/lang/ - Language Learning

Last thread died, so here's a new one.

>What language are you learning?
>Share language learning experiences!
>Help people who want to learn a new language!
>Find people to train your language with!

(more info can be found in the following posts)

Other urls found in this thread:

4chanint.wikia.com/wiki/The_Official_Sup
duolingo.com/
drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9QDHej9UGAdcDhWVEllMzJBSEk#
fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/oldfsi/index.html
memrise.com/
lingvist.com/
clozemaster.com/languages
tatoeba.org/eng/
effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty
lexicity.com/
cosmogyros.tumblr.com/post/108962232110/huge-new-language-learning-collection
dliflc.edu/resources/products/
en.childrenslibrary.org
hellotalk.com/#en
italki.com/
mylanguageexchange.com/
interpals.net/
gospeaky.net/
speaky.com/
polyglotclub.com/
lang-8.com/
goethe-verlag.com/
languagetransfer.org/
babadum.com
context.reverso.net/translation/
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/делать
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

>Language learning resources:
4chanint.wikia.com/wiki/The_Official_Sup Forums_How_to_Learn_A_Foreign_Language_Guide_Wiki

duolingo.com/
>Duolingo is a free language-learning platform that includes a language-learning website and app, as well as a digital language proficiency assessment exam. Duolingo offers all its language courses free of charge.

>Torrents with more resources than you'll ever need for 30+ languages.

drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9QDHej9UGAdcDhWVEllMzJBSEk#
>Google Drive folder with books for all kinds of languages.

fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/oldfsi/index.html
>Drill based courses with text and audio.The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the United States federal government's primary training institution for employees of the U.S. foreign affairs community.These courses are all in public domain and free to download.Site may go down sometimes but you can search for fsi on google and easily find a mirror.

memrise.com/
>Free resource to learn vocabulary, nice flash cards.

lingvist.com/
>It's kinda like Clozemaster in the sense that you get a sentence and have to fill in the missing word, also has nice statistics about your progress, grammar tips and more information about a word (noun gender, verb aspects for Russian, etc.)

ankisrs.net/
>A flash card program

clozemaster.com/languages
>Clozemaster is language learning gamification through mass exposure to vocabulary in context.Can be a great supplementary tool, not recommended for absolute beginners.

tatoeba.org/eng/
>Tatoeba is a collection of sentences and translations with over 300 hundred languages to chose from.

radio.garden/
>Listen to radio all around the world through an interactive globe

effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty
>Check out information about languages and their difficulties

lexicity.com/
>An invaluable resource for comparative language study as well as those interested in ancient languages

cosmogyros.tumblr.com/post/108962232110/huge-new-language-learning-collection
>A very extensive language learning collection for 90+ languages.

dliflc.edu/resources/products/
>Similar to FSI, drill-based courses with text and audio issued by the US government.These courses were made for millitary personel in mind unlike FSI.

en.childrenslibrary.org
>Lots of childrens books in various languages, categories 3-5yo, 6-9yo, 10-13yo.

hellotalk.com/#en
>The app is basically whatsapp, but only connects you with people who are native in the language you are trying to learn. It also has a facebook type section where you can share pics and stuff too.

italki.com/
mylanguageexchange.com/
interpals.net/
gospeaky.net/
speaky.com/
polyglotclub.com/
lang-8.com/
>Few more language exchange communities like Hellotalk:

goethe-verlag.com/
>A mostly free site which offers audio and drill like exercises for 40+ languages.

languagetransfer.org/
>A free resource with recordings to learn a language.

babadum.com
>Flash card game with a focus on vocabulary.

context.reverso.net/translation/
>A website like Tatoeba (also has a Firefox extension!)

>tfw too stupid to get through one Pimsleur lesson per day.
I have to do one, then repeat it, then make flash cards, study, then listen again.

At this rate I'll never learn Spanish.

just take your time

it can seem exasperating at times, but trust me, there is no such thing as "too stupid to learn a language". At worse, you might take longer, but I guarantee you that you can, in fact, learn Spanish.

I've narrowed down my desired language to being Hebrew or Mandarin. It's very hard to decide.

Are you Jewish?

how similar cantonese and mandarin?

No. I'm interested in the history and culture of Israel. It's the same with China too.

