Language Learner's Thread - Cunning Linguists Welcome. - General

I've slowly been trying to learn Icelandic for a while, but damn I just cannot roll my R's, and it's really holding me back with spoken language. I have most of the pronunciation down but R rolling.

Rolling r's is really fucking difficult if you haven't learned it from birth Lived around spanish speakers my whole life and I still can't do it

Learning Polish right now on duolingo, which is going fairly well. Are there any resources similar to duolingo which I can utilize for say Finnish? It's an interesting language and I don't plan on learning it right now, but I'd like to keep an eye out on it

Finally finished the Swedish duolingo course. Not really sure what to do next. Sadly they've removed the translating documents stuff for some users, and I happen to be in that group.

[QUOTE=laserpanda;50083439]Finally finished the Swedish duolingo course. Not really sure what to do next. Sadly they've removed the translating documents stuff for some users, and I happen to be in that group.[/QUOTE] How well can you read and write in Swedish? Like, I'd assume the next stage is just to chat to people who already speak the language, read their posts, read wikipedia articles and books, etc Also movies and games, stuff like that. A lot of people learned English by playing games or watching movies, so the same could probably work by changing the language settings for a game.

FYI for those that want to learn Vietnamese or Welsh, those courses recently came out. However, I've been hearing mixed reviews on the Vietnamese course, so proceed with caution.

Hvor er danskernes thread? I can see swedish and Norwegian, but not danish Just started doing danish on duolingo, it is quite fun Pigen har en mørkeblå jakkesæt på

still curious if there's any decent resources or shit for finnish that i ought to try out considering my geographical location it might be useful

Having some stress regarding whether or not I should travel this summer to Europe, particularly to France, Switzerland, and Ukraine (maybe Hungary, Georgia, Bulgaria?). I speak a good amount of French (I think I could make friends in the language), but my Russian is very basic after only two semesters of study. I can't tell if I should wait, or why I feel so rushed to travel [I]this[/I] summer as opposed to next summer when my Russian will be twice as good. I know lots of solo travelers just go to countries where they barely know how to say "hello" in the local language, but I don't really want that. Additionally, as an afterthought, I'm underage in the US (and never bothered to get a fake), but could club and drink in Europe, although I'm not sure if learning that scene solo in a foreign language would be a good idea.

(so i'm going anyway)

Went back over an old practice test I did 6 months ago that I remember exhausted me trying to understand the passage of text and realised I had 100% comprehension of it with no effort. Praise Tae Kim and visual novels.

Would anyone happen to have any resources dedicated to learning the proper pronunciation of Pinyin? I'm heading to Rural china in a month and i figured it would handy to learn some extremely basic Mandarin as i'm likely to encounter no English at all. Any other resources (starting from literally nothing) would be handy.

I don't have any resources for you, but I took a Chinese class for like a week so here's what I remember, might be wrong Ma1 is a rising tone Ma2 is a flat tone Ma3 is a falling tone Ma4 falls, then rises [editline]10th May 2016[/editline] Curiosity's sake, can anyone remind me what these 4 versions of "ma" mean? I know one is "mother" I think it's ma1

[QUOTE=inebriaticxp;50292506]I don't have any resources for you, but I took a Chinese class for like a week so here's what I remember, might be wrong Ma1 is a rising tone Ma2 is a flat tone Ma3 is a falling tone Ma4 falls, then rises [editline]10th May 2016[/editline] Curiosity's sake, can anyone remind me what these 4 versions of "ma" mean? I know one is "mother" I think it's ma1[/QUOTE] I don't remember which is which but rising tone and falling-rising means "hemp" and "horse" and the falling tone ma is for scolding people. [editline]10th May 2016[/editline] Flat tone is "mother".

