I saw we had a thread for Japanese but not language learning more generally. do you learn languages? what are your goals? methods, best practices? discuss!!
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I’ve set a goal of getting to B2 in français by next June - planning to go back to montréal for jazzfest - fell in love with the city this past week, have half a mind to try and move here someday , so want to get to a high level in french eventually. never learned french before this and the vowels are tough but the vocab is really easy - tons of overlap with english.
to learn i’ve been doing a combination of things:
Mango Language app (Canadian French) - i can strongly recommend this app for most niche languages, e.g. one of the only apps that has a good Tamil program with native speakers. if in the US you can probably access it through your local library. it has really clear sentence diagramming, pronunciation help , vocabulary flashcard, structured conversations etc- although the pace is a bit slow
Fluent Forever app - I really like this one, it’s developed by a guy who wrote a v influential book on his learning method. i found out about this through his really good youtube video guides on pronunciation. basically it focuses on pronunciation practice through « minimal pairs » using IPA transcription, so you can be very clear with what sounds are being used. and then for flashcards, it uses images instead of english translation, so you can immediately connect the word in a target language to the concept, rather than to an english word. Need to grind this one more. relatively limited language offerings but not an issue for popular languages.
For maximum input I’m doing « Fake immersion » i.e. getting as much french in my ear as i can.
a. I found in montreal i loved seeing and hearing french in context of the actual items being discussed. e.g. going on the metro and hearing « prochain station, Guy-Concordia » obviously this is Next Station. still trying to find a good way of replicating this experience here in the USA, maybe watching a lot of POV videos in Francophone countries
b. Listening to montreal talk radio via the Simple Radio app - great app for radio - see some channels here - but i have yet to find a way of connecting this to the visual side i.e. activating more of the senses to build those connections between words/sounds and concepts. right now i can broadly follow along bc there are so many cognates and i know some commonly used words e.g. aujord’hui, maintenant, etc. also a good way of hearing Quebecois differences in pronunciation and vocab - diphthongs!
I love learning languages but I haven’t gone deep in any in awhile. Spanish is my main secondary language atm, and I’m working through an oral fluency barrier. I mostly engage with it through Spanish subtitles of the DragonBall Series Japanese dub (easier to access than the Spanish dub) and talking with Spanish speaking staff and students at my school.
I understand far more than I can speak. I think the only way that changes is through speaking frequently and building automaticity through routine conversation. Still, “bilingualism” isn’t a single state but a continuum of knowledge and competency. I’ll be happy to stumble my way through a ten minute conversation.
Relearning ukrainian for uh obvious reasons. My speech skills are stuck at “better at understanding than speaking” and have been ever since I stopped speaking it as a primary language when I was like 10 years old.
My formal language learning journey ended years ago and my Spanish skills have atrophied terribly. What little Japanese I learned in a single semester has turned into a formless goo of stuff that I understand if I hear it. Mostly vocabulary and phrases I have heard a thousand times in JP language media.
Attempts to speak Japanese sometimes accidentally turn into Spanglish halfway through a sentence.
If I had any drive I’d brush up on both, particularly Spanish
As of today the state of Berlin has conceded that my German is of a sufficient level (B2) that I can now apply for my passport. Fuck you Brexit.
Japanese progress has slowed a lot this year. I have almost finished my N4 Anki deck but have decreased new cards to just two a day. I feel like I am not improving at all in my speaking despite having weekly 1:1 sessions with a native speaker. I don’t do enough input!
As a true test of my German speaking skills I accepted an invitation to a friends birthday where they were running a murder mystery dinner thing. So I essentially had to roleplay in my non-native tongue which was absolutely terrifying. I didn’t die! People were nice and I only made a couple of mistakes.
Also back to regular 1:1s with my Japanese tutor after a break and although I was really nervious at first, I hadn’t forgotten as much as I had expected. Daily flash cards are exhausting (I think I have almost a two year no-miss streak) but it seems to be working.
I need to get back to flashcards, I find them boring but thru are really good for verb conjugation and well mostly that
otherwise im trying pimsleur and listening to more french, pimsleur is 30 min lessons with listem and repeat and breaks down phonemes in a very good way, it does take time tho
Maltese is a really cool language. It’s kind of like a combination of Arabic and Italian but it sounds more like Arabic to me (I studied Arabic in college for several years). The numbers are virtually the same as Arabic and the general grammatical/word structure is similar. It’s peppered with Italian and English words. Like and “polizia” and “schedule” respectively. It also doesn’t have all the same phonemes as Arabic and has only ever been written usinh the Latin alphabet but with certain diacritics added (like modern written Turkish). Anyway, it’s just a fascinating study in how a country’s language can reflect its history !
I’m going on a trip to Zurich in February and I feel like this would be a good opportunity to brush up on the German I took on high school. I know basically everyone there will also speak English, but.
I have had the realization recently that, compared to other languages which I know some vocabulary for, Spanish sounds like speech in a way that is similar to how I understand English. As in: though I may no the syllabary of Japanese, I still cannot parse words or intonation eas easily as I have realized that I can with Spanish. This gave me a sudden burst of learning confidence that has made me compelled to possibly begin studying Spanish. It maybe something I pursue in the next year!
Going to consider some of the apps and methods mentioned in here if I do go that route.
