Language learning is hard ;_;

Language learning is hard ;_;

How do you linguistics do it?

"to" has just as many uses in english if not more, it's a common thing with prepositions

yeah but it's still the same word, there's not 16 different words for "to" in the English language.

lel, the best and easier way to learn a language always was and always will be living in the country where that language is spoken

t. someone who has studied 5 languages and now remembers nothing

by spanish standards for example there are multiple ways to say "en" in english (at school, on monday, in september...) which would all be represented by the same preposition

Yeah that's my problem, everyone speaks English here and I don't plan on moving anywhere yet, just visiting. Surely you could at least get a handle on the basics? I'm not trying to be fluent, that takes years...

ikr I started learning spanish and apparently its supposed to be """""""easy"""""" compared to other languages for english speakers, it's fucking not

>Surely you could at least get a handle on the basics?
only in English because I still use it, but it's broken af most of the times

I see what you're saying now, yeah. It still throws me off, but I've only been learning for a couple weeks, but today I feel like I haven't learned a thing.

Yeah you know the feeling, the plight of being a native english speaker.

It's easy if you start early. I started learning English in kindergarten so I pretty much spend primary school and gymnasium chilling out at the back of the class. German was a bit harder because I only started learning in the later years of primary school but I was already familliar with a bit of it.

GIT GUD

Memes aside, never try to translate preposition. It's a waste of time and you'll eventually realize that you just have to get used to them and their usage

Indeed, I'm nearly 30 and I'm just beginning, it's going to be a long road ahead. Which do you use more besides Slovenian in real life? German or English? how do you remember all the vocabulary without getting all jumbled?

Do it in reverse and you'll see that it will give you a lot of english words almost unrelated to what you tried to translate.

English, of course - I'm here on a daily basis. I use German on rare occasions; it's mostly when I'm drunk and posting on /deutsch/ or when visiting Austrian Carinthia (but I might as well speak Slovene then).

English has been part of my life for long enough that I'm comfortable enough with it to not have too many problems. And if I can't find a word (which can happen in any language, really), there are always online dictionaries.

When you are an English native speaker, you don't need to learn any other languages.
You are super lucky.

I see, and I'm noticing portuguese has a ton of stresses, pronunciation is a problem.

First, I guess, you should to know what structure does a language has(inflection, agglutination, analytism...). For example the Portugal language is mostly analytical. That is why you need to learn so many prepositions.

Sadly, but learning these details is necessary.

I've got some difficulties in English. Because I'm Russian speaker. There are grammatical cases in Russian(inflection) which can be used in ways like this:

Magazin(masc.) - shop; v - in, into, to ,at...
v magazin-e(loc.) - in(at) shop
Ja (est') v magazine. I'm at the shop.
v magazin(acc.) - to(in) shop
Ja id-u v magazin. I'm going to the shop.

I can't use Russian grammar concepts when I'm speaking English. English is too analytical, so I need to use 'at'/'in'/'into' or 'to'.

Why the fuck would you learn languages anyway?
Assuming 90% of Sup Forums is bilingual, learning a new language means getting to know the concepts you understood and memorised twice already, sounds like a massive waste of time that could otherwise be spent doing something interesting and new

True. But at least a lot of words have accents to mark the stressed syllable when it's not too obvious.
One thing that might fuck you over, though, is that the "trema" (ü) has been abolished, so you might end up pronouncing words like "cinquenta" as "cinkenta" when, in reality, the correct pronunciation is something like "cinkuenta"

anime

>implying anyone learns a language just for Sup Forums memes
>implying learning languages isn't fun
>implying someone can't just learn it as a hobby

Consider this image, OP.

To express the position of something relative to something else, we use prepositions in English. Other languages may use cases, some other languages may use a mixture of case and prepositions.

Now, in English and in order these would be:

1. in
2. on
3. below
4. beside
5. behind
6. before (usually 'in front of' nowadays)
7. between

Now, that's easy enough, but we must also consider an object's movement to that position and from that position. This gives us three possible 'states' for each preposition: (1) already at that position, (2) going toward that position, and (3) coming from that position.

1. a. in
1. b. into
1. c. from in
2. a. below
2. b. to below
2. c. from below
etc.

English has no prepositions for most of these, but other languages do - hence all those Spanish prepositions. Some languages employ cases with prepositions, which simplifies the matter somewhat.

