picked languages relating to my hobbies
As a historyfag, depending on the historical figures or epochs you're interested in you're gonna find more shit written about them in a particular language. eg. if you're into, say, Louis XIV, sources will be in French and you'll find a lot more scholarly works in French. But if you're into age of sail shit most books are gonna be written by British historians etc etc.
Like I picked up English bc i wanted to read about naval history and there was jack shit about it in my native language lol

No. 811721

File: 1621540261775.jpg (267.59 KB, 1000x511, quebecflag.jpg)

>>569079
I'm currently trying to learn French because I'm a leaf and may have to move to Québec for work in the future. Can any Québecois anons please tell me if the people in Québec prefer it if you speak standard French or Canadian French (when you're originally an English speaker)?
If you have any insights, podcasts, or resources you like please share them :) I would appreciate it so much!

No. 811740

>>810837
I love 1379

No. 812468

Any russian/russian-speaking anons have some favorite content creators/youtubers to recommend? I'd like to strengthen my russian knowledge, and it'd be nice to listen to some native speakers, especially about current topics or reaction channels or whatever.

No. 812531

>>812468
Unironically love watching BadComedian who is a russian and younger version of Nostalgia Critic (same format basically), where he shows how horrible russian movie industry is. Over years his videos improved in quality a whole lot which is awesome.

No. 812709

>>811721
> do French-Canadians prefer if you speak Canadian French?
… the answer is pretty obvious, anon. there are some pretty significant differences in dialect. english is my first language but I've heard that québécois speakers and speakers from france tend to have a lot of difficulty understanding each other because not only is the pronunciation quite different, but there are major variations in vocabulary between the two dialects.

No. 812740

File: 1621656772127.gif (226.69 KB, 280x215, 0053EDFF-86A3-4E09-A1C3-A16BE3…)

>>812709
i'm french from france and i can confirm that depending on how pronounced their accent is, Québec people can be hard to understand. It really depends on the person and how pronounced their accent is, most of the time it's mutually intelligible but someone with a strong accent who uses a lot of dialectal terms can be almost impossible to understand. As in, french TV will use subtitles fir some québécois speakers.
There's much more difference between québécois and standard French than between other European variants of French.

It would probably be more useful to learn standard French than dialect though, because people in Québec will likely understand standard French, but other francophones might not understand somoeone who only knows Québec French.

No. 815662

File: 1621967064419.png (19.34 KB, 523x204, zzz.PNG)

https://www.fluent.co/
it helps you build your vocabulary by changing common words on the page to spanish/french (there's a waitlist for new languages, too.)

No. 864248

File: 1627339489996.webm (1.9 MB, 1440x1080, 1621701783933.webm)

bumping. Also, does anyone know any good Spanish-speaking youtube channels and/or musicians?

No. 864251

>>864248
*and books, movies, shows etc

No. 864273

>>864248
What anime is this?
>>864251
I'm fluent in spanish so I can recommend some stuff. What are you looking for? what are your preferences?

No. 864274

>>864248
For spanish speaking youtubers i recommend Maire wink (pretty funny, makes videos testing hacks and viral internet recipes almost always ending in a mess), danna alquati (movie reviews) and mimi XXL (storytimes, reaction to shows). The other ones i watch are scrotes so they might not be your cup of tea. For movies maybe Esperando a la carroza and El secreto de sus ojos. And music, i only listen to Rosalia and sometimes Miranda.

No. 864355

>>864248
I like Mon Laferte and Natalia Lafourcade for pop/"Latin" style pop, Silvio Rodriguez for his guitar and lyric artistry, Buena Vista Social Club for Cuban boleros, and Willie Colon for the fun salsa music.

No. 895377

File: 1630322130408.gif (19.04 KB, 220x164, e.gif)

Trying to learn a new language at age 20. Is it possible? It's Russian.

No. 895388

>>895377
Totally, anon! I know plenty of immigrants who have learned my language Finnish, regarded one of the hardest to learn languages in the world after immigrating in their 20's. It's absolutely possible. Don't believe the claims about new languages being impossible to learn after your childhood, according to studies adults learn new languages just as fine.

No. 895392

>>895377
My mom learned English at 55.

No. 895413

File: 1630325440991.gif (1.81 MB, 480x270, aaaaa.gif)

>>895388
>>895392
Thank you for the encouragement, anons!

No. 895446

>>895377
If you're trying to learn Cyrillic buy a tube headphone amp, you can buy them for as low as $30. I started to pick up Cyrillic without even trying because I was looking for soviet vacuum tubes and reading Russian sites to find out about the old Soviet factories.

No. 895951

>>895446
Thanks, anon!

No. 898318

I’m not expecting much, but do any anons speak Welsh? Or are learning? I’ve been learning through Duolingo because I think it’s a fun language but am looking for other resources. I’ve found the courses offered by the Welsh government—both free and $ and did sign up for a six-month long, online course that starts in a few weeks. Bought the text book off Amazon since I couldn’t get it shipped to the US from their site. Only thing that will suck is if I actually have to show up to the once a week zoom classes because they’re at 3:30-6:30 in the morning rip. But like. I was amazed that the course was only ~$60 and the textbook $25. That baffles me.

I’ve also dabbled with the older “say something in” podcasts because they are free. Idk. There’s no reason for me to learn Welsh but it’s really been one that clicks for me if that makes sense. So I figure I should follow it.

No. 898324

>>898318
I'm casually learning Welsh through duolingo! It's such an interesting language, my dad's side of the family was from there so we are learning together. Please post if the online course works out for you! I've gotten kind of a bit burned out on it tbh, an actually class would be a good motivator

No. 898351

>>898324
Honestly, that’s why I signed up for a proper class lol I believe mine’s through Carmarthen and is an entry level 1&2 course
If you’re curious—See if there’s any courses on learnwelsh.cymru that can fit your schedule! They’re half off at the moment (usually £90 but are £45 until the end of September)

No. 898407

have any of you actually learned anything from duolingo? because I never did. I used lingvist for a really long time and in the entirety of that I learned one word. I didn't retain a single word from duolingo.

No. 898430

Did anyone pass the JLPT N3? I'm thinking about trying December's session this year but I forgot so much stuff since I graduated I'm not sure how to study for it.

No. 898444

>>898430
Me, but I didn't really understand your question

No. 898450

>>898444
Sorry, I meant to say I forgot a lot of words and kanji since I graduated in 2019 that I'd like to have some advice to study.

No. 898458

File: 1630565648887.jpg (10.52 KB, 224x225, e9edd07b66a0c33025a0150fc073f8…)

>>898450
For appa, I'd recommend

>kanji study by chase colburn

it's paid but it's very complete, imo. The best out there. It's not super expensive either
>Bunpo
Another paid one, but this one I actually pirated lol it's simple and good.
>Easy japanese news by todai
Read this daily. Short news with assigned JLPT difficulties and translation of key words.

Also practicing irl. I think that the fact that I was going to a japanese association with a lot of the higher ups speaking solely japanese (although I'd mostly answer on my native language) also helped a lot. I'd learn words by context, would check them on my dictionary later (I use the takoboko app) to confirm it and that process made me memorize stuff quicker and easier. If you have anyone to practice with, please do it!
Good luck, nonnie

No. 898466

>>898430
The only JPLT test worth paying for is 1 because that's the only one that matters for jobs or anything you might need certification for.

No. 898481

>>898458
The first app looks great, it's even in my first language so I can have an easier time understand translations and the app's settings. I'll see if I'll pay for it a bit later. I tried to practice irl in Japan thanks to my working holiday visa but because of COVID it was just not possible. And I couldnt stay the whole year on top of that so forgot a lot of words and kanji I was really used to back then. I'll see if I can practice in my country.

>>898466
True, although I've seen a lot of job opportunities requiring a N2 certificate. My goal is to see what's my current level and make some progress little by little, I don't think I'd be able to pass the N2 just yet. The biggest problem for work is keigo though, I hate that shit so much. I have some rl friends who passed the N1 and still have a hard time with keigo.

No. 898517

I've been studying Mandarin for a few years, I'm around HSK4 but I lost motivation to continue with it during the last year. I want to get back into it now, I might start with Duolingo when I'm on the bus in the mornings. But I really want to properly learn Irish, it's sad that I studied it from the ages of 5-18 in school yet I genuinely can't string a sentence together.

No. 898556

File: 1630579370137.png (144.79 KB, 322x600, 47308925-F601-41B7-B1D9-99671B…)

My girlfriend baby talks to me in her native language. I learn more from those little conversations than any of my study resources. Maybe that's because despite not really understanding her or knowing how to formulate a proper reply, I still feel so so happy and I can tell she's enjoying herself, too. I just love her tone of voice. It takes off all the pressure of being perfectly correct. I also think this approach mimics the natural acquisition of language, closely enough that even my adult brain latches on. I'm really grateful to have a patient and loving teacher.

No. 898559

>>898517
Do you learn with a teacher or alone? How hard is it?
I have always wanted to learn an Asian language (years ago I tried to learn Japanese because I like the culture and used to be a weeb but recently I was thinking Mandarin might be more useful)

No. 898606

>>898559
I learned with a teacher at the beginning but now that I have a good grip on it I'm studying it alone. It's hard at the start, I couldn't really speak at all in the first year or so because the tone system/pronunciation is so different from English. But the further you go the easier it gets, especially if English is your native language, because the grammar is very simple and similar to English. My teacher even told me that in her experience American students had more success in becoming fluent than Japanese students despite both languages using Chinese characters. Good luck with whichever you choose anon, it's been useful to me in the workplace for me a few times so far!

No. 923367

I keep getting ads for "lifetime access to all languages" for rosetta stone. I am thinking about it, but I've never used them before and don't know if it would be worth it. Have any of you used them before?

No. 923427

I’m a translator who speaks 3 languages (French, Arabic and English) and I was looking for an extra language to add to my list so I picked up Korean because its alphabet is so easy to read… that was the only reason… I’m still wondering if I should learn mandarin instead but I’m not sure which language is more beneficial for my career

No. 923431

>>923427
Can I ask how much you make as a translator? Like, can you make a comfortable living? Because I've always wanted to be a translator of some sort (or go into linguistics) as language is my passion but I have heard it's really hard to make money in that field because of google translate and stuff

No. 923528

for any dutchfags reading, is it worth to learn the language? i'm planning on moving there sooner than later and wonder if it would sort of give me a heads up as a foreigner, even if a lot of dutch people have a good grasp on english. right now i'm just on duolingo but also wanna know other resources that could help.

No. 928551

>>923528
Of course it's worth learning the language if you're planning on living here long term. Most people, especially younger people, speak well enough English to hold conversations with you in English but if you don't want to get stuck in an expat bubble and make connections with natives, you should probably learn the language. We also appreceite it if you make an effort to learn Dutch despite generally willingly speaking English with foreigners. And if you speak English on a native level, Dutch should be one of the easiest languages for you to learn since they're closely related so that's nice. r/learndutch has a list of various recommended resources in the sidebar you may want to take a look at.

To satisfy my curiosity, why are you planning on moving here?

No. 929009

Do any of you use Anki (for studying a language or otherwise)? I've been having trouble with mine. Like I'll click on the "show answer" (or whatever it says in English) button and I'll get a blank screen or it'll give me the answer from the previous card, or I'll scroll down and it'll give me the wrong/right buttons before I even pushed the button the show the answer, wacky things like that. It usually fixes itself by minimizing the window and opening it again but it's annoying and happens a lot. Does anyone know how to fix this? Asking this here because I guess anons reading this thread would be most likely to use Anki.

No. 929316

>>742399
Does anyone have a backup of this?

No. 929323

>>929316
If that folder is the one I'm thinking it is ( >>771165 ), check salvadorbonaparte on tumblr. They just moved it to a different site.

No. 929411

I can't roll my R's for shit, is learning a language really over for me? Is there a language easy enough to learn without it?

No. 929464

>>929411
You needn't roll Rs in french. The grammar is pretty tough tho.
Also I'm horrible at rolling Rs and still manage to speak decent Russia . Apparently not rolling your Rs makes you sound like a bit of a snob but in my experience it wasn't detrimental to getting understood.

No. 929470

>>929411
I had a friend who couldn’t roll his R either, the way I could find to teach him how to do it is to say it as if you were saying the letter D in “taddah” in like an American accent, since you put your tongue in a similar place when pronouncing the rolled R. Then you start to say it faster and faster until it becomes “tra”. It’s more of a very soft roll and but it’s better than not rolling your Rs at all. I speak Portuguese and not Spanish so our rolled Rs are much less intense, but I still think that could work fine with Spanish. And with practice you can learn how to do it the “right” way.

Don’t give up on learning a new language, anon, unless you have no genuine interest in it. It’s not easy but it’s not impossible either, the key is to keep consistent in your learning journey. Good luck!

No. 929472

>>929470
nta but this was really helpful lol

No. 929476

>>929464
I studied Russian for a bit and I always had to think ahead when I was about to say an R, to get my tongue in the right place to roll it. It never really came naturally so I had to prepare myself.

No. 929488

>>929009
Try uninstalling and reinstalling it? Or check if it needs an update. You can save your decks to your hard drive before you do that so you don't lose any progress.

>>929411
A lot of languages don't require rolled rs (moonrunes, mandarin, turkish, german, basically anything that's not a romance/slavic language)

No. 929493

>>929464
My mother speaks completelely understandable russian and she can't roll her Rs. I don't know where this idea that russian requires hard Rs even comes from.

No. 929530

I have been listening to 7+ hours a day of my target language both passively and actively, though mostly passively, and it's really helpful for separating phonemes and picking up words. I remember my ex saying he just picked up English as a preteen almost effortlessly because all of the media he liked was in English (game, movies, tv) so I've tried to immerse myself as much as possible.

No. 929540

>>929530
God, I wish other languages were as easy to learn as English. Read a book, watch a movie, get into Twitter arguments with Brits – done. English pronunciation is tough and I bet I already fucked up the sentence structure in this post, but the lack of grammatical gender as well as noun and verb declension makes it so easy to get into… and then Russian comes along and knocks you over with pronunciational anarchy, three genders and 6 to 15 grammatical cases.

No. 929543

>>929411
>>929464
Yeah, you don't need to roll the R in French (or German), you just have to gargle and/or make scraping sounds that will make your throat hurt kek.

Have you tried trilled Rs?

No. 929544

I can’t roll my R’s and I’m learning Spanish currently hahah. I am getting better at it the more I practice honestly though.

No. 929550

>>929544
what practices do you do? this is the main thing that discourages me from spanish.

No. 929600

>>929540
I'm a native english speaker and honestly I don't think it's that easy. The biggest pro of course is that so much of the internet is english, but I dunno. There are so many things that can't be explain and just have to be felt out/ learned. For example. Teacher taught. Preachers preached. Drinks were drank. Swimmers swam, but swingers swung. I cannot explain why any of these past tenses are the way they are, I just know that they are. Also you can't list adjectives any way you want to. It sounds weird to say "the red, flat bench" instead of "the flat, red bench". Also there are millions of exceptions when it comes to spelling.