Anyone have experience with Tandem? It's a phone app that connects you to people that speak a language your interested and they're interested in your language. Seems like a good idea but haven't seen it mentioned here and want to get some /lang/ thoughts.

Wew lad, Duolingo now has High Valyrian, a quick look on wikipedia tells me that this language Latin-tier inflections but very simple phonology,

The beauty of anonymity on the internet is that we can connect with faceless strangers across the planet, never knowing who they are, whether we've met them or ever will, and have discussions with them. I'm a stranger and I'm telling you to learn Chinese. Go ahead and do it, and when someone asks why, joke that a stranger on the web told you too. You don't know who I am, and you never will. Imagine what I look like if you wish, and think of me when you give them that response. Do that, and I will be satisfied to know that I graced the thoughts of another human's mind; because it's all I've ever wanted - to be remembered.

SerboCroatian is Naranca, Spanish is
Naranja
These are different ?

You need to tell yourself that you're going to get a C3 level in Spanish, you tell that to yourself out loud and write it down until you believe.
If you keep telling yourself that you won't ever learn you won't.

>burtuqal
lel it's bourtguan

Fug

I'm way too excited about this

It seem to be not very hard if you know Latin and Greek, very useless through.

naranča is pronounced naranja(english pronounciation)
naranja is pronounced naranha

Is French still big in North Africa?

Ayyy I've been waiting for the High Valyrian duolingo course for a while

Truly a waste of time and resources. Just like the Klingon course. Esperanto is debatable.

> High Valyrian
back in my youth, all the book nerds were learning Elvish

They're highly unintelligible except sharing the same character

What about elfic?
When will we have an elfic course on Duolingo?

german words are so retarded

Portugal
burtuqal

Well that coming from a Polish speaker is kind of rich

Bruh. Mandarin. When the fuck are you gonna use Hebrew? All Israelis speak English (or Arabic or other European languages) anyways. Mandarin is only gonna get even more useful in the future.

I think Portuguese traders were the first to bring oranges to the middle east, so they started calling oranges "portugals". It's kind of cute

where should I start with Chinese?

What's up with
>zürj
>aoureval
Also, that eastern slavic one, does that literally mean orangecoloured potato?

You have to decide which dialect first

>apel-sin
>sinaas-appel
Why, Dutch?

>eastern slavic one, does that literally mean orangecoloured potato
What. No. Potato is kartofel or kartoshka. Orange colour is orangeviy.

False friends I guess. Also mixed up pomme for potato instead of apple (pomme-terre)

"The tree's original range probably was northern India. The Persian orange, grown widely in southern Europe after its introduction in Italy 11c., was bitter; sweet oranges were brought to Europe 15c. from India by Portuguese traders and quickly displaced the bitter variety"

started learning japanese and latin. Its been fun but i cant seem to get consistent in the practice

Dunno. We do have the "word" appelsien, but it's generally used to refer to orange juice. According to the Dutch wiki, it used to be appelsi(e)n in early modern Dutch, but it flipped around?

bump

Bump

Anyone learning Korean?
I think there were UK and someone else but idk if they're around rn

Gross, I read this in his voice and speaking style.

I'm trying to learn to write in cursive cyrillic.

Anybody care to tell me if I made any mistakes, or if there's anything specific I need to improve?

it's not that good for language learning, since it's kind of hard to teach over an app like that, but you can learn a lot about foreign cultures and such or even pick up some foreign girls if you're good enough.

Lifeline

Is it even possible to learn 2 languages at once or is that just a meme?

Yes, this is the minimum standard in European Highschools.

That's funny, considering Europeans got the original name of oranges from the Middle Easterners afaik.

After researching a bit I've decided on a few languages I'd like to learn; French, Spanish and Catalan.

Which would be best to learn first? Or does it not matter? I have no prior experience with romance languages, which is why I'm asking.

I'd say Spanish is probably the easiest of the three, so it's good entry-level Romance language. However, this is only one factor among many others to be considered (the single most important of which is obviously your actual interest in the language and culture).

Is Spanish really easier than French for English speakers? I'd thought French would be easier, given that it has a lot more shared vocabulary and slightly more similar grammar.

Whatever you do, pick Catalan last. It'll be easier once you have French and Spanish under your belt, and there's less resources for learning it so it will be more of a challenge if you pick it first.

