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What language are you currently learning and why? And how do you do it?
I've been learning la langue française, as the language of renaissance. Also it has a lot of great authors and movie directors, and I think it's just beautiful (not as beautiful as German, but it's another kind of beautiful). So I use the method that works best for me, just take Notre Dame de Paris and translate the shit out of it. Or some other text if I'm feeling lazy to look up the names of clothes from middle ages.
I've been learning C++, very slowly.
In meatspace I've been learning Russian. I'm not familiar with it enough to hold a conversation but its been a fun experience so far!
Я русский, и я надеюсь, что у тебя получится!
Russian is a great language with many great authors and beautiful poetry. It's also useful if you're interested in Russia's history or communism.
Oh hey, C++ is one of my favorite languages. It's a bit tricky to get in if you've never thought about memory management before, but I find it very rewarding to write in.
It's a more elegant language for a more civilized age.
Rust, because I write server applications and low level software for a living.
Oh. You meant real language.
Hungarian, because a good portion of my family is Hungarian, but I was never able to pick up that weird as fuck language.
Et bonjour, j'suis Quebecois, donc je parle un peu francais.
Je ne suis pas Quebecois mais je pense que je peut changer apres aujourd'hui - je suis d'Ontario.
(apologies for horrific french)
It's okay, I grew up and live in an English area of Quebec - I'm slowly forgetting all my French since high school.
And to risk derailing the thread, I haven't been keeping up with Ontario politics at all - is a PC majority really that bad?
Do you remember Rob Ford, the buffoon mayor of Toronto who smoked crack on camera?
His less respectable brother now has a PC majority.
A PC majority is not necessarily a bad thing, but a Doug Ford majority is ridiculous. His economic plans are somehow worse than the liberals. He campaigned on lowering beer prices. He handed out $20 bills to people so they would like him. He said that he would cut funding to the CBC (a nationally funded corporation).
I don't have a problem with the PC party in general, but with this PC party in particular, under this leadership.
I can understand your confusion about hungarian. I find it weird as a hungarian too compared to other languages. Keep on going!
Moi aussi !
I've been busy recently with other things so my progress has been slow. It's been only a few months since I started and I know it takes years of practice to learn a language (before French I studied English), but I really want to learn French and I've been enjoying it so far. When I learned English most of my practice involved writing and reading so my pronunciation isn't very good and I find understanding spoken English a bit difficult. I'm currently trying to improve on those two areas. For French I'm focusing more on listening exercises than I did while learning English.
I watch a few YouTube channels dedicated to teaching French, I have Memrise and Duolingo (I know some of their exercises have errors, I report them when I find them) and I try to watch scenes of movies and shows in French to measure how much I am progressing. Knowing Spanish and English has helped me a lot with vocabulary. Spanish has also helped me when constructing sentences since the word order and many common phrases are similar. Learning the gender of nouns has been difficult, many times they are the opposite of their Spanish counterparts. Conjugating verbs was the hardest part and I still struggle with it, but not as much as when I started.
Hey, as long as it's progress, it's progress! It helps to listen to someone speak in that language while you're doing something else that doesn't require all of your attention (like eating or tidying, or exercising). It increases your exposure time, with is the most important thing when leaning a language. Especially since you know so many words and phrases already.
I'm trying to get into programming, and I'm starting at Lua on Roblox.
On the real-life language side, I'm learning Italian, because most of my mother's family doesn't speak English, only Italian. I'm using Duolingo to do it, and I'm still trying to remember how to use all the different variations of words. And they also speak, like, really fast.
You should ask them to help you. Make them correct you, speak slower, give you tips. Talk in Italian with your wife, even when it's hard! It's the best way to get used to a language.
I've been trying to learn Esperanto. I'm not sticking with it as much as I should, but it's the first (non-native) language I can actually make/form sentences in. The why, I don't really have a great reason, but I enjoy it.