No. 929602

>>929600
As fluent as I am in english sorry there are so many typos, kek.

No. 929615

>>929600
idk, i suppsoe the overabundance of english media plays a part but english was definitely the easiest language i ever learned. the grammar is straightforward.
you get the nuances after a while if you pay attention to what you're reading/watching.
i picked up english on my own by reading books (first english versions of stuff i already read in translation, then expanding my horizons) and i have a much greater degree in fluency in english than in some languges i've studied formally.

No. 929628

>>929550
So I have noticed that it’s much easier to make the sound when it’s attached to a vowel sound, so practicing like verbs not conjugated has been helping me. I still can’t isolate the rolled r sound by itself though. I also have been immersing myself in Spanish music and trying to sing along when I really like a song and that has helped a little. I notice when I speak it sounds a little better now but I can’t just make the sound by itself which makes me insecure.

No. 929631

>>929615
What is your mother tongue, anon?

No. 929645

>>929631
french. i also studied quite a bit of german which makes it easier to find cognates

No. 929662


No. 931401

>>928551
Sorry for the long wait for a response, I forgot I wrote that down in the thread. Personally it's just somewhere new as i've been tired of living in the UK.

My curiousity of the country started out of the blue when i was a teen, and when I went to amsterdam for a few days it sort of solidified my want to move. Of course I want to make some Dutch friends too so for me learning the language is important. This makes me sound like some sort of Dutch-weeaboo I promise I'm not. Hopefully next year I'll get to visit again to go to other cities such as The Hague.

No. 931473

>>929600
Do you speak any other language? We got a list in school with irregular verbs in English and it's like 200. 3 forms to memorize. Swim swam swum. See saw seen. Everything else is just -ed. That's ridiculously easy compared to other languages.

Yeah, the order of adjectives is the one weird trick English has to offer, but there's a rule (quantity, quality, size, age, shape, color…). And do you have adjust these adjectives according to the gender and number of the noun you're describing? Nope.

In German the teacher "lehrte" (lehren), the Preacher "betete" (beten), the swimmer "schwomm" (schwimmen), the drinks "wurden getrunken" (trinken). There's nothing unusual about what you listed. It's just that the structure of our native language tends to be less obvious to us because we learn it intuitively.

If you want your mind completely blown read up on aspect in Polish. The concept is actually easier to understand for English speakers, but it's still crazy that we have two different verbs instead of just different forms.

widzieć (to see, imperfect)
zobaczyć (to see, perfect)

ja widzę
ty widzisz
on/ona/ono widzi
my widzimy
wy widzicie
oni/one widzą

(repeat for "zobaczyć")

vs

I see
You see
He/she sees (BOOM)
We see
You see
They see

No. 931486

>>931473
samefag. I realize I messed up the sentence structure re:
>>We got a list in school with irregular verbs in English.
Should have said "In school, we got a list with irregular English verbs" instead. I didn't delete because I wanted to give anglo anons the satisfaction that there are parts of English that aren't super easy (sentence structure and pronunciation vs spelling).

Btw. I love English for it's simplicity. It's an extremely effective language. Learning English made me hate German even more because it doesn't just sound dreadful, it's also bulky and unwieldy.

Fun fact: English has more words than German. It's very versatile. I always struggle to find German translations for specific English words because there are fewer choices (no, compound nouns don't count).

No. 931488

>>931473
nta but i had to learn aspects in russian too and they drove me bonkers. verbs of movement too. the grammar was a nightmare, ad i come form a language with a very complicated grammar already.
english is so simple in comparison.

No. 931585

I want to seriously start studying Portuguese again, my BF's family are all in Brazil and it would be nice to be able to talk with them next time I visit. I wanted to find some movies, books, or shows to study from, but so far there is nothing really that interests me so it's been hard to immerse myself. Does anyone have any recommendations?

No. 933265

>>931585
3% is pretty good.

I started reading Harry Potter in my target language and my kindle's time prediction for the first chapter is 38 minutes lmao So far I've written down 60 words and I'm only half way through the chapter

No. 933362

>>931585
Have you tried Globo novelas? Alternatively,

No. 933809

>>931585
You could ready/watch stuff you already like dubbed/subbed/translated to portuguese. Brazilian portuguese is the most common anyway, and a lot of stuff on streaming services have the sub or dub option. Mangas are also often scanlated in Portuguese as well. Boa sorte!

No. 933843

>>933265
>>933362
>>933809
Not sure why I didn't think of reading translated stuff I already like, that makes sense! Thanks anons, these are helpful suggestions!

No. 934350

>>570443

I'd highly discourage you from using Duolingo to learn Greek. I've taken a peek at the lessons and while it's good because of the exersices and remembering vocabulary, the sentences sound unnatural.

No. 934449

>>934350
Can anyone tell me if the Duolingo course for Russian is good? I’ve been using it as a supplement to my class

No. 934936

>>895377
Samefag, I haven't even attempted to learn. I have no motivation. I think I will learn Spanish since I'm most likely to use it everyday.

No. 947560

>>934449
duolingo is not good for anything. if you want to learn to speak or read a language, you need to practise speaking and reading, not rearranging sentences on an app.

No. 950780

If I wanted to become a translator for Arabic, what is the best dialect to learn? Same question for Chinese

No. 950901

File: 1635315349819.png (1.49 KB, 296x170, descarga.png)

Can a russian anon tell me in the most simplest of terms that even retards can understand what palatals or soft consonants are. I've heard audio and seen videos but I just… don't get it. I don't want to give up. I've seen subbed versions of your literature and cinema. I just want to be able to actually understand it fully.

No. 950903

>>950780
lmao
like… the msot common ones? you know there's such a thing as Modern Standard Arabic right? and Putonghua?

No. 950915

>>950780
do you want to be an interpreter (verbal) or translator (written text)? not going to speak about dialects since i dont know, but IIRC mainland chinese speak mandarin and write in simplified chinese characters while those in taiwan and hong kong write in traditional characters. those in hong kong also mostly speak cantonese, but there are those that know mandarin too. i learned simplified, and can mostly guess the traditional characters, but i heard that those who know traditional first have a much easier time reading simplified. so it depends on you.

No. 951186

Japanfags, I need suggestions. I'm looking for shows I can watch in japanese without translation to help me practice with listening comprehension. Usually I watch Chibi Maruko but a lot of the characters talk like weird gremlins so I can't understand a single fucking word they say. What are some good shows to help with learning?? I'd say my Japanese is intermediate at this point

No. 951204

>>951186
Why not watch full japanese youtube videos instead? Japanese people have said anime and shows aren't always great because they essentially use over dramatic lines and it doesn't sound natural

No. 951243

>>950901
palatalizing means pronouncing while having larger area of your tongue touch the roof of your mouth (= palate). IDK what you mean by soft consonants are (it means really different things in different languages), but a palatalized L for example is an L not with the tip of the tongue touching above your front teeth, but with the tip and middle of your tongue shoved into your palate and you know you've done it right when you pronounce "la" almost like "lya". hope that's useful !

No. 951252

>>950901
I can't help you if your actual problem is hearing the sound (though I guess making a list of words containing and not containing softening and hardening sounds and comparing how they sound like on websites like forvo.com could help?). If it's about replicating the sound, the simplest way I could describe it is as pressing the entire middle section of your tongue against the roof of your mouth and the tip against the back of your lower front teeth, while with hard sounds you press the middle of your tongue down and the tip against the back of your upper front teeth. My English pronunciation is horrid so this might be wrong information, but I'd pronounce soft sounds the same way I'd pronounce the D in -dy, as in comedy or somebody. I think it's easier to pronounce soft sounds while keeping your mouth not as wide open as you'd do with hard sounds, but maybe I'm justing imagining things here.

No. 951335

Just going to rant a little bit. I'm going to try and learn Chinese again, because I'm Chinese and my family is Chinese and I'm tired of not understanding family gossip. Also trying to learn how to write, and holy fuck it's so hard to remember all these characters. I really wish my parents had taught me Chinese when I was younger. My family and I speak Cantonese, but I feel like such a retard because I can't understand anyone else besides my parents.

No. 951363

>>951335
Have you tried mnemonics? They helped me a great lot when I started out learning kanji (=imported hanzi).

No. 951614

>>951335
Personally had this issue with Spanish. I grew up speaking the language but eventually realized I can only understand a specific beach dialect so it's basically useless. I've got no clue what the fuck other people are saying.

No. 953588

>>950780
Modern Standard and then pick a region to specialise in. Egyptian is probably the most useful as it where lots of movies come from. The best interpreters are familiar with all the major regions.

>>951335
Sounds like you are trying to learn random ones using flashcards or rote learning like Chinese people do at school. This is the worst way to learn. As the other anon said, you need mnemonics. Get "Remembering the Hanzi" and the corresponding Anki deck. The order will seem a bit random at first but just stick with it and everything will work out.

No. 953596

>>950780
Oh, and same for Chinese. Pick a region to specialise in. Mandarin is the most useful for most of China and Singapore but everywhere else in the world is more Cantonese. The language is written pretty much the same for most Chinese languages, but Cantonese for example has some of its own characters and grammar. Cantonese language learning resources are pretty limited though and Cantonese has more tones with Mandarin so it would probably be pretty difficult to learn.

For both Arabic and Chinese, the less common the dialect you learn, the more money you can make, but the less call there will be for it. Different regions will have more or less need of different dialects too.

Try and think where you want to work, how much of a work/pay balance you want, what type of language learning resources you want to be available, which dialects sound the best to you, and are you willing to learn a second dialect, then ask some Chinese and Arabic learning forums (or interpreting forums) what they recommend from all that.

No. 959743

File: 1636061961079.jpg (46.45 KB, 564x705, 30653b1c8eb73a3ab8fe8768ab068c…)

I have this problem where I can understand intermediate-ish japanese just fine, but I can't translate that into speaking. I just become a mess. Sometimes when I am talking to my japanese superiors, it looks like the scene from a movie become they speak in japanese and I answer in my native language lol so far it hasn't been a problem since I'm still in my native country, but when I get to Japan again for a more business/academic oriented purpose, I don't wanna embarrass myself like that.
Is there a site or app that focus mainly on sentence making? Like, not tests that you have to pick from 5 different answers, but actually constructing the sentence or at least putting in order? I feel like studying and practicing sentence's structures like that daily would greatly help me to get better at speaking, since my problem is not basic vocabulary or even grammar when it comes to forms of the verbs and such.

Hope I made sense, and thanks in advance!

No. 959817

>>959743
Don't know of apps or sites, but I used to play a rom of My Japanese Coach on my DS when I was younger that had a mini game that was exactly what you're describing kek. A warning though, it's a complete start-from-zero thing, so I don't know how helpful it'd be for you in terms of complexity. I honestly think just starting a diary where you write about your day to day life, or writing short stories would be your better bet, even if it's just half a page every other day. At least that was the case for me. Also, try saying what you're reading out loud. This isn't speaking per se, but you get used to how the words are supposed to flow and reinforce set sentence structures that way. I feel like reading novels or even just stupid personality quizzes out loud improved my speaking and also mediation skills by a lot, too.

No. 959987

>>959743
duolingo is shit, but it does what you're asking for. there's a site called cooljugator for verb conjugation too, but it only conjugates in casual form and one form of keigo, which is not the one you'd use for superiors.

No. 960348

>>959743
I think this problem is normal just because of how Japanese works in the complete opposite way of some other languages. I'm taking lessons right now and I've realised that while I can understand the current intermediate textbook fine, I'm only ok talking spontaneously using the grammar patterns from the previous book. I think this is because I need lots of examples to feel more confident using a pattern without thinking about it too much. Probably when we move onto the next book, I will feel better about using patterns from the this one.

Besides just listening and reading a lot, I recommend using Bunpro as it keeps the grammar patterns you learn more fresh in your mind and makes you fully realise how to use patterns, such as the correct conjugations, particles, etc that go together. Don't just type the answer though, read the sentence out loud and complete it, then type the answer. If you get it wrong, use the "oops" feature and type it over and over until you get it right.

Also find someone Japanese that you can practice speaking with and feel comfortable trying out new patterns with, such as a paid teacher who has experience of Western learning styles. Japanese people in the wild (and Japanese teachers without much Western experience) can be a bit rude and laugh in your face when you get something wrong. Somehow that seems to be acceptable in Japanese culture but not really great when you need experience speaking.

No. 975312

do any of you like to use textbooks to study your target language? what do you do when you study from a textbook? do you use a physical book or online book?

lately i’ve been using textbooks from the library. one has lessons and the other has exercises. i copy down the lessons into my notebook, then do the activities from the second book. i don’t have a way to play CD’s so i haven’t been doing the listening activities.

i feel like this method is working really well for me, i feel like i’m actually absorbing the information. however i want to start making quizzes for myself, to really make sure i memorize the stuff i’m learning.

No. 975526

>>959817
>My Japanese Coach on my DS
Late, but is it fun and educating? I still have a Nintendo DS, would like to give this a shot… Is it better than smartphone apps?

No. 980291

I don't understand why some anons itt bash Duolingo. I suppose it depends which language you're learning too. Obviously it's not the end all be all but it's definitely a good primer before buying language books. I have definitely learned some things about grammar and new vocab. My only gripe is it is not very useful for pronunciation.

No. 980313

>>975526
As I said, it's very very basic. You learn simple grammar a la "X wa Y ga suki desu", daily vocabulary like colors and clothes, and get to practice kana. Not sure about kanji, I never finished the entire game, but I think they aren't even taught, since I once cheated every lesson done on a second account and even the last lesson still used kana. Gotta be careful about the writing sections too, since the game either didn't care about or even actually taught the wrong stroke order, not sure which one of those it was. I'm talking badly about it, but honestly, for twelve year old me it was fun enough. You have to amass a certain amount of points for each lesson point (I think it were ten per lesson point with ten per lesson? Basically 10x10) to pass onto the next lesson, and you get them by playing mini games like word search, multiple choice reading, multiple choice listening, writing out what you hear and the like. Since the lessons were pretty short in itself, it was satisfying for my monkey brain in terms of instant gratification, which I think was the reason why I still had fun even though it can get a bit repetitive lol. You have each vocab voiced and can record yourself, too, to compare the pronunciations, and it also has a dictionary, so that's pretty convenient. Can't talk about apps, since I never used them.
tl;dr if you know anything more than the basics you'll probably not get much out of it, otherwise, go for it but keep harder material ready

No. 981102

How do I learn correct way of thinking and writing in English? Even thought I read (a lot) and understand everything, my written English sucks.

