Anyone here learning a new language?

Japanese because of some family members and I wish to understand and speak clearer to some friendly acquaintences i've made over time. That and most localised stuff sucks.
Also brushing up on my spanish because I knew it better as a kid, then years of not really putting it to use has made me bad at it.
 
Leer El Quijote para aprender español es como si alguien quisiera aprender ingles leyendo The Canterbury Tales. Te ira mejor si mientras estas comenzando lees algo a) mas breve, b) que este escrito en el espanol que se habla en este siglo.

jokes aside, si tu nivel de español todavía no te permite leer literatura podrías leer tebeos (comics) en plan Mortadelo y Filemón o ver series en español como Aquí no hay quien viva. Recomendaría pelis pero creo q eso ya sería igual de difícil que leerte un libro.
I've been exposed to either that show or its remake because of a friend who's also learning Spanish and had it as background noise all the time for a while, so as to get used to how Spanish sounds. Anyway, I reckon it's actually the other way around: it might be better for a beginner to start with movies and then move on to tv shows such as that one, if only because movies are aimed at a more international audience and thus are much easier to get into than say, that kind of sitcoms which I don't think are meant to be consumed outside Spain, not even in other Spanish-speaking countries.

Watching dubbed versions of stuff you like and already know is an useful, autist-proof thing to do when you're learning by yourself. While the translation may not be as faithful or even good, it will help you pick up vocabulary and get an idea of how sentences are structured in conversation.
 
Leer El Quijote para aprender español es como si alguien quisiera aprender ingles leyendo The Canterbury Tales
true lol. dudo que @Insuficiencia renal lo dijera en serio. Yo estaba definitivamente bromeando jeje.
it might be better for a beginner to start with movies and then move on to tv shows such as that one
yeah, I meant that aquí no hay quien viva is probably easier than full on spanish films like Tesis or any Almodóvar film or whatever.
Watching dubbed versions of stuff you like and already know is a useful, autist-proof thing to do when you're learning by yourself.
this is for sure the best method. Also youtubers playing a game you like in the language you’re learning. Lots of vocabulary.
if OP’s girlfriend is Spanish, I still recommend Aqui no hay quien viva just because it’s pop culture (but not the remake, omfg…). If she’s not, then totally not worth it.
 
true lol. dudo que @Insuficiencia renal lo dijera en serio. Yo estaba definitivamente bromeando jeje.
He oido a gente en Espana aconsejar eso sin ironia IRL mas de una vez. Yo hablo español decentemente desde nino y creo que no entiendo una sola palabra despues del primer parrafo.

yeah, I meant that aquí no hay quien viva is probably easier than full on spanish films like Tesis or any Almodóvar film or whatever.
No need to go the artsy fartsy route. Put on some Torrente and let the learning begin.
 
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No need to go the artsy fartsy route. Put on some Torrente and let the learning begin
The artsy fartsy route is so awesome though…. (though Almodóvar is a TOTAL hack:roll:)

The idea of learning Spanish with torrente is amazing and hilarious. OP should do that 100%.

I would tell him to watch El hormiguero (QUE ENTRE LA CHINA) but nobody should be subjected to that horror and I don’t wish that pain on anyone,
He oido a gente en Espana aconsejar eso sin ironia IRL mas de una vez. Yo hablo español decentemente desde nino y creo que no entiendo una sola palabra despues del primer parrafo.
Entendible:geek::heart-full::heart-full:I mean, not even the kids in highschool fully understand it when they get told to read it. I personally didn’t like it that much.

it’s obviously an important piece of literature, but there’s honestly more enjoyable reads even within the realm of compulsory school literature books; Lazarillo de Tormes is underrated.
But it’s not beginner friendly either so that’s neither here nor there lol
 
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There’s a strong chance that I might be going to Japan this upcoming Summer or early Fall, so I’m going to somehow cram and (or procrastinate) learning Japanese with an old dictionary dating back from the mid 1990’s in the next month.
I've heard you can reach JLPT N5 within a few months if you're the type to cram. You're gonna want to pick up more than just a dictionary if you don't speak like Korean or Chinese though. Particles and grammar are pretty important (especially considering particles aren't actually words but more like linguistic functions). A basic word like taberu (to eat) can appear as tabemas, tabemasen, tabemashita, tabemasendeshita, tabemashou, tabete, etc. Luckily there seems to be very few exceptions to rules ("kuru" and "suru" being the main ones, as their verb stem isn't "kuri" and "suri", but rather, "ki" and "shi").

Kanji is also a major thing. Apparently some newbies go "why do I need it when everything can be written in Hiragana?", but it's so ubiquitous that there's some which you'd see all the time. Not to mention it differentiates words that are spelled identically in Hiragana (for example, かみ (kami) can be written as 神 or 髪, the first one means "god", the other one means "hair").

Honestly tho, main thing is just do something every day. Even if you feel like you're getting nowhere. I'm about to hit my second month studying and I definitely look at myself and go "jeez I'm never gonna get past boilerplate phrases", but the fact I can pick out some bits now is good. As well as form basic sentences like あなたはよく日本語のべんきょうしますか?
 
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I downloaded a bunch of russian shit, including a few american cartoons dubbed in Russian for 'comprehensible input'. But tbh, with all the dumb side projects I take on and other hobbies the odds of me learning anything beyond cyka blyat is low.
 
