Hello, im asking people who are learning more than 2 languages at a time, how is your schedule (as in sitting down & learning the language) ? I'd like to know because I want to take my language studies more seriously. And especially how do you fit it in with having work or being busy with life. Thank you, (TL)

cant take a freaking break

Edit: obviously im not forgetting everything. I'm forgetting a few month's worth of vocab. and it's annoying.

Whenever I take acid I feel like I can exist without my schemas dictating my perception.

I’m thinking about learning Urdu (TL) for my beautiful partner, but I have an awful habit of trying to directly translate things to english.

I was in the shower and thought, what if I took an acid tab and tried to learn it like I’m a toddler? Full on hitting the restart button to try remove comparison; an attempt to make it the new definition instead of just translation.

Thoughts? has anyone tried this?

Also if you know any good Urdu language learning resources please send them ❤️❤️

Bonjour-hi! My post will be sorta angled around French but I am asking generally what techniques y’all have.

I used to study French about 2 years ago, and right now, because I live in Quebec, I can understand basic commands or translate a document and live life, but I want to get back on the horse and make that push from B1-ish to B2 and C1, as I’ve decided to actually pursue a degree in the Francophonie (France or Switzerland) after my stint in Quebec, and while Montreal is very bilingual, I don’t think I will get off as easy in other places.

The way I studied back then was by just taking a class at high school. I did relatively well in HS in French and my official TCF showed me at a B1.

However, I just don’t know where to go from here.

I am a student and my budget is already extremely tight. I spend the majority of my money paying for the absolute essentials, food, medication, transport and rent. Nothing else really remains after that except a hundred dollars or so. I am currently seeking pay at my research gig but it is not very simple due to my immigration status.

I want to continue learning, but I just don’t have the finances to hire a tutor on some website. The best I can really do is invest into books and self-study. I can’t take classes at my university because while it is offered, I need to complete credits for my degree because I have such a high requirement for my major and minor combo.

So, my only real option is self study. However, I don’t know where to really go. I tried grammar books and to read the news in my target language, but the entire thing just feels so unstructured. I’m used to the design of « okay, you do this, then this », and self learning has been a very difficult jump for me to make.

I know that I can practice writing and reading by just doing that myself, and then I can put my writing through a discord server or something for people to critique. I can do something about my listening by just using radio shows and just trying to focus on understanding then synthesizing what was said.

But speaking is the real pickle. My partner can speak French but she prefers not to as it’s not her first language and she isn’t as comfortable with it versus just speaking to me in English. I can ask her, but I know that she will be too nice at my attempts and I won’t get the critique I want. I have a few francophone friends, but the same issue sort of persists. In a friend group of 6, there will be 2 Francophones and the other 3 of us can speak French at varying levels, and one cant. But all of us speak English natively or fluently, so we all just persist in English.

I know this post is referencing French a lot, but it’s just because it is the language I am currently working on. About the same applies to me for German as well, unfortunately :(

I was wondering about exactly two questions:

1. How do I self-structure a study plan for myself to get the results I want to see, so that it doesn’t seem like I am just doing whatever I want, which would be a waste of my time?

2. How do I improve my speaking and my accent without having to spend money? I tend to speak very fast and have an issue with mumbling, even in English, so it’s something I really need to work on. I saw discord servers for this type of language learning. Are those useful?

I have just started reading a book in my TL (German), and I also have it in my native language (English).

It's going to be beyond me to read it all without using a lot of translation, although I think I could probably understand a lot of the sentences without fully understanding the plot. I've never read it in any language before, but I've read the synopsis.

How would you go about it to maximise the language-learning without losing motivation or just not enjoying it?

Currently I'm reading a chapter in English, then reading it in German with the English chapter open. It's probably relevant that it's not directly translated in all ways, sentences are broken up differently and I think there's slight creative/interpretation differences.

Should I try reading it in German first? Should I use a dictionary to translate words and write notes? Should I read the whole book in English before switching to German?

I know it's a personal thing and I'll need to find what's right for me, but I'm just looking for what has worked for other people.

TIA for your help.