No. 981667

>>981102
you could try writing diary entries, practice writing about your day/weekend, or whatever you want to write about. just practicing writing will help you, and there’s some resources online that can check your spelling and grammar for you
https://www.grammarly.com/grammar-check

No. 981754

>>981667
I was practicing my writing skills by interacting with people on discord but even there I get called out for being ESL dummy. I tried grammarly but in the free version they don't tell you where is the particular mistake. Is grammarly good enough to buy full version?

No. 981819

>>981102
get a tutor and have them give you written tasks every week, then go through the errors together. look for someone who is very strict and will be blunt.

No. 981821

>>981819
When I was at school I had a very strict teacher and I ended up crying, later on she told me I should change a tutor. Private lessons sound good but I'm not flexible time vise because of my job. Are there any online tutorials or books focusing on writing, grammar and coherent sentences?

No. 981825

>>981821
I say just befriend some English native speaker and practice English with them, actively ask them to correct you when needed. There's plenty of language exchange websites and communities, I'm sure you can find someone willing to help you out, especially if you offer to help them in your native language in return.

Also is your written English really that bad? It doesn't seem bad to me from these few posts, but I'm not a native speaker either.

No. 981986

>>981825
Every English speaker I befriended is too lazy to actually explain my mistakes. I do wish I had at least one grammarnazi friend. I doubt anyone will be interested in language exchange with me, but I will try. Thank you nonnie!

I share a server with many ESLs and even they get triggered by my mistakes.

No. 982009

>>981825
>I say just befriend some English native speaker and practice English with them, actively ask them to correct you when needed
yeah, no one is going to want to play teacher for free

>There's plenty of language exchange websites and communities

no offense but this is trash advice. it's the sort of free advice that is always thrown around on blogs so they can clickbait the idea that language learning is free and super easy. most people can't explain why their language is that way or have the motivation to do it regularly. yeah you might find someone that can do it but what usually happens in this situation is either it goes nowhere or you become friends and whoever has the stronger language ability takes over and you only speak that language. good for them i guess but you're honestly just better paying for a tutor for all the hours you have to put in

No. 982045

>>959743
Genuine advice since I’ve also experienced what you’re describing: Talk to yourself in Japanese constantly.
I walk around the house like an insane person. Ask myself what I want to eat out loud, explain what I’ve done during work today, pretend I’m a celebrity telling my childhood story to Oprah. All of that in Japanese every single day. It forces me to create sentences about everything. It has helped me an insane amount since I eventually notice what words or grammatical things I’m struggling with. It also makes you more comfortable talking in Japanese.

No. 982668

>>982009
She also refused the idea of a tutor.

No. 988427

Is Swedish easier for someone who knows English and studied German before? Anons who have studied it, what's your mother tongue and how hard did you feel it was?

No. 988432

>>981102
Sign up for an IELTS/TOEFL course with a native speaker tutor, even if you’re not planning on taking the test. I still use the writing tips my IELTS tutor gave me to this day.

No. 988444

>>810837
textile anon come back where do you get these. I would learn french so fast just so I could feed my autism and have these textiles in my hands. Absolutely fascinated by these patterns - what do you usually use them for?

No. 990062

Aside from English and Spanish, what's the most useful European language to know? And I mean useful in terms of how in demand it is for employers

No. 990081

>>988427
Knowing English and a little bit of German definitely helped me at least. I don't think it's a hard language in general, but I'm only B1. My mother tongue is Spanish from Argentina.

No. 990125

>>990062
Why specifically European if it's about usefulness for employers? Also depends on your country and field.

No. 990149

File: 1639095779278.png (289.24 KB, 1600x902, language.png)

>>990062
Same as >>990125 said. Depends on your area and industry, e.g. Italian and French will be useful for the fashion industry and in countries that speak those languages but not as useful if you want to work in Poland and open a Barszcz restaurant.

No. 990192

>>980291
I use it so I learn vocabulary outside of my welsh class, but I hate how it doesn't really go into how sentence structures work or why things go in the order they do or verb endings. It also, for welsh, doesn't really distinguish between north/south regional differences… which would have been annoying were I not taking south welsh (which it seems to focus on)

No. 990408

>>990192
I kinda wanna learn Welsh too! How difficult is it? Love how different the language is, reminds me of quenya for some reason!

No. 990464

>>990062
I'd say French instead of Spanish. In other countries than France you can do just fine with English; and knowing French would be useful in any other country for an employer who needs someone to deal with french market.

No. 992223

>>990408
I’ve enjoyed it! I’m an anon that posted up-thread about learning it and being American and… having to be up for a 3:30am class once a week, but in general everyone has been so nice and it has been a great environment because we aren’t afraid to make mistakes. I’m one of the younger ones in the class, which I thought was interesting. It’s mostly middle-to-70 year old people learning it because of where they moved to recently or something to do while in lockdown. But we have a couple WhatsApp groups (one for class-related work and one for general life chat) so I’ve been delighted by how welcoming everyone has been because I will admit, I was a bit concerned about coming off as “too American” but apparently that’s not been the case.

The language, as a whole, has been fairly straightforward. Once you learn the verb conjugations, it’s pretty easy. Soft mutations can be annoying, but I’m getting better remembering which letters do it, I just have been slacking on some outside prep because , turns out, I’m bad at allotting time for studying. I can do well enough in class though, so that’s good.


… I realize this post has been both sort of about the language and the class, but I think it’s because I do like the class-aspect as well. Check out learnwelsh.cymru ! That’s where I’m doing my class through and they have a bunch of online resources that you can access for free as well!

No. 993196

>>990125
I realize now that was kind of a dumb/vague question to ask because obviously it would depend on your field. It's just that knowing a language can get you more job opportunities in some fields, I'm in America and it seems like most interpreter/translator jobs want you to speak Spanish. But knowing Chinese or other languages can get you ahead in the business world- but who am I kidding, I have no interest in being in the business world anyway. I just wondered about European languages because most of the languages I want to learn are European, I mostly want to learn German.

>>990149
Thanks. Also I had no idea German had the 2nd most speakers in Europe, I wouldn't have guessed that.

>>990464
Interesting, I didn't know that. I really like French too so I will look into that.

No. 994681

Has anyone studied Cantonese? I really want to try it but it seems that there are hardly any resources available.

No. 995000

I really wish there were more audio resources for learning languages. I feel like just absorbing the language is the best way I learn. Apps and books want to be interactive but I almost never retain it that way. In fact most of the words I know in different languages are from listening to music in those languages that I learned unintentionally.

No. 1011849

>>994681
Reddit, there’s r/cantonese and plenty of linked resources. If you struggle, watch Cantonese speaking YouTubers and start off with kids’ shows, get a genuine interest in the language and you will go far

No. 1012440

How is learning Hebrew? I remember in 6th grade learning about Israel and loved it. I'm also like 1/3 Ashkenazi jewish from my mother's side. None of us actually practice Judaism though. My mom's mom abandoned her while she was young so she was never taught anything about the culture and was raised by her lutheran dad (who never went to church).

I'm also am kinda interested in learning Swedish as I'm also a tiny bit swedish through that same lutheran grandfather.

No. 1012443

>>1012440
ok colonizer(back to twitter)

No. 1012446

>>1012443
Twittertard detected

No. 1012509

How easy is it to learn Japanese if you're fluent in Korean?

No. 1012563

>>1012509
I'm the reverse (mildly proficient at JP, learning KO) and I wouldn't say they're that similar at all. Maybe it's different the other way around though, I don't know.

No. 1013056

>>1012509
>>1012563
Unless you are really good at hanja, probably only helpful a bit for the grammar.

No. 1013461

Does anyone else learning Korean find listening for meaning the hardest part? Native speakers talk so quickly, and all the words (that I can comprehend through reading just fine) smush together and become incomprehensible. I’m even pretty good at creating and speaking my own sentences.

I’ve been watching kdramas and listening to kpop for a while, so I don’t think lack of input is the problem either.

I appreciate any suggestions, too!

No. 1014051

Listen to it at half speak and then when you are ok with that, try increasing gradually. You can also then listen to things sped up so that normal speed seems slower.

No. 1014993

My main weakness when it comes to Japanese is my vocabulary. I studied it in uni during my bachelors but a lot of teachers were absent and not replaced or retired and were replaced by incompetent new teachers so I barely learned anything during my masters. I'm thinking about using my twitter to practice writing, does any of you know how to befriend Japanese fujoshi on twitter?

No. 1015041

I'm thinking of finding a partner to learn russian with (or maybe even a group if I find enough people), I'm just not really sure how to start on it. The idea is sitting down with them and maybe watch videos and write down words we don't know or seem interesting, look them up, give each other challenges to translate texts or try to have conversations. I don't want to start from the very basics, so I think that will make it even harder to find anyone who's interested.

Also not completely related, but I had to spend a few days with a native english speaker and had to realize just how fucking awful my english pronunciation is(even though they said they understood everything). And whenever they'd mumble I couldn't make out a single word they said. Maybe I should just suck it up and get some private tutoring so I can expand my vocabulary and learn to speak proper english, I'm so embarassed by my inability to express myself.

No. 1015047

>>1015041
What’s your native language? I would love to learn Russian with someone, do you want to try over discord?

No. 1015065

>>1015041
>>1015047
I’d join too

No. 1015103

>>1015047
My native language is hungarian, so I don't expect I'll find anyone here from my country. I created a server for now for anyone interested (it's my first time, so hopefully I haven't fucked it up somehow), but I'm not really sure I'm allowed to "advertise" here: https://discord.gg/pBnVbQct

No. 1015217

I think its important to remember that 'perfection' isnt the point of language learning to most people and your skill level really depends on how much of yourself you want to give. When learning a new language you essentially need to transfer your entire self, thoughts, opinions, expressions, mannerisms and that takes time and conscious effort. People speaking their native language arent articulating their thoughts in that moment, the neural pathways for their ideas and the words connected to them have already been carved automatically through their internal monologues. People assign words to their experiences subconsciously as they are occuring. Its good to think realistically about how much you want to invest in a new internal monologue in a different language and which aspects of yourself you want to chart (work-self, social-self etc).

You will likely see huge improvement by spending time translating your thoughts, this may involve tediously googling for specific word meanings and new ways of expression that fit the language youre trying to learn. Try not to get frustrated, you want it to be stimulating and enjoyable. Dont fall into the trap of feeling like you deserve to suffer before you can get results. Normalise fantasising situations and your verbal responses before they happen. Having a friend you genuinely want to express your thoughts to helps a lot.

No. 1015344

>>1013056
That's good to hear that I'll have at least some minor advantage in learning Japanese. There are some overlaps in the vocab too which is nice! Ty anon

No. 1015474

In 2021 I made it my goal to learn half of the joyo kanji by the same time next year. Well, now is the time and I've only made it to just under 900. I'm really disappointed in myself for being so lazy in my studies, but I guess going from 300 to the amount I know isn't so bad, especially since I can read a lot more stuff now. How long did it take you to learn all of the basic kanji, Japanese knowing anons?

No. 1015499

Ive decided. Ive been a weeaboo for 15 years. I will now learn japanese.

No. 1015530

>>1015474
Depends on what you define by knowing. I could recognize, pronounce, understand (as in, understood what it meant even when the word was unknown) probably pretty much all of them after about four or so years of on-and-off stuyding and excessive reading. Ask me to write them by hand though and I'll be completely lost kek.

No. 1016494

>>1015474
It's been 7 years since I started learning and I never really studied individual kanji. Most of the later ones don't mean anything all by themselves so it's much better just to learn vocab. I can read and if I find a word I don't know I look it up.

No. 1016635

>>1015344
>There are some overlaps in the vocab too which is nice!
Yeah, that is what I meant with the hanja. They both will have distorted Chinese readings which might still be similar. Obviously if you can write and read the meaning of hanja, you can do the same for kanji.

No. 1016636

>>1015474
wankikani or kanjidamage or both

No. 1042493

Total shot in the dark, but have any anons tried learning modern or classical Sanskrit?

No. 1042512

File: 1643227666490.png (634.32 KB, 1110x1600, BEB2C48B-9B33-4CCC-B906-E17A60…)

>>1015474
nearly 900 kanji, anon, damn! I applaud you.
With kanji I don't memorize them individually either, it's hard for the characters to stay in my brain unless I use them practically everyday (by reading, crafting tweet, translating).
picrel is an example how I often recall a kanji. manga is Ikoku Nikki by Yamashita Tomoko

No. 1049278

File: 1643750044118.jpg (73.89 KB, 900x661, srtdfjkhjl.jpg)

>>898458
Anon, I'm retarded. I downloaded Kanji Study as soon as you posted about this and I got lazy and literally didn't do anything at all. Since then I got myself a new smartphone and I have a better job with less nonsensical shifts/more free time, maybe it's time for me to start studying, especially when I get bored while working from home and I'll pay for Kkanji Study because it seems like a very complete app. I'll try to aim for N3 this year in December, there's no session in July because fuck France I guess but if I feel confident enough I'll change my mind and go for the N2 test.

No. 1049337

Does anyone else hate Quartet for Japanese? I'm using it with my tutor right now and I see it being praised a lot but there are so many things I dislike about it.

>Gap between Genki II and Quartet I too big, feels like a book missing in between. Goes from the end of Genki II being saying goodbye at the airport to the start of Quartet II explaining a biology Nobel prize.

>Kanji introduced in a random nonsensical order and example words include kanji not convered. Kanji not always used in texts, even for common words.
>Conversations mostly focused on exchange students which is boring and they feel unnatural.
>Some texts boring if you have been to Japan before as they cover extremely basic culture things.
>Too many "fill in the blank" sentence exercises which are hard to know what they want even if you feel confident with the grammar or topic vocab. Whole sentences to translate E>J would have been better or more freedom to make your own conversations.
>Speaking section has a first practice section before actually teaching you anything which is pointless.
>Conversation flowcharts also pointless as it's the same as the script on the opposite page. Feels a bit patronizing teaching you how to organize a conversation as it's the same as English.
>No answer key easily available (had to find a sketchy drive link on Reddit).
>No translations of texts to compare and pick up finer points.

Probably other things I am missing. I worked through half of Tobira myself before this and liked it a lot more.

No. 1049870

File: 1643813733142.jpg (46.94 KB, 317x480, 01216499_get-started-in-swedis…)

Anons who learned Swedish, can you rec a good course book for self study? I've been eyeing picrel

No. 1049872

File: 1643813773161.jpg (40.34 KB, 312x480, 01999223_complete-swedish-begi…)

>>1049870
…and this. Not sure which to pick. Complete beginner btw

No. 1049878

>>1049870
I have the exact same one, I never started on it though lol. Kind of hard since I switched to a computer that doesn't have a disc drive.

No. 1049880

>>1049870
No idea, but lycka till!

No. 1049882

>>1049878
Sage 4 offtopic but you can get external dvd players with usb things to plug in your computer. You could probably get one from amazon, mine was like 25 bucks and it works fine

No. 1050168

>>1049878
>I never started on it though lol
lmao I fear that this is going to be me as well

>a computer that doesn't have a disc drive

shit, mine doesn't have one either…is there no option to download the audiofiles from their website or something?

