Language Learning / Bilingual / Polyglot Thread

[Daddy's Little Kitten]

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[Samson Pumpkin Jr.]

If you're fresh out the gate, Duolingo is pretty nice for being free, though it focuses far too much on vocabulary and less on understanding and speaking a cohesive statement.

that's wrong, sort of. All the stuff you need to learn grammar with is literally not available for phone users. On PC it's also a little frustrating because they're called "tips" when in reality they are not tips, it's essential reading for you to master the language. The duolingo German course is, as I have heard, one of the most comprehensive ways to learn German. I've also heard that there are some real bad courses like Irish and Guarani

 

[Uncle June]

that's wrong, sort of. All the stuff you need to learn grammar with is literally not available for phone users. On PC it's also a little frustrating because they're called "tips" when in reality they are not tips, it's essential reading for you to master the language. The duolingo German course is, as I have heard, one of the most comprehensive ways to learn German. I've also heard that there are some real bad courses like Irish and Guarani

I use it on PC, simple because you can type in the phrases where as the phone forces you to use a word bank (last I checked anyway).
Agreed on the Irish. It was fairly surprising how poorly it was organized on Duolingo compared to many of the other courses.

 

[Observerer]

I speak German (native), Malay (native), English (kind of native), French (highschool) and a bit of Esperanto, Japanese, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic. Languages used to be one of my obsessions, before I real got into cartoons.

This is about learning languages, not showing off how many languages you know a few sentences of.

 

[C.U.N.T.]

Nothing beats living in the country whose language you want to learn. Been said, I know.
I've seen people fresh out of University with a degree in a language go to that country thinking they're hotshit and very quickly be humbled. Not many people actually speak like they do in textbooks.
Having to find somewhere to live, get electricity connected, etc will stress the fuck out of you but you will improve quickly.

Watch DVDs with subtitles, watch them again without. Replay a scene 10 times, trying to repeat phrases once you understand what's being said.

Moonspeak specific, I'd focus on speaking more than reading at first (assuming you can read hiragana, katakana and some basic kanji already).
I'm repeating dick justice's points but:
Don't worry about counters too much, you can get away with hitotsu/futatsu etc and there's not that many esoteric ones that pop up in daily conversation, probably 人 people, 枚 flat things like paper, 本 slim, long things like bottles,台 vehicles (not planes, trains or ships though lol).

The main thing in any language, including your native one, is to have your thoughts understood. It doesn't have to be perfect, polite or polished. If you can have someone understand what you want to say you've succeeded in communicating.

I hope one day to merely grok the difference between 「僕」 and 「俺」, nevermind something as complex as 「非難」 and 「批難
.

僕 is a little weak and borderline effeminate. It's for boys to use when they're speaking politely up until around University age (although when speaking with each other they'll be using 俺 from around age 6+)
俺 is a little rough or informal, best used only with friends and family.
僕 isn't a faux pas for an adult man to use, sometimes they will on purpose to project a more passive/meek air to a "superior" but mature adult men will use 私, either わたし or わたくし in semi-formal or formal speaking situations and maybe 小生 (しょうせい) in formalish writing. It's much more dignified than either 僕 or 俺. They will more than likely use 俺 at home or in casual conversation unless they're 70+.
Not an absolute rule but best I can type out on mobile. Better to err on the side of politeness if you're not sure where you stand.
As an aside, I've heard tough old ladies in the countryside refer to themselves as 俺 and even 我 (われ) but that's not very common.

As for 非難 and 批難, that's gonna get pretty autistic and I'm sick of typing already but it's like purely blaming/criticising a person vs constructively critiquing someone with positive intentions.
criticism vs critique perhaps

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Kind of OT, but it's something I've always wondered. In English we have many animal-specific words for the males, females and young of different species. Here's a few to show what I mean, in the format animal/male/female/young:

Dog/dog/bitch/puppy
Cat/tom/queen/kitten
Duck/drake/duck/duckling
Goose/gander/goose/gosling
Swan/cob/pen/cygnet

My question is: is this unique to English? Is there an equivalent in your native tongue?

 

[Gamer Supreme]

My question is: is this unique to English? Is there an equivalent in your native tongue?

Russian also has this, although I won't be able to provide as many examples, here are some:

Собака/пёс/собака(сука)/щенок
Кошка/кот/кошка/котёнок
Курица/петух/курица/-(?)
Утка/селезень/утка/утёнок

E: Interesting to note that most of the time the word for a female animal is the same as the animal in general.

 

[Some Badger]

Currently trying to learn Russian through Duolingo after about 5 years of saying I'm gonna start learning, mostly so I can level the playing field between me and a Russian friend who is essentially fluent in English. Would also be nice to visit St. Petersburg someday too.

Russiabros, is there another resource I can use to learn Russian besides Duolingo? This is my first time using the platform and I'm assuming there will come a point where it'll outlive its usefulness. My only real means of practicing conversational Russian would be with my aforementioned friend (which is kinda hard when you don't have a bilingual keyboard) or taking a day trip to Brighton Beach and practicing with ordering food/shopping, so I got options, but they're somewhat limited.