Hi! I am currently learning Korean, but I love learning how to say things in all different languages. I came here to ask about the method I should take as I continue my learning (TL). Am I supposed to learn individual words and verbs and such, or are you supposed to memorize sentences (at least at the beginning)? Like for example, should I learn “what” “do” “you” and “like”… or should I memorize the phrase “what do you like?” Does this make sense? If you need further explanation please let me know.

So today I learned about the existence of Mauril, an app for learning French or English created by the Canadian Broadcasting Company and Radio-Canada. As far as I could find, it appears to be decent?

I was wondering if there are other apps like this, either for other forms of French or English, or for German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, etc.

I haven't heard anyone do this before, but I've found it's one of the best methods I use when it comes to learning a language while watching a show semi-passively without getting bored or burning through an entire series too quickly.

I watch the same episode of a show usually 3-4 times under different criteria.

The first time I watch the show, I usually watch it in my target language with my native language subtitle to understand the full plot.

The second time, I watch it in my target language with my target languagenish subtitles to tie the vocabulary to the plot that I learned during my first watching.

The third time, I usually have to watch the show again in my target language with my target language subtitles. (They always speak so fast lol so I don't catch it all on my second viewing). But by this point, I can feel myself feeling the words in the story rather than just reading them and staying two steps behind on the show.

The fourth time, I watch the show in my target language without subtitles. By this point, I am truly able to enjoy the show because the vocab is with me.

I often go 5-6 times without truly being bored of the single episode I continue to watch because with each iteration I am picking up more subtitles about the show. A word here or there that I didn't know.

Obviously, you can adapt this method to yourself. To be honest, I typically start directly with the my target language audio and my target language subtitles, but if you are just starting out, although there is a lot of research against English subtitles for learning, I personally found it helpful.

I tried to apply the same concept to movies, but it didn't work for me. I couldn't sit through an entire movie and then sit through it again 3 more times.

Anyways, I hope this is valuable to someone. I found myself burning through TV shows I liked too quickly and find this method helps me to savor shows a bit longer without the dreaded "best shows on Netflix to learn my target language" Google search. (TL)

Speaking my heritage language can sometimes feel like a chore to me because it doesn't feel as emotionally profound as my native language. How can I feel more emotionally close to it and have a strong desire to speak it if I don't currently live in the country where it is spoken? Most of the people around me who speak it also speak English fluently, so I usually default to English to convey more nuance and depth.

I’m currently trying to learn both French and Spanish (TL). French is around B1, Spanish the lower end of B2. My goal is to become comfortable and “automatic” in them both. It’s just a personal goal, I don’t have any pressure on me to learn both.

Currently I have a half hour session twice a week in both languages with an online teacher, I’m reading a book in each language (just average kinda books - Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid in French, and Violeta by Isabel Allende in Spanish) and most days I watch videos with subtitles on YouTube in both languages. I generally do a bit in both languages every day and I don’t seem to have any problems with mixing them up.

My question is…is there anything else I should be doing to maximise my learning, that doesn’t take hours and hours?

Thanks for any advice!

I imagine that most Duolingo users started using the App because they thought spending a few minutes of their day to learn a language was a good idea - a way to spend a small part of their day improving themselves.

But lately I’m seeing a lot of complaints on the r/Duolingo sub complaining about everything under the sun (yeah - I know - it’s par for the course for that subreddit). Many are about recent changes that make it harder to just do a quick lesson to maintain a streak (even though the changes make the app better for actually learning a language). For example, lots of whining about changes to the Words practice from a simple matching game to a form that forces your brain to actually recall a word from memory (which is a lot more like you do in a real conversation). And now it’s harder to pass through Units without proving you learned the vocabulary (and just today, I saw they’ve added grammar exercises to that final Unit test - also an improvement IMNSHO).

Or else, people are complaining about incredibly trivial things that ‘trigger’ them and they just can’t continue with the app (which to me sound like they were just looking for an excuse to quit).

So what about you ? Did you give up on your language learning goals and just log on to keep a (relatively meaningless) Streak ? Or do you do a simple exercise every day to keep the streak, but once in a while do a real session to improve your language skills ? Or do you remember your original purpose in starting the app and just concentrate on learning (while maybe using the streak and gamification to motivate yourself to stick at it) - while ignoring extra clicks, silly voices, strange icons and non-proportional progress bars?

Is there a research on which method gives better results:

a) Trying to recall the meaning of a target language word having a a native translation - for example in Anki I have English (TL) sentence with gap for learned word and a native word meaning and example sentence translation to my native language.

NL → TL

b) Just reading (TL) word in a sentence or hearing it in a movie and if not understood just checking the meaning.

TL → NL

It is like two ways of learning. Would 100 repetitions in Anki - filling the gap with TL have the same result as reading a word 100 times in various books, articles and occasionally looking up the meaning in a dictionary? The main difference is that while reading a book, articles the word appears in different sentences, with different collocations. The whole mind process seems to be different.

It is a question about how memory and mind actually works. I know Anki and spaced repetition idea. It is great because it let me focus on selection of words that I really don't remember, unlike reading a book where I have all kinds of words, those I remember very well and those I see first time. Reading books is not as boring as Anki session.

Both methods are totally different and the question is whether they give similar or different results and how much different.

Was it measured?

so I've started memorising vocabulary through flashcards using Anki, and I feel like it just doesn't work for me. Even though I know the word in my target language (I can easily recall it) - I still cannot use it while I talk and get tongue-tied. I know there's division of passive and active vocabulary, but how do you actually get to the point of using it comortably? please help! (TL)

I'm looking for apps or language learning suggestions that you can use without looking at a screen. My work and hobbies often revolve around screens and I'm trying to avoid eye strain.

One I use a lot is SpanishDict's flashcard function. It says a word out loud, you verbally respond and it automatically advances to the next slide (after letting you know if you got it right or not with a noise). It's just for Spanish/English, but I'm looking for Russian and/or Mandarin or general suggestions.

so there is this online course with a live teacher that is kind of cheap. I was interested in learning japanese trough this course,but my question is,has anyone ever learnt japanese or any other language trough this type of courses? (TL)

Hi everyone!
I studied Japanese for a while until about B2, but now I have reason to learn Chinese well. (Currently B1)
It’s my own fault, but for these few months I studied Chinese, I barely went out of my way to interact with Japanese at all, the result now being that I cannot quickly retrieve it in conversation, and even when I aim to say something in Japanese, I can only think of how to say it in Chinese.
I would probably prefer not to completely let Japanese slip my mind, but I have less time to dedicate to it now. What advice would you give someone who’s trying to regain, (I.e not learn from scratch) a language, especially at this level?
Thank you!

P.S I am not saying that they’re overly similar, just that my obsessive engagement with one has taken attention from the other.

I'm currently learning Polish (TL), just starting, and I had people speaking it in my dream. I've never had this when learning French in high school. Listening to audio/ having ads in Polish (VPN) helps.  Though I didn't know what they were saying, I even stumbled over myself as I said, "my brain doesn't work," which got a laugh out of the one I was speaking to. Anyways, share yours! :)

Although people have different language learning goals and standards, and I try not to be judgemental, I myself value precision and careful speech. I tend not to correct people when hearing mistakes in my native or even (TL) languages, unless they ask me to.

In my workplace, every day I hear and read tons of grammar mistakes (at vs in, off vs out, would do vs would have done, etc) and mispronunciations (lock vs luck, prize vs price), poor usages, and misplaced word stress. It's definitely comprehensible input to me, but it's the kind of input I prefer not to consume.

I keep telling myself not to talk like that, but sometimes massive immersion is so powerful that I sometimes doubt myself if I'm picking up some wrong expressions or a more ''foreign'' way of speaking.

What's your take on this? Do you have any advice for me? I have to be in that language environment and I don't want to pick up bad habits that will take me time to kick later.

My apologies for the post being so long, I wanted to include as much detail as possible, It is about how learning Yorùbá (TL) has altered my cultural perception and how we can help third culture kids get comfortable with their language:

So my family immigrated to the UK when I was 10 (about 25 years ago) from a sizeable city in SW Nigeria. Before the move, I and my two siblings (older one is 2 years older and younger one is 8 years younger) were surrounded by English speakers because my parents were academics and healthcare professionals, my primary school was English speaking only and full of middle class and expat children, our nanny was English speaking and so were the other hired help; I only really heard or spoke my native language of Yorùbá (TL) whenever we'd visit grandparents in the village they'd retired to (they were both headteachers during the colonial period so their transatlantic tinged English was also top level), they made an effort to speak Yorùbá to us but mainly, they also communicated in English with us. As a result, I could barely understand Yorùbá and speaking it was ATROCIOUS.

