/LANG/

Dead general revival edition

Come in here to talk about learning languages.

>Learning resources
First and foremost check the Sup Forums Wiki. Please contribute to the wiki as you learn a new language. Many pages need updates. Some pages are completely absent (Hungarian for example)

4chanint.wikia.com/wiki/The_Official_Sup Forums_How_to_Learn_A_Foreign_Language_Guide_Wiki

Check """pastebin.com/ACEmVqua (embed)"""; for plenty of language resources as well as some nice image guides.

/Lang/ is currently short on those image guides, so if you can pitch in to help create one for a given language, don't hesitate to do so!

Torrents with more resources than you'll ever need for 30 plus languages:
Google Drive folder with books for all kinds of languages:
drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9QDHej9UGAdcDhWVEllMzJBSEk# (Links to the other folders, apparently it was taken down from the original drive)

Other urls found in this thread:

dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/future/future-in-the-past
oxford-royale.co.uk/articles/learning-english-hard.html
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

I've been learning Japanese but am honestly tempted to start learning Mandarin. I don't want to stop leaning Japanese though.

Is it possible to learn both at the same time? Or is that a stupid idea?

concentrate on one at the time

I might end up living in China soon (slim chance), so I might end up swapping to Mandarin then. But otherwise I guess I will just stick with boring ol' Japanese

Yeah, Its better that way. Or there is a risk that you'll end up mixing the two that can create rather unpleasant situations.

(more difficult) xd

I am studying ancient Greek and those verbs man

They will never be able to understand us

Guys, I'm graduating this year and I'll go to China for a masters degree (full scholarship). The thing is, I'll be 25 at the beginning of the program and I've never had a job or money. I'm feeling old and useless.

Do you think I'm wasting my time? Can I find a job or something to do while I'm there? I want to start doing something, I'm feeling like a piece of shit to be quite honest.

Btw I'll do 1 year of mandarin (also in China) before my masters. Could you recommend me some good material?

Good. I don't want no niggers pretending they were kalevipoegs and shit.

Both languages and pretty hard...unless you're a savant you're probably best off picking one.

>Romanian is easier than French
t. a dude studying Romanian but with no knowledge of French

Learning russian.
My vocabulary is progressing at a snail pace. I hope i'll eventually learn it quicker.

Yeah I also found that weird
this language seems like a clusterfuck to learn

>future 1 ,2,3
wtf are those

guessing that this is the english equivalent dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/future/future-in-the-past

>36 weaks
Yeah maybe in germany. Good luck understanding austrians or Swiss. Even germans struggle with understanding us

ahhh but the table does have future in the past besides those 3 future mods

I like Romanian's spelling (almost 1 letter = 1 sound), which French obviously doesn't have, but the grammar of Romanian is relatively complicated and inconsistent.

They're equivalent, future 1 is standard
2 & 3 are sometimes referred to as "viitor popular" which basically means less formal, but it's all vague as shit anyway
The second one is usually the most common in casual conversation

Isn't austrian fairly similar to standard german? Moreso than Swiss german anyway.

I know there are some vocab changes like erdapfel instead of kartoffel ... what else is different in austrian german?

>gave up
Fuck

Is Faroese harder or easier than Icelandic?

bump

I feel you, the non-latin writing system adds an extra hurdle to word recognition and they like to use really long words

I find that using handwritten flashcards helps me a lot

What app, textbook, website, etc. is your primary resource for learning a language?

I personally am using a textbook called Reading for German. Though the main thing I use now is a website called lingq. I also use duolingo just because I want to finish the damn tree but otherwise it's not very useful anymore. Once I finish the tree I'll probably try out memrise for a bit so I can study on my phone while I'm out and about.

I use duolingo, a grammar book, and I try to read news in the target language, handwriting flashcards for new words. I'm doing Russian so I do a few examples of different cases for some of the words as well as I learn them.

Anyone?