I can't read it mate.......

the first line? can you write it?

also бyлOк

I'm not a native English speaker so I can't say for sure, but despite the similar vocabulary, I still think Spanish is easier, because of much more predictable gender (or rather, more easily predictable, since there are rules which allow you to guess correctly for something 80-90% of French nouns, but those rules are much more numerous than the ones in Spanish), more predictable conjugation (both languages have a shitton of irregular verbs, but French literally has an entire class of verbs which are pretty much just "they don't fit in the other two classes lol", such as mettre, courir, recevoir, etc.), two different auxiliaries ("avoir" is the most common, but "être" is sometimes used in somewhat unpredictable ways) whereas in Spanish it's easier to predict the rare instances where you use "tener" rather than "haber" as an auxiliary verb (not to mention that "haber", AFAIK, is never gramatically wrong, unlike "avoir" in French). And of course Spanish is read phonetically, whereas French is definitely more difficult in this regard. As far as pronounciation goes though, I think both are roughly equal, though maybe French is slightly harder simply because it has a larger number of phonemes I think.

But again, I say all of this as a non-native English speaker, so I don't know for sure.

it's supposed to say:

B чaщaх югa жил бы цитpyc?
Дa, нo фaльшивый экзeмпляp!

Cъeшь жe eщё этих мягких
фpaнцyзcких бyлoк дa выпeй чaю.

oh, I just realized I accidentally wrote "жaл" instead of "жил"

Not bad

>жил бы
Mabye жил был? Anyway, generally it can be understood, but your writing skills are poor, like it was written by, say, a 10yo kid.

>but your writing skills are poor, like it was written by, say, a 10yo kid
Yeah hopefully I can improve, but unfortunately even in the Latin script my handwriting is horrible. Anyway, thanks!

>Mabye жил был?
I don't know, I just googled "russian sentence with every letter" or something like that and came across that. Supposedly it translates to:
>Would a citrus live in the bushes of south?
>Yes, but only a fake one!

>Eat some more of these fresh French loafs and have some tea

I'm learning english internet,actually I can read and listen english fluently but can't write and apeak. I'm not making any progress,so my english sucks when I not use google translate.But I don't care because I'm brazilian. I also learned something at school,but the big part was in video games,movies and internet.

it should be жил был; it means 'once upon a time there lived'

thanks!

are the other sentences correct?

Not bad, actually. There are several things you could improve.
>в чaщaх югa жил бы цитpyc?
(I hope I got it right).
югa looks almost like нoгa which makes one stumble and stop reading. The connection with the right letter should go from bottom to top, not to be on the same level. Also, и in жил looks like a (again, if that's what you mean).
>экзeмпляp
The connecting prong in the minuscule м should be lower and not be so upright, it looks almost like ш. In the context, though, it's clear anyway.
>фaльшивый
Your ф looks like a printed one. Basically, the cursive ф is like the cursive Latin q + p joined together.
>cъeшь
ъ must be connected on both sides. It's weird why it's not, it's a hard letter to write.
>фpaнцyзcких
The hook in ц is way to prominent and removed from the letter, it looks like a щ.
>бyлoк
It's бyлoк, in case you're not sure.
Give me a few minutes, I'll show you, how I would write it myself.

>easier to predict the rare instances where you use "tener" rather than "haber" as an auxiliary verb
What.

As far as I know we don't really use "tener" as an auxiliary verb. It is possible to use it along with a participle, but it's not really a conjugation with "tener" as an auxiliary, but rather a conjugation of "tener" with the participle as an adjective (e.g. "tengo decidido" vs "he decidido").

And yeah, avoir vs être is an extra complication for French conjugation, but I think that's comparable to Spanish ser vs estar when it comes to added complexity. And when it comes to pronunciation, I believe both languages have around the same amount of phonemes that aren't present in English.

I was thinking more among the lines of some shared grammar points, like French not being a pro-drop language, using impersonal "il" in a similar fashion to English "it", and (in the spoken language) using the same conjugation for several grammatical persons.

But I guess we'll be running in circles until an English speaker who's studied both settles the matter.

Actually, I take that back. I didn't see the question mark. Everything's all right. This phrase is supposed to be a pangram, i.e. a sentence using every letter of a given alphabet at least once, that's why it doesn't really make a lot of sense.

>it's not a hard letter
>too prominent

>you will never speak proto-indo-european
why even bother?