>>1049880
>lycka till
ah I learned my first Swedish phrase haha! thank you

No. 1051078

File: 1643908666614.png (83.78 KB, 220x223, 5EC1F892-609A-4B03-8B06-659982…)

That’s it nonnies I’m learning Norwegian now!! As a german it feels like it’s gonna be easy. Not sure how to start. I did language courses before but dropped out every time because they too slow for me. I have book in picrel but i haven’t started any exercise. I mostly use drops and Duolingo right now.

No. 1051081

>>1050168
>>1049882
Sorry for doublepost forgot to sage but you can get external ones with a usb plug nonna's!

No. 1051091

>>1051078
How do you find Drops? I'm not familiar with it. I've only used Duolingo but I feel like it's only good for really basic stuff

No. 1051112

>>1051091
I definitely prefer Duolingo. Drops is better for preparing for a trip maybe but not so useful to lay out groundwork. I like that they’re very intuitive though that’s cool. Duolingo feels more structured so i use it more often.

No. 1126916

File: 1649364104569.png (160.19 KB, 1100x365, busuu.png)

Anyone here using busuu? I keep seeing it advertised everywhere as free with premium only for some additional functionalities, but I've started a course and just 6 lessons in (out of 80) it already tells me anything more is only accessible with premium. I thought it may be a daily limit thing, waited a day, nothing changed. Am I missing something there?

No. 1126935

Nonnas, I started taking German classes a few weeks ago at the Goethe Institut. The classes have been great so far and I’ve been able to learn a lot, but I would like some tips to improve my learning. Do you know websites or any other media that could be useful for a beginner? Thanks in advance!

No. 1127177

>>1049870
>>1049872
You should start with "Get started". I can't vouch for the Swedish version, but I'm learning with their German edition and I think it's great. Viel Glück!

No. 1127333

>>1127177
Danke!!

No. 1141918

>>1126935
I think Slow German's youtube channel is great for getting exposed to more vocab and natural speech. I read the German subtitles and listen even though I'm only at an A2 level and can't understand everything. Don't worry about understanding everything, try to take it in.
Coffee Break german's podcast is good too.
One more thing, I'm interested in cooking, so I like to read German recipes. Just a way to pick up more vocab and sentence structure in areas that are relevant to you

No. 1141949

I wish I was fluent at French. I still understand some basic phrases spoken and can ask for basic shit like where is there toilet or something, but I just can't get the accent down well. I could talk to my family members since a lot of them are fluent in French, but I don't like talking to them tbh. I just want to learn it to consume French media.

No. 1141966

been reading and understanding English speaking media for almost a decade yet every damn time I try to write or speak something by myself I cannot find the right words to save my life, nonas why does this happen

No. 1141967

>>990062
young people in my poorfag country are being told to learn Dutch in addition to English

No. 1141984

>>1141949
same but i can nail the accent but feel weird as hell talking in french accent. i have an issue with this with all accents. i'm hispanic and still feel uncomfortable speaking spanish with my correct accent and feel self consciously pressured to speak spanish with a gringa accent. i don't know why i do this. anyone experience this even though they're capable of speaking with the correct accent?

No. 1141995

>>1141967
Kek why?? All native Dutch people speak English too.

No. 1196615

I have question relating to learning japanese language.
It is actually necessary to learn kanji characters by itself? That's how they teach in schools but idk if it's an effective way to learn Japanese. Maybe as a native yes, but I'm only a weeb that just want to learn to read games/manga etc.
For example, for the word 動物 we have kanji for 動 which means "move, motion" and 物 which means "thing, object". You can't really understand the word by just knowing these kanji, reading it literally means "moving object", but the word actually means "animal".
I plan to learn basic kanji maybe to second grade, but idk if I sould learn further. Should I just learn words? What should I do?

Secodnd question is about writing kanji. Do I have to write exactly in order?
For example, kanji 右 is written with ノ stroke first and then 一.
Yet 左 you write 一 first and then ノ.
It's so confusing and hard to remember, do I really have to remember the sequence of strokes perfectly?

No. 1196628

>>1196615
Maybe this video can help somehow

No. 1196637

>>1196615
I'm also a weeb who's been learning Japanese for a while. The way I learn Kanji is by learning their most useful meanings, important readings, and stroke order. The way I study all of this at once is by writing my vocab in kanji and keeping in mind their meanings. It eventually gets a lot easier and I no longer rely on mnemonics to remember them because it's more practice to learn through writing words and meanings. Sometimes there is a pattern, like with 食. If it's written first without kana, it will most likely be read as しょく. But obviously this isn't fool proof since there are exceptions. Also, stroke order is important to japanese people because they can tell if you write it the wrong way. If you don't care about what they think then don't worry about it, you're a foreigner anyway. But stroke order is very linear and gets easier to guess (it's usually top to bottom, left to right, draw the outside of the square before the inside, etc). I usually don't worry about it for things like 右 and 左 because I think it's dumb that they're opposite and you can't tell of you wrote it differently anyway.

No. 1196677

>>1196615
you dont have to learn each onyomi for every single kanji because as you learn new words, your brain will naturally memorize the different onyomi associated with that character. also, there's definitely no way you'll be able to read any manga or game if your kanji level is only at the second grade kek so absolutely study further because most games/manga do not have furigana. you'll be severely limited in what you can read, like PG/kiddy stuff. i recommend reading web novels so you can gauge your level and find new words. personally, there's no need to learn stroke order and writing if you don't plan on filling in IRL documents in japan though writing down words do tend to help some people memorize easier. for me, it was a waste of time, but if writing kanji helps you memorize faster then go ahead.

No. 1196704

>>1196628
Very interesting video thank you!
>>1196637
>The way I study all of this at once is by writing my vocab in kanji and keeping in mind their meanings.
This is good idea, I will try this out!
>important readings
How do you decide which reading is the most important?
>>1196677
>there's definitely no way you'll be able to read any manga or game if your kanji level is only at the second grade kek
I was talking about learning to second grade kanji and their meaning, not words.

No. 1196881

>>1196704
There are readings for kanji that are either outdated or really uncommon. I'd recommend using an app or website that let's you search for kanji and gives you information on it. Usually they will tell you about certain readings that are uncommon or hardly used. I personally use KanjiStudy (it isn't free but it's a really good investment if you don't mind paying 20 bucks) and it keeps track of all of the information I gave plus a built in dictionary. But there are still plenty of free resources if you're on a budget

No. 1197885

>>1196881
Oh ok I get it, thanks anon! I think I will buy this app, it looks promising!

No. 1202590

What are the best sources to study Spanish? I notice a huge difference in 2 different websites and three different apps. Any advices?

No. 1208677

Has any of you used LingQ? I discovered it the other day googling some Japanese word, and found the Japanese script for my favorite anime. At first I was pretty confused about the site, but then I learned that all the script for every single episode is there, and basically they're like lessons to learn vocabulary and grammar.
I don't know if I can watch/read the entire series for free but I'm this close to making an account just for it.

No. 1208732

I started actively learning Russian like 3 weeks before Putin went full retard. Ever since I've been learning in private and not telling anyone. It's been alright but lonely. Getting an English/Russian keyboard right off the bat has been helpful.

No. 1208751

I’m so sad that Cure Dolly passed away. Her lessons are always amazing. Shes so knowledgeable of linguistics and a great teacher.

No. 1208820

File: 1654229964208.jpg (313.2 KB, 1078x781, 1j8ickpta7261.jpg)

I want to start learning French again. It's stupid because I technically could have known French bc my grandmother speaks it, but for whatever reason she didn't teach us growing up. I know languages get tougher to learn later in life, I did take French in school but don't remember too much of it. I'm wondering how practical it would be to learn one version of it, since French has many different varieties, like Canadian french is a little different from french spoken in France and Cajun french…

No. 1208859

It's really easy but I'm proud of myself for learning how to read Korean. I don't know what any of it means but I can at least make out the sounds.

No. 1208867

>>1208859
I'm proud of you too! That's really cool of you to put in the effort to learn something new.

No. 1208878

>>1202590
i really like Italki for language tutoring, you can chat with native speakers and they’ll give you homework/lessons etc

No. 1208955

File: 1654239934024.png (83.74 KB, 390x390, Hindi-Alphabets-Vowels-Chart.p…)

>>1208859
that's awesome nona!! I tried to do that a couple times, but my brain cannot compute hangul.

I'm learning the devanagari script for Hindi and it's so easy to remember in comparison, idk why.

No. 1209208

glad to see my silly little thread active lol

>>1208732
a lot of people have been having conflicting feelings in regard to learning russian with everything going on but you shouldn't be ashamed! languages build bridges between people and that's nothing to be embarrassed about even if their leader is a fascist

>>1208820
tbh forget all about how you "should" already know french and just start learning! just be patient and allow yourself to fail.
standard french will get you far everywhere tbh, but if you live in canada, learning québec-specific french as well could be useful.

No. 1209231

>>1208878
Is Italki free?

No. 1209246

Dumb question, but: how can you tell that someone is ESL? Aside from bad grammar/spelling ofc. Are there any "quirks" you've noticed?

No. 1209260

>>1209246
I've noticed that ESL speakers do better with English than native ones for spelling, actually

No. 1209264

>>1208677
animelon is slow as shit but has the same concept.

No. 1209272

>>1208732
I was learning russian in 2021 and got lazy. I feel like my pronunciation is alright and it was getting easier to read but then I felt too embarassed to continue with the war. So you arent alone anon.

No. 1209296

>>1209246
I sometimes notice someone is ESL when they're perfectly proficient in English but slip up and end up using literal translations or their native grammar structures. The thing that outed me as an ESL one time was asking how something was called instead of what. I have a Japanese friend who uses right? and you know? a LOT, and it's always in places where she'd use ne if she were speaking Japanese. I recognize people from my country often because they tend to overuse that as a conjuncion and what I feel like to be always start sentences with because lol. I think people from my country use a lot more commas, too, again, using native grammar. And the one thing that'll forever out me are prepositions. I'll never understand the difference between at, on and in. I had 74 out of 75 points in my English finals in school, and that one missing point was me using on instead of in in an essay.

No. 1209309

>>1209296
What is your native language and is it spanish? I recognized myself in what you described lol

No. 1209310

>>1209296
Adding on, messing up the word order. My native language isn't entirely SVO like English is, and I tend to go back to my native word order whenever I'm tired.

No. 1209369

>>1209246
When they use the wrong prepositions, like in instead of on or vice versa.
Ex: saying being on bed instead of in bed, saying I’m on the car since you can get in/on the car

No. 1209445

>>1208751
Really doubt she dead. Most likely faking because her spanking cult was found out. She's changed her name a few times before to hide, like after she was charged with assaulting someone.

No. 1209452

>>1209445
What the fuck are you talking about??

No. 1209454

>>1209445
>her spanking cult
Excuse me what? Please explain, I follow Cure Dolly on yt

No. 1209455

>>1209445
She what??? Please anon give the details

No. 1209470

>>1209445
Please come back and tell us the info

No. 1209488


No. 1209497

>>1209488
I’m not gonna read this and I’m gonna forget you ever said anything. Goodbye.

No. 1209500

File: 1654267684283.gif (682.16 KB, 320x164, true-its-true-tho.gif)


No. 1209515

>>1209488
I just read the OP and uh, how are they linking Cure Dolly to this person? I don’t see any screencaps regarding whois either

No. 1209714

>>1208820
>I know languages get tougher to learn later in life
I know your brain is supposed be able to learn them better when you are younger, but aside from accents, I think learning when older is much easier.

No. 1209718

>>1208878
Are the native speakers qualified or actual teachers? I've found a huge quality difference between people who teach because they want to make some money and people who have made a career out of teaching and are really passionate about it.

No. 1210422

>>1209488
Holy shit that's a rabbit hole I'm not prepared for

No. 1210570

File: 1654313584266.png (Spoiler Image, 1.75 MB, 1953x1758, whois.png)


No. 1210746

>>1209718
you can look for yourself, there’s thousands of people on there

No. 1210785

>>1209272
Maybe Ukrainian is an option? If someone is asking you you learn the language to help communicating with refugees.

No. 1210789

>>1210570
My question is why does she teach Japanese then?

No. 1210791


No. 1210826

File: 1654332929575.jpg (96.26 KB, 820x546, 2013-12-14.jpg)

Which one do you guys think is easier to learn as a monolingual native english speaker, german or dutch? I've always wanted to learn another language but french and spanish seem a bit too difficult to me whereas german and dutch are at least somewhat more related to english.

No. 1210838


No. 1210854

>>1210826
I remember seeing a table that put the Germanic languages (so including Dutch and German) all in the category "easiest to learn (for a native speaker)" and the one exception was German that was put in it's seperate category with a little more hours. So Dutch would be easier.

Do think about if learning Dutch is worth your time though. Everyone in the Netherlands speaks English so you'll get little practical use out of it if you're not moving there or whatever.

No. 1210856

File: 1654336374701.jpg (137.47 KB, 1080x867, IMG_20220604_115248.jpg)


No. 1210858

>>1210856
Samefag again, also note how Spanish and French are actually put in the easiest category together with the Germanic languages. English actually borrows a lot from Romance languages which French and Spanish both are, so they may not be that much more difficult for you to learn.

No. 1210931


No. 1211030

Is it true that Finnish is "near impossible for adults to learn"? From the perspective of a native English speaker. How would it compare to say Russian or Japanese? Asking out of sheer curiosity as I heard about it, I don't have plans to study it.

No. 1211944

>>1208732
Honestly who gives a single fuck if you wanna learn Russian. As long as you don't talk about it on the internet because everything here must be about politics, there's no reason to feel bad. It's not like you're supporting any one political ideology or anything, a language is part of a people's culture.

No. 1214319

File: 1654544442610.gif (406.03 KB, 500x281, vcn2o1_500.gif)

>>1196615
Get rid of this "kanji is evil" mentality asap. Kanji is your best friend and amazing for navigating Japanese, a system used out of necessity for a language with obscene amount of homophones. Especially if you are learning to read more than to speak.
Yes the learning curve seems daunting at first because you are forced to use pattern/image recognition and recall. Japanese/chinese people tend to score higher in visual memory tests some parts due to this.
But, once you have gotten a few hundreds kanji and a thousand vocabs under your belt, magic happens. Sentences start to decode themselves before your very eyes. Even if you had forgotten a word, you can still recognize its meaning. Repetition works I promise.
On the topic of stroke order, it should help learning kanji not obstruct it. Yes I know it seems like a drag. IMO you don't have to get them right 100%. But just from knowing the approximate rules of stroke order, you can deduce just about how to write every kanji. You will see how many words have the same "parts" and belong in the same "sets" and have loose connection to each other. Look for a kanji-learning app that you like and try to use it every day. Practice making simple sentences with learned vocab to commit them to working memory. You can do it!