I use duolingo+memrise together, have a book called Comprehensive Russian Grammar that I use as a grammar reference whenever I don't understand why a word is conjugated or declined a certain way or a sentence is structured how it is, and I follow a few Russian people on social media and youtube and read their posts and watch them talk in videos between studying

Really need to consume more media and get off my ass and do the Pushkin online courses

Why are you learning Russian?

For material check the wiki... I think the chinese one gets spammed by advertisers though.

Romance languages are boring and I have very little interest in their cultures or media, and Japanese is a bit too intimidating for me with their logographic writing system, so I decided Russian is a nice middle ground, I'm kind of a russiaboo anyway and want to at least visit Petersburg and Moscow sometime, considering trying to get a TEFL position over there within a couple years

Don't try to talk me out of this either btw because I already know it's kind of a shithole and there are objectively better places I could go for money or living standards, but I'm a broke loser here already so if I'm going to be a broke loser either way I want to try doing it in a foreign country I'm fascinated by for a while, make some interesting experiences before my youth is up

Why is Suomi so difficult? Do the Finns want to keep the memes to themselves?

Wtf are you talking about. Its actually really easy and logical to learn. I have a german guy who came here to work and in 3 months he spoke bad romanian just by listening to us.

How is French any more difficult than any of the other Romance languages?

Spelling and Pronunciation i guess

Doubt it.

Realistically, French spelling is similar-ish to English, and Pronunciation would be harder for both Portuguese and Romanian than French (at least based on the number of sounds).

haha, i'd like to see you speak russian with me in person after 44 weeks of learning it

French has a lot more hard rules accents and quorcs then any other romance language.
t. Guy who took 4 years of french in school

>at least based on the number of sounds
The only strange sounds we have are

Ă (like a long pause in "aaaa what?")
 (Like when you are desgusted "aaaa what is that?!")
Ș (like the S in Shampoo)
Ț (like the T in "Tzar of Russia")

Nothing wrong with learning Russian. As a native English speaker, it really comes down to personal interest since you already know the most important language.

I'm learning Russian because pretty much 0 Americans learn any language much less Russian and it is applicable to the field I work in so it seems it would give me an edge in hyper competitive Government jobs. That's the justification, really I just have fun with it and putting my energy into it is helping me shift away from hobbies that don't contribute to personal growth, like video games etc.

Is learning Ukrainian because I like Taras Shevchenko a bad reason? I'm not even 1/59344 Ukrainian.

Yeah no I agree, having a personal interest in it is what keeps me disciplined enough to keep up my daily studies, I just noticed that for some reason whenever I tell anyone I'm studying Russian they're skeptical, like nobody ever asks "Why are you learning Spanish"

Kinda makes you feel like you have to defend your choice

Ukrainian and Belarussian are more dialects of Russian than their own languages, it's pretty much the same language but with a few regional words and quirks

If you have any kind of interest in the language/culture that's enough, anything is better than "It's easy/a practice language", as long as you think that's enough to keep you motivated to keep up with studying it though, but if you actually get into it you might find you like more aspects of the culture anyway

Russian seemed intimidating to me, though I love Russian literature. Went with German instead because I also didn't want to learn a roamance language.

It's for diplomats that spend 4 hours in class per day learning. Difficulty is based on pass rates or something like that. French was initially a level 1 but had a lower pass rate than the other level 1 languages so they bumped it up.

This should put it into perspective. The hours spent learning is about 4 per day for each level.

Umm sweetie, English is the hardest language in the world. Just ask Oxford.

oxford-royale.co.uk/articles/learning-english-hard.html

And every retard on this planet can master it in 3 weeks, except for the British.

Every native speaker believes their own language is harder than it actually is as some kind of pride thing

Yeah, but it's pretty funny when it comes from an English speaker. Which is a notoriously easy language, just like Spanish and Swedish.

And I'm pretty sure most Dutch speakers know that German and French are quite a bit more difficult than our own language as we had in it school.

bump

what is it with German language that makes it so impossible to actually learn. I watch their TV, read their news and have been learning it in school for years, yet I can't string together like two sentences without taking 5 minutes to try and remember all the words and correct order.

Maybe you just hate 'em?

Using random.org to pick a language

why not pick a language which comes from a culture you'd like to experience, or has literature you want to read, etc. Seems like you're bound to fail picking a random language

Isn't ancient Greek almost exactly the same as modern Greek?

What would be the best thing to couple with Duolingo for me to start learning German?
I'm trying to learn it because the robotics company I work for is based out of Germany, and I feel like it would be helpful if they decide to send me there for work.

I need to expand my French vocabulary and Duolingo doesn't seem to be working very well for that

Kial vi ne lernas Esperanton, Sup Forums?

I've heard both that it's almost exactly the same and that it's extremely different.

>English is hard
>Beacause there is no ham in hamburger.
>Oxford
Wow, why not just let China take over the planet, it's over for the Anglosphere. How can Oxford not know that this word comes from Hamburg the place, and not ham as in pork?

How do I get better at French listening lads
This is the final hurdle
If French people had French subtitles under them when they spoke I would be fluent right now

Anyone tried one of these?

Are they any good?

>inb4 use online resources
I am for Deutsch and 日本語 but you can imagine how difficult it is with both going at the same time.

Pronunciation is relatively hard compared to other Romance languages. Spelling is almost as bad as English.

Hello Anons. I'm studying French and next semester the class is almost entirely in French. Problem is I'm shit at remembering vocab. I study the words, but I'm just bad at remembering vocab. Do you guys use any useful mnemonics for vocab or is it just reading shit until the words become part of you? I've only had a semester.

Try duolingo, it's not that usefull by itself but it should definitely help your vocabulary.

modern Greek is Turkish with Greek alphabet

Pals, I am really divided concerning what to study. I already learned French, and have dabbled in other languages over the years. I do not know what to learn next. I want to completely dedicated myself to a new language as I did for French, but I don't know which one. People tell me just to do the one I am most interested in, but I am interested in so many languages. The ones I narrowed it down to two:

Mandarin - I am interested in Chinese history, literature, and culture. I am interested in experiencing how foreign China and the rest of the sinosphere is, and accessing that foreign culture. Plus, it goes without saying that it will open up job opportunities in pretty much any field. One thing that holds me back is the 6000 characters I need to know to be able to read. I dabbled in Japanese for a bit, and memorising characters is tedious as heck.

Russian - Same reasons as Mandarin, plus I have a handful of online friends who know it. I hear the grammar is pretty rough.

Any suggestions, anecdotes? Looking for really any advice that would help my decision.

pro ke me lernas ido, la vera internaciona linguo.

It's just memorization. Use Anki

It's the same in difficulty I'd say

this book

I disagree. "memorizing" words just means you're doing a micro-translation in your head. Vocab should be built though association to other words imo. This is why duolingo, lingvist, memerise, clozemaster are pretty effective apps. It's not just flashcards and word for word translations.

In German for example there are a bunch of words that can pretty much mean anything on their own. Their association to other words in the same sentence give their actual meaning. So you can't just "memorize" the word, you've got to see it used in dozens of ways.

Russian. You have a better chance of actually learning it desu. plus Russian literature is the best.

Reminder that persian is the real man's IndoEuropean Language of choice

Why is french harder to an English speaker than other romance languages? The grammar rules are basically the same between all of them and English has a ton of French loanwords

Keep practising one day it just clicks.
I used to hear audio files from my books, note everything and then would hear all of it again with the transcription. Did it 5-6 times per text or until I got everything right.
Also been hearing a shit ton of french radio (radio.garden)

>Turkish

French people hold their language to a high standard. So you can't just speak it like non-anglos speak English (anyway they want). You have to have a good accent and the pronunciation is hard. Those r's are frustrating, and conjugation is a nightmare, and combining two words (one that ends in a consonant, followed by a word that starts with a vowel) makes listening pretty hard too.

It's only made somewhat easy by the shared vocabulary.

what did you choose?

bump

I didn't do it yet. I want to add a couple of dead languages on there too but im undecided which ones.