I'm a native English (TL) speaker, but have a Czech parent. I was homeschooled for a long time, and never noticed having an accent. However, for years now (I wanna say I first noticed it happening 8 years ago), people have, even after a very quick conversation, asked me what country I'm from. It happens so frequently I stopped counting.

I've recorded myself speaking on plenty of occasions, and have never noticed an accent in my speech. I want to kill the accent, but at this point I have no idea how to if I can't even spot the accent in my own speech.

Again, I was born, and have lived my entire life, in the US. What can I do?

Edit: A voice recording here: https://voca.ro/1ibIcUafaPsF

Edit 2: Thank you everyone for the amazing advice and kind words -- I think I probably need to go do some thinking about why this accent bothers me so much.

I was looking for a platform to gain vocabulary in English (TL) and German (TL). Langeek looked useful actually. But most features are paid and it's cheap, so I think I will purchase soon. If any of you used, how is your experiences in Langeek? Do you think it's worth purchasing? You could recommend any other platforms too for my aim.

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Pessoal, comecei a estudar inglês usando Comprehensible Input e estou meio perdido sobre como aplicar a técnica na prática.

Por exemplo, assistindo a canais como o Volca English, vocês costumam apenas assistir tentando entender o contexto? Ou param para anotar frases que parecem úteis, repetem, revisam depois etc.?

Queria saber como vocês realmente aplicam o I'm brushing my teeth no dia a dia e o que funciona para vocês. Se puderem dar exemplos de como é uma sessão de estudo, ajudaria bastante.

(TL)

I’ve been learning Swedish for 8+ months and have mostly focused on vocabulary and reading. My reading is now quite good, probably around B2/C1, but my listening is terrible.

I can read Swedish news and understand most of it, but when I watch YouTube without subtitles, I barely understand anything. With Swedish subtitles, I understand almost everything.

So I’m wondering how I should approach listening now. Should I use subtitles, avoid them completely, study pronunciation first, or try things like shadowing and dictation?

Has anyone had a similar experience where reading was much stronger than listening? What worked for you?

(TL)

I remember meeting someone that was learning specifically Moldovan Romanian since Moldova and its culture was a big interest to them, and I'm curious what other people's reasons for learning obscure languages are, and what they are.

Has anyone here been using Airlearn (TL)?

I enjoy learning Spanish on Airlearn. I really like how detailed and organized the lessons are, although I mute my phone while studying because the app’s pronunciation sounds really, really weird. 😭

After checking the Tagalog course, though, I started doubting the app’s accuracy. The Tagalog lessons are just horrible!!! Aside from the incorrect pronunciation, many of the lessons contain grammatical errors and culturally inappropriate or unnatural language. I’ve lost count of how many slides I’ve flagged because of inaccuracies.

Now I’m wondering: Are there any native Spanish speakers here who have tried checking the Spanish lessons on Airlearn? How accurate are they?

And what about Portuguese? Japanese?

I’d really love to hear from native speakers who have actually gone through the lessons and can tell me how reliable the content is.

P.S. I'm still exploring different apps. So far, I like Busuu for the Spanish pronunciation. For Duolingo, I just don't like it a bit because I'm a sytematic learner. If you could recommend other apps, I'd be so thankful!

I started learning French this past week, and definitely spent a lot of time doing so, but I didn't really track hours. I don't know what counts and what doesn't. I also bounce between activities a lot, so it's a ton of small bursts of focus with some hyperfocus sessions here and there. (TL)

TL;DR summary: I started self-studying Chinese (TL) from scratch in September 2025. Completely self-taught, no teacher or tutor. Put in ~2 hours every day, a bit more towards the summer. 

First 6 months: used Chinese learning apps, simple YouTube videos, and HSK1/2/3 test materials to learn basic grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation.

Second 6 months (March - now): comprehensible input phase -- exposed myself to as much graded videos/podcasts/reading materials as possible. Also started practising output (speaking + writing).

This week (August 27): did a HSK5 2.0 mock paper (a Chinese exam equivalent to B1) to see where I'm at. Got a passable score, would consider myself a low-B1 level.

-----------------------

Now for a more detailed report and reflections of my past year.

Learner's profile: I'm a 33-year-old English teacher specializing in TESOL.

Starting point: My first day of Chinese study was September 1st, 2025, starting from complete zero. I didn't know a single Chinese word before (other than Nihao if that counts). 

Reason for study: entirely hobby. I don't know any Chinese person, have no plan to go to China, don't need it for my job, so I don't really have a practical purpose to study. 

I've simply always found Chinese history and culture fascinating. I want to get to a point where I could read stories and articles about fascinating Chinese people, history, culture, technology, enjoy Chinese movies/novels, watch Chinese documentaries about the various aspects of life there, and one day possibly go to China, navigate the streets, converse with locals, and be able to read museum labels on my own.

(This is also part of the reason why I decided to self-study entirely. Since it's just a hobby, I don't want to have to follow a textbook's rigid curriculum, and I don't need the stress of homework and deadlines. I want to just study whenever and whatever I want.)

Study Schedule & Time: in the past year, I've spent ~2 hours every day on Chinese. I would have loved to dedicate more time, but with a job and family that's really all I can set aside.

From summer (June 2026) onwards, as I reached a level where I could consume graded Chinese content more comfortably, and as summer vacation began, I was able to push it to 3 hours/day. 

So I'd say over the past year, I've put in roughly 800 hours (all focused, deliberate study hours, not like spacing out or just background listening).

Study Method & Resources

My study plan was very simple. I divide it into 2 phases:

• Phase 1 is to study the basics of the language (pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary) and get to a low-HSK4 (A2) level.
• Phase 2 is to mass-consume graded content (comprehensibly input) where I could understand 95+% of the content, and let my level grow naturally from this exposure.

For phase 1, I used an app called HelloChinese as my primary resource. I already wrote a very detailed review and comparison of the two most popular Chinese learning apps HelloChinese and SuperChinese here. Basically, I picked the app because it is designed specifically to get a learner from 0 to advanced beginner (A2 or low HSK4).

During this time, my day would look roughly like this: 

• 45 minutes on HelloChinese learning new content and revision;
• 20 minutes of flashcard revision with Pleco (a Chinese dictionary app with flashcard built-in); 
• 20 minutes of listening and shadowing; 
• 20 minutes of reading a graded reader;
• 15 minutes of pronunciation drills.

Note that I decided to skip handwriting entirely, so I'd saved a significant chunk of time compared to other learners who choose to practice handwriting hanzi. I also didn't do any speaking, and instead just focused solely on getting the tones/vowels/consonants right.

Phase 2: from March - now, I ditched the HSK materials and focused entirely on mass-consuming comprehensible input. I make sure to pick materials that I understand >90-95% of and consume them consistently. I absolutely detest doing grammar or vocabulary exercises from a textbook, so I wanted to just stick to content consumption as much as possible.

For listening, I'd find lower-intermediate/intermediate videos created by Chinese teachers on YouTube (such as the LazyChinese, Zhangkai Chinese, TeaTime Chinese channels, and many more. I have a whole list of these channels I subscribe to). 

I also tried to watch children's cartoon like Peppa Pig opr Big Ear Tutu but quickly gave up because it's too difficult.

For reading, I set a simple goal of reading at least 2000 words every day. I alternated between several sources of reading: the graded reader library in HelloChinese, Doraemon in Chinese, websites for Chinese learners like MaomiChinese, TeaTime Chinese, and ChineseInLevels.

For speaking: after the previous 6 months of only pronunciation practice, I began practising output. I have several self-practice speaking methods: I'd find a massive list of A2-level questions about everyday topics (weather, traffic, work, family, technology, etc.) and answer them one by one into Google Voice recognition. If it could accurately recognize my words, that's a good sign that my pronunciation is decent enough.

I'd also verbally summarise the content of the video/text I just consumed, and occasionally do a picture description and translation exercise.

Around May, I tried finding Chinese language exchange partners. I had a few hours-long conversations with Chinese people, but I quickly realized my lack of active vocabulary was the biggest obstacle that made these sessions less productive than it could be. So I stopped doing language exchange and back to self-practice. Yep, just speaking into a microphone every day like a true autist.

For writing: every week I'd write 3-4 essays about a variety of topics and have DeepSeek correct them.

That's basically how it has been for the past 6 months. Every day, the first thing I'd do is open up YouTube, pick an intermediate/upper intermediate video or podcast, listen to it intently, occasionally pause to note down new words into Pleco. Then I'd read one chapter of Doraemon and 2-3 graded essays. Then on to some speaking practice, and if time allows, some writing. During my commute to work, I'd do flashcard reviews on Pleco. Throughout the day I'd also watch a few short Douyin clips.

I never did any textbook grammar, reading or listening comprehension exercises. It's too boring, IMO, and kills the joy of language learning especially for a hobby learner like myself. I'd much rather stick to consuming interesting content and just let my level grow naturally.

Attempting the HSK5 Mock Test

Yesteday (August 26), I figured maybe I should give the HSK5 test a try. This test is the equivalent of B1, consisting of listening, reading, and writing. I don't really have any reason to take the test, but since it's been exactly 1 year, I just wanted to see where I'm at.

First, I went through the list of HSK5 vocabulary. I was surprised to find that out of the 1,295 words, I could recognize over 1,000. That's purely from consuming comprehensible input materials. I never intentionally sat down to learn HSK vocabulary, only write them down as I come across them naturally.

Today (August 27), I did the test. This is the test paper that I used. I didn't do any revision or preparation, just basically opened it and attempted it in the allocated time (110 minutes).

When I checked with the keys, my result came out to be: Listening 33/45, Reading 29/45, Writing 9/10. That's technically a passing score of 71% (minimum passing score is supposed to be 60%).

Does this "passing score" mean I consider myself a HSK5 learner? No, absolutely not. I only got many of the correct answers through crapshoot and lucky guesses. This means my true comprehension of the materials is still very shaky.

I'd say I'm the equivalent of a high-HSK4, or low-HSK5 learner at most, or a low B1 in reading and listening, and high A2 in writing and speaking. For a learner with 800 hours of study, that's quite reasonable.

Final Thoughts & Future Plans

When I first started, I had certain expectations about where I'd be at the 1-year mark. Looking back now, honestly I've progressed more than I'd expected in some areas, and less than I'd expected in other areas.

The biggest surprise is even now, when I can comfortably listen to intermediate-level videos, I can still barely understand native speakers when they're speaking at a natural rate. I've been watching Douyin clips, and even when the conversation is about simple everyday topics, without subtitles I'm completely lost. It's like the words that I hear coming out of their mouth and the subtitles don't even match. Native speakers speak incredibly fast, merge and blur sounds, many have very heavy local accents, and it doesn't help that Chinese is incredibly dense on homophones (so many words have the same sounds of shi, zhi, yi, yu, ji, etc.). I guess the answer simply boils down to more exposure.

I'm also surprised at how easier Chinese reading ended up being. Before I began, I remember feeling super intimidated by the logographic system. But then with enough flashcard revision and daily reading, gradually I've found to be not as impossible as it appeared to be at first, and I can fairly comfortably read B1-level materials now.

Speaking currently remains my weakest skill. Though my primary goal remains to be able to understand and enjoy Chinese media and content, so my focus is listening and reading. I don't know any Chinese person nor have any plan to visit China, so speaking is much lower down my current list of priorities. Next year, I plan to find a Chinese tutor for a couple of sessions a week just to make sure my speaking does not lag too far behind.

Before, I translated a word and used flashcards to learn vocabulary. The problem I found is that I learn only one translation of the word. Sometimes the word has other meanings, sometimes it has no equivalent word in my language, or the translation is a full sentence not only a word, and sometimes it is not common and people use other words instead.

So instead of asking only for the translation, I ask for the full picture: the meanings in sentences, the degree of usage, the similar words, ...

This is the prompt if you want to try it. Just change the source and target language (TL):

$SourceLanguage = French
$TargetLanguage = English

Each time I will write a word in $SourceLanguage. Give me images that express the word. Then give me the meanings of each word in $TargetLanguage, and the degree of usage of each meaning with yellow stars, with an example of usage for each meaning. And at the end, tell me how much the word is used in daily life, and if there are other similar words (with how common each word is, and the difference between it and the original word). Add any other information you see useful.

Considering doing a 4 week program in Spain. Seems very cool, my wife and I would be beginners (we are in late 50s) but thought it would be great way to immerse ourselves into Spanish (TL) country and community. We both took in high school so we do have a base line. Looking for feedback from people who actually did this, lived on campus or rented local apartment.

I recently read Kató Lomb's Polyglot book and have started to integrate a lot of reading into my language learning. In particular enjoyable book genres that I would read in English, but are from Spanish speaking authors. Though I am not quite sure how to best implement her method into my language learning strategy. My largest gripe with the book, and it is possible I missed it, but I felt like she did not really go over her method in much detail.

I wanted to see if anyone found a reading method that worked really well for them that was inspired from this. I am doing a lot of passive reading and try to intuit meaning of unknown words from context (as was suggested in the book). However, I will pick a chapter once a day (I am usually reading a couple chapters a day) and write down all the words (in the sentence context) in a notebook and then write the translations on the other page, so that I can review them. I use Anki normally, so I might turn them into flashcards as well. Though it is still too early into this approach to know if what I am doing is helpful for me.

