The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
Please vote in the Forum Structure Poll. Polling will close at 2PM EST on January 21, 2025.
はじめまして！Let’s learn a new language!
joshofalltrades
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
Guten Tag! Hola! こんにちわ！
While the Holiday Forums were up we had a really cool thread about our efforts to become polyglots. I still remember a bit of my German from my high school days. I took it for four years, but working at a Lutheran church really put it into practice. As with most things, proficiency comes from a combination of study and application!
Which is why this thread exists. Some of us are native speakers looking to help those who want to learn, some of us just think we sound ridiculous while we try to learn. But actually, making the effort is a laudable goal!
And not just for cultural reasons! Knowing multiple languages can land you a real cool job in another country or at home, and looks awesome on a resume regardless!
I’ve started to learn Japanese this last year. With four kids in the house, I don’t have a lot of time to study! But I’ve always wanted to do this. Even knowing the hiragana and katakana feels good. I can watch Japanese shows or play Japanese games and know how to read (some of the) characters!
Please use this thread to practice, ask for help, encourage each other in our endeavors, and be a little closer to our worldly neighbors.
I’m sure we can get a Discord channel started to practice more regularly as well!
While the Holiday Forums were up we had a really cool thread about our efforts to become polyglots. I still remember a bit of my German from my high school days. I took it for four years, but working at a Lutheran church really put it into practice. As with most things, proficiency comes from a combination of study and application!
Which is why this thread exists. Some of us are native speakers looking to help those who want to learn, some of us just think we sound ridiculous while we try to learn. But actually, making the effort is a laudable goal!
And not just for cultural reasons! Knowing multiple languages can land you a real cool job in another country or at home, and looks awesome on a resume regardless!
I’ve started to learn Japanese this last year. With four kids in the house, I don’t have a lot of time to study! But I’ve always wanted to do this. Even knowing the hiragana and katakana feels good. I can watch Japanese shows or play Japanese games and know how to read (some of the) characters!
Please use this thread to practice, ask for help, encourage each other in our endeavors, and be a little closer to our worldly neighbors.
I’m sure we can get a Discord channel started to practice more regularly as well!
joshofalltrades on
+20
Posts
Let's all finally do it.
Let's all learn Esperanto.
*fires up Duolingo*
*selects Valyrian*
I still find it funny and interesting that Korean uses the same adverbs/ some adjectives the same or similar to Japanese it kind of speed up the process for me
What’s different? My big complaint is that it doesn’t really teach, it just immerses.
I don’t think “little cross playing the tuba” is a long term strategy.
I really want to learn the indo European one but there is a lot of pseudo science about it so that squashes that plan
よ: yo, I’ve got a tuba
See how the cross look like he is just waiiiiiiling on that tuba?
Yaya playing a stupid tuba.
Pseudoscience? Like what?
If I want her to help me I’ve got to learn how to ask
今日の天気はどうですか
(kyo no tenki wa dou desu ka)
What’s the weather today?
Prove me wrong!
I mean, I am extremely goal oriented and I have a lot of free time.
So.
Is it crazy to learn two at once? Id like to learn a language with forumers but it'd only be a side thing for me.
now I mostly repeat vegetable names to my kid while he shoves them in his mouth. ¡tienes zanahorias! las zanahorias son anaranjadas.
anyway I’m really hoping that I’ll have some opportunities to work on it more often now, living in Texas. Duolingo feels like good fuel for practice but I need something less sterile, too! also if I ever try some nonsense in Spanish that doesn’t make sense please for the love of god tell me
the biggest obstacle at the moment is figuring out what all the prepositions do
Edit: and I'm pretty sure there it's used as an adjective anyway, which means, still no plural marker.
ideally i would like to get to the stage where she can speak to me slowly en espanol and i have at least some idea what she's saying, but we'll get there. need to build some vocabulary first
edit: also i need to practice talking more and not just interpreting
so would it be “naranjada?”
Dictionary suggests both are aceptable adjective forms, though I have never personally ever heard anyone actually say “naranjado/a”.
¿tú escuchabas anaranjado/a usualmente?
(I am definitively in the wilderness the moment I step out of the present tense)
I'm excited to finally understand what the hell Chiitan is up to
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
So here's the V A O of Māori.
Some of this is stuff I don't fully understand yet so it may be a little inaccurate. But here goes.
The basic unit of Māori is phrases, not words. I guess this is because tense and plurals are handled by words.
A basic phrase might be:
Kei te inu au.
Tense verb agent
I am drinking
If you wanted to include what you're drinking, ie the object, you would add another phrase
Kei te inu au/ i te miraka. (/ is for your benefit it is not there irl)
The 'i' connects the two and the 'te' is a singular 'the' and miraka is milk.
Unfortunately I chose a bad example to show plurals. You can say "ngā miraka" in some contexts but I don't know what those are.
So instead...
Kei te inu au te kurī i te miraka.
The dog is drinking the milk.
Kei te inu au ngā kurī i te miraka.
The dogs are drinking the milk.
So there is "te" for a definite single the and "ngā" for a definite plural the. And there is also the indefinite "he" which can be either plural or singular. I dont get it.
Oh geez. I should not be trying to type all this up on my mobile. I haven't even gotten to location words! Oh well, in for a penny.
Nei na ra
Te rākau nei.
The tree near me (or just "this tree")
Te rākau na.
The tree near you (or "that tree (near you)")
Te rākau ra.
The tree yonder (or "that tree (not near either of us)")
I may be awry with the spelling of the location words. For a while there was much debate over how to represent long vowels. With the two sides being double vowels vs macros. aa or ā
One of my books is by a guy who was in favour of the double. He takes an academic approach to learning the language which I find useful but his vowel method is outdated. So theres a few blind spots I'm trying to correct. E.g. I have been spelling "ngā" as "nga" for a while which is not quite right and I'm trying to change that.
His concern was that a macron was not easily typed on a PC but nowadays it's very easy to do and you can even do it on your phone. Plus there are times when you have two vowels touching (e.g. a compound word) and using a macron for long vowels means that those two touching vowels don't get mistaken for a double vowel.
Whew. A little more than I meant to write but I guess it is a little more complicated than it seems. There's a lot of stuff I have left off! And that's just the stuff that I know which is kind of a morale booster. I'm usually looking forward at the mountain of stuff I'm yet to learn and it was kinda nice to look back at the stuff that I have a pretty good grasp on (even if I did need to double check my books while writing this).
En mi familia decimos “naranja”.