Are you learning another language? How far along are you?
Μαθαίνω ελληνικά. - I am learning Greek.
I am at the point of being able to read Greek, introduce myself, ask and respond to "how are you" and how to say "I am still learning Greek can we speak English". haha
I'm learning Python. Not bad, but I prefer C.
I have no experience in C, but I do like Python.
Rust is calling to me
Python also prefers C
2,337 days in on learning German. My goal is to understand all of the band Rammstein's library of work without needing a translator.
I just gave up Duolingo at 1770 days for French which hurt to do. I was mostly just maintaining a streak at this point and with the news of them using AI to replace their employees (even if they retracted it), I decided to quit.
I’ve switched to Babbel now which has been really good so far
That's a pretty long streak 😯
I'm on day 460 learning Italian.
If you want that, then I'd suggest usinh Bussu and Memrise
I've been learning Portuguese for well over two years now. I think I've got a pretty good handle on sentence building. The grammar of verb tense is sometimes still somewhat confusing and I think I've got a lot of words to learn still.
But if I read posts on Lemmy in Brazilian Portuguese, I kinda get the gist of it.
What made you decide to learn Portuguese?
Portugal is a lovely country and I've decided to go visiting it a lot in my life. I feel more comfortable abroad if I at least kind of speak the language. English and German are no issue for me, French goes in a pinch so I'm pretty comfortable in western Europe but I'd like to be more comfortable with the Mediterranean languages. In due time I might try learning Italian as well.
こんにちは！日本語を勉強しています！
I'm 90 days into learning Japanese. Most of that has been learning kana and I'm now working on kanji and grammar. It's very different from English but I really like the way information is conveyed. I'm struggling with grammar stuff right now pretty bad, particularly conjugation, but it'll click eventually. Also the lack of spaces is definitely something to get used to.
Watashi no nihongo wa warui desu yo.
Watashi mo, but getting better every day.
What tools are you using to study?
I started with Duolingo and while it has all the regular duo problems, I think it actually does a good job with the kana stuff. You can turn off the Romaji too, forcing yourself to read. It doesn't teach grammar, though, so I bought Genki Vol 1, working my way through that, and wotaku.wiki has a lot of good resources.
I really like the Cure Dolly stuff for grammar (though she can be difficult to understand, use the youtube transcripts or if you prefer reading a book someone helpfully wrote it all up). Her approach is totally different from the Genki methods, but I find it easier to understand.
I am also using Anki with the Kaishi 1.5k Kanji deck for kanji and vocabulary. This is honestly pretty painful, I've been doing it for like 10 days now and I feel like I'm doing badly every time, but I am improving. I could probably stand to study the radical stuff to understand more how the kanji is constructed but I haven't found a good resource for that just yet.
はい、私は日本語勉強します。(Yes, I'm studying Japanese.) I've been doing it for the past year but not consistently. I can say and understand basic phrases but I'm far from being able to hold a conversation.
Japanese is a language I have on the burner to learn. I have had a full course on it for years but never got around to getting beyond basic greetings.
After I am done learning Greek, I am going to refresh and learn more French, and then Japanese is next because I love Anime and Manga and want to watch/read it as it should be.
I'm studying Japanese for over a year now. I recently had another motivation spike after seeing my favorite singer, Ado, live for the first time and understanding just enough to understand that I don't really understand. I have been doing mostly kanji and vocabulary practice with Wanikani over the past time, but since about 2 weeks, I'm going strong again with daily studying.
I think I'm currently reaching the tipping point where my sentences start to become meaningful, but still take some time to formalize. Having made it a habit to write a few short sentences in 日本語 is something I would definitely recommend, at any level probably. It helps train the learned stuff and adds an immersion factor that is very fun.