 

[Soycast Guy]

I know a few hundred words of German and baby levels of Spanish. That’s about it.

 

[Desu Mountain]

僕 is a little weak and borderline effeminate. It's for boys to use when they're speaking politely up until around University age (although when speaking with each other they'll be using 俺 from around age 6+)
俺 is a little rough or informal, best used only with friends and family.
僕 isn't a faux pas for an adult man to use, sometimes they will on purpose to project a more passive/meek air to a "superior" but mature adult men will use 私, either わたし or わたくし in semi-formal or formal speaking situations and maybe 小生 (しょうせい) in formalish writing. It's much more dignified than either 僕 or 俺. They will more than likely use 俺 at home or in casual conversation unless they're 70+.
Not an absolute rule but best I can type out on mobile. Better to err on the side of politeness if you're not sure where you stand.
As an aside, I've heard tough old ladies in the countryside refer to themselves as 俺 and even 我 (われ) but that's not very common.

Any knowledge you have about what pronouns are appropriate for what age will be outdated in a few years or when you move to a different region, because the truth of the matter is Japanese pronouns are a generational fashion accessory. People use the pronoun they grew up using, thus it becomes the pronoun for adults, kids feel adult pronouns are unfashionable, so they use another pronoun, that pronoun becomes associated with kids' language, but then the kids grow up and keep using the same pronoun. Rinse, lather, repeat.

 

[Dufe]

Abre la contesta!

 

[C.U.N.T.]

Any knowledge you have about what pronouns are appropriate for what age will be outdated in a few years or when you move to a different region, because the truth of the matter is Japanese pronouns are a generational fashion accessory. People use the pronoun they grew up using, thus it becomes the pronoun for adults, kids feel adult pronouns are unfashionable, so they use another pronoun, that pronoun becomes associated with kids' language, but then the kids grow up and keep using the same pronoun. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Are you saying that pronouns such as boku/ore/watashi etc go through generational/cyclical trends? That one generation might use ore/uchi as kids, use that their whole lives and the next will rebel against that and start using watashi or watakushi or something instead?
It doesn't work like that, people use different pronouns depending on what is appropriate to the time/occasion/audience/their position throughout their lives, from the time they're aware of it.
Not sure if I understand what you're saying correctly.

 

[Desu Mountain]

Are you saying that pronouns such as boku/ore/watashi etc go through generational/cyclical trends? That one generation might use ore/uchi as kids, use that their whole lives and the next will rebel against that and start using watashi or watakushi or something instead?
It doesn't work like that, people use different pronouns depending on what is appropriate to the time/occasion/audience/their position throughout their lives, from the time they're aware of it.
Not sure if I understand what you're saying correctly.

Yes, people switch pronouns depending on how formal the situation is. Nobody who wants to keep their job uses the same pronoun when speaking to their boss and when speaking to their drinking buddy at the pub, but for every day situations it pretty much does work like that. These days in standard Kanto-ben Watashi is consered effeminate. Just spend some time on Japanese learning forums and see how long it takes for someone to make a thead titled something like "My Japanese girlfriend told me to switch to Boku because Watashi sounds too girly" or something like that.

Ore is apparently now considered normal enough among adult men that I've seen students who've studied in Japan claiming some of their university lecturers have been referring to themselves as ore during their lectures, something that just a little over five years ago would've been considered rude and inappropriate. Words like uchi are more regional, common in parts of the Kansai region for instance but rarely used in places like Tokyo. I've also seen people say in the past few years that "atashi" is only used by 35+ year old cat ladies. 10 years ago it was considered the teenage girl pronoun.

Watch some old Japanese movies from the 60s and 70s and see how common "washi" was back then. Compare that to the 90s onwards. It's so horrifically outdated it's become the go to yakuwari-go for Old Man speech.

Pronouns become so much less confusing when you realize they're basically the same as clothes. Whether they make you look like a normie, an old fuck, a little kid, or a flaming faggot depends on where in the country you are and what decade it is.

 

[C.U.N.T.]

Yes, people switch pronouns depending on how formal the situation is. Nobody who wants to keep their job uses the same pronoun when speaking to their boss and when speaking to their drinking buddy at the pub, but for every day situations it pretty much does work like that. These days in standard Kanto-ben Watashi is consered effeminate. Just spend some time on Japanese learning forums and see how long it takes for someone to make a thead titled something like "My Japanese girlfriend told me to switch to Boku because Watashi sounds too girly" or something like that.

Ore is apparently now considered normal enough among adult men that I've seen students who've studied in Japan claiming some of their university lecturers have been referring to themselves as ore during their lectures, something that just a little over five years ago would've been considered rude and inappropriate. Words like uchi are more regional, common in parts of the Kansai region for instance but rarely used in places like Tokyo. I've also seen people say in the past few years that "atashi" is only used by 35+ year old cat ladies. 10 years ago it was considered the teenage girl pronoun.

