Obviously this is a pretty international forum, and a comrade asked before which languages we speak, but which languages are you working on? Which ones do you aspire to learn someday even if you aren’t learning it now? I’m a Yank so I know English and took about 5 years of Spanish in HS, I was in the advanced classes, but it was years ago so I can understand Spanish, but I can’t speak it really. I’m learning Russian now because I’ve sorta been learning it informally my whole life, my grandma being born in early 30s rural Belarus meant she always wanted to pass that on to me, she spoke an Eastern dialect of Polish but knew Belarussian and spoke fluent Russian. I just knew basic basic Russian as a kid like Принесите Пожалуйста and Спасибо mixed with other phrases that were very local to her. In the past 2-3 years I decided to officially learn Russian bc the rest of my family is very American (I don’t blame them, that’s where we live and consume the vast vast majority of our entertainment/content from) the Irish side of my family doesn’t give a shit about the history of Ireland nor do any of them speak any word of Gaelic Irish, so at least by learning Russian I can communicate to a few cousins from the old country and my grandma. Realistically speaking Spanish would be most useful to me, being in the US, but if I finish learning Russian I wanna learn Arabic. I want to learn Chinese but goddamn thats one of the toughest ones to learn. I feel like Arabic would be cool to learn. What are yall thinking?
Chinese isn’t as hard as some people think. The hardest part is learning all the characters, but other than that the grammar is pretty simple. Learning multiple languages gives you linguistic analysis skills and views you can’t really get anywhere else. You don’t realize how much of an anglo you are until you are no longer in the anglosphere.
I have 4 years of experience in German, 8 in French, 3 in Spanish, 2 in Chinese, and off and on Russian/Greek.
deleted by creator
I have yes, with French/English but I would probably need another few years of serious study to reach that level and I’m not really prepared to do that career wise at the moment.
deleted by creator
Never forget how hard it is to learn Mandarin tho
For anyone wanting to learn, I recommend an app called HelloChinese.
It’s similar to Duolingo in many ways, but goes above and beyond. Phrases are individually recorded instead of stitched together by a synthesizer. They go out and get volunteers on the street to record some lines. Every unit has a 15-minute podcast attached to it.
It gives loads of additional material to practice on in addition to the core teaching units. I used to use a combination of Duolingo and a reader app called ‘The Chairman’s Bao’ which offered graded texts, but HelloChinese does both and it’s so much better when the two are coordinated.
I can’t recommend it enough.
I’ll try it, I tried Duolingo Chinese and it didn’t help as much as I thought it would
HelloChinese
I tried this, but after a certain point it forces you to subscribe to the pro version for any more lessons.
Wouldn’t have been a problem if there was a way it would accept my moneyOh sorry it didn’t work. It’s frustrating when online payment platforms do that. The number of websites that I can’t buy things from because they demand a postcode in the billing address 🤦♂️
Meanwhile me who pretty much requires a credit card to buy anything from (online) stores not local in our country: :)
español (that’s “Spanish” in Spanish 😏😏😏)
Been learning Chinese for the past year, it’s hard but definitely doable. I can highly recommend this app.
Be completely honest, is it plausible for me to learn Russian and Mandarin or is that naïve of me to assume I could pick up 2 very different languages (from the perspective of a Yank that only speaks English and very little Spanish)? If so I am genuinely interested in learning Simplified Mandarin Chinese
It’s more than plausible but you need to put the time in. If you search Lemmygrad for FSI you should see some of my other comments on how long it takes to learn languages.
With the right program you can get conversational quite quickly, but mastering the language will take a long time. The joy is that once you’re conversational, you can engage with native content and it’s no longer a chore from that point. The trick is to make it as fun as possible—whatever you need to do to get enough exposure.
If @Munrock@lemmygrad.ml is right about HelloChinese it could be a good start. I’d mix it with Listening-Reading, with which method you can ‘natural listen’ to native audiobooks within a month of 12-hour days (250 hours total, extreme but effective, although it does require you to read a grammar and make notes before starting). Once you can understand the spoken language it becomes a lot easier. You can then listen to a familiar book and follow a parallel text to absorb the meaning of the characters in a (relative) flash.
Chinese is often said to be hard for native English speakers. But most of the difficulty is the writing system. I’ve heard from people who focused on listening and speaking that it’s just as quick as any other language (maybe not quite so easy as Spanish, French, or Dutch). Then the characters do take time, but not as much time as if you try to learn the characters at the same time. How to achieve this? Search Lemmygrad for ‘Listening-Reading’.
One hurdle with Chinese is access to native content from within the West. I don’t have any tips for this, I’m afraid.
One hurdle with any foreign language is grammar. If you’re like me, you won’t understand English grammar enough. So the first task is to read or skim a book on English grammar. Then when you come across terms like preterite, conditional, imperfect, infinitive, conjugation, etc, in relation to the target language, it’ll actually make sense. Once you work this out with one foreign language it gets easier and easier with the second and third, etc.
One warning. If you search the internet for advice you’ll come across the idea that you only need to do one thing. Usually, it’s ‘just get input’. While you do need comprensible input, nothing is comprehensible until you’ve mastered at least a bit of grammar and quite a bit of vocab. Don’t do what I did and waste a year watching foreign TV without subtitles hoping you’ll magically acquire the language.
Use every aid you can think of to help make the language comprehensible – but make sure you are taking the time to understand the target language rather than relying on the aid! (This is the basis of the listening-reading method.)
Nice one, thanks! Damn, now I want to try Chinese again.
Lol same, FUCK IT I’M LEARNING CHINESE (in conjunction w Russian obv, it would be a waste to forget the 2 years of Russian I’ve picked up)
Deffo. I think Grover Furr did the same thing.