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Mein Deutsch ist scheiße. I can speak it poorly, but write/read it's awful.
 
Yo habla cinco idiomas. (Well, in a liberal sense).

As for Spanish. I'm getting close to conversational level now and am getting used to the verb conjugations. French is also going fairly easy. The complex words in Russian makes it a bit hard but I'm getting used to it, and Japanese is the most time consuming because of it's different word order but I'm getting the hang of it as well. I have language learning books and the app Mondly and both in tandem helped me a lot.
 
After doing nearly 2 months of a respectable amount of study, I feel confident with this japanese tip I've picked up.

Most Katakana words are english words spoken with a stereotypical, maybe slightly racist Japanese accents. Just say the word and don't include sounds that don't exist in Japanese (so get rid of Ls and Vs. And make sure your Es are prounced as "Eh"s)

Hotel = Hoteru
Drive = Doraibu
Elevator = Ereebeetaa
Handbag = Handobaggu
Concert = Konsaato

This works for way more katakana words than you'd expect. Seriously, if you check out the JLPT vocab lists, about half of all Katakana words are basically just "say english but say it slightly japanesey"
 
I was having an interest in learning Ket (A distant cousin of Navajo) however there are very little language learning resources about the language aside from An archive of more than 2000 words but still missing the verb conjugations, cases, plurals, particles, etc. as well A Dictionary regarding the Ket Language. This website also gives you a guide to their alphabet. Here's a summary on the latter site.
Ket is the last surviving member of the Yenisei family of languages. It is spoken along the Yenisei River and its tributaries in Central Siberia. In 2010 there were 210 speakers. The majority of speakers were older adults, and few Ket speakers were raising their children to speak the language. There were no known monolingual speakers. In 2017 there were no remaining fluent Ket speakers.

Ket is also known as Yenisei-Ostiak or Ostyganna qa'. It is related to Yugh or Yug, which became extinct in the 1970s, and Pumpokol, Arin and Kot, which became extinct during the 18th and 19th centuries. These languages are thought by some linguists to be related to the North-Caucasian and Sino-Tibetan languages. Others, such as Edward Vajda, a historical linguist at Western Washington University, believe they are related to the Na-Dené languages of North America.

Ket is taught as a subject in some primary schools up to the fourth grade. After that only Russian is taught.
In other words, this language is severely endangered and would likely be gone within the next decade or so. It's also really recommended you learn Russian (A language I am actually learning) to learn Ket since it has a Cyrillic alphabet script. So unless someone has a learning book on how to learn the language, Ket is likely gonna be extinct which is really sad because this language was the last ancient connection to Afro-Eurasia and The America's. It is a really awesome language although really hard since it's polysynthetic and the grammar rules would drive you bonkers even for a fluent Russian speaker.
 
I'm attempting to properly learn how to speak and read and write in Portuguese. I can understand ~80% of most things though I was never able to learn to read and write. It's a coin flip on whether I can string together a complicated sentence without butchering the verbs. Reading's gotten easier by sounding the words out.

Done a little bit of Spanish seeing as it's so similar to Portuguese, and some French and Japanese. I'd like to learn Russian so I can understand whatever the fuck they're shitposting about. ПЕДИКА
 
I've been learning Japanese for a couple of years now. It's a lot more different than my native language and english, so it's pretty hard. I have a lot left, like expanding my vocabulary, memorising what I have left of the JLPT4 and moving on to the others, getting better with sentence structure... I try to set small goals but life can get pretty busy.

One of the things I've seen recommended the most is immersive learning. Spending 20mins-1hr a day listening to/watching Japanese media. Only thing that's hard about that is I'm not into much Japanese stuff aside from music and maybe some movies. I tried using Duolingo for a bit, but IMO it prevented from learning much, along with already knowing a majority of what it was teaching me. It's also just a time waster if you're not a complete beginner. Really, Youtube and the world wide web have been a major help throughout my learning. I have paid for in-person courses before and while I did enjoy them, they are definitely not cheap. Aside from that, I've never seen a point in paying shit loads of money for lessons when you can find informative lessons about everything involving the language for free online.

One thing that's difficult for finding motivation to learn is that I have basically no use for Japanese in life outside of the internet. I didn't start learning the language because "lol i can watch anime without subtitlezzz!!11!". I started learning it when I was in my mid-teens so I could become an exchange student or something similar, but that time has long passed as I've gotten older. I see people talk about wanting to be an english teacher but there's already a ton of them and even more wanting to be one. Like ChibiNekoDemyx lol But still, it's just something fun and interesting to me.
Sorry for the long tangent but it's nice to see there's a thread for this. Good luck to everyone!
 
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百三十七日間は私の日本語の学です。

I think my grammar is still pretty bad, but I've been focusing really hard on learning kanji up front. I think if I can learn to read the language as its written early on, then should be able to actually read things like news articles on like NHK Easy and hopefully start to pick up the grammar that way.

When I was a little kid reading a lot really helped me develop a strong vocabulary so I'm hoping to replicate that.

Might run into a roadblock, but if I do I'll get through it. Can't be that hard to learn a language, otherwise babies wouldn't be able to do it.
 
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