Watch some old Japanese movies from the 60s and 70s and see how common "washi" was back then. Compare that to the 90s onwards. It's so horrifically outdated it's become the go to yakuwari-go for Old Man speech.

Pronouns become so much less confusing when you realize they're basically the same as clothes. Whether they make you look like a normie, an old fuck, a little kid, or a flaming faggot depends on where in the country you are and what decade it is.

Sure, go back further and you've got people using sessha and onushi so I agree there is some generational change/hayari with pronouns.

Watashi has always been too girly for young men to use informally, boku also imo. Maybe I'm just used to country ways.
Atashi always pissed me off for some reason, glad I don't hear that much anymore.

Your analogy comparing pronouns to clothes is a good one.

 

[Dick Justice]

never before have I wanted to drop this inscrutable faggot fucking language than reading the thread's necroposts.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

I've also heard that there are some real bad courses like Irish and Guarani

Agreed on the Irish. It was fairly surprising how poorly it was organized on Duolingo compared to many of the other courses.

I've heard some complaints about the Irish course in that there's only one speaker (as of 2020, I don't know if it's been updated since then) and that there's been virtually no updates and improvements to the course in the last few years. Someone even described the course as Duolingo's "unwanted bastard child", lol.

I'm not learning Irish but Scottish, and in that course there's a speaker who is a bit infamous for being very hard to understand and may have been recorded with a potato. She's simultaneously the best and worst person to learn from because while one one hand she's incomprehensible but also she is definitely somebody's old-ass Scottish grandma who knows the language. The other speakers are mostly pretty clear though, and you can hear regional differences in pronunciations.

I definitely don't like that the "tips" section isn't available on the app, there's so many weird grammatical things that you can't just pick up in context. I recall that the Scottish course was done in a very short amount of time, IDK if the Irish course was the same. I still like using Duolingo though, I supplement it with other learning sources and Gaelic radio broadcasts just to get used to the sound of the language.

 

[Samson Pumpkin Jr.]

Currently trying to learn Russian through Duolingo after about 5 years of saying I'm gonna start learning, mostly so I can level the playing field between me and a Russian friend who is essentially fluent in English. Would also be nice to visit St. Petersburg someday too.

Russiabros, is there another resource I can use to learn Russian besides Duolingo? This is my first time using the platform and I'm assuming there will come a point where it'll outlive its usefulness. My only real means of practicing conversational Russian would be with my aforementioned friend (which is kinda hard when you don't have a bilingual keyboard) or taking a day trip to Brighton Beach and practicing with ordering food/shopping, so I got options, but they're somewhat limited.

Pirate the pimsleur Russian course. Oh, don't want to pirate? Committing crimes is based. Nick Fuentes said so.

Oh, you find 30 minute pimsleur lessons excruciatingly boring? just buy lingq for 200 fucking dollars lmao https://youtu.be/3vAKzpbtNGk
Steve Kaufmann will help you with snake oil

 

[Nick Obre]

Kind of OT, but it's something I've always wondered. In English we have many animal-specific words for the males, females and young of different species. Here's a few to show what I mean, in the format animal/male/female/young:

Dog/dog/bitch/puppy
Cat/tom/queen/kitten
Duck/drake/duck/duckling
Goose/gander/goose/gosling
Swan/cob/pen/cygnet

My question is: is this unique to English? Is there an equivalent in your native tongue?

Not in Spanish, at least not for most animals. Of course we use the masculine/feminine form of the word, and the corresponding diminutives for the young: Perro/Perra/Perrito/Perrita. Cachorro is used as a generic for most youngs, so a Cachorro can be for a puppy or a kitty or some others, but you gotta specify the animal: Cachorro de perro. Cría means the same, but it's a little more formal.
Some animals do have different words for male, female, and young. Toro (bull), Vaca (cow), Ternero/Ternera (calf).
And then there's animals that only have masculine or feminine form, and you have to add "Macho" (male) or "Hembra" (female) to specify. La Jirafa macho (the male giraffe), el Salmón hembra (the female salmon). You don't say El Jirafo or La Salmona. You can't even change the article to say El Jirafa, you gotta say La Jirafa macho.
And then there's animal names that work both ways, but I guess these are mostly words imported from other languages and that don't sound masculine or feminine. Tapir can be male or female, you just use the appropriate article: El Tapir, la Tapir. No need to go "La Tapira".

 

[Kill a Troon for Pikamee]

Can someone recommend a good online course/resources to learn Latin? I've decided to learn Latin

 

[Soseki]

Can someone recommend a good online course/resources to learn Latin? I've decided to learn Latin

I considered picking up Latin also and looked into Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata. The book is completely in Latin but it starts off very simple and you read every chapter several times. There is supplementary material to go alongside such as extra stories for practice or grammar explanations in English when you feel lost. I own the physical books since I prefer working from a physical textbook but I found PDFs of everything as well if you prefer digital.