Definitely, I try as much as I can to use the Japanese keyboard and reading in Japanese. It's a cool language and same, there are some songs that I like that I have no idea what they're singing about
Damn, I've been learning for half a year and was thrilled to try and read that, but I'm missingbthe Kanjis 勉強. I assume they are the Kanjis for learn (minus the shimasu at the end). And why did you use the Hana 語 Kanji to say JapanESE ? Is it pronounced go there for form Nihongo? Sorry, don't have the Japanese alphabet loaded into my keyboard yet
From what I understand (Don't take what I say as correct as it may be wrong) but when 語(はな) hana, which is derived from 話す(はなす) hanasu which is the verb to speak, is paired with a nationality, with some exceptions of course like English which is 英語(えいご) eigo, it describes a language. So, pair 語(はな) hana with 日本(にほん) nihon, Japan in Japanese, then you get 日本語(にほんご) nihongo, meaning Japanese. Another example is French which is フランス語 (Furansugo).
And 勉強 is the Kanji for べんきょ(benkyo) which means study.
I’ve been learning Dutch, since the Netherlands seems like a nice place to go if I ever have to flee the US. Thinking about joining some Dutch communities here so I can get more “natural” language exposure.
If you ever need a language buddy, let me know.
There is also a Learn Dutch discord that is fairly active.
Duolingo sucks ass for learning languages. Dutchpod101 is pretty good, but the best is a combination of dutch books + listening like dhtchpod101 or some simple news podcasts or so.
I have pretty much been studying a language every day for the past 4 years, 3 years with Japanese and now 1 year with German.
Und wie weit bist du mit deinem Deutsch?
I’m about a month into learning Mandarin Chinese. I expected the character set to be the challenge but really it has been the inflection and intonation that I’ve had the hardest time with so far.
What got you interested in Mandarin?
Honestly I love language and languages in general, so I rarely need an excuse to go study one haha.
That said, Mandarin Chinese was attractive to me for a few reasons.
Firstly, a LOT of people in this world speak it, so it has high utility potential and may even come in handy for me professionally.
Secondly, I think the culture and history of China is interesting and that my default lens for it is likely heavily biased. I’ve always found that reading source material and opposing positions or narratives has helped me understand the truth of a matter with more (albeit still imperfect) clarity.
Tried learning Spanish in school but I never really had a reason to stick with it or keep going. Recently started relearning some vocab and grammar and phrases because there are places I'd like to visit that would be much easier with even just some basic phrases and books I'd like to read in the author's original words and phrases.
Same here. I learned un poco en escuela, but didn't pick up that much. I recently started trying Language Think Transfer. It's kind of fast paced, but it goes over a lot of language concepts to help you translate outside of the classroom. It follows a teacher and student learning and the one I'm doing is 90 lessons. I got to take notes and everything.
I've been learning Japanese for a long time now. The funny thing is that I started at the wrong end by learning kanji first and then moving onto grammar and vocabulary in that order. Avoid what I did unless you want to be proficient at reading it without understanding it!
Although not all is lost, because I'm getting used to reading news and Wikipedia articles without much aid or effort anymore, and spoken Japanese is slowly getting easier. Understanding it is still proving to be a bitch from time to time but that's on me!
Btw, does anyone know of great websites to read Japanese? I browse Gigazine.net quite a bit and many news outlets, but I'd like to mix it up and move away from politics and news in general. I'm still a bit shy about online forums, but maybe I should do that next.
Kanji first sounds pretty good to me. You didn't feel like it worked well?
I went through Genki I with Kanji mostly sidelined, and I felt like I wished I'd known Kanji better first. Having to look up how to write every character is a drag, and I don't think using kana is a much better alternative.
You say you could read but not understand... I feel like that's a step up from the reverse! (That being, "I'd totally understand thus if I could read it") And I find that learning Kanji now is making it way faster to remember vocab.
I guess the lesson is just that it's all important, skipping or putting off any of it doesn't work so well.
You could ask in !japaneselanguage@sopuli.xyz
I know you said transition away from news sites but Easynhk.com is always a staple
Twitter is honestly great since there's so much variety, not to mention there's a lot of artists who'll post full chapters of manga. You just have to curate who you follow to avoid musk stuff.