>It is possible to use it along with a participle,
Yeah this is what I meant, but I guess you're correct to say that it's not actually an auxiliary, but rather simply a conjugation of "tener".

Cпacибo! This is very helpful!

I whant to learn german.

>I'm learning English on the internet. Actually, I can read and listen to English fluently, but can't write and speak it. I'm not making any progress, so my English sucks when I'm not using Google Translate. But I don't care because I'm Brazillian. I also learned something at school, but the big part was through video games, movies, and the internet.

I know you didn't ask, but I thought the corrections might be helpful. Your biggest problem seems to be a lack of prepositions and articles, which are always a pain to properly learn. Good luck Brazilanon

Can't read the first two lines very well. Improved at the end. Try to not be so "harsh" when writing the letters, it should flow more naturally. There are some printouts online you can practice with if needed, I learned in a workbook.

just build a time machine and go back for some sick immersion dude.

My handwriting. Excuse the poor quality of my cam.

To make it quicker, it's usual to substitute a line above й and ё for breve and dots respectively.

Also, instead of writing э in three steps (the bow, the middle stroke, the connector) it's simpler, for me at least, to write the connector through the middle of the bow. Basically, a cursive shwa. It's much faster and very useful given that э appears in lot in the beginning of the words.

>Really want to learn Russian
>Doing duolingo
>New Penguin Russian Course
>Anki
>Still only know basic shit and the fucking Cyrillic alphabet
>mind feels like a sieve with new words
>No idea where to start
>Grammar makes me want to fucking blow my brains out
>Try watch Zootopia in Russian with English subs
>Almost every other word sounds different
>Understand 0.005% of what they're saying without subs

Is there a more enjoyable way of doing this or do I really just have to grind this shit out? I have the motivation to learn but the classroom way of learning is masochistic to me.

You didn't start learning at a course? A big mistake. The classrooms lessons can give you lots of props.

Thanks again, this helps tremendously!

If there's any way I can help you out with any questions you might have related to French or English, feel free to ask, I'll do my best to help you any way I can.

No one around me offers any. All I have is the internet and books.

>Russian courses
You have no idea how rare these are.

You can try Pimsleur for beginning user, but after a certain level of understanding you have to grind it out, unless maybe you have someone available to you that can teach you and stuff then it won't be as grindy.

Sad. I've got kinda the same problem with Arabic. I did attend a course for a year in my uni but I had to end it after almost everyone had dropped out. Lousy fuckers.
Je t'en prie, mec ; )
>French
Je l'aime vachement, mais il n'y a pas de possibilités de l'utiliser.
In El Salvador for sure, anyway.

My high school offered Japanese and Latin Russian courses are essentially nonexistent here.

>Live in canada
>don't even know a word of french

I just can't learn it, i don't think I have the attention span to learn a new language

In El Salvador there are non-existent, yes, but I'm talking in general.

There may be more common in Europe and Asia, but in the Americas they're quire rare.

>There
They

Goddamn.

Started working my way through an online guide today, mostly practiced memorizing hangul and got a gist of the word order and some basic particles. Intending to get basic conversational ability for online chats, not going too deep. What about you?

Btw here's an example of Russian literary richness.
Today when I got home from work, I fried chicken. "Chicken" is кypицa but there is also a colloquial synonym цыпa or, of you add the dimunitive suffix, цыпoчкa. Цыпa/цыпoчкa has a second meaning - "a girl, chick young woman".
The verb жapить "fry" has also another vulgar meaning "to bang".
So, when you say (я) жapю цыпy it can equally mean "I'm frying a chicken" and "I'm banging a chick".
How does that feel living in a country so small?

>i don't think I have the attention span to learn a new language
this is a common way of thinking, but it simply is not true. Even if you were downright stupid (which I'm sure you're not), language-learning is not a matter of intelligence. As for attention span, it's simply a matter of adapting your methods. Unless you really have a serious problem like ADHD (in which case medical solutions do exist), I'm confident that you can succeed.

For example, instead of forcing yourself to sit through a textbook for over an hour, just do 10 minutes in the morning, do a couple of exercises to help grasp what you just learned, then maybe watch a tv show or something in French with english subtitles, then later in the evening do another 10 minutes of working through a textbook, and top it off with a couple of vocabulary memorizing sessions on memrise or anki or whatever site/software you prefer.