Ps: 右 is written with ノ stroke which goes from right to left. 左 is written with 一 which goes from left to right. Maybe think of it like that ♥

No. 1214361

>>1211030
Finnish is harder than Russian and Japanese unfortunately. I am about to give up.

No. 1214373

>>1211030
it might be really difficult but it really isn't "near impossible". no language is "near impossible". however, if you lack materials, immersion content, friendships and other reasons to learn, it might feel impossible or pointless.

No. 1214382

>>1214361
Is a lot of it due to the spoken and formal language being so different?

No. 1214747

>>1209246
I recommend the book "How Languages are Learned" by Patsy M. Lightbown & Nina Spada, it talks a lot about ESL and patterns in second language learners (not necessarily English learners)
>>1209264
I doubt it has my fav anime tho
>>1214319
>Get rid of this "kanji is evil" mentality asap
this, it really isn't that bad. Just don't think about how many kanji there are, you'll learn them naturally little by little by becoming familiar with them.

No. 1215081

>>1214319
Kanji is the best part of Japanese.

No. 1255535

I finally started using Anki for Japanese to refresh my memory and learn new words after years of not using Japanese because I graduated university. I hope this will pay off. I'll also use a former teacher's textbook for grammar as a refresher because she's an amazing linguist and I love that she gives extremely detailed and technical explanations. I should have time to study for the JLPT N3 now that I have more free time at my job. For anons using anki, did you use it and popular packs with the default settings, or did you change some of the settings? Are there some things I need to know in particular that could help?

No. 1256198

What level would I be able to get (level as in B1 B2 C1 etc.) if I study Norwegian for 3 years say half an hour a day. A Germanic language (not English or Nordic) is my native language so Norwegian should be among the easiest for me to learn. I'm average at learning languages.

No. 1256211

I never got past really basic French because I’m terrified of speaking. I’m going to sound doubly dumb because it’s Canadian French. I’d like to start self study but idk where to go. Nonnies help

No. 1256222

>>1256211
If you want to improve you'll have to talk with someone though, practice makes perfect.

No. 1256387

>>1256211
There's resources online, even apps, that connect native speakers with learners to practice with writing and speaking. I just don't remember any specifically on top of my head so you'll have to google it.

No. 1435767

File: 1670417834097.png (190.71 KB, 1372x1372, -1177292656.png)

bumping this thread because duolingo wrapped just happened. anyone else wants to show off their? ngl i'm surprised i'm in the top 4% didn't expect that

No. 1435770

>>1435767
that's great anon! what language are you learning?

No. 1435813

>>1435767
What language are you learning? Do you find that Duolingo actually helps you?

No. 1437178

>>1435770
>>1435813
i started with polish and i already achieved fluency so i moved on to other languages, mainly spanish and german. i don't use duolingo as my main source for language learning, i only use it to stay consistent even on days when i don't have time to study or revise older materials. i find that practicing 5-10 minutes a day keeps me consistent enough to not completely forget everything in between my main study sessions. i also like to pick a random language from time to time when i'm really bored and learn the basics lol
i'm kinda bummed about the new update though, i was thinking about uninstalling. you can't exercises via topics anymore, and i hate the linear progression. sometimes i just want to practice the vocab in a specific topic and i can't do that anymore

No. 1437186

>>1437178
Did you really only use Duolingo to learn polish? Their polish course is really shitty

No. 1437432

>>1437186
noo i went to actual classes for polish. i only used duo to practice a little bit of vocab when i was too busy or lazy

No. 1450913

In late summer I started learning Japanese on my own. First, it was using apps.
>Hey Japan
My very first app I started using in this time of “serious” learning. Has sections about writing, speaking (voice recording + pronunciation), choosing the answers and some sort of chatbot with the app’s mascot. Words and grammar. I must admit I like it and it has funny achievement but one thing bothered me a lot: at some point you can’t progress further without purchasing the premium, full version. The limit is that you can do the whole first “section” (9 big topics + review) and then, you can’t open the new ones because a notification pops up that to unlock the session you have to buy the app either for a lifetime or for 6 months. I’m not spending money on that so I repeat the

> Hiragana Pro & Katakana Pro (both by Gerson Luca)

Used before for remembering the kana. You learn all the kana and their sounds and the test is always choosing which kana it is, you have it above a few answers and choose the correct one. Each time you click the answer, a sound plays.
Hiragana Pro is now called Kana Pro and has both hiragana & katakana in it (?), there was some update which changed the appearance of apps and I don’t use these anymore but I found them good for repeating the process of kana learning.
They’re free, have some paid features but it’s all good without the paid options.

>Write Japanese (Write it! Japanese by Jernung)

App for learning how to write hiragana + katakana, pretty simple and I found it useful for remembering stroke order. You practice a few kana in each little “chapter” and then have a test from these. The test includes writing or choosing the correct answer.

>Learn Japanese Phrases - Bravolol

I knew this app before, used it sometimes for learning random phrases and right now I don’t use it much but plan to move just to remember the phrases. You can just listen to them and record your voice too and compare pronunciation.

>Learn Japanese - Drops (part of the Drops series)

A phrase which has vocabulary + phrases. I found the appearance good, I like using it for building daily habits (of learning kanji and vocabulary). The app also has some short pics with “motivation phrases” you get as you have more correct answers but you can turn it off if you don’t wish it to appear in your session. The way of testing is quite entertaining: not only classic “choose the correct answer” but sometimes building the words from parts of it, also writing practice for kanji. No speaking though.
You get everyday about 5 free minutes, can be given more time as you keep the streak everyday (I do), also ads sometimes give additional time.
You can’t unlock everything without full version (paid) but I found it unnecessary since it was possible to unlock a few further topics with watching ads and now when I am close to finishing one topic, the next one becomes unblocked naturally. So, it’s good without paying and there’s one more reason:
Please don’t buy the full app because once while scrolling through the topic, I found their put tranny shit somewhere there. Not an obligatory topic luckily, but still it is. I guess some features could have been added by users’ requests or maybe because of Pride Month but it’s bad. It seems there are words associated with transition and gender shit. For real.
If you have to, use the app, but don’t give them money.

>renshuu

A free app with some paid features but it’s perfectly good without paying. It also has a community and various game-like methods of learning beside the classic ones. No speaking practice (as far as I’ve seen?). I found it very useful. It also offers kanji + grammar + words vocabulary which is very helpful. Everyday you get some goals and if you complete them, you have additional points for levels.
Although there are animations showing how some kana/kanji are written, so far I never had a casual course exercise (in section called Mastery schedules) to write any, it’s just “choose the answer”. Games are different though, there is one that actually teaches you writing (Quick Draw). I also like Shiritori (word chains). I also found it really interesting how this has a few tools, for example Kanji Index and you can look up some kanji and get worksheets to practice stroke order or with a grid for writing essays.
There is no time limit in this app, you can choose whatever you want to do. Of course in the course the new topics unfold as you practice the previous ones. I also find it good to use daily (at least I began to use it that way) to build habit and spend at least five minutes everyday using it.

Additionally, recently I also got myself a course book + exercises (from a publishing house which specializes in language learning materials) and it was very good to get since I needed to practice writing in real life, beside the apps. It’s also more structured to have a book and I also began to keep a notebook in which I practice kana & kanji + rewrite some phrases or vocabulary.

>>1214319
Good tips in that post too.

No. 1451222

File: 1671366819272.jpeg (15.97 KB, 265x190, A327E4A0-A189-4912-9328-6840D0…)

i want to learn swedish so im doing it the same way i learned english, by simply consuming things on the internet, assuming what they mean and looking them up for confirmation, interacting with the content and using the language myself until i get more and more comfortable and therefore knowledgeable. just need a friend who wants to do the same and i'll be set
sorry for the garbage picrel kek it wouldnt load so i just downloaded it anyway

No. 1451339

File: 1671371652799.jpeg (231.45 KB, 1280x720, gaelic.jpeg)

I want to learn Irish. My parents are Irish and taught me a few things they learned in school but I would love to one day be fluent. My goal is to be able to write and sing in Gaelic.
However, I hit a bit of a slump with learning. I use books, videos and duolingo but feel I really need something more engaging. So I'm thinking I will start learning Irish songs at this point.
Anyone else learning Irish? What is your reason for wanting to learn and how will you put it into practise?

No. 1451344

>>1451222
I've been thinking about doing this aswell, replicating how I learnt English by consuming media with a new language. What's holding me back from actually doing it though is I'm no longer a child, does it work the same when you're an adult? I also don't have a teacher to at least teach me the basics like they did back in primary school.

No. 1451347

>>1451339
samefag. this is one of the songs I would like to learn.

'Bean' = woman (or in the context of this song, 'wife')

No. 1451380

>>1451339
I'm Irish and I'd love to learn it properly. What we get taught in school is mostly ridiculous. It's such a beautiful language, I want to learn because it was taken from us.

No. 1451407

File: 1671375095712.jpeg (150.26 KB, 720x1029, based irish woman.jpeg)

>>1451380
Do it nona! I am very proud of some of my cousins who went onto study it and are now fluent, using it as regularly as possible. I'm in Bongland (I know, land of the oppressor) but visit my family at least once a year, so I can practice with them too. There does seem to be a renewed interest among the younger generation which gives me hope.

Also some inspiration from this based woman in pic related. We need more people like her.

No. 1451424

File: 1671375953464.jpg (16.33 KB, 362x482, cyrillic-alphabet.jpg)

Does any one have any tips for learning Russian? I'm vaguely interested in learning a little bit
but i should also practice more on my German because I am so rusty

No. 1456655

File: 1672241358147.png (1.61 MB, 2168x1701, kys.png)

>be watashi
>learn nihongo for close to a decade
>understand p/ everything heard, seen and read
>picrel
I don't think there'll ever come a time where I can use both with 100% certainity no matter the situation. I'm pretty sure I've read everything there possibly is to read about it on the internet, starting from the ever so useless は is a topic marker, が is a subject marker to は epmhasizes the following while が emphasizes the preceding to reading linguists bachelor theses on it, but still, I'm only sure about the correct usage in 8/10 cases. At this point I've opted to just omitting it whenever possible, coping by telling myself it sounds more natural that way anyways, but I know I'm just running away from my problems. The one thing I've found to help best is to find a sentence where I really understood and internalized why one is chosen over the other and use it as a base whenever I have to use it myself, but this obviously won't always work lol. I'm not particularly looking for advice or anything by the way, just wanted to rant for a bit to people who might understand me lol.

No. 1456675

>>1456655
this year i have been learning japanese too and when my teacher started to explain the difference between wa and ga i didn't understand anything T_T at least i'm not alone in this

No. 1456680

>>1456655
Don't worry, japanese do not understand it either other than basic usage.

No. 1456734

Recently started learning Turkish. It's not too hard but since it is a completely new language I just take it day by day. I'm doing just 10-20 mins everyday, let's see how it is in a year.

It helps that I am proficient in languages that work similarly with word order, cases, and agglutinative features, but the vocab is all new for me.

No. 1456766

>>1456734
Nona im Turkish and its honestly surprising to see someone learning it. What is your native language and why did you choose turkish out of all others? Idk if this is appropriate but if you ever need practise let me know if i can help.

No. 1456775

>>1456766
Wow that's interesting. I had started with Kazakh and didn't find many resources, since they are both Turkic languages and I have been planning to visit Turkey I decided to try it. Turkish sounds lovely to me, not difficult to pronounce.

My question now would be, are there any irregular conjugations with verbs or cases? So far it seems consistent and straightforward, unlike Russian which I also have been learning for a while.

No. 1456794

File: 1672253406654.png (554.61 KB, 923x669, a_little_salami.png)

i'm trying to learn a relatively obscure language that has been colonized into not being widely spoken (carpatho-rusyn lemko). i have some ancestry from lemkovyna and i think it's a really interesting language. i have a textbook, i listen to one radio station in the language, and i am fortunate enough to be in contact with a native speaker - but it's still difficult with the lack of resources out there and how difficult it is to immerse myself in it. i want to visit the region eventually but i don't have the money rn.

does anyone have experience with learning less popular languages that don't have a ton of resources out there?

No. 1456836

File: 1672258142990.png (55.52 KB, 540x516, tumblr_pbmlqoo0HR1soyfmao1_r1_…)

okay nihongo-nonnies I'm moving to Japan in April and want to learn a basic level of Japanese until then (I know it takes time but I really mean a basic level). I already know hiragana and katakana and have a decent understanding of vocabulary when I'm listening to Japanese. However, I think grammatically there must be some huge issues since I barely can string a sentence together when speaking.

What would you nonnies suggest to be my next step? Is there a specific textbook or app you think would fit my situation?

No. 1456837

>>1456836
try yuuta on youtube his japanese learning videos are decent

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn7LyBvG5LEBXK9I4W5dGdA

No. 1456840

>>1456837
>yuta
He's extremely scrotal so no. He disgusts me to a next level.
>>1456836
Try Miku real japanese.

No. 1456892

>>1456837
>>1456840
thanks! I do know about yuta but have a hard time looking through his Japanese language learning playlists, he clutters them up with scrotey interviews. Never heard about Miku real Japanese so I'll check that out!

No. 1456974

>>1456775
I would say turkish is pretty regular in terms of verbs. There are a lot of conjugation rules but most things follow the rule. I can think of some that dont follow the rule you thought it would fit into, though.
Idk what your level is but for example, "bulmak" (to find) becomes "bulurum" (i find) instead of "bularım", although classic vowel harmony rules might make you think 2nd one sounds correct. Still, i would say there are very few verbs that just dont follow a rule. The main issue i see with turkish learners is them getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of rules. So like
Gitmek (to go) → gider (goes)
Almak (to buy) → alır (buys)
Ölmek (to die) → ölür (dies)

Most of the time, you add something with a consonant (like -r) and then you fill the space between the verb and the conjugation with a vowel, like above. My advice would be to understand that these assignments are actually very natural and all follow a harmony. Idk maybe because im native i am biased, but it feels like in turkish if something sounds correct and "harmonic" - it probably is correct.
Hope your journey goes well nona

No. 1456991

>>1456836
I like Japanese Ammo with Misa. She breaks sentences down to make them easier to understand. Good luck anon!

No. 1456992

>>1456892
sorry nonnies I didn't know it was that bad

No. 1457228

>>1456974
That's really helpful thanks.
I tend to learn things quickly, I can recognize a bit of the grammar in writing but I am learning to apply it myself, and I also cannot understand it spoken besides the basics. But it's been only a couple of weeks so far.