I'd also say just watch some YouTube videos. It's a good way to practice listening and most YouTubers will personally subtitle their videos as well so you can follow along while reading. A particular favorite way for me is to watch videos of Japanese people travelling/living in America/English speaking places. It's fun seeing their experiences with everyday stuff for us; a channel I watch a lot is called Kira Kira USA. They post videos frequently, use a lot of day to day Japanese, and get to see viewpoints from the various family members.
Good luck!
Thank you for that! Kira Kira USA sounds a lot like what I'm looking for. I really liked Miku's Real Japanese Pocast so this is right up my alley. Hehe
For reading practice, I like using satori reader, the full service is paid but it has really nice grammar breakdowns and i like being able to click on words to see their definition/readings
Thank you! I'll check it out.
I'm learning English. I think I can manage. I'm reading more and faster than most native speakers.
Meine Muttersprache ist Deutsch.
Dieser Kommentarbereich ist nun Eigentum der BRD
Wir sind großzügig und teilen.
A few years ago I considered learning Greek. Abandoned the plan because Greek has the triple whammy:
So: good luck.
I found the alphabet and grammar easy to understand personally, which is why I am able to read before I can do basically anything else.
Greek is spoken in Greece and numerous other countries because of the Greek diasporas in the world.
Coming from a Greek family, while the locals may speak English they generally prefer to and appreciate speaking in Greek especially in Greece.
Thank you for the well wishes.
I’m learning swedish, and have been on and off for almost ten years now. I can read a book in swedish on my kindle thanks to the built in dictionary, but it is so rare that I can talk to someone in swedish that i almost never do it. Listening to Swedish people in real life gets confusing fast as well, as I am just not used to the different pronunciations and the speed i need to process stuff at
That is one of the harder things I have noticed about learning language in general. There is always a clear difference between how a language "should be spoken" and how it actually is in practice with native speakers.
I'm learning Japanese. On and off for years, but mainly the last couple. I'm still only at the advanced beginner stage, trying to work on my Kanji, reading, and listening.
Also learning Spanish, but I feel like I'm in a better spot with it. I took classes in school and have a decent foundation, just need way more practice. It's on the backburner since I'd rather build on my Japanese.
For fans of this thread/topic, check out !languagelearning@sopuli.xyz . They have a weekly thread for progress and a few active folks. Lemmy also has more specific language learning communities that could stand to be more active.
I always find it amusing when I meet people who speak all three languages I do: English, Spanish, and Japanese. Well, admittedly, I also know a bit of French, but it's so similar to Spanish that it feels like cheating to understand so much with so little investment. So yeah, when are you learning French next? 😆
I'm probably going to start learning spanish again, and I feel the same way you do about french, given I'm a native french speaker.
Coincidentally, I speak English, French and Japanese, and am learning Spanish (and I learned German and Sesotho in the distant past). I cheated, however all except Spanish were learned at least partially by immersion in places where they speak it.
LOL, I did take a semester of French in high school.
I guess it makes sense as an overlap - North America and Europe both have primarily English, Spanish, and French speakers in close vicinity. And Japanese cultural exports are just really popular.
Thanks for the suggestion!
I started learning Swedish yesterday. My native language is Dutch. I started by reading a pronunciation guide, but (and this is so childish) I had to put the book away for laughing so hard after reading the Swedish word for meatballs: köttbullar.
::: spoiler Profanity In Dutch, the word "kut" means "cunt". It isn't as profane as the English word and is also often used for the well-known genitals. The guide explained that Swedish "ö" is pronounced like Dutch short "u". After this I opened my Swedish story book and the first picture had the word köttbullar in it. I then heard myself very carefully enunciate what in Dutch sounds like "cunt balls". Couldn't stop laughing. :::
Today I will make a second attempt. I hope I can keep it contained to a short chuckle.
Thank you for sharing this absolutely hilarious story. Gave me a hearty laugh in the morning. haha
Good luck getting passed it! I know I wouldn't be strong enough. haha
I've been doing a few Duolingo lessons a day in Japanese for a couple years now. At the rate I'm going it'll be a decade before I'm even slightly able to understand the language, but I don't mind - it's already been well over a decade since I first tried to learn it, so as long as this pace is sustainable, I'll still be a lot further along than if I'd tried too hard, gotten burned out, and quit for a decade again.
