The Language Learning Thread - Interested in learning a new language? Already learning a language and wanna share your experiences? Need to find a partner to practice with? Come sperg here!

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I found the best way to keep the Hiragana and Katakana memorized is to is to try to read in Hiragana and Katakana enough times until I get speedy enough at reading them. It's how I also got my Russian Cyrillic and Spanish pronunciations together.

I have chosen these languages but plan to learn French if I am really good at at least 2 of them.
 
I've seen some languages resources shared in this thread so I figured I'd share some as well. I've learnt a bit of Japanese, but I am currently looking into German and Spanish. If anyone could post more of them, that would be appreciated. Here's what I've got:

General resources:
https://www.duolingo.com/ - Obvious choice, pretty good for supplementing your learning. The cartoons are annoying to me.
https://www.lingodeer.com/ - Found it pretty good and it has a selection of languages. The main issues with it are i) you have to pay for it, around £14 a month which is quite expensive. You can pay for lifetime access as all year round there is a "75% discount" on lifetime access. ii) The test-out feature to skip over sections you already know doesn't add the lesson contents of those sections to your revision.
https://apps.ankiweb.net/ - Flashcard tool for language learning, pretty customisable. Good choice for language learning, you just need to find a good deck.

Japanese resources:
http://japanese-lesson.com/ - Good for Hiragana/Katakana.
http://studykanji.net/ - Good for studying Kanji.
https://www.japanesepod101.com/ - Good for listening exercises. You listen to a conversation in Japanese and then the conversation is broken down and explained. It also has resources along with most podcasts to help you. - This company also does this for other languages, there's a Polish version of it for example.
https://easyjapanese.net/ - Japanese articles that are sectioned based on how difficult the vocabulary is. Very good for reading. - The company behind this also does it for other languages too. I saw one for German.
Dictionaries:
I've found Takoboto good to go to if Jisho doesn't have what you're looking for.

Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4071737C12790477 - Japanese for beginners, teaches a lot of the basics of Japanese conversation along with a few words.
https://www.youtube.com/@YukoSensei - Yuko Sensei does Japanese lessons on her channel.

Books:
Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig - His idea is that you look at kanji and create little stories for each symbol to remember the meaning of it. It does not teach you the pronunciations.
 
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Lunar Eclipse Paradox said:
I found the best way to keep the Hiragana and Katakana memorized is to is to try to read in Hiragana and Katakana enough times until I get speedy enough at reading them. It's how I also got my Russian Cyrillic and Spanish pronunciations together.

I have chosen these languages but plan to learn French if I am really good at at least 2 of them.
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Agree, currently learning Japanese although i would add that something i tend to do is to attach words or things to the characters for example ホ(Ho) if i stuck i just think "HOly cross" and my mind picks it up, nifty trick to learn characters even if it is dumb.

At the end of the day is all about practice and memorization, then characters and words just start to click.
 
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I've bought resources to learn French and noticed how incredibly similar it is to Spanish which now I am capable to forming sentences in. Not only do I really want to learn Spanish and French but I also use them to help me with learning Japanese and Russian too.

Parasma said:
Any good resources for learning Finnish? I wanted to start learning it for a couple of month but hadn't found decent sources
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I've heard Finnish is notoriously hard because of how synthetic it is. I suggest picking up vocabulary on Finnish and worry about conjugations and cases later. That's what I did with Russian. I recommend learning an easier language that's fairly more synthetic than English such as Spanish or French to help you with learning Finnish so you could get used to learning a demanding synthetic language more easily.
 
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I've realised when it comes to learning words, it's a good idea to learn them from a sentence. It's easy to remember than trying to remember the word on it's own.

I think I will stick with Japanese but try getting some German in. I tried Spanish but I wasn't really interested in it. I don't plan on going to Germany, apparently German is a very valued language in the UK. Although, with AI coming along, language preferences for jobs will probably drop...
 
Lunar Eclipse Paradox said:
I've bought resources to learn French and noticed how incredibly similar it is to Spanish which now I am capable to forming sentences in. Not only do I really want to learn Spanish and French but I also use them to help me with learning Japanese and Russian too.


I've heard Finnish is notoriously hard because of how synthetic it is. I suggest picking up vocabulary on Finnish and worry about conjugations and cases later. That's what I did with Russian. I recommend learning an easier language that's fairly more synthetic than English such as Spanish or French to help you with learning Finnish so you could get used to learning a demanding synthetic language more easily.
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I speak Belarusian and know Russian too, cause too state languages in my country. Is it enough of a background to try to learn Finnish, or I should try something like French/German/Spanish?
 