No. 1457268

>>1456836
the genki textbooks are really helpful for learning beginners grammar plus some vocab and kanji

No. 1457289

>>1456794
I've learnt a couple of languages with very scarce resources, and at least for me it was helpful to start working with the small amount of real language material I had right away and not wait until I had finished a textbook (I did have a textbook but it was quite old an in another language I knew only partially at the time). One language I was learning had just one online newspaper and one online news program, so I started reading the paper (with a dictionary) and listening to the program every day while going through a textbook, and slowly I started to pick up words and phrases and understand more.

No. 1467147

File: 1673201332827.jpg (325.94 KB, 1200x1135, r.jpg)

any tips on improving fluency and pronunciation without immersion? my pronunciation doesn't suck too much, but i want to retain it at the same level when i speak fast. i don't have access to a native speaker outside of class, so i try to read aloud from books in my target language. it's been months, and i feel like i haven't made any progress. still sitting in my bedroom stalling at every fifth word like an ooga booga caveman. i've been listening to podcasts too, but it mostly just helps with understanding and thinking.

No. 1467153

>>1451424
Read simple kid's books. I took Russian when I was around 9 years old and I still remember a little bit. Memorizing the alphabet is easy, it's trying to listen to other Russian speakers that's hard for me.

No. 1467158

>>1467147
Talk to yourself

No. 1467162

>>1467158
Become shizoid

No. 1467181

>>1467147
One thing I used to do was look up tongue twisters in that language, or recording particularly hard sentences/phrases and seeing if I could beat the original time while still keeping it intact and sounding natural.

It might help to find "conversations", or parts of a movie you could recite as a back-and-forth. Something like that so you can probably get a better feel for the flow of conversation.

Sometimes if you look hard enough on Google, there are audio files set up just for this or study files for scripts.

No. 1467332

File: 1673214042130.jpg (45.13 KB, 750x690, s.jpg)

I am learning Russian and French.
Russian is incredibly hard, and I honestly don't think I'll ever be anywhere near fluent, but Russia as a country fascinates me. My goal for now is to be able to read written Russian and interact with Russians on the Internet, but I also really want to visit Russia one day.
The most frustrating thing about learning Russian for me isn't even the million cases or anything like that, but the lack of immediately recognisable vocabulary. I can watch a French show with French subtitles and broadly figure out what is going on just by virtue of how similar the vocab is to English (plus some really basic leftover memory from school). With Russian meanwhile I can't even read a simple text because none of the words I haven't specifically studied before can be guessed or figured out from context like they can with French. It's really discouraging.
For anyone also trying to learn Russian, I recommend looking for Russian meme channels on Telegram. There are loads of them, it's an easy way to get some daily input, and it feels rewarding to actually understand a meme without having to look anything up.

I feel much more confident with French compared to Russian. I learned French in school for four years, but like many others I had a terrible teacher who made me loathe the language even beyond the point I was able to finally drop it from my schedule. Now that I have actually been to France a few times though, I became a bit of a francophile (yeah cringe whatever, my younger self certainly wouldn't have believed it) which made me want to learn French for real. I forgot most of what I learned in school unfortunately, but at least I didn't have to start from zero. I really hope that I can make it to B1 or even B2 this year. Maybe I'll move to France one day (fortunately easy as Eurofag)

No. 1467489

File: 1673224815535.jpg (137.83 KB, 889x1080, ZwblBf9bDfQ.jpg)

>>1467332
aw nonna, i am russian and i want to wish you all the best. it's always so heartwarming to hear that other people want to learn your language. i wish i could share my knowledge with you.

No. 1467493

>>1467332
I feel your pain about Russian, but then I see a word like чизкейк or троллейбус and it doesn’t seem so bad.

No. 1467525

>>1467489
I can read this but NO fucking clue what any of it means, aside from "muziki" being "music". Right?

No. 1467535

>>1467525
Nta, "Мужики" translates as men. Music is музыка. The rough translation is smth like this:
Nobody:
All the men in the world when it comes to the length of their penis:
13 (21 is written in white text)

No. 1467628

>>1467332
I was learning Russian before the whole, you know. So now it feels like a weird secret I have to keep so people don't unnecessarily freak out kek. Russian is more difficult than French, but Russian speaking people are more willing to actually try to understand what you're saying while trying to learn. Which does make it easier in comparison to the French who can be a lot more demotivating and demanding ime.

No. 1467633

>>1467535
Isn't it Mushchiki?

Shch is my special interest.

No. 1467728

>>1467633
No, it is muzhiki. Ж = zh; щ = shch. Also, first i is pronounced closer to ы than to и (influence of ж before), without softness. Moo-zhы-KEE. Щ can be confusing, in some words you can hear the sound of щ, but you don't use the letter itself, instead writing a combination of other consonants. For example, мужчина is pronounced mushchina(мущина).

No. 1467741

>>1456836
I know this is going to sound nosey but why/how are you moving to Japan. Did you find work in Japan or are you going for a semester abroad

No. 1467746

I have mixed feelings about continuing French but I also want to learn German or/and Japanese (or Korean) and at the same time improve my mother language.

No. 1467750

>>1456836
i know this post is from two weeks ago, but learning hiragana by itself is completely useless in practice. i highly suggest you start learning kanji.

No. 1467895

>>1467147
Watch shows and echo back phrases to yourself as you hear them. Makes you look insane but I and multiple people I know do it.

No. 1469743

does anyone have suggestions for an online japanese course that doesn't require zoom lessons? my current schedule doesn't really work with irl or zoom classes, but i'd really like to have some structure for my studying.

No. 1469968

File: 1673475495633.jpg (25.95 KB, 430x315, mongolian_man_lifting_a_cow.jp…)

one day I want to learn mongolian, but my only reason would be because I like the sound of it.

No. 1481084

Anyone have recommendations for apps to learn Korean (that isn't Duolingo)? Or YouTube channels?

No. 1483886

I just started learning Korean and the pronunciation is daunting to me. The class I’m doing will say one constant is between a G and a K sound and when the teacher says it sometimes it sounds like K and sometimes it sounds like G and I don’t know why. I’m not confident in learning them cuz I’m not sure how to say them. For those who speak or learned Korean how did you deal with this?

No. 1483912

have you guys found more success for language study through self study or through classes?
ive been casually studying japanese on and off for years. been toying with the idea of going to classes just to see what it's like, but i also don't want to feel like im wasting money on stuff i can do myself (plus ngl im kind of wary of the types of people that id meet at a physical japanese class)

No. 1483991

>>1469968
>my only reason would be because I like the sound of it
this is a good reason to learn a languge though

No. 1484124

>>1483912
Honestly classes made me finally regularly study Japanese and being able to immediately ask the Japanese teacher a question and get an answer without having to search online is nice. The people at the classes are of course autistic nerds unfortunately but at least it provides speaking activities that I don’t get when I just studied at home.

No. 1484251

Can the mandarin learning anons please recommend tv shows to watch? I'm up for anything, maybe podcasts too?
I found some cartoons and some shows on Netflix that are translated in Chinese but I would like something native seeing as dubs always suck regardless of language

No. 1484332

>>1484251
Strangely watching old Shaw Brothers movies helped me. Not the poorly dubbed ones, clearly. I found some that were subbed in english with characters above the english translation. A lot of the line delivery is accentuated and not terribly fast, so it's easier to follow. As for casual conversation I don't know many… I did enjoy the movie Secret which my mandarin teacher played for us.

No. 1484336

>>1484251
samefag the animated Ne Zha films, White Snake and Green Snake are fun.

No. 1502634

Anonnies i think i will go back to study Japanese and get at least the JLPT 5& 4!! I always wanted to but lost track of studying. I’m not the type for courses so I’m going to have to figure it out myself. I do have enough time though and I’m anyways always bored so why not use it for education

No. 1502636

Anonnies i think i will go back to study Japanese and get at least the JLPT 5& 4!! I always wanted to but lost track of studying. I’m not the type for courses so I’m going to have to figure it out myself. I do have enough time though and I’m anyways always bored so why not use it for education

No. 1524355

How do you figure out a self study routine for yourself and how do you know what's a good balance between practicing/studying vocab, grammar, speaking, listening, writing (and other things I may be forgetting)?

No. 1524804

File: 1678939353497.png (18.09 KB, 1120x508, toucan.png)

im trying to learn spanish for real this time. when i was in school that was my language class of choice, but then i left school young and that was that. ive tried learning on and off since then, and spent time living and working around spanish speakers, but not enough to comprehend much spoken word, so many flavors of the language and they speak too damn fast and slur words into each other which goes way above my head. reading is better though. my bf's family is from a spanish-speaking country so i want to feel less left out when they are talking around me. i redownloaded duolingo (last time i used it was 2012 kek). the app is absolute trash now there is an ad every minute. are there better tools now? especially if canarian or caribbean spanish… i downloaded the toucan browser extension so ive been using that but im mostly been on my phone lately so thats useless.

No. 1548921

File: 1681482322125.jpg (31.22 KB, 1080x793, Spanish.jpg)

can you pronounce thus nonna's ?

No. 1583302

Does anyone have resources that they can recommend for specifically learning pt-pt?

No. 1583307

>>1548921
This one is a tongue twister for sure but I'm determined to learn.

No. 1583308

>>1583302
www.practiceportuguese.com
r/portuguese also has some free resources for PT-PT in their wiki. Boa sorte nona.

No. 1583414

>>1548921
I would pronounce that as "seh-sen-ti-syeh-te"

No. 1583597

>>569079
I'm rereading one of my favorite books in Spanish, it's slow going but I'm making progress, and I love seeing how characters choose to use tú/usted and it's adding extra context about their dynamics and relationships. I feel like I unlocked bonus content.

No. 1583648

>>1548921
I think it's "seh-sen-tah-ee-syeh-teh"

No. 1583668

>>1583648
"-ta" and "y" are a diphthong. So it'd be something closer to "ty" (assuming you're American).
Not pronouncing diphthongs between the end and the beginning of two different words is one of the biggest sings of a Second Language speaker.

No. 1583854

File: 1684716334936.gif (3.93 MB, 498x498, IMG_7890.gif)

>>1583308
Thank you nonnie!

No. 1583857

>>1583597
What’s the book?

No. 1584077

>>1583668
Kek I've taken spanish classes before but I didn't know about that, thank you. I guess some people can pronounce it a bit differently, I remember the word for "I" also has different pronounciation sometimes (Jo, djo, yo?).

No. 1584081

>>1584077
>Jo, djo, yo
In Spanish, or at least most dialects of Spanish, the difference between all those sounds doesn't matter. Sometimes it depends on accent and dialect, other times the sound changes because of the sounds preceding and following it.
For emphasis, you would probably end up pronouncing it with a harder "dj" sound. When speaking casually and/or lazily, it might come out as "y". Stereotypically, Argentinians would pronounce the Y in "yo" as a sh. It doesn't matter which exact sound you make, it varies a lot.
Spanish doesn't distinguish a lot of sounds (this might vary a bit depending on which variety of the language we're talking about). Perhaps the most obvious example is the lack of a v/b distinction (this might be the reason "vaquero" resulted in the English word "buckaroo"). It's the same with the y/j/dj sounds.

No. 1617878

Does someone else feel like their mother tongue skills have deteriorated?
At the same time, I can't say my English is perfect either. I mostly just read or watch something, I can still write out words and collocations but I don't learn lists of words like in the university. I feel like I lack vocabulary to express complex thoughts or just to be able to express myself in a more interesting way. Sometimes I speak to myself but it's kind of lazy, there's no challenge so to say. I'm trying shadowing now, going to look up other techniques I haven't tried yet.
And I guess I better start reading books in my language again. For a long time, I just felt like I was wasting my time reading in my lang because it wasn't as useful as reading in English, but I can see now that eventually it's killed my eloquence and my vocabulary became so basic and colorless. Kinda dumb when you can speak a few languages but on an equally mediocre level lol

No. 1617883

>>1617878
That's just how memory works. If you don't practice something in a while you will forget it. I used to be able to hold full conversations in German now I can barely remember shit about it cuz I never used it past that time in my life, and its really tedious to force yourself to use a language just so you'll remember it.

No. 1617997

>>1617878
Yep, for sure. I use English at work and consume media primarily in English and I noticed this reflex to say certain words in English instead of my mother tongue when I don't remember them from the top of my head

No. 1635523

How are you supposed to use a book that's completely written in your target lnguage even though it's for beginners?

No. 1635535

>>1635523
Read a sentence. Underline the words you don't understand. Look them up. Read the sentence again, then the next one. Rinse and repeat. Read a single chapter/story twice if you have the time to really absorb the vocab.

No. 1635562

>>1635535
I'm sorry I should've been clearer, I meant a studybook. I did pick it up from the library so maybe it's only intended for a classroom setting?

No. 1635563

>>1635562
Highly likely. You could probably use it with a dictionary, but whether that would be efficient heavily depends on the book. What language are you learning?

No. 1637530

Any tips for learning a new alphabet? I'm trying to learn Arabic, I managed Cyrillic on my own but Arabic is much harder. This is especially because the letters are 'joined together' a lot of the time and it's a bit hard to make out if you grew up with the latin alphabet. I've tried watching videos but it just made it more complicated.

No. 1641819

>>1635563
German. I remember some German from taking it for a couple of years in secondary school so it's not like I'm completely lost but I don't remember what grammatical terms mean and such and it's just annoying. I'm gonna return it and see if they have something else.

No. 1641865

Trying to learn Russian. Used Pimsleur and it was pretty good at the beginning.

No. 1641871

>>1641865
Why Russian? (I'm not anti-learning Russian because of the war anything, just genuinely curious)

No. 1641876

it's been close to a decade and i still haven't decided whether i want to learn japanese, korean or mandarin more (yes i know that i have a yellow fever problem). at this point i could have studied all of them already…

No. 1642337

File: 1690178603088.jpg (31.95 KB, 445x759, Arabic-alphabet-table-001.jpg)

>>1637530
I don't really have any tips other than to memorize the letters. Try making flashcards. I'd recommend memorizing the individual letters of the alphabet first. Then, once you're familiar with them, learn how they change based on their position in a word. One thing to keep in mind is that the 'dots' on a letter never change so that will help you recognize a letter. For instance, ت (taa) has two dots. When in the middle of a word (متى), it still retains those dots. Over time, you'll learn to recognize the different patterns

No. 1642462

>>1641876
Kek anon maybe you're just not that passionate about learning any of those languages (which is fine)

>>1467332
I know I'm replying to a 6 months old post
>but the lack of immediately recognisable vocabulary
This is why I'll probably never attempt to study a non-Germanic or Romance language.

No. 1642713

>>1641865
I'm learning it too but I went with Rosetta Stone and Duolingo (I know). I also had some books which I found helpful. It's not easy but it's not nearly as difficult as I was told it would be. Getting a Russian/English keyboard right off the bat has been the best investment.

No. 1645202

For anons who're using a self-study book to study: How quickly do you move on to the next section or chapter? I'm not sure how to pace things because I often don't know the new grammar or vocab on top off my head yet once I'm done with the provided excersises but I have a global unerstanding and no more excersises to do so I want to move on to the next thing, but idk if that's too quick.