>which simplifies the matter somewhat.
I don't know, people on here often say declensions are difficult.

box - škatla
in the box - v škatli
on - na škatli
below - pod škatlo
beside - ob škatli
behind - za škatlo
in front - pred škatlo
between - med škatlama (dual)/ med škatlami (plural)

in - v škatli
into - v škatlo
from in - iz škatle
below - pod škatlo
to below - pod škatlo
from below - izpod škatle

>implying anyone learns a language just for Sup Forums memes
>implying learning languages isn't fun
Maybe if you learn it naturally aka via constant communication with native qts, otherwise its just grammar shit and vocabulary shit, its the opposite of fun
>implying someone can't just learn it as a hobby
Sounds like a boring hobby
>hey dude, what do you do for fun?
>I learn how to pronounce the same exact stuff in 20 different ways

Im trying to learn spanish with pimselur and duolingo. do I do it once a day or its ok to do it as long as I have free time? cause Im still on 14 in part 1 because i forget.

and my mom can speak spanish but how do I get her to speak naturally in spanish in the house?

The uneducated usually think that learning languages will be easy, only to find that most languages - language itself - is very complex. Given that most Anglos are not taught or learn any kind of grammar whatsoever, this is doubly difficult.

In Ancient Greek, for example, one uses the prepositions as usual, but the 'direction of travel' is indicated by case - dative for static, genitive for 'from', and accusative for 'to'. Hence

on the box - epi tôi kibôtôi
to on the box - epi ton kibôton
from on the box - epi tou kibôtou

Doing some lessons on Duolingo doesn't mean you're studying a language, so no, you haven't studied 5 languages. And if you have you don't remember any of it because you literally have severe mental retardation and should be castrated with a red-hot steel wire.

>omfg i don't know what a book is!!!!

>which simplifies the matter somewhat
Not really. You could get the same by making more prepositions, it's completely unnecessary to have a complicated declension system for that.
Only three of them ("in", "on" and "behind") actually use the cases. Most of the prepositions always have the same case after them.

The key to propositions and most language is not to translate it... It's to understand the actual meaning.

Like swedish "mot" can mean to but it's more like against our towards and in some cases even across, like a crossroads uses mot in the word.

So you do something bad "mot" someone and something good probably åt. Or maybe you give something till someone.

I learn for a week, then at the end of the week it feels I haven't learned anything at all, maybe I'm just too retarded to learn anything at my age.

>be english monolingual
>take a year of spanish in highschool, want to learn a language and apparently spanish is easy
>literally makes no sense, struggle, fail after second semester
>take Chinese freshman year of college because I still need to learn a language and I give no fucks
>It actually makes sense
>I pick it up really easily
>Finish 4 years of Mandarin and speak it almost fluently
>Go to Beijing with class in 4th year and I can actually function and communicate with locals
>Thinking of going back and finding a gf or something

You just gotta find a language that makes sense to you. That may be something like Chinese or Arabic or Icelandic. And once you learn one, you learn how to learn a language and it makes future ones easier.

tfw my language doesn't have prepositions

Some particles in Japanese can be treated as or considered prepositions, in a sense

> You could get the same by making more prepositions
Of course, and that's my point. Languages can employ complicated cases like locatives, illatives, and ablatives; or use solely prepositions 'at', 'to', 'from'; or - as is the case with most IE languages - a mixture of the two.

Doesn't Japanese have postpositions?
> bokkusu kara
> from the box
Although I know nothing about Japanese.

I see. Looks like we have prepositions.
I don't really understand my own language in a view of grammar. I can't even teach learners my own language...

anyone?

ASK HER.

> I can't even teach learners my own language
Thats not surprising, you do know people are trained to teach languages right? It's not something anyone can do efficiently.

No I really wanted an answer for the top sentenceabout whether I should do it slow and steady or as long as I have the free time?

Study as much as you can. Otherwise your retention will be shit

>the 'direction of travel' is indicated by case - dative for static, genitive for 'from', and accusative for 'to'
Wow, that's pretty efficient. What did they do after the dative case disappeared?

is going to sleep while listening to language lessons effective?

Modern Greek? No idea. I know nothing about it.

>learning portuguese

Mas porquê?

>mas por quê?

Consertei para você.

Is there differences between real Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese?