• bleepingblorp@lemmygrad.ml
    10·
    2 years ago

    Spanish. I am a USian so it is a very common language here, plus if/when the US and China and/or Russia go to war I want to be able to flee south and hope someone can take me. Conventional wars between nuclear powers won’t stay conventional.

  • panic@lemmygrad.ml
    10·
    2 years ago

    Wasting my time with French because I had an “advanced beginner” level after high school. Hon hon hon.

    I wanted to learn Russian but I shit myself when I was gathering learning resources. I don’t have the confidence to start self-learning a language completely from scratch… yet

  • SovereignState@lemmygrad.ml
    9·
    2 years ago

    Korean. Going ok. Hard to find motivation at times, though. I don’t listen to or particularly seek out KPop, which seems to be a major driving force for a lot of non-Korean Americans learning the language. I wanna read Korean theory in the native language and go to the DPRK. With how difficult it is and will continue to be for Amerikans to go, like I said it’s difficult to maintain motivation.

      • OsrsNeedsF2P
        4·
        2 years ago

        대한민국에 오기 전에 한국어를 잘 못 했는데 요즘은 더 괜찮아요. 지금 학원 다니고 있어요. 비싸긴 한데 이러게 혼자보다 빨리 공부할 수 있어요. 아직도 많이 몰르니까 매일 부지런하게 숙제를 완성하고 열심히 보카를 옌습할거예요.

    • CanaryintheCoalmine8@lemmygrad.ml
      4·
      2 years ago

      I’ve thought about learning Korean for a similar reason, to understand more about the DPRK and Juche.

      I had a classmate from the DPRK when I was studying in Beijing for a time. We were both pretty advanced in Mandarin, so that’s how we spoke with each other. She actually had me tutor her in English a few times. She was a really cool person and I regret not learning more from her.

      Do you know of any resources that focus on the northern dialect?

  • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
    8·
    2 years ago

    I’m leaning Spanish.

    I’ve tried before and given up. I just could not stay committed to studying language the way I was taught in school. (I didn’t study Spanish in school; I’m just referring to the way we worked through a grammar book with exercises.) (Also, I’m not necessarily criticising the way schools teach languages, here. Make the most of it if you’re in school!! If you supplement whatever your school teaches with some other (fun) activities, you’ll be on fire and close to fluent by the time you finish school if you put enough hours into the more fun stuff.)

    This time I’ve been consistently looking at Spanish for 21 months. I had one day off, by accident. This means spending between 10 minutes (bad / busy days) and 10 hours (great, empty days – not many) each day with the language. Average is somewhere between 30 mins and 3 hours.

    For three months I watched Dreaming Spanish and similar Comprehensible Input videos. (Not sure I would recommend that others start like this.) Then I used the listening-reading technique for 200+ hours before adding in some children’s audiobooks, just audio (I would recommend this method, after reading a brief grammar – the kind you might find in the middle of a dictionary).

    Then I started to read native content and decided to switch all my entertainment into Spanish. So everything dubbed or originally in Spanish. With English subtitles at first, then Spanish subtitles, then none. Lots of music. Plus some Skyrim, Fallout 4, FFXV (text only), Civ VI.

    For most of this time I failed to finish any novels unless they were adapted or very short. And my comprehension was low. I’d struggle through about a third of each book before realising I’d missed too many details to enjoy the story. My understanding increased slowly.

    The first full adult novel I read was a translation of Bernard Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom. That took about six weeks. The second one took me about four weeks. I’m on the third in the series now. I’ve read 45% since the weekend.

    Something very strange happened halfway through that second novel. I was reading and understanding without translating each sentence. But I was kind of aware of this happening in a way that doesn’t happen while reading in English. A part of my brain was watching the other half think in Spanish, and acknowledging this process in English. Very strange. Kind of euphoric, actually.

    Anyway, that lasted for about ten pages and now I just read in Spanish without translating for the most part (although I still pause and reflect over some sentences – where all the words make sense, but not the sentence as a whole). This only works with the Bernard Cornwell series, btw. I tried picking up another book and it only half makes sense.

    This is mainly receptive. I’ve had almost no writing or speaking practice, but I have recently picked up some grammars (well, I’ve picked them up before but soon thought that watching another series or film would be more fun and put the book down again). These are much easier and much more fun when the language as a whole makes some kind of sense, though, so I think I’ll stick with the grammar this time.

    So I’ve still got a few years of learning left to do. But this is much easier after figuring out a method that lets me enjoy the language early on (listening-reading followed by scaffolded native content).

    There you go. The language I’m learning and my life story. Sorry.

  • KrupskayaPraxis@lemmygrad.ml
    8·
    2 years ago

    Language learning is my hobby.

    I’m Dutch and english is taught at school as well

    I’m learning Danish because of family, and am almost fluent in it.

    I learned German in school

    I’m learning Arabic, both Standard and Levantine

    I’m learning Portuguese which has the bonus of making me understand Spanish

    I quit learning Hindi but I will keep on practising sometimes

    Sometimes I study Greenlandic just because it’s such an interesting language

    I want to learn Russian and Chinese