No. 1645235

>>1645202
You can always google "grammar topic" + worksheet. There's plenty of that on the internet, usually made for teachers by teachers.
>How quickly do you
I'm a bit autistic about it and do everything twice. Say, I've finished Unit 1. I go and finish Unit 2, go back to Unit 1 and review it.

No. 1645298

>>1637530
Seconding flashcards. I've managed to learn other alphabets a lot easier but Arabic was really hard, so in the end I just made flashcards and grinded them daily until I got it down. After that I moved to actual words and simple sentences in order to get used to seeing the letters being used together.

No. 1646474

>>1645235
Thanks, I'll definitely look for those worksheets, good to know that's a thing! What do you do for reviewing, just scanning/reading through the material?

No. 1646687

>>1646474
Yeah, I just skim through it. Do an exercise or two. Stare at the pictures. Stew in the memories of me learning this stuff for the first time. It really does help.

No. 1647497

>>1642462
no my interests just keep switching. these days i was really into chinese movies, so i think i want to learn mandarin - but then i get hit by a bout of weeb nostalgia and change my opinion again. rinse and repeat.

No. 1657315

i wanna learn french i did it for gcses and got a 4/C wanna go back but I threw out all my textbooks. can someone help me on where to start and what online resources are the best thanks!!1

No. 1657347

>>1657315
thepiratebay dot org > search > french language learning pack

No. 1674778

This is somewhat related to the thread but ever since I decided to give Japanese a shot I’ve been seeing extremely annoying content from Americans about how pRoblEmaTIc Japan is, it’s obvious they’re fishing for views and likes but it drives me mad.

No. 1679345

Anybody got an idea how much I can realistically expect to learn in a 36-hour language course if I have a knack for learning languages and the one I'm attempting to learn is considered relatively easy for people who speak mine? It's pretty expensive and it'd be the first time I'd visit a formal language course and I have no idea what the pacing would be like in a classroom setting, so I'm wondering if I'd be better off just self-teaching myself again lol.

No. 1679347

>>1674778
I know someone who at every chance they get says how horrible and evil Japan is, but at the same time they're obsessed with anime and seem to have a fetish for Asian people. They are also obsessed with kpop which is basically slavery but you won't see them talking about how horrible that is, unless it's to bitch about how the female artists are skinny bitches that are a bad influence on girls.

No. 1679443

>>1679345
Unless you need to do it for school credit or to get a certificate, I don’t think a beginners class is worth it. The pace will be slow (especially if there are students who never studied any language before). If you study extra outside of class, you’ll still be held to their pace which is frustrating. You won’t learn much from interacting with classmates. The information you will learn is usually easily accessible online, for free, unless the language is niche.

Maybe look at some reviews of the specific course? There are probably some intensive courses which are worth your time, but the courses I’ve done like this haven’t been.

No. 1679464

Don't waste your time learning foreign languages. There's apps that translate everything.(bait)

No. 1679551

>>1679345
Just ask what material you'll be going through. They'll probably be able to give you an indication of X amount of vocab, the following grammar etc.

No. 1679595

>>1456840
yuta's poor attempt at facial hair always looks like he slathered his face in wet coffee grounds and got to filming kek

No. 1689288

Nonas, I need a bit of guidance.
I started studying Russian in january, while at work when I was bored or during breaks, but since then I haven't been able to focus properly and really dive in to study further than basic words.
And I noticed that I have a tendency to study in moments that requires my attention for something else that's more important. And when I have free time, I have 0 will to study.

I was using apps like Drops and LingoDeer, but my greatest challenge is to find a way to learn that's more enjoyable and not forceful or out of boredom.

Do you nonas have any tips to avoid this type of lousy studying and to improve?

No. 1689319

Does anyone have tips for remembering german grammar? I can make simple sentences, and I understand when reading (A2) but I have trouble making complex sentences

No. 1689357

>>1689288
Input, nonna. What do you like to do in your free time? Playing games? Change the game language to Russian (sims is great for this). Like music? Find some Russian singers/bands to listen to and try to translate the songs. Etc.

>>1689319
You need to read - news, blogs, the german thread here and see how natives make complex sentences and try to identify the structures you learned and then try them yourself.

No. 1689572

>>1689357

I listen to a few russian bands like Ploho, БИ-2, Буерак, BrainStorm, КИНО, Танцы Минус and Земфира . I know that there's more, but I feel a bit overwhelmed when looking for new ones bc it feels like an endless catalogue and I don't wanna get fatigue from Russian music so soon.
I thought of changing my pc language to Russian, but wouldn't that be a bit too extreme at once?
What makes me frustrated is that I'm learning Russian from English sources, and I'm ESL already, but it's bc there's not a lot of good material in my native language, so it makes things extra hard to learn.

No. 1689597

>>1689572
If you use your computer for work or school changing the language isn't a good idea if something comes up. Video games, or just certain programs you use often would be fine. If you use netflix you can change the subtitles and dub think.
I'm ESL too, I know the struggle.

No. 1698245

>>1689597
But do you know at which proficiency level is possible to switch a game's language to Russian and, even if a bit quite difficult, be able to navigate and learn new words?
Proficiency as in: how many words I should already know and how much of grammar knowledge?

No. 1698274

Find websites like Lolcow that are in the languages you want to learn. That's how I'm learning English!

No. 1698426

>>1689288
I’d recommend something I did with English when I was a teenager. Just find something you like in the target language, and watch it with subtitles in the language you understand. This way, if the thing you watch is long enough, you can remember some words and phrases. For example, you can watch To the Lake - it’s on Netflix, and it has English subs. There is ton of Soviet stuff on Youtube, old movies, cartoons, etc. most of them are with subtitles. Or you can watch pirated content with pirated Russian dub.

i would honestly advice against changing your PC/smartphone language to Russian. It won’t get you anywhere - the best case scenario is that you learn some computer vocab in Russian, but it’s mostly loan words from English. You can learn that “My computer” is «Мой компьютер», and “Disk C” is «Диск C». I really really don’t think it helps.

No. 1699103

I normally have a French-Italian tandem partner where I live, but I haven't seen my partner since the beginning of July if not late June cuz she does seasonal work in another region, and now at my job we're understaffed so I feel like all I'm doing is covering shifts for people who are either sick or taking a day off/paid holidays, that I'm either too busy covering 9:30am-6pm/9:45am-6:15pm during the week, not counting weekend shifts or too tired.
And my tandem partner works evenings in the performance arts so I can't just organize us to go have a drink or a restaurant because she's usually at work then.

I have the luck to work in tourism so when there are Italians at my job, I try to talk to them in their language. I also have changed the settings of my phone in Italian on IG, same for the Switch Lite I got myself recently, probably will do it for Whatsapp too.
But I miss talking to an actual person in Italian and making progress.

No. 1746669

File: 1698804593036.png (61.69 KB, 1057x793, lagartixa bebedeira.png)

Trying to learn russian.
I've always thought it to be a pretty language since I was 14, but learning a language alone at that age doesn't always work, so i gave up and only started it again recently.
I'm using Penguin's russian course for beginners and youtube videos for some tricky pronunciations (like the difference between soft and hard consonants).

No. 1749436

learning 中文。any chinese shows i can watch that are actually good and entertaining?

No. 1752155

wanting to learn turkish but not sure where to start. just been annoying a turkish friend and using shit like duolingo and langauge apps but i would like to be recommended some online courses, free or cheap preferable… also whats hould i start with first? words, vocabulary??? suffixes are really confusing, and the sentence structure even worse. english is the only language i know so i'm basically learning from the ground up.
i'd also like to learn spanish, same thing goes but i have 0 knowledge on it right now.

No. 1752157

>>1752155
hell even good sources. sometimes i use tureng and reverso context in case i don't understand something but man i've got a long way to go

No. 1752174

>>1752155
Spanish is easy in my opinion. I am learning turkish right now too and I would recommend starting with words and then try incorporating them into simple sentences. Turkic languages are complicated to get at first.

No. 1752194

>>1752155
Spanish is much easier than Turkish for a native English speaker.

Check this link for resources >>929662. Also look up if there's a Turkish/Spanish learning Reddit sub, those language learning subs usually have decent recommended resources in the side bar and then just pirate like a good work book and a grammar book or something like that. Import most common vocab into anki. Look for some easy reading material (There's books made for learners rather than kids' books too)) and consume native content.

No. 1752216

I'm finding a lot of language learning programs to be a slog since I have a weird skillset.
>can speak Mandarin well from long-term exposure to native speakers, but don't know how to read or write because I don't know the characters
>learned French as a kid so I instinctively understand syntax/pronunciation but simply forgot all the vocabulary
I was doing a French program and it felt awkward because I could read and write at a much higher level than they expect, but would also randomly forget basic beginner words. And I didn't have a lot in common with other Mandarin learners because they're breaking their backs over tones and grammar but can at least read simple sentences. A lot of the courses also have trouble placing me at a proficiency level.
Idk I think I'll stay off traditional language learning resources and just try to read more media to gain familiarity with vocab. I just wanted some kind of structured plan to follow. Anyone else had a similar experience?

No. 1752218

File: 1699131259600.jpg (232.47 KB, 1619x1073, 20170512165754_5IOYE0KA.jpg)

>>1749436
I really liked Ode to Joy. It's very female-centered compared to most cdramas

No. 1752232

>>1749436
the only Chinese drama I have watched is Love 020

No. 1752400

>>1752216
>>can speak Mandarin well from long-term exposure to native speakers, but don't know how to read or write because I don't know the characters
How did that happen? Just curious?

No. 1752452

i tried learning german for like 3 weeks because i met my german dad for the first time this year, but then i realised i don't even like him and can't be fucked anymore

No. 1752711

>>1752400
I am actually a Mandarin native speaker myself, I just didn't really learn the written language. I grew up in a western country. It may seem weird but my parents and I basically coexist with entirely different cultures, I didn't inherit much of their customs and they didn't assimilate.

No. 1752727

>>1752216
>>1752711
NTA but that's really interesting, is this a common thing with 2nd generation immigrants speaking Mandarin? I wonder if it's the same for thai speakers and their script or if it's simpler to learn than hanzi. What's your experience learning the characters while you know the word and tones but don't have the character for it?

No. 1752814

>>1752727
I'm not sure how common it is but personally most 2nd generation people I've met either have a stronger connection to their parents' culture or their parents are more westernized. I'm not sure I have a particular advantage with learning the characters since there's no relation between sound and appearance

No. 1829868

File: 1703660905066.gif (527.48 KB, 220x220, FC13F892-23D2-4C60-97F7-B5D61B…)

Yo leer los libros en español y mirar los peliculas en español porque quieres estudiar español y hablar muy bien. ¿Entender a me?
>anons fluent reading this maybe
Soy tres Dias en estudiar español!

No. 1829873

>>1829868
wait you've only studied three days?
that's pretty impressive anon

No. 1829892

File: 1703663112818.gif (1.18 MB, 300x225, Soraya Montenegro.GIF)

>>1829868
> ¿Entender a me?
¡Muy bien Nonita! A pesar de no ser perfecto entendí perfectamente lo que quisiste decir. Me parece que si sigues estudiando sin duda que pronto lograrás hablar español fluidamente. If it’s any encouragement, most Spanish speakers, in the Americas at least, are very accomodating to new speakers.

No. 1829893

>>1829873
I’m really immersing myself but also I knew some surface level spanish already cause my family speaks it but I barely know it and I wanna talk to my little granny more she doesn’t speak English

No. 1830754

How soon after you started learning your target language did you start consuming content (books, videos, tv shows, podcasts etc. by natives)? I read in a guide that you should consume content like that as a beginner but idk how soon is too soon, you know?

No. 1830869

>>1830754
Depends on the content you wanna consume. I remember when I moved to Germany as a 13yo with only two years of learning German where I come from (which is more learning grammar than anything), I watched a lot of SpongeBob SquarePants and anime that would run on TV. And then soon after thanks to friends at school I'd buy manga for young teens in German with my allowance and it helped tremendously.
Depends also on the level of interest, if you're naturally inclined to watch travel content in you native language, you can try to watch travel content in the target language, or insert whatever suits your interests here.
Besides nowadays a lot of digitalized stuff has captions or subtitles.

No. 1831212

>>1829868
Very good start! Minor critique: "Ver" is the better word to use instead of "Mirar" when talking about movies. Mirar is more like "to look at" and Ver is "to see/watch." Keep up the good work!
>>1830754
As the other response says, it depends on how you wanna go about it (casual vs by the books). Music and subtitled reality shows are a good way to hear the language spoken naturally and fluently while books and educational videos will focus more on grammar and vocab. Imo a good balance of both are very important to your learning, on top of actually getting practice speaking the language, be it with another person or through apps where native speakers can review your recorded speech. The tv shows and music is the easiest/fastest way to get your feet wet in your target language, and if you have a pen and paper with you you can pause the media to google vocab used or certain phrases

No. 1840246

I started learning russian, essentially by reading random articles. So far I've made some interesting progress, mainly taking into account it hasn't been that long since I begun. Hope I don't get discouraged and keep reading throughout this year.

No. 1840475

File: 1704489941998.png (216.99 KB, 393x503, 44c7-b45e-1f5317a8b799.png)

I need to do my best to learn the local arabic here, people in the workplace use english but i don't want to feel behind others and i want to be able to talk casually even if i know that it's a hard language.
I've memorized some words but at the moment i want to learn the alphabet and be able to read arabic letters, i'm used to my very basic sounding language so making certain sounds is so difficult and i get a bit embarassed when i try to practice pronunciation both in front of others or alone but i hope i can make it.

No. 1840501

>>1840475
Are you a pasta anon? I am and there's so many people speaking arabic here I've been thinking of learning it, though the tutorials/guides put me off because they all teach the language and preach Islam at the same time and I'm not here for that

No. 1856906

How reliable is forvo.com for pronounciations?

No. 1857657

>>1856906
Probably depends on the language, but very, I find.

No. 1859444

File: 1705543525553.png (326.54 KB, 417x514, pastanon.png)

>>1840501
Pasta-sister! I'm still learning the basics, but do you know what kind of arabic it is? Back in Italy there were lots of people from Morocco or Algeria in my place.
It seems that the standard arabic is kinda different from the arabic of specific countries, kinda like our dialects, i didn't understand it very well yet but it seems like some states just have different accents, while others have different idioms so they could have some trouble understanding other arabic languages?
Still i think that standard arabic is a good start, getting used to the letters and sounds, then maybe you correct it depending on the type you're interested in, not sure.
I'm living with my arabic friend so i sometimes bother her with it, but i've been to a bookshop and they had lots of english-to-arabic books that didn't mention religion, maybe it's more common to find something like that online or maybe you're following sources from countries that are much more religious.
I always look for english guides when i want to learn something new, but that's mostly because they usually have more content.