Fast forward to moving to one of the "-shire counties" in England, at this point, my younger brother hadn't started speaking as he was just barely 2yr. And although my English had that bit of a transatlantic accent (listen to old recordings of middle class Nigerians in the 80's and you'll understand what I mean) mixed with American going on thanks to pop culture, I didn't struggle with the posh people I was slung in with at the girls grammar school.

Around age 13-14 I started getting more and more racialised bullying targeting my ethnic features (to the point it affected my physical health and still affects my self esteem and sense of self worth to this day) and because I was shy too, I just couldn't keep up with defending myself in English so mum told me to start shouting any random yorùbá words that came to my mind in the heat of the moment at them because they'd guess it was an insult but they won't know what it meant so they'd be even more hurt/angry and won't be able to contest because they didn't know what I'd just shouted at them. And I did and it worked 100%, as a bonus, it also led to me seriously learning the language in a very short space of time (I'm talking became able to hold medium level conversations in it within a couple of years), I did all this learning from both parents and grandparents alone who would visit us regularly as well as YouTube films with subtitles. Dad would also give me parables/idioms and ask me to translate them roughly or convert them to the closest English sensibilities as a lot of Yorùbá tends to be philosophical/talking in idioms.

I went from not being able to speak a sentence in Yorùbá to being able to hold full blown conversations before my 18th birthday. Although some words still elude me. Compared to my older brother and younger brother, I am the most fluent in Yorùbá; -My older one really struggles with understanding idioms and the heavy philosophical side of the language although he can speak it (he gets intonations wrong too). -My younger brother doesn't speak it AT ALL. He seems to understand it, you can give him basic information and he'll understand and fulfil the tasks but he can't fit the life of himself utter a single sound in the language. ^{It's as if a barrier exists between his brain and mouth when it comes to speaking.}

We all grew up in places where we were usually the only visible people of colour in the area sometimes (I was the only black girl in my grammar school year from years 7-11), so there was zero chances to practice speaking any other languages apart from English until I went to university in a city near London. Same as both brothers, none of us got to experience talking different languages or interacting with different cultures until all three of us got to our respective universities. But despite this, I can speak basic to medium yorùbá and hold my own with a native speaker if their accent isn't too heavy and they're speaking a standard dialect, whilst my brothers cannot do any of this. And I'm wondering why this is the case?

Could my being bullied and deliberately embracing the language in my teens have led to such a huge difference in our grasp of the language?

How can I get my younger brother to speak the language? He really wants to start speaking it as a young adult now trying to get in touch with his cultural identity in the current political landscape. I've tried to get him to repeat words after me but it doesn't seem to be helping his confidence. How can I encourage him to get past this tongue tie like hesitation and seeming embarrassment at sounding wrong that his brain has with uttering any words in the target language?

Also, through immersing myself in the culture, it started me on a journey to decolonise and deconstruct my relationship with introduced religion, power and privileges and western ideals of beauty.

^{The main point the bullies used against me were that my African features and skin tone were extremely undesirable to the white boys around including my crush at the time. This was crushing as a teenage insecure girl who had no role models in media and no other representation around me except immediate family. I felt extremely ugly (and this has coloured my perceptions of myself till now and still affects my dating life negatively as a 33yr old single black woman: I abhor compliments about my features as I have deep rooted fear the person is being disingenuous and sarcastic to get me to lower my guard before they go in for the kill as my bullies used to do}. At the time, all I had was this culture that might as well be alien in middle England, before afrobeats and jollof and fufu became popular. I tried to find beauty in yorùbá culture online and tried to be prideful of these features which were so far from western ideals of beauty. Learning rbr language opened me up to being able to watch early YouTube movies which featured dark skinned and gap teethed and full lipped women and this was a small bandage on the deep festering wound that being an unattractive black woman was in Britain at the time. And I also stepped away from the Abrahamic view of respect and honour etc. (I became an atheist anarcho-communist) .) ^{Connecting to the culture through language immersion allowed me to accept my button nose, full lips and gap teeth as these features were directly praised in yorùbá; even if the mental damage was already done by the bullies in my formative years, at least I stopped saving up for cosmetic surgery. The language used to describe black women in the UK is still atrocious (bleak/bleak, UKBeast, mandem etc} but learning Yorùbá opened me to a big ocean of self esteem reinforcement I can draw upon whenever the voice of self doubt and self harm rears it's ugly head even as an adult now. I want my younger brother to also have this background he can draw upon to bolster self esteem as a visible black man in today's United Kingdom.)