One hurdle with Chinese is access to native content from within the West. I don’t have any tips for this, I’m afraid.
For Putonghua, try Bilibili. China’s answer to youtube. Might have to use a vpn depending on your location.
There’s also echinesesong.com which is just tons of Chinese songs with lyrics pinyin, 汉字 and sometimes English translations. Use an ad blocker for that one.
I also like to check out CGTN which has some info and news in Chinese
Great resource, thanks!
Русский, Deutsch, and Na’vi
German and Mexican
Interesting, the Mexican dialect of Spanish? I always preferred the J sound of the Latin American “ll” sound as opposed to the Mexican Y sound but to each their own? I love to pronounce Silla as Sijja
Yup, Mexican dialect is just unique imo.
deleted by creator
Based. Good luck. It’s hard to find Cree related information online, and it’s often only specific to a certain region due to the varied dialects of the language.
Español
deleted by creator
Anyone have any good study tips they wanna share ? I have ADHD so struggle with building good habits like this but I must persevere
I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2022, at the age of 30, and am awaiting a formal ASD diagnosis (psychiatrist strongly suspected it but couldn’t diagnose in the meeting because meeting was for ADHD only). So I’ve got a lot of years of coping mechanisms for studying.
With my mix of ADHD and ASD I love routines but struggle to build new ones or add new habits. I build new routines and habits by hanging new habits off of existing ones. I already religiously brush my teeth; so I decided to moisturise beforehand every time. After a while the new habit grows. I then personally find that once I’ve developed the new habit, it’s a lot easier to move it about to a new “home” in my life/routine if appropriate.
Applied to language learning I would recommend doing a quick survey of your existing daily or weekly rhythm (I won’t assume a routine yet!). Are there any touchstones that remain relatively consistent across the days / weeks? Basic stuff like brushing teeth, washing. Maybe going to and from school/college/work? Food? Even if these things aren’t consistent in terms of the time of day (maybe your mealtimes are erratic), are they at least consistent across the week? e.g. do you always manage to eat at least one or two meals a day? If yes; great. You’re off to a good start. Remember these are examples; you’re looking for the patterns in your own life. Depending on the severity of your struggle with ADHD you might have more or less to work with.
Once you’ve spotted them, apply the language learning habit to these patterns as appropriate. 5 mins while food is cooking, or maybe listening to / watching something in the target language as you eat. Or maybe taking 5 mins to digest food while you practice or revise some vocab. Start small, build momentum. Don’t fret disruptions. You absolutely will forget and drop it. Even after years I still do this. Just forgive yourself and try to hit the next timeslot.
Once you’re happy with where you’re at with your consistency, take a second to evaluate. How would you feel with moving the habit about now? Is there a better “home” for it in the rhythm of your day or week? Maybe when you get up, or before/after you brush your teeth? Or are you happy with it where it is? Either answer is fine, just checking in with yourself is the aim
deleted by creator
You’re very welcome. That sounds like a lot to balance, especially with ADHD. Good luck comrade, I know you can do it!
my biggest tip would be to make sure you study every day and mix it up. i use duolingo, Anki, videos, phone/computer in the language, games in the language, etc
I’m currently stuck in intermediate purgatory in Spanish (I can understand a lot but I struggle to construct my own sentences). I love the language, as well as Latin America, and I really want to become fluent.
After Spanish, there’s maybe 2 more languages in which I would like to be fluent (Russian and Mandarin) and a few more in which I would like to be more or less conversational (Romanian, Hungarian, Korean, Persian, Cantonese, Serbian)
If you ever need conversational Russian help, lmk I desperately need help too lmao
I’m learning Portuguese right now, a mix of European and Brazilian. My family is European Portuguese but Brazilian is more accessible in terms of lessons and I like some of the pronunciations better. Both my parents were born in Portugal and thus it was their first language. Even though my mom was raised in Canada, English is her second language. So even with a family of immigrants my first language is English, I grew up knowing some Portuguese words but I could never speak it. It makes me sad that I wasn’t raised to speak both proficiently; English at school, Portuguese at home. So now that I’m an adult I’m trying to learn to speak it, which is surprisingly difficult despite having Portuguese speakers around constantly. I mean, the Portuguese news station is always on TV and I’ve been watching shows and movies and TikTok’s with Portuguese subtitles to try and immerse myself more.
It seems we are in a somewhat similar boat comrade. We both know a bit of the language of our ancestors and seek to learn more, all the best to you!
nihongo, hanyu (simplified)
interested in learning russian and a bit of arabic too i guess
and wondering if i should learn espanol or portuguez (probably espanol, since way more people seem to use it
dare i say it’s the next english in terms of european languagesover portuguez)although sometimes i wonder if i really should even bother trying to learn (multiple) languages if they won’t be of any/much use for me
and google translate/deepl is right around the corner… but then again, being able to speak/write in that language and understanding it by yourself sounds more fun than having to rely on translators all the timeDM me if you wanna correspond in Russian a bit, Id love to learn apart from Duolingo and Mango languages with a real person if you are interested
Thanks! Though right now I’m extremely basic at Russian. As in, I can only read Cyrillic Letters (most of it anyway), and only know how to greet and say goodbye in it; so I don’t really know how helpful I’ll be haha.
If you keep at it I’m sure you’ll get there eventually comrade! Congrats on your endeavor, much love
I’ve been studying Russian informally for 2 years now, got a plethora of plans too but after that I’m thinking of Serbocroatian and Chinese
continuing to learn spanish. Would like to learn more
A wise endeavor but I get too bored by it
Spanish very slowly. I think it’s important to be able to speak with the rest of America. But it’s the hardest thing I’ve put myself to.