Esperanto isn't difficult to learn or understand (at least, if you speak common European languages), but it's as much of a language as others, so you also need exposure to it in the form of books and speech. Maybe find someone you can talk to!
Gratulojn! Mi lernis Esperanton antaŭ multaj jaroj, sed eĉ hodiaŭ memoras la lingvon sufiĉe por konversi.
I've been trying to learn Japanese for about 5 years now, primarily because I love Japanese culture. Most of my knowledge comes from classes I've taken, sometimes if I'm feeling motivated enough I'll try and learn on my own using memrise or the Genki textbooks. I also listen to Japanese songs sometimes to try and help my comprehension.
I don't know a lot of Japanese or Chinese, but Kanji fascinate me, and I know way more about them than the actual languages they come from.
Kanji are pretty interesting, it's extremely painstaking to try and learn all of the ones to make you able to read proficiently though.
나는 한국어를 배우고있다. But I'm really bad at it. :/
I'm using the lingodeer app on my phone, YouTube videos and lessons with people from Korea.
I'm learning the basics of Hawaiian to prepare for my university year. So far it's all extremely basic - just words or very basic phrases like aloha (hello), a hui hou (formal goodbye), lanei (patio, flat surface), imu (underground oven / firepit), that kind of thing. Someday I hope to say something like the amazingly named "humuhumunukunukuapua'a" fish :P
Do people still speak Hawaiian or does it get pushed out by English? It'd be a shame if the language was only left in textbooks in several decades or so.
Depends. There is an island in Hawaii called Niʻihau whose inhabitants still use Hawaiian as the daily language I believe, but I think in most parts it's been replaced by English. There's an active push right now to try to make the language more popular though, so kind of like the various dialects in Germany, we might see it make a comeback. Knowing a second language is very common in Hawaii, but it's generally tied to where your family comes from; native Hawaiians are most likely to speak Hawaiian, Japanese immigrants are most likely to speak Japanese, I speak German sometimes because my mother is from Germany, etc
And I mean, I'm a relatively recent immigrant here, so it could very well be possible that it's more commonly spoken then I think and I just haven't been exposed to it yet.
I'm learning Spanish cause my school requires me to learn a foreign language.
Kotlin, lately. I've been looking around to see what I'd like to learn after that as well.
I’ve had several languages in school (small country with its own language, also went to schools that were good with foreign languages):
But the language bug never left me, so when Duolingo came along, it became a common habit for me. I already finished French, German, Spanish, and Italian there.
Currently I’m trying to finish Portuguese through Duolingo, but there are many more that I started and haven’t finished yet.
Why? Hmmm, two reasons.
One, I like languages – they’re fun and I think you can feel the culture (and changes in it) through the language as well. Subtle differences, which otherwise get – literally – lost in translation ;)
Two, it feels like common curtsey to me that if I travel to some foreign land, I at least make an effort to understand them and be understood. If at all I can, I try to learn some of the language.
If you need help with Portuguese, I'm a native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese, and a lover of languages (so far English, French, Italian, bit of Dutch, learning Japanese now).
Never checked the Portuguese Duolingo, but their method is pretty nice (I used it to remember Italian), so I hope it's working for you.
Very happy to take you on the offer! Is there any cartoons or webcomics in Portuguese that you would recommend?
I find Duolingo great as a refresher or quick intro into a new language. But the byte-sized lectures alone don’t make you an active speaker. The most important part IMHO is exposure to the language.
Back when you could help translate longer documents (e.g. Wikipedia entries), this helped. At least now they introduced Duolingo Stories (and podcast), which at least helps you with understanding a short story.
You got me there. I'm not very good at cartoons. The ones I usually read were Calvin & Hobbes and Asterix. You can find them in Portuguese, but they obviously aren't native. There was one in Portuguese, about the 3 Amigos by Laerte which was hilarious, although very mature. I think I have some, I'll check.