If you looked at my Duolingo, you'd think I was pretty fluent in Japanese. But if you look at me talking to a Japanese person, you'd think I knew very little Japanese.
I'm learning Esperanto because everything I do has to be esoteric. I understand the fundamentals of the language and my pronunciation is perfect i'd say. I've been learning for a few months and I can read and write basic sentences. I also want to learn Spanish (mostly to flirt) but it's hard to find the time. I'd also like to learn Indonesian, German and Afrikaans.
Edit: I'd also love to learn Polish but it's so fucking hard.
Edit 2: Oh and Finnish. I really like languages and I get excited about them.
I learned a bit of Esperanto, many years ago. It's crazy how easy it is to progress in that language, compared to natural languages.
I think you could enjoy looking into toki pona.
I'm familiar with it. I have Sonja Lang's book on it.
everything I do has to be esoteric
👑
I'm learning English and a little bit of Czech (stopped a while ago because of my lazyness but want to start learning Czech again). I think I'm still speak badly in English but I understand it very good.
I'm from Ukraine btw
(Also does programming languages count? I love Rust)
Currently taking Japanese classes for fun. I'm about two years in and can have very basic conversations.
Took three years of German 20+ years ago and have German friends (and read German lemmy) so can practice sometimes.
I'm terrible at all of them and not that great at English either. I tend to "vomit language" moreso than speak well.
我的汉语越来越好，写，说，简单的没问题，但是比较复杂还要多的练习。其实说最近练习地不周到。
I've been learning Portuguese (Brazilian) off and on for a while. I'm mostly okay-ish at reading it, but it's nearly impossible for me to understand it when spoken.
Am I learning a new language? No.
How far along am I? About halfway.
You're killing it, keep it up! 💪
J'apprends le français, C''est ma troisième langue. Il va ça va, et je suis A2 après ~8 mois, mais j'ai un amie qui m'aide aussi
Je suis en train d'apprendre le français aussi. J'espère que je comprendrai cette langue bientôt et que je pourrai écrire un paragraphe plus long. J'espère que vous passez un bon moment avec cette langue.
Bonne chance!
Je découvre que j'aime le français :) C'est difficile mais très intéressant. Mon français n'est pas parfait (et je fais beaucoup d'erreurs), mais j'apprends quelque chose nouveau touts les jours et je voudrais bien parler en français avec mes amis québécois.
Maintenant, je lis un petit livre de fantaisie sur les lieux hauntes. C'est bon et pas dur!
French; Next is to start B1 level
Μιλάω ελληνικά, το πιο δισκολο είναι η συγγραφή.
*δύσκολο Συγγραφή would be used to describe authoring a book. You could use γραφή or γράψιμο or a verb construction να γράφεις "to write".
Σωστά, είναι καιρός που δεν χραφω ελληνικά 😅 :)
tryin to learn Korean, not very far since I JUST started learning lol
Nederlands (Dutch), my native language is Portuguese and I also speak English.
"Hallo, ik ben Cally en ik spreek een beetje Nederlands." probably translates to "Hello, I am Cally and I speak a bit of Dutch."
I kinda suck at learning languages so I'm still at what I assume is A1 level, I think my pronunciation is ok, though. Idk how to speed up language learning but I have set my phone to Dutch and that kinda helps. For example, "Instellingen" means "Settings"
Lekker bezig!
I am learning German and I can read simple sentences with context, I still can't understand it by listening
Ich lerne Deutsch, und
opiskelen suomea, ja
estoy aprendiendo español también.
Furthest along with Deutsch, because I did it at school (decades ago), not making huge progress gains with any of them because Duolingo, but it fits in my day so easily and the repetition is effective I think.
I’ve been learning Russian for a few years, I’ve also started learning Serbian and Ukrainian a little bit.