Good luck, user, and believe in yourself!

>Today when I got home from work, I fried chicken. "Chicken" is кypицa but there is also a colloquial synonym цыпa or, of you add the dimunitive suffix, цыпoчкa. Цыпa/цыпoчкa has a second meaning - "a girl, chick young woman".
>The verb жapить "fry" has also another vulgar meaning "to bang".
>So, when you say (я) жapю цыпy it can equally mean "I'm frying a chicken" and "I'm banging a chick".

Holy fuck user.

In all honesty, it's actually quite nice. Everything is within a few hours driving distance (even borders), so you can make day trips without feeling like its a waste due to the long drive.

Though it's not like I leave the city that frequently anyways.

Do other languages have conjugation a bit like ours or not? People often talk shit about our conjugation i feel like

In Russia the scale is entirely different. The distance between Moscow and my city is about 180 km which is roughly comparable with the dimension of your whole country. And this 3 to 4 hours long trip on a bus/train is considered quite short. Inhabitants of Siberia and the Far East are so far away, that's going to Europe/Asia is cheaper than going to the other part of the country.
Don't say that English doesn't have a shitton of slang words and idioms.

Russian. Not sure, but guess it's even more complicated than in French.

just exampe

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/делать

>People often talk shit about our conjugation i feel like
desu even though most of french conjugation is like, exclusively in the written language i still quite like it. it makes written french way more aesthetic, if you dig.

>Inhabitants of Siberia and the Far East are so far away, that's going to Europe/Asia is cheaper than going to the other part of the country.
this is the part that surprises me about Russia

I mean, obviously Canada is very big as well, and some people do live in the far North which is extremely far from everything and isolated. But in a way hardly anybody cares, seeing as it's mostly natives who live there. But in Russia, even in places like Magadan, there are plenty of ethnic Russians. I imagine that they must feel extremely disconnected from the rest of the country sometimes, despite being of the same ethnicity?

Who's talking shit, user? English speakers crying because they had to take French in high school? French doesn't seem to crazy compared to most other language most people have to do in school or something. I guess you have extra tenses but that's not a huge problem.

To be honest, making a trip from Vladivostok all the way to Moscow (and then continue on all the way to Paris) is an item in my bucket list. I'd love to learn Russian for that but it's somewhat difficult with the resources available online, and like I mentioned earlier
>no classes
The best I can do is hire a private tutor, but that would be quite expensive.

>Don't say that English doesn't have a shitton of slang words and idioms.
Probably every language has double entendres like that. In Salvadoran slang, "Me la comí" can mean either:
1. I ate it (the food that we were talking about).
2. I'm fucked
3. I sucked some dick.

I believe most Indo-European languages have rather complex verb conjugation systems. English is the outlier here desu, having such simplified conjugations.

>extra tenses
The funny thing is that the average French speakers (or at least, here in Québec, but maybe in France they're better), the average person wouldn't even be able to use a tense like the subjunctive imperfect in a coherent sentence if asked to.

If you look at the tenses which are actually used, then French is very similar to English or Spanish. In fact, it's even slightly easier because IRL French combines both the simple past (e.g. "I ate") and the present progressive (e.g. "I have eaten") into a single tense, the passé composé (j'ai mangé). I remember when I was just starting to learn Spanish, I assumed Spanish did the same, so I would always say things like "He comido una manzana" even though what I actually meant to say was "Comí una manzana".

Russian conjugation may be somewhat challenging. We don't have that many tenses, and we cannot express the ideas of consecutive actions in the past/future by the verb form only (i.e. passé composé, imparfait, plus-que-parfait correspond to Russian past tense). But there are still two difficulties in Russian
1. consonant alternation
2 the use of different verbs to express aspect

For example:
He was writing that morning
Il écrivait ce matin-là
Oн пиcaл тeм yтpoм
On pisàl tem ùtrom. Пиcaл/pisal is a form of пиcaть/pisàt' "to write" (imperfective)

He wrote an email to her
Il lui a écrit un courriel
Oн eмy нaпиcaл имeйл
On yemù napisàl imèyl. Haпиcaл/napisal is a form of нaпиcaть/napisàt' "to write" (perfective)

I had to finish the course because the price got too high.
It's not like we can afford traveling a lot, so what gives?

>Oн eй
>On yey
Sorry