I understand that just through the act of reading a lot I will intuit grammatical rules and learn new vocabulary, but I don't know if I can squeeze some extra juice out of this proverbial lemon.

Things I am not doing when I am just passively reading and not on a chapter that I am writing everything down on:

• Stopping to look up words I don't know. I will if the word shows up a lot and I still haven't quite figured it out.
• Rereading the chapter that I took the time to look everything that I was confused about up.

I would love to hear some critiques, ideas, and/or if I am stupid and did not see the part where Kató explains her method! Thanks everybody.

FYI: I have not taken a CEFR exam, but I would say that I am a high B1.

What’s the best way to pick up a language again after years not speaking it? Is it a private tutor? immersion? I don’t want to textbook study.

I studied Korean extensively for a few years and was really comfortable speaking and listening, quite fluently honestly. However I stopped studying it and now I’m not so comfortable speaking and don’t remember a lot of vocabulary at all. However, listening to podcasts/videos I recall some words and sentence structures and sometimes pick up the gist of the dialogue, so it won’t be helpful learning from scratch.

Thanks for any advice!♡

(TL)

Hi everyone, I’m looking for an Android app that can show two subtitles at the same time on YouTube, for example English + Japanese (TL) . I want to use it for language learning, so ideally it would work directly with YouTube videos and let me see both languages while watching. Does anyone know a good app for this? Thanks in advance

I used to do these but my brain loses focus and gets fried through this method very quickly - this is unfortunately how my brain works in general, but flash cards amplify it from the numbing repetition. It feels ineffective to an extent. I'm just wondering if they're absolutely crucial to learning a language well and if there are alternative options for learning vocabulary?

I don't have the best habits yet as I'm still relatively new, and I'm not sure what to do at this point besides flash cards and practicing basic reading. I'm still discovering new sites. I'm learning Dutch (TL) because of my family lineage.

Up until now I have amassed mostly vocabulary cards in my target languages. I actually don't hate this at the B2 ish level because I already have enough vocabulary for daily conversation, so I do need to stretch myself to remember less commonly used words. Usually if I hear a word once more in the real world, it'll solidify it. I have a review load of about 100 cards for Chinese and 150 ish for Japanese a day. There are some mined sentences in there but not many.

However I really want to improve my listening skills so I want to transition away from these vocab cards and move almost entirely into sentence mining.

The issue is I don't want to erase the progress I have so far in these vocab decks. It's actually pretty minimal anyways. For Chinese it's words / phrases from my chinese classes with a tutor, and for Japanese it's mostly words attached to the dictionary app so I can quickly make cards when I look something up. I live in Japan so this happens quite often. Basically all these vocab cards I currently review are still useful.

I have a few ideas.

1) Manually set a limit of the # of reviews a day by deck. (If I do, how much do you recommend restricting this to?)

2) Set the FSRS to a lower retention rate. (Not too sure how I feel about this because I don't want to have too many mature cards when I do not actually remember them well)

tldr - I think the vocab decks I have now are useful, however I want to spend less time on those cards and allocate more time to sentence mining. Suggestions to do that?

Thank you!

(TL)

I'm a heritage speaker and up until 3 years ago, my level was described by my parents as being on a 5th grade level. I have not studied this language at all, put no effort into learning it, and now all of a sudden I've passed a competitive oral entrance exam and am going to a relatively hard to get into university all in my heritage language. I've suddenly lost most of my foreign accent (it was incredibly strong before) and while I still mix some English grammar and words in, a lot of people fully believe this is my first language.

I refuse to believe that just 2 weeks of studying (not the language but the uni subject in the language) suddenly propelled me from a 5th grade level to a university level but I haven't done anything else that could've possibly helped me improve.

Migaku is my gold standard, and it's what I'll be returning to (at least for a month to make a ton of cards before unsubscribing), but the cost does add up. However it has always been reliable, easy, and most importantly streamlined. I feel like I can enjoy what I'm watching, which I can't say in regards to yomitan / asb player.

I mostly mine Japanese and Chinese, watching my content on youtube and netflix.

Are there any alternatives to sentence mining that are just as streamlined as Migaku, but aren't yomitan/asb player? Preferably free, but even something cheaper than Migaku would be great. Anki integration is also a requirement.

Please don't try to convince me to just use yomi/asb. I do not like the flow of it, and if I don't like something, I simply won't do it. I am looking for alternatives.

Thanks! (TL)

Just wondering this about something that should be the same across the board, like Spanish 101 for example.