[QUOTE=inebriaticxp;50292506]I don't have any resources for you, but I took a Chinese class for like a week so here's what I remember, might be wrong Ma1 is a rising tone Ma2 is a flat tone Ma3 is a falling tone Ma4 falls, then rises [editline]10th May 2016[/editline] Curiosity's sake, can anyone remind me what these 4 versions of "ma" mean? I know one is "mother" I think it's ma1[/QUOTE] 1 is high flat 2 is rising 3 falls then rises in isolation, but in practice it's usually just low 4 falls 媽 ma1 mother 蔴 ma2 hemp flax etc 馬 ma3 horse 罵 ma4 to scold someone or something those are traditional characters btw (paging super2donny)

Recently started learning Japanese with a private tutor, in addition to my weekly lesson I have been trying to memorise hiragana with the use of the game Learn Japanese to Survive - Hiragana battle. I'm still very much a beginner but I think it's pretty good if you stick to it.

[QUOTE=inebriaticxp;50292506]I don't have any resources for you, but I took a Chinese class for like a week so here's what I remember, might be wrong Ma1 is a rising tone Ma2 is a flat tone Ma3 is a falling tone Ma4 falls, then rises [editline]10th May 2016[/editline] Curiosity's sake, can anyone remind me what these 4 versions of "ma" mean? I know one is "mother" I think it's ma1[/QUOTE] If you are serious about Chinese hit us up on wechat, we have a group, if you are learning Chinese you'll probably want wechat anyway. Same goes for anyone studying Chinese. epreeves [editline]13th May 2016[/editline] 共产党的中文是最好的，小伙子你不要听到他们的谎言。 妈 麻 马 骂 The best way to learn them after practicing them separately is to repeat tone pairs. After tone pairs move on to full sentences. This video is fantastic. [video=youtube;3wV8B4bx1lM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wV8B4bx1lM[/video]

[QUOTE=reevezy67;50310936]共产党的中文是最好的，小伙子你不要听到他们的谎言。[/QUOTE] 簡體字衹是爲了白癡啊 :downs:

Jag talar inte svenska ännu. Duolingo seems like a pretty good way to learn.

[QUOTE=DepDirkson;50317660]Jag talar inte svenska ännu. Duolingo seems like a pretty good way to learn.[/QUOTE] Duolingo är bra men uttalet på vissa frågor är dåligt. [sp]Duolingo is good but the pronunciation on some questions is bad.[/sp]

Cross posting this in Japan Chat and Language Learning since it's relevant for both and I'm not sure how big the reader overlap is. My friend has "wanted to learn japanese since 2008" but he's pretty lazy so hasn't done really anything about it. Anyway I figure I am at a level where I can at least learn him through the basics and offer corrections and stuff. To this end I set up some online learning software so I can fail him on things in an official manner and maybe the deadlines will help him or something. For anyone who has either taught a language class or participated in them before (I am all self taught, so I have no idea what they are like), what kind of things are good for assignments? I was thinking the obvious stuff like "translate x" and "what is the reading of y" but also wanting to get more interesting things in as soon as possible. Maybe something like having him review / describe the plot of some show he likes or something - obviously this would be many months in to allow a build up of grammar and vocab. These will be accompanied by weekly quizzes on the vocab and grammar points covered and will be repeatable the week after they are marked for review purposes. He gives up more easily than I would like so I am taking everything a lot slower than I would learn it as a result (2 weeks for katakana, compared to my 5 days). At the current rate I have the first 7 weeks of content loosely planned and don't expect any assignments would be worth doing before then any way.

I would say that if he isn't able to learn by his own willpower, he's likely not to learn very much at all.

Sometimes you have to realize when your friends are useless pieces of shit and stop trying.

Probably being overly optimistic but I do want to at least give him a chance first. Not going to fully lay out more than a week ahead because honestly I expect he will quit and don't want to have wasted [I]too[/I] much time on it. I get some minor practice with teachery words since I can have my interface in Japanese and his in English so it's not a complete loss.

They say that those who are teaching are the ones learning the most. By being able to comprehend the material enough to explain it to others will only strengthen your grasp on it. But if it's a lost cause, that's up to you to decide whether it's worth it.

Finished up learning "English" on Duolingo. No idea how you get the level to 100% because I did everything and it's only at 52%. [t]http://helifreak.duckdns.org/image/20160616084401762.png[/t] Part of me is glad because I finished a thing but part of me is sad I now have one less source of new vocabulary and grammar.

Any French speakers mind translating a few short phrases for me? Maybe with pronunciation too if you could manage. I need it for a theatre project Do you speak french? Where are you from? Your home? Your old home? Do you want to eat?