I can speak Russian pretty decently, it’s my girlfriend’s first language so I’ve had a lot of regular practice with it, I don’t consider myself fluent at this point but I can hold conversations with native speakers without too much of an issue
With Ukrainian I can understand quite a bit but I haven’t had much practice speaking it with other people at all yet. I have the basic phrases memorized, things like привіт, будь ласка, доброго ранку, добрий вечір, дякую, як справи, etc. but I don’t think I could hold a conversation speaking only in Ukrainian. I’ve been studying it kind of off and on for a year or so, and I listen to some Ukrainian music fairly often
Serbian I’ve been struggling to learn, I’ve been working on it for about 5 months. I think learning Russian first made it weirdly harder since the sentences are structured fairly differently. When it’s written, I can understand quite a bit, but if someone walked up to me and just started speaking Serbian I’d be completely lost
I'm not but I'd love to learn some other romance languages, Italian and French would be my choices right now.
Been studying French on and off since high school, but still don't feel far along at all. Ha. Much better than my Spanish and German though!
I started Korean a few days ago. I am still in the "learning how this all works" phase. I'm frustrated by my slow reading speed and inability to find something to help that readily.
Learning Swedish now, since I already speak passable Norwegian, it's not the hardest endeavor.
This might be a weird question, but: Did you have a particular reason to learn Swedish or Norwegian, or is it just for fun?
I've been interested in learning Swedish or Danish, but I haven't been able to find a practical reason to. I hear that almost all of them speak English pretty well, and will prefer speaking English with you if you visit their country. (The curse of being a native English speaker who likes languages.)
I would have had easy access to a native Danish speaker, but sadly, my Mormor ("mother's mother") passed away just last night. Her English was perfect as she lived in the US for >70 years, but her beautiful accent is what originally sparked my interest in Scandinavian languages.
So sorry for your loss!
As for my motivation, I did a year of work & travel in Norway after finishing my bachelor's and picked up enough to be conversational. Actually I tried staying afterwards but could only score student jobs and temporary stuff, so decided to build my CV a bit more before going back.
Life took a few unexpected turns and instead of returning after a couple years, I ended up working all over Africa and then Asia for 15+ years, but I still kept going, thinking I would one day return.
Now that the time might have come in the near future (= next 2-ish years), I was looking more and more into the requirements and figured out that the wealth tax would break me - I'm by no means filthy rich, but they tax you on assets above ~160k USD, and since I don't qualify for any government pensions due to my erratic work, I've set aside a good chunk of investments for my retirement that'd effectively be crippled in its growth potential. The only thing exempt are a primary residence there (considered to 25% of its value) and local government pension accounts.
That pretty much killed Norway for me, so I'm now looking at Sweden instead, where there's no such thing, and cost of living are also lower. So I decided to switch over to learning Swedish instead, it's not far off. I was there last year and was able to have a pretty normal conversation with a real estate agent where I spoke Norwegian and he Swedish, and we understood each other just fine.
For visiting only, English is just fine. But if you plan to work and socialise long term, it's absolutely essential to integrate.
I’m learning French, when I remember to. I did not put too much effort into it until now, because I understand a lot from articles, conversations, youtube videos. It is similar to Spanish, which I learnt up to native level I guess, also mostly speaking without a foreign accent. But back to French, I find it very hard to write it, so many accents and ‘s and letters that are not read. I have what they call a “musical ear”, so I do distinguish a lot of sound variations and tones, but the writing in French is brutal.
Another language I will forever learn and not be able to get to it as with my Spanish or English is German. I mess up the articles all the time, I am sure, but I just keep going. I am perfectly comfortable reading German literature or having a conversation, but it bothers me that after so much time being exposed to it, I still make poor choices of articles.
I started at some point learning Portuguese, but I found it frustrating that it was so similar to Spanish, all the words would come in Spanish in my mind.
If I could, I would love to also know Greek, Danish, Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic and many others probably.
Да, я изучаю русский язык, но не знаю какой у меня уровень, может быть где-то B1-B2. К сожалению мне не с кем говорить в последнее время 😪
I am also trying to improve my English recently, mostly because I am pretty bad at speaking, and pronouncing stuff correctly.