My final question is this:

Has learning a non western language/your ancestral language and immersing yourself in that culture helped you heal from racial/cultural/colonial trauma you might have experienced growing up in the west or adjacent to it? (This applies to people growing up in non western countries that also might have similar colonial trauma e.g Singapore, Ukraine, Hong Kong etc...)

I sound like a native Russian speaker (and have had this confirmed by multiple natives), but I'm only an A2, and there's a long way to go before I can start feeling comfortable in this language.

Anyone else in the same boat?

English is not my native language. But I started learning it when I was 6 or 7 years old, I really wanted to learn it and was highly motivated. Was the best student in my class and perhaps in the entire school. Also had a private tutor around the same time. Later I went to the US where I practiced it and then I just switched to it - I think in English, I write in English, it all came natural to me. But then I moved to France, been living here for more than a decade. I took private school classes, I had a private tutor, I had mandatory intensive classes from my local prefecture for a couple of months. A few years back I passed DELF for A2. Then I took another two courses, one in a local college, another with a language organization in Nice. And most recently, I took 3 months intensive class from Pole Emploi. Guess my exam result? it's still A2! At the same time, I understand Spanish, which I've never learned in my life, only watched movies, to the level close to A2. And I still can't speak even in simple phrases in French, can't construct them properly. I don't have any 'stage fright' nor that I care about my pronunciation or accent. It's just like I have a complete block or something. (TL)

What I think of it is that I really lack motivation, otherwise it's just hard to explain. I wanted to blame it on my age, but my Spanish example says it's not it. But the thing is that no matter how many hours I spent on learning French, all that massive amount of information I consumed, it just doesn't stay inside my head. No matter how hard I try. Most likely, deep down maybe I don't want to learn it. Anybody ever had that?

(TL) I've been studying german for about 2 years now, and I just hit a wall. I'm around B1 now, and for the past ~9 months, I feel like I've made no progress at all. I had to stop my german classes because I started attending a new school and didn't have time to attend multiple german classes a week.

The thing is, I don't know what to do. I'm doing Anki flashcards every day, but I feel like I just forget the words whenever I actually need to use them in real conversations. I try to watch Youtube, but the videos are either too simple, or too difficult. I can't seem to find the right content for my level. It's even more frustrating because I should be way higher now, I should be able to hold a conversation with a native speaker, but I am not able to do that yet.

To be completely honest, I'm just barely holding on and feel like giving up. I guess I just need some guidance, someone who can tell me what to do and how to break this "curse" (I seem like a lazy slug rn cuz I should be able to figure this out myself). Here comes the fun part though, my future goal is to study a very specific major (my country doesn't really have it afaik) in Germany, and I'll most likely be attending a german course next year for a few weeks in a german-speaking country. I would feel horrible giving up those two things just because I can't figure out how to push through right now.
Basically, right now, I'm struggling to stay motivated because I feel like I've been stuck at the same level for a long time.

I recently got into a bit of Spanish, and I was honestly surprized by how easier it felt. Unlike german, It's got WAY more vocabulary shared with english, so I understand more with less effort, and the grammar is simpler too. But the bad thing is, I don't live anywhere close to Spain, and I probably couldn't study their programs either, since, unlike the german ones, they're paid. I would probably also not use Spanish nearly as much as German in my potential future career.

So, what do I do? Do I keep trying to learn German, or switch to Spanish completely, whilst giving up all the benefits that learning German would bring? Did any of you guys give up learning a language?
Thanks for reading :)

If someone says a proper noun I've never heard before, like a person, place, brand, whatever, my brain almost never registers it as a name unless it's explicitly introduced. I just assume it’s a word I don’t know and start trying to figure out what it means, which usually makes me miss the next part of what they’re saying.