[QUOTE=inebriaticxp;50676478]Any French speakers mind translating a few short phrases for me? Maybe with pronunciation too if you could manage. I need it for a theatre project Do you speak french? Where are you from? Your home? Your old home? Do you want to eat?[/QUOTE] - Parles-tu français ? - D'où viens-tu ? - Ta maison ? - Ton ancienne maison ? - Veux-tu manger ? It should be ok.

Been in China for the last month, been fantastic, today, the "last" day was a hectic, but good day for language practice. Lunchtime saw a friend off at a train station, really sad, been with them travelling for a month. Went to Mcdonalds for lunch because it's my last day in China, why not cherish it with western food, no one inside spoke English. Afterwards, I was supposed to go from Wuhan to Shanghai and then to Melbourne and home. Anyway, took a taxi to the airport in Wuhan, the driver wouldn't run the meter, trying to rip me off cause I was a foreigner, anyway I argued with him for ages as he was driving to turn the meter and he finally gave in and turned i on, but he was pissed, driver dropped me off at international, not because of this, just because I'm an idiot, anyway, had to get a second taxi, the driver in the second taxi had a good laugh at my mistake and we chatted for the 5 minutes it took to change terminals. Plane ticket had some issue, wasn't showing on the board, so I had to go ask where to check in. Stopped at a cafe in the airport and the staff were really awkward about me, as some Chinese people are toward foreigners, they always assume you can't speak any Chinese, anyway because they were so awkward that they didn't ask me to pay, they were really close and assumed I couldn't understand anything, but they were chatting about how they were afraid to come over and speak to me in English to tell me to pay. In the end the manager came over and his English was awful. I didn't use Chinese because it was so awkward and I didn't want them to feel even more awkward. On the plane I asked for water once in Chinese and all of a sudden they stopped all of the English announcements, not a problem, who needs to listen to airplane announcements? Anyway, plane nearly stalled mid flight, so they landed at a different airport and got us all off the plane to transfer to another plane. Meanwhile no English, got the gist, but I had to ask the old lady next to me to explain a few things using simpler Chinese, she was super cool though her accent was really hard to understand. After getting off the plane, I was told by a couple of older men they were taking a taxi to the destination airport, it was faster than waiting for the flight which would arrive at the airport after my connecting flight to Melbourne. I checked the map on my phone and it was an hour away, which was like a half hour before my flight. So rather than go with the airlines arranged flight I went to take a taxi, expensive, but less expensive than missing the flight. Anyway, the line for the taxi had like 500 people in it no joke, waited 20 minutes then gave up, so did the guys I was with, booked a hotel pretty close to the wrong airport, waited in line, phone was at 1% so I asked a guy to write the address down for me, since I was afraid I'd write too slowly and my phone would run out of juice. Guy spoke perfect English, wtf, Shanghai is so different from the other cities I've been in for the past month. So many people speak English and it's really awkward, because even if they speak English I always reply in Chinese, which I think is a bit rude because they are always looking forward to practising English but I'm just so used to speaking in Chinese, I've done nothing but speak Chinese for the past month so it's really hard to reply in English. Finally got in the Taxi with a guy that was speaking some Shanghainese, knew Mandarin but his pronunciation wasn't great, so much so that he sat on the side of the road with me for a good 5 minutes trying to get his siri like app to recognise the address. I don't think he knew how to type characters, old guy, I thought it might be insulting to ask him to type if he didn't know how, would suck to have the foreigner type Chinese for you. Anyway we had a good laugh about how shitty the app was, not his pronunciation and I arrived at the hotel. Another person speaking English at the front desk, awkwardly replied in Chinese again by accident. Got inside, sat in my room and called China Eastern Airlines for two hours arguing for free tickets, anyway got free tickets but they aren't until Saturday. Stuck in Shanghai for a few days.

Okay, so I moved to Germany like 9 months ago, but I barely learned any German and I don't seem to have any motivation to learn it. Any tips how to make my German better without even trying? haha And if anyone wants to learn Lithuanian, there is basically no apps for it from my experience. So I can help kinda?