See title. I've been to quite a few local language meetups and saw lots of people IRL who are learning languages: wondering how are y'all doing too

For myself... learning French due to necessity. I am making progress, just veeery slow. I underestimated how difficult it would be (a lot of vocabs between English/French are similar... but the languages themselves are not!)

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 21 points 8 months ago (2 children)

English, being born in non english speaking country significantly boosts your chances of being proficient in two languages. I understand everything I read on the internet pretty well, but my writing skills are not perfect, and speaking is the hardest part.

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago* (1 child)

    i found an easy and fun way to learn to speak it: take your favorite sitcom series, preferably a fast paced one with subtitles. pause after each sentence and try to repeat it. in the beginning you may have to learn the difficult sounds with help from youtube. went from being too ashamed to even speak it to fluent in a few months. and i used the office and brooklyn nine nine.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Spanish and it’s slowww. I dont have a lot of time and I’m stressed out so it’s hard to consistently get listening exposure in.

    I like language transfer and assimil and will be trying out dreaming Spanish for more listening but when I finally have free time I usually don’t want to do more learning lol

    So yeah…it’s rough, I really need more discipline

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Te recomiendo unos podcasts.

    Por si no lo sabias los simpson son muy populares en latino america y el doblaje latino es muy bueno.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago

    When I was in high school, the sequel to my favorite game didn't get translated, so I convinced my parents to sign me up for Japanese lessons on the weekend. But I didn't get all that far in it on account of having too much actual schoolwork to keep up with.

    Last year I picked it back up again, just for fun, and I'm making a lot more progress using Renshuu than I did in a classroom environment. Earlier this year I bought one volume each of a bunch of different manga series, slowly working through the pile with the help of vocab lists from LearnNatively and Wanikani. So far I've finished Yotsubato, RuriDragon, and Look Back.

  • source
  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago* (5 children)

    Japanese! I originally thought I might make quick progress, but there were surprising number of characters I've never seen before. So I just decided to learn everything from complete scratch so that I don't ever have to backtrack. Everything is written in hiragana at the current stage, and that's throwing me off a lot too. But I have to learn how they're read anyway so, oh well.

  • source
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] [S] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Ohh nice! If you happen to be interested in manga: someone at my local Japanese language exchange recommended よつばと! which seemed like a cute & quite useful manga series for learning Japanese

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
    [–] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    I'm speedrunning French, trying to focus on Québécois you kinda end up learning traditional French too along the way. This is my third language.

    • Duo for daily practice and grammar, but it makes a lot of mistakes
    • Work group to practice speaking
    • I switched various daily apps to French
    • Grabbed a few comic books in French, happy to say I'm now past those :)
    • Québécois friends for slang and informal reference
    • Recently been playing Pokemon ZA in French (extra fun since it's in Poke-Paris), quite pleased with it!

    I'm about a year in, and I'm low-level conversational. Solidly A2. Basically just taking any resources I can find, I plan to look for a proper class soon.

    Le chemin est très agréable, je le trouve bien!

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    Pokemon Z-A in French is perfect, lol! I've been playing it for language learning too (Japanese). I think those games are pretty great for it, good low-stakes, familiar games that have a lot of text, but are also kid-approachable. Would be nice to have voice acting, but otherwise fantastic language immersion games.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    Also check out !languagelearning@sopuli.xyz for this kind of discussion on the regular!

  • source
  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    I've always wanted to learn Korean and I tried multiple times but never really stayed motivated enough to keep at it. How do you stay motivated?

  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] [S] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I... don't think I need motivation when my employer, my landlord, and even my government are legally obligated to establish all legal communications in French (facepalm)

    I also suffered from motivation before moving here though, so I'd love to know as well

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 7 points 8 months ago

    Spanish. I'm not consistent and go through bursts but I know more now than I have before.

  • source
  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago

    私は日本語を勉強します (I've been studying Japanese) I've been doing it just because it sounds cool and I want to go to Japan one day for a visit. I haven't studied for a bit due to life getting in the way but I can form simple sentences but I'm far from being able to hold a conversation

  • source
  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    I decided to teach myself Russian and Japanese when I turned 40. It's been over a year and making good progress in both. Am still at a beginner lever but pretty happy with progress.

    what sucks is when i tell people this they think i am weird or mentally ill. nobody i know or have met in the past year has seen it as a cool or fun thing.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Well I think it's cool! I studied Russian at uni and I'm taking Japanese evening classes at the moment, so I know both the struggle and the joy of learning both.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Esperanto, very slowly, using Duolingo. Why? Just because.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    German. I'm not that motivated nowadays but my level improved a lot from the intense work I did between February and June this year

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Japanese. I'm not focused or committed enough.

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago*

    fwiw i've tried to learn it 3 times. 2 failures were because the classes i was taking was full of tourists who dind't really want to do the work. and the teachers sucked. it would take us like 4 classes to learn basic greetings.

    i'm doing well now because i'm doing it alone and away from the tourist classes. just get Genki or Japanese for busy people and work on it an hour or so each day.

    if you can't do that you won't learn it. it's not hard, it just requires a lot of time commitment.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago*

    Before a 4 month stay in Vienna, I tried upping my German game: consumed lots of German-language media (news, books, videos), attended a language course, really tried immersing myself as well as I could. It was enough to get by okay, but I felt frustrated not being to follow along always or express myself precisely. Since coming back I haven't been able to pick it up and in fact have come to associate the language with the sad realization that it's behind me.