I want to learn another language as well, maybe I will return to Czech (I was learning it for 1 month some time ago, and don't remember much, although I understand fairly amount because I am Polish).
I started learning Russian 2 and a half years ago now maybe, mostly in uni classes. Haven’t done anything in a while though. I generally think slavic languages are cool and would like to learn another actually.
Я начинала учить русский может быть 2 с половиной года назад, в основном в универе, но ничего не делала за учение в последнее время. В общем я думаю, что славянские языки круто и действительно хочу бы учить другую.
Здравствуйте друг студент! I've been trying to learn it as well over the past 2-ish years, and it has proven to be a much slower progress than I had hoped for. How are you faring? And what methods do you use to learn?
Eh, as I said I haven’t been keeping up with it and I’m starting to forget stuff. I should get back into it. I did pretty good though when I was actively learning. I’d say even one of the best in the class that were learning it from scratch.
I went to Russian classes in uni for a bit over one year, and at home I did the exercises in the workbooks we had for the course + studying vocabulary with Anki. Basically the classic way to learn a language in school.
I have been learning Polish on-and-off for a couple of years now.
Здравствуйте все!
I've been actively trying to learn Russian for about two years now, and I'm still not very capable of having even simple conversations, due to the great difficulty of constructing sentences in my head. I guess I let the grammar get to me, with all the various prefixes and suffixes, so I choke. That, and the positioning of the words in a sentence. And also the concept of cases (all 7 of them). I know English and Norwegian from before, none of which has this slavic sentence logic/rules, so I find it incredibly difficult to remember/associate words/variations with their use.
I use Duolingo, Babbel, and sometime Rocket Language, in addition to trying to expose myself to having to read/listen/reply to other native speakers, but man am I having a hard time. Any suggestions?
I would suggest going to the Library and seeing if they have a Russian language course, or finding one at a book store if you can afford it. I find having an actual structured course helps me in my learning, and it will usually include resources like audio.
I had the same problem when I started learning Russian and honestly the only thing that helped me improve was just speaking and writing in Russian more
the grammar is also really hard, but I found it best to just not overthink it and just get used to speaking and making mistakes but improving over time. It's easier to focus on correcting grammar when you're more comfortable just constructing sentences in that language in general and don't have to think as hard for each word you want to say
Ullyfay uentflay.
I just started taking Spanish classes. I had one year of Spanish in elementary school and I’m fluent in French, so it’s been pretty simple to understand Spanish but I need to keep working on speaking. I’ve also started watching Spanish language tv, to try to pick up more vocabulary.
Decided to take it to be able to speak with more people in my community, plus I love visiting Mexico and South America.
I've been trying to learn russian but it's been hard. I mostly know how to read Cyrillic and a few words and phrases. Everything else has been pretty difficult to make it stick in my head.
Hmmm aku sedang belajar Bahasa Indonesia sekarang but I'm terrible at it.
I'm currently learning Catalan, doing Duolingo until I find some class (which there should be one in a couple of months). It's relatively easy for me since I already speak fluent Spanish and Portuguese and understand almost everything in Italian.
I'm learning a bit Dutch. We're quite close to the dutch border and have been going there for vacation and shopping for a while now and would like to be able to at least order food/ask for the toilet etc.
I'm learning Irish. My schedule is crazy busy, but I do a lot of driving for work so I listen to Irish speaking lessons. I also do this only while I'm on the road because my Irish boyfriend has no idea I'm doing this so I can speak Irish on our wedding day.
I can say things like where I've been yesterday, where I am today, where I'll be tomorrow, what are you doing, what were you doing, it was great craic, I don't know, I'd like a pint of Guinness, please.
I'll probably get made fun of for speaking the Ulster dialect (his family is all Dublin), but my favourite instructor that I've found is from Belfast and at least I'll be able to speak it. ☘️
I can't learn any languages because I have ADHD
Your english seems okay
yeah that's what you think