No. 1859461

>>1859444
I'm half moroccan and moroccan arabic isn't really similar to most dialects of arabic. it has heavy tamazight influence so people from arabic speaking countries that aren't maghrebi have a very difficult time understanding us. I'd recommend learning egyptian arabic if you're looking for a specific dialects of arabic. egypt has a big TV and movie industry so egyptian dialect is widely understood throughout the Arab world (kinda like American English for the English speaking world I guess)

No. 1859529

>>1859444
you have modern standard arabic (msa), which is usually what you learn when you learn arabic in school, and then a bunch of dialects yeah. dialects aren't always mutually intelligible and they reflect the country's history. for example tunisian dialect has a lot of italian and french loanwords, moroccan dialect has more amazight and spanish loanwords etc. meanwhile syrian/lebanese dialects are closer to classical arabic.
if you want to learn the language it's probably a good idea to start with msa which is understood by more people.
classical arabic afaik is useful for scholarly pursuits, not so much to talk with people.

No. 1859546

>>1859461
That's curious! Here they have a lot of people from egypt too and it was cool how they could tell if a person is egyptian when i don't get it at all and sometimes when i try to pronounce something they tell me that i sound egyptian, haha.
>>1859529
Yeah! MSA is what i'm going for at the moment, then just check with my friend to see how different something is in her dialect, don't feel like saying exactly which one it is here but it's from the gulf area.
Classical arabic is the one used for politics and religious writings right?
Maybe the other nona had troubles because she found guides for that instead of MSA….

No. 1859553

>>1859461
Samefag but omg thank you for reminding me of the maghreb and mashriq terms, i always end up forgetting them and when i ask my friend about it she doesn't seem to get what i mean kek.

No. 1871341

I'm already trying to learn Italian (cuz it's close to my native language) and Japanese at the same time (because I wanna go there and be able to talk and understand a bit when I'm there). And I'm at least good at understanding both languages, spoken languages though speaking myself is still tough as I'm still used to thinking either in my mother tongue or in other languages I already know.
But to make matters worse, I also would love to learn Finnish and go there for all the Metal, and also because the landscapes are so far from what I know. It wouldn't bring much in terms of my job because we don't work with Finns really, and if they're in my country, they speak English, whereas me speaking Italian and knowing some Japanese has proven helpful at work before. But I'd love to learn it some day just for the hell of it.

No. 1877298

there needs to be a website kind of like youswear for slang in different languages with notes on how outdated/recent/classic it is. anything from online internet slang ( abbreviations etc ) to irl colloquialisms. the only way i vaguely parse my way through is by looking up the words/phrases on twitter to see them in context and/or if anybody has ever used them the way i want to at all with time frames included, and that's neither very efficient or accurate because it's only based on my assumptions and whatever the twitter search function decides to show me. there's no way for me to immerse myself irl in my target language swedish because there is no interest for it in my country, so my only hope is online, but i don't even know where to look. i don't want to accidentally come off as a goofy boomer or language learning textbook character kek i want to know how people my age are actually speaking !!! guess i'll just have to spend more time surfin' forums and socials and enjoying media in that language until i finally gather enough information to not sound retarded just like i did with english.

No. 1877430

>>1859444
Fellow pasta anon how is it going? I've been trying learning standard arabic and that's already so hard kek. But we'll get there little by little I guess!

No. 1878092

I'm trying to get back into learning French. Five years ago I was able to travel independently in France speaking French without issues, but I've not maintained the skill since graduating and I'm struggling to determine what to use as a re-entry point. For now I'm using Clozemaster for daily SRS review and I've downloaded a few comics to read, but does anyone have any experience getting back into a language after a gap like that? How did you do it? Recs for improving listening & speaking skills are especially appreciated.

No. 1881118

File: 1707353042568.jpg (125.95 KB, 700x510, Gaelic_league_posterRG.jpg)

I'm currently starting to learn Gaelic Irish! I moved to Ireland a year ago and it feels sad to not know the language of the country, though where I live not a lot of people speak it fluently, only the priests as far as I know. I'm really struggling with grammar since the only textbooks I could find online are in English (second language) and I dont understand some comparisons made with English grammar. I want to save up a little and maybe join some irl lessons, but until then I hope my pdf copy is enough kek, slán

No. 1881151

How long did it take nonas to learn Spanish?

No. 1883026

what are some good , easy to follow russian shows/movies for a beginner learner? im trying to immerse myself more beyond just textbooks aha

No. 1883231

can any german anons recommend some german poetry or poets? I find that poetry and lyrics help me learn faster

No. 1884283

>>1883231
Goethe is the most popular german poet and he was good but you might've read some of his poems already. If you haven't, I'd recommend 'Erlkönig' (1782) and 'Das Göttliche' (1783).
Eichendorff appeared about as often as Goethe in my german lessons and while he's boring he filled his poems with pretty words, he must be good for vocabulary. 'Mondnacht' and 'Nachts' are his prettiest.
'Belsazar' (1820) by Heinrich Heine and 'Der Werwolf' (1907) by Christian Morgenstern are my current favourites.

No. 1899307

>>1884283
danke!

No. 1903247

this is probably a really stupid question, but how can some languages be way more complex than others? don't all languages more or less express the same things (except for some specific culturual things)? like why is french so much easier to learn than say, chinese or finnish? I've never tried to learn chinese but I've heard it's really hard. not even talking about the alphabet, just the language

No. 1903254

File: 1709010109630.png (323.6 KB, 2000x2067, language tree.png)

>>1903247
Well to give you a very brief answer: some languages are harder to learn because not all languages are directly related. To expand on that: it is easier for an English speaker to learn French than it is for them to learn Mandarin Chinese because French and English are more closely related. In fact, over 40% of words in English come from French. The easiest language for an English speaker to learn would be Frisian, a Germanic language spoken in the Netherlands, as it is the closest relative to English. French and English and Frisian are all part of the Indo-European family of languages, whereas Mandarin Chinese and Finnish are not part of that language family. If you look at picrel, you can see the Indo-European family of languages. In the graph, the red boxes indicate dead languages that are extinct and the green boxes indicate living languages that are still spoken. The Indo-European family of languages is one of many language groupings, there are dozens more. Even though all the languages of the Indo-European family are quite different from one another, they all share the same common ancestor.

No. 1903277

>>1903254
Not trying to be shitty but wouldn’t Scots be the easiest language for an English speaker to learn, not Frisian?

No. 1903295

>>1903277
Yeah, but Scots is widely understood to be a dialect of English rather than an independent language. On the graph dialects are shown as boxes directly below other boxes with no line (Like how Scots and Yola are both dialectical variations of mainstream English or how Saterland Frisian and West Frisian are dialectical variations of North Frisian). Dialect politics can be very divisive.

No. 1903348

>>1903254
This is crazy cool nona, what a wild graph

No. 1903390

>>1903247
like other anons said, it all depends on the languages you alreaady know and how closely related they are to the one you're trying to learn.
chinese is especially complex for a lot of people because while most languages use an alphabet or syllabary, chinese uses logographs which requires you to think in a completely different way. instead of constructing words out of a small fixed set of letters you have to make them by combining thousands of different characters, each with its own inherent meaning. it requires you to radically rethink the way you construct language. although one saving grace is that the grammar is simple.
other languages can be deemd complicated because their grammar is difficult (eg russian verbs are a headache for most learners) or their orthography is hard to make sense of (in french, many words derive their spelling from latin so it's not always easy to figure out unless you know the etymology).
>>1903254
i love that graph. i'd have thought fr'ech would be closer to italian, ime standard italian is fairly easy to read if you know french and a pinch of latin.
also it's funny how closely occitan and catalan are related, my mother knows provençal aka the easternmost dialect of occitan and she can understand catalans from barcelona with minimal effort

No. 1903422

>>1903348
Yep! Indo-European is a super large family of languages; it's interesting that even though today they are super different sounding, at one point Hindi, Polish, Dutch, and Serbian are all direct descendants from the same language spoken some 6000 years ago. Proto-Indo-European studies are super interesting because if you go far back, not only do languages become the same but also mythologies. The ancient Vedic pantheon is almost identical to the ancient Greek pantheon, and they share many similar mythological stories.
>>1903390
>I'd have though French would be closer to Italian.
The graph is a bit wonky because of how much info it's conveying, but Italian and French are very similar! They're both direct descendants from Italo-Western, standard Italian is from the Italo-Dalmatian group and French is from the Langue D'oïl subgroup of the Gallic group. So they're only about 1 degree of separation apart. Occitan and Catalan are cool! Your mum sounds dope!

No. 1903689

>>1883026
late to seeing this but kitchen

No. 1908995

I'm considering getting the volumes for Jujutsu Kaisen and Golden Kamui in Japanese online because when taking into account the shipping fees if I buy the volumes in bulk it would cost as much as the French volumes or maybe a bit less, and I want to go back to practicing a bit despite forgetting a lot of kanji after graduating university. I know JJK will have furigana because it's a shonen manga, but is that also the case with Golden Kamui, since it's a seinen? What about light novels, do they have furigana or does it depends on series? I wonder if e-books can include them too.

No. 1909018

>>1908995
I'm pretty sure you could easily find free raws of both of those manga online. Buying physical manga to practice isn't really worth it because you'll likely need to lookup kanji a lot. It's easier to do that with kanjitomo.

No. 1909024

>>1909018
It's dumb but I find it way easier to learn and remember kanji after I trace them to look them up on my electronic dictionary and reading online would discourage that. I use rikaikun and it helps me read when I'm browsing twitter and there are a few words here and there I don't know or don't remember anymore but I forget them soon after. I don't plan on writing any annotations though. And I like collecting physical copies of things I like too but that's another topic.

No. 1909083

>>1908995
Furigana is only a crutch and you shouldn't be relying on it, but as the other anon said you can find the raws online and then check if they have furigana. I highly doubt seinen manga would have it though. I've read some LNs and I've never seen furigana on them outside of names or obscure words.
If you're having trouble remembering things I would suggest you check out Anki, it has a bit of a learning curve but it's by far the most efficient way of making sure you'll remember new words after seeing them.

No. 1909544

>>1908995
I agree with other nonnies telling you to find it online, I wouldn't bother getting physical volumes unless you're at a comfortable level reading it. And yes, ebooks can have furigana (at least I think that's what you're asking), and if you want books with furigana there's kadokawa tsubasa and I think aoi tori. These are aimed at younger readers of course but you should be able to find something that would interest you. Also if you don't mind reading on your phone and have an android (can't remember if there is an ios version) there's an app called jidoujishou that's made entirely for learning Japanese and allows you to look up words as you read. It also supports manga reading and watching anime, but I have no idea how good those are since I only use it to read ebooks. It can also connect to anki if you plan on using that.

No. 1917937

How long do you think it would take to learn Hungarian and/or Finnish? I speak mainly English, forgot most of my mother tongue and the little Arabic I knew.

No. 1923573

Does anyone have experience with total language immersion? I'm moving to China in a few months for a year or two, and I've been trying to learn very basic Mandarin on my own but it's been quite difficult for me. I'm bilingual so I have a good grasp of language learning concepts and methodology, but Mandarin is very foreign to me and without proper classes I feel like I can't make much progress. I don't need to know Mandarin for my job, and I will have English-speakers around me, but obviously I'd like to learn the language of the country I'm staying in for a while. I've talked to a few Chinese people around me and they've all said that once I go to China, I'll be surprised with how quickly I pick it up: I wanted to ask other anons if they've ever experienced language learning via immersion and if they'd like to share their experiences.

No. 1923578

>>1923573
>I'm moving to China in a few months for a year or two
Wow what field are you in?
Personally I would be scared af going somewhere I don't speak the language.

No. 1923582

I signed up for a german course through my university (total beginner) and it's an online class, so I can't really practice outside of class hours with my classmates and I desperately want to find someone I can practice my german with because I learn so much better by actually using it and not just reading it. Right now I've just been annoying my friends by speaking german sentences but I want to find someone who actually is learning. Does anyone have any tip?

No. 1923605

>>1923573
I studied abroad in Germany, and immersion didn't really work in my case because people basically refused to speak to me in German, they only wanted to use English. My level of understanding was alright by the end from watching a lot of television but my speaking skills were shit. I regret not taking more formal language classes because I only ever took German at the absolute beginner level. Obviously China would probably be a very different experience than that but I think you should definitely prepare yourself as much as possible with studying and not necessarily rely on just immersion. There's a reason you find so many expats who never learn the language of where they live.

No. 1923611

>>1923582
Search for language/German learning and language exchange discords.

No. 1923617

>>1923582
When I was learning my second language at my university during my undergrad I was paired up with native speakers for hour-long Skype calls twice a week. You should talk to your professor and inquire about any opportunities for practicing outside the class, if there aren't any available you could try to start a small study-group for meeting up with your classmates. A few of my classmates and myself did something similar in our advanced classes, it was a good way to improve and also to make friends with people with similar interests to myself.
>>1923578
I'm in the tertiary education field, and I also do translation work and other copywriter stuff on the side. I started with assisting professors in their language courses during undergrad (I was in the advanced level helping to teach the beginner's level), and I really enjoyed the work. I continued with assisting until I graduated, then I launched my own private tutoring website. I eventually shifted from tutoring the second language to Anglophones into tutoring the English language to foreign speakers. I don't think there is a future for me in my country and I'm very pessimistic about my economic status if I choose to stay here, so that's what interested me in teaching overseas. I'm not scared of going overseas much, I think it will be a good experience for me to have in my life.
>>1923605
I've been trying to prepare myself but I've had such difficulty with the tones and characters kek. The only people I can ask for advice are the owners of the convenience store I go to everyday, they're from Hainan they are excited that I'm going over there and they've told me that once I'm there if I go out and about it will be easier for me to pick it up. So far the owner has helped me with tones. I'm hoping they're right and not just trying to giving me good words.

No. 1923858

>>1923573
>>1923617
That sounds super stressful but also really exciting. I studied abroad in China and knew some people that came with like A0 level. I will say that they improved really quickly but not as much as I think actually needed to manage day to day life. I'd definitely track down some chinese classes once you're there. They should be super cheap and a private tutor might be even cheaper.

You don't have to worry about this though >>1923605 Chinese peoples English level is way below Germans (having lived in both countries). In Shanghai or Beijing yyou'll get a handful of very educated or young people trying to speak English with you, but 90% of the population will barely be able to string a sentence together tbh. Also, Chinese people get super excited when people try to learn their language. I used to have people randomly come up to me if they saw me reading a sign or working on homework or something and offer to help all the time.

For tones, the most important thing is just to know they're important. If you have an ear for languages at all it'll be fine. Just make sure you're repeating words exactly the way you hear them. Characters are also not too bad. Until you finish A1, practice writing new vocabulary words by hand and have someone check them for you. After that, learn radicals and you should be able to pick up new vocabulary wwell enough to read and type.



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