If you take a course in university for a certain language at a certain level, is it actually any different depending on the school's prestige? Like I don't know why conjugating a verb in Spanish (TL) would be much different at Harvard compared to a generic state university. But elite universities tend to attract smarter students with greater work ethic, so does the curriculum need to be adjusted to account for that?

Why not do only shadowing/parroting/chorusing for example to kill two birds with one stone any time you would listen to something? Would a learner who did that use fewer hours to reach the same proficiency as someone who simply consumes (pure reading or pure listening) the comprehensible input?

You might also be able to rep millions of flashcards including cloze flashcards to potentially learn grammar and word choice more time-efficiently than someone who just reads a lot. What do you think? (TL)

Hello everyone! I, 24F, have always loved reading about many cultures, travelling and history. I currently speak Spanish, Galician and English, and I started studying German and French, being in both level A2, which I started learning in group lessons.

I've wanted for so long to study languages on my own, but I struggle a lot with sticking to a routine/method. When I'm in class with my teacher, I am guided by them on what to learn and how to do things, so I don't notice how much I'm actually learning. For example, I could be reading a text in German (TL) and realize that I do understand a lot more than I thought yet, while I was in the course, I always had the impression that I wasn't retaining much, which wasn't the case luckily haha.

However, a few years ago I stopped my French lessons and I was trying to pick up the language back again on my own. Since I'm Spanish, it's quite easy to understand everything and I feel like I can gain the language easily. Still, even with this "advantage", I struggle with sticking to a routine. Maybe I'm doing a few grammar lessons, some speaking practice, some reading or oral comprehension questions,... And my mind starts wondering whether these exercises are helping me learn at all, or if my method is not good enough.

I was told by some therapists and teachers that I am a perfectionist and I obsess over efficiency, but I'm clearly not being efficient by starting over with a different method every month 🫠. Since learning a language is a long commitment, I'm always unconsciously trying to find the most efficient, effective method. I already struggle with consistency in general, so my combo with perfectionism doesn't help me at all.

How do you all stick to a routine/method and trust it's the right one to learn the language? How do you stay consistent no matter what?

Tl;dr: I have a hard time staying consistent with a routine because I am constantly trying to find the best method, which doesn't exist. How do you fight your perfectionist side and stick to a routine? Do you notice yourself learning or just hope for the best?

BLUF: I’ve only got ~5x months of time invested into Arabic (TL)studies, and I’ve been trying to read a news article each day (a simplified, beginner oriented news website). I still find myself only understanding ~10% of the material I’m reading, and need to look up words consistently to decode what I’m reading, or reference the vocabulary list below each article to try and understand the key ideas. Is it still an effective way to building vocabulary if I’m reading a new article each day and having to look up a lot of words, without reviewing the old articles or making flash cards out of the words I encounter?

Amplified explanation:

Reading Short Articles (Beginner Student)

Beginner student with just a few months of Levantine Arabic knowledge. I just completed the PDF book “Colloquial (Levantine) Arabic” by Mohammad Al-Masri, as well as all 3x levels of the Pimsleur Eastern Arabic series as a refresher/foundation. I also used Anki to memorize the “700 most frequent words for language learners” and am currently working to memorize the most common Levantine Arabic verbs from “the 101 most used verbs in spoken Arabic: Jordan and Palestine” by Fredrick Tiedemann. This is all meant to be a primer/foundation refresher focused on Levantine Arabic, and I will be establishing 1-2x meetings a week with a Preply tutor focus on conversation abilities.

I have seen repeated statements that “memorization/flash cards/anki are not effective for building truly expansive Arabic vocabulary, and that reading is the best method”. I also see websites saying that “if you can’t understand 90% of the material you’re reading, and having to look up words repeatedly, you’re wasting your time”. Obviously someone with a limited understanding of the language at my level (only a few months Levantine) will have no reading material where I understand 90% of anything other than a super simplified graded reader. I have recently been trying to read easy Arabic news articles on Lingualism’s site (Daily Learner News - Easy - Arabic) which I really enjoy, but I only understand 5-10% fragments of most articles, and have to either look most things up, or use the vocab list below each article to decode the article’s meaning. My question is… will reading like this each day still actually enhance my vocabulary development if I work through decoding and reading a new short article each day, without reviewing old articles and making vocabulary lists from them? Or does vocabulary acquisition through reading truly mean I need to be at the point of understanding 90% of material already, and reading alone and encountering a word in context is not enough to learn it, but rather needing to make vocabulary for it and truly commit new words to memory?

Thanks for your time - I sincerely appreciate it!