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Parasma said:
I speak Belarusian and know Russian too, cause too state languages in my country. Is it enough of a background to try to learn Finnish, or I should try something like French/German/Spanish?
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If you speak Russian and Belarusian. You're probably at a very good start when it comes to learning Finnish. I'm only starting to pick up on Russian.
 
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I decided to learn Korean because I've been very interested in Korean culture as of recently and I needed another SOV language so I can compare it with Japanese (Another language I am learning). Needless to say Korean's words are even more complicated than Russian (Another language I am learning). So now that's 5 languages I am learning.

Edit: I also decided to pick up Mandarin as well. But yeah. 6 languages I am learning and I'm gonna end off at that for awhile. The reason I picked Mandarin is to compare with Korean and Japanese.
 
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Lunar Eclipse Paradox said:
I decided to learn Korean because I've been very interested in Korean culture as of recently and I needed another SOV language so I can compare it with Japanese (Another language I am learning). Needless to say Korean's words are even more complicated than Russian (Another language I am learning). So now that's 5 languages I am learning.

Edit: I also decided to pick up Mandarin as well. But yeah. 6 languages I am learning and I'm gonna end off at that for awhile. The reason I picked Mandarin is to compare with Korean and Japanese.
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How do you handle learning so many at once? Do you practise all of them every day? How do you make sure not to mix them up?
 
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GratsTheat783 said:
How do you handle learning so many at once? Do you practise all of them every day? How do you make sure not to mix them up?
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I practice around 5 - 60 minutes per day switching between the ones I am learning (mostly learning 3 languages a day on any 6 languages) and I do it almost every day and breaks lasting a solid week is relatively uncommon. And even though a lot of languages have so many things in common, I very rarely mix them up probably because my accent has capabilities of switching whenever I speak them that it becomes easily distinguishable. (Example, I sound deeper when speaking Russian. I speak in Tenor but in Russian, That's Baritone level.)

Also, the best thing about this. Russian, Spanish and French has it's similarities and Japanese, Korean and Mandarin (Including Cantonese) has it's similarities. And it's just fun pointing out the similar words.

Spanish: Que hora es
Russian: Который час

Japanese: Taiyo
Chinese: Taiyang
 
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Just started learning Arabic and it's such a beautiful language. I set my language simultaneous learning cap at 7. I picked the most widely spoken languages because they're just much more easier to maintain. I've now had conversations in Spanish which is good. And I got to practice with many people with most of the languages I picked. And to be honest, I'm autisticaly invested in language learning.
 
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I’ve been doing Duolingo daily for ages just so I get a little bit of practice.

Busuu has been good as it explains grammar rules but it does seem to do that once that then been shocked that you haven’t mastered the language skills after reading one slide.

Apps are a good starting point and great for a little daily practice but I’m really needing to attend a an in person course.
 
FedPostalService said:
I’ve been doing Duolingo daily for ages just so I get a little bit of practice.

Busuu has been good as it explains grammar rules but it does seem to do that once that then been shocked that you haven’t mastered the language skills after reading one slide.

Apps are a good starting point and great for a little daily practice but I’m really needing to attend a an in person course.
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I use the app mondly to teach me the essentials of each language, I then buy books in these languages and ask people if they speak the language I am learning.

For those trying to learn Korean Hangul like I am. These 4 pictures will help you know how it works.
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So apparently I'll have to teach myself fluent German in record time very soon, or it's prolly back to the Karoo with my scrawny arse. Now I speak enough Afrikaans and decent Dutch so that's a headstart of sorts I reckon, but the prospect of having to learn how cases work frightens me. Any tips?
 
I really want to learn Mandarin so that I can visit China and read my xianxia web novels before they are translated
 
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Anyone tried Pimsleur? I’ve download one of their starter level audiobooks on Audible but haven’t tried it yet. The online course seems exspensive.
 
General Woundwort said:
I'm trying to learn German but I have no idea where to really start. Is the self-teaching course from the Goethe Institute any good? Do I just brute force it and turn all my settings on everything into German? I've got some vocab books and some 'learn to read' books but it's just memorization, not how to use the language. Duolingo is okayish for basic vocab but it feels kinda shitty cause I know I should be using something else.
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Deutsch Welle was helpful for me especially with pronunciation. It's all free as well
 
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