    Edit: just a positive note, I can now easily follow along with German-language talks, musicals, articles etc which feels like a superpower!

  • source
  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    I’m also learning French right now. I took Spanish in high school, which helped a lot with understanding Romance languages and the basics of learning another language. I’ve found that learning vocabulary French is fairly similar, but listening and understanding is so much more difficult because it’s so much less phonetic than other languages.

  • source
  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    Does Python count? If so, it's going okay.

    I keep bouncing around on the sources for where I'm studying from. I started with w3schools, but didn't like it. I went to https://programming-24.mooc.fi/ and I like it. I'm currently also watching these videos being used for prep on a certification, but they're not great - the slides sometimes will have errors (print statement without closing parantheses for example) and sometimes the instructor will read one thing but the slide says something else (instructor says "max" but slide says "min" - luckily this time it was just the names of variables rather than actual functions or something). They also don't go in depth on a lot of methods, and there's no good exercises or anything. But at least it'll get me a cert if I pass the tests, which is paid for by my work.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    My shameful secret is admitting that LLMs are great for things like getting comfortable with a programming language. They're generally trained on the same publicly available samples as these courses and the conversational extrapolation is great for identifying concepts you forgot the technical terms for (ie. "How would I do this in python: [Java code]")

    Vibe coding sucks, but walking through some examples with an LLM and a REPL can save hours of navigating docs or Hello World blog posts.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Ik versta jou niet! 😇

    What's your motivation? The goal of most people that speak Dutch is to learn something else so we can also be understood by the rest of the world 😄

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    Aah nice, yeah we're sadly not at a point where you can get by in many social situations with English only just yet. And perhaps not for a long while if this nationalism trend continues :|

    I assume this means you've got enough people around to practice writing with or direct questions to, but if not just shoot me a message (I speak it natively)

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    I moved to Denmark, so I'm learning danish now. It's one of the languages of all times for sure. Pronunciation is hyper specific and very different than the written words.

    But, depending on the day, getting there. I deal with a lot more of it at work than most in my situation, so it's expediting my learning (and a massive imbalance to my free time)

  • source
  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago* (1 child)

    我正在学习中文。中文很难!

    I took a break from learning Chinese for a while due to personal stuff being busy and am trying to get back into it. Chinese is a very logical language, I think, and learning it is fun and interesting but challenging. I was just about HSK1 level, I think, before I stopped. I gotta boot up peppa pig in mandarin again - 你好小猪佩奇老师,我是你的学生!

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Hey, 我也会中文。我在广州出生,在中国读书至到二年级,然后就出国了。我会粤语和国语 (aka: 普通话),会基本的字(会看不会写 xD,用拼音或粤拼来打的字)。很 Interesting 的语言。Many words/phrases are self explanatory, unlike English, lol.

    I think the grammer and sentence stucture is a but non-standard because I think Cantonese sentense structure is a bit different(?) and the English as my now-primary language messes with it a bit. I can understand like most of Mandarin or Cantonese drama without subtitles, except maybe an occasional vocabulary that I don't have in my Lexicon yet.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago*

    很酷!很多的人也很多的我的朋友 from my hometown & childhood 和你一样来自中国。我喜欢能看到 the etymology in a 汉字。

    I wish 我的中文是足够好 to understand 中文 TV. 老师小猪佩奇不是有趣的。

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    Español, Deutsch, Français, a me ka ʻŌlelo.

  • source
  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    I've started learning Catalan, it's going slower than I hoped because the class I'm taking is filled with people who already speak the language and spend the entire class discussing about technicalities instead of letting the teacher teach.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
    [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    German and Spanish. It’s ok, though every time I think I have an alright though basic understanding, someone starts speaking way too quickly and it all just falls apart. Also, speaking is difficult, and reaching for the correct words in the correct language is even harder. Many times I want to answer in German if someone asks me something in Spanish, and vice versa

  • source
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Not actively learning a language, but I have a degree in Spanish, though it's been years since I used it professionally and I no longer regard myself as proficient. Before that I took Latin throughout high school (a rare treat in a US public school AFAIK), and attempted to learn Mandarin via Duolingo in 2019.

    As it happens I also construct artificial languages as a hobby after the manner of Tolkien.

  • source
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    I need to learn German, it's literally life or death situation for me, if I don't learn it very soon, I will not be able to remain where I am, and if I go back to the country I'm from they will kill me either slowly or quickly, but not pleasantly for sure.
    The learning process is going not great. Not great at all.

  • source
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    I'm on a strong streak with my Japanese self study. Been going for over a year and I'm somewhere around N4-N3 level. It's very rewarding to understand long conversations, but it also feels like progress is slow. My grammar is pretty good now, but learning vocabulary and kanji is like a Sysyphian quest.

    I'd say I usually get in at least 30 minutes of listening practice every day. I'm still not speaking much, but I think this is OK. I've heard VR chat is a good resource for that, but the timezone mismatch makes it pretty hard.

    Overall I recommend immersion based study with a strong emphasis on input (listening + reading) before doing much output. Duolingo is a waste of time if you're serious about approaching fluency. I've never seen a single comprehensive product that actually works for learning Japanese. You have to consume native materials, and there are some good tools that make it easier, but you need to be a bit savvy to stitch them all together into a cohesive workflow.

  • source
  • load more comments
    view more: next ›