Duolingo is nice to get you started, but the only way to really learn is to read, listen, talk and then write. Using it is the only way.
Much appreciated, thanks :)
I love languages!
Duolingo must think I'm mad because I'm part way through courses on German, Swedish, Japanese and Welsh. German and Swedish share a similar grammar structure and vocab, so they're more complementary than I realised. Japanese is fun because it's a completely different set of alphabets and Welsh is just because I lived on the border when I was younger and I like the idea of diving into an obscure native language.
I'm a relatively fluent Spanish speaker, which is kind of a cheat code because it allows you to get the gist of Italian, French and Latin. I'd definitely recommend a Romance language to anyone looking to start learning because it opens a lot of doors to other languages.
I was going to come here and say a programming language because I thought I was clever but about 20 people beat me to the punch.
Learning another real life language is appealing to me but I don't really know what language I want to learn or where to start.
If you don't know where to start and you know any of the major European languages (English is good), then I'd recommend Esperanto. It's relatively easy, and there is a lot of people to talk to, there are even native speakers. If you don't want Esperanto, it's completely down to personal preference. Languages like German, French, Dutch can be good starting points as they are relatively easy for English speakers.
I'm also trying to learn French. Part of it is thanks to a University requirement, but I chose French because of the wider world that it opens up career-wise, especially looking at international work. I use Duolingo and Rosetta Stone, but wish I could find a better way.
I've been trying to learn German for a little bit. It seems like a really useful language to know.
And it's such a beautiful language linguistically speaking! And aesthetically, I love consonant clusters and compound words. Don't see why people view it as a harsh language, it all depends on the speaker.
It's a very "synthetic" language. English is kind of synthetic since we have prefixes, suffixes and whatnot, but German can pack a real punch with a single word. And that might be a bit intimidating.
Well, it's not the most synthetic language there is. Go further North for that... But I like straightforwardness of German, like the word for kettle in German is Wasserkocher, or "water cooker". Only if other languages could be this literal... Looking at you, English.
I had to learn Danish and German in school but since I just graduated I don't have to anymore.
I was never much of a language person but I was able to understand some Danes if they talked slowly and if I wanted to I could almost talk to someone and order food.
German was alright, when I graduated I could understand just a little bit but not a lot, I could barely form sentences that made some sense and I was never bothered enough to learn the grammar well. I however was able to understand a small boy that walked past me. He was arguing with his little sister about if I was a girl or a boy since I've got long hair.
I started to learn hebrew. Well I kinda learned the alphabet and started its course on Duolingo.
I find it hard to start as the pronunciation is strange. I mean I can understand the letters now, but phonetically the words sounds different. Extra vowels here and there and I can't understand its logic yet.
Why? I am thinking to move to Israel in the future and I thought it is better to start the language in time.
Python and Japanese. Targets are not connected...
For Python, I'm doing online courses and books. For Japanese, I'm using multiple tools: audio classes for grammar and vocabulary, apps on the phone for the writing, listening to music and trying to read the Le Mans mangas (it's going very very slowly).
Many years ago I tried learning Russian using Rosetta Stone and an ex-wife from Ukraine but only managed to retain a few words! I have also tried some YouTube videos to learn Spanish. I had a co-worker from Mexico to practice with at the time, and the problem was that the videos were teaching textbook Spanish. Apparently there is a significant difference between Spanish spoken by a person from Spain, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. Now I am able to insult/curse, order food/beverages, and locate a toilet in Spanish, but that's about it.
English. I'd like to think mine isn't so bad but I have much to learn.
こんにちは、私は日本語が勉強しています。漢字が楽しみですが、文法は大変かとです。
Hello, I'm studying Japanese. Kanji's fun but grammar's tough.
I'm using WaniKani for kanji and it's working well enough for me, on the grammar side I haven't found anything that has clicked with me yet though I'm contemplating Bunpro as a supplement to whatever I figure out.