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French! I am learning French right now! I will join a French party J'aime les langues! Elles sont trés interresant! Je ne sais pa quelque chose, mais, j'ecoute le nouvelle en francais chaque jour!
Also, I learned Japanese for 15 years and worked in Japan for 2, and passed the JLPT 2 back in the day. I used to earn my bread as a translator/interpreter back in the day... it's been a while now, but 皆さん、何でも聞いてもいいですよ！ ^_^
+3
valhalla13013 Dark Shield Perceives the GodsRegistered Userregular
I would like to learn Spanish or hangul. I gave a serious try to Spanish once, never did pick it up. I took Latin in high school and college. I don't remember any of it, but I can always tell when something is something I learned and just forgot.
Another fun one is 맥가이버칼, or "MacGyver knife", which is a commonly used name for Swiss army knives, still in use long after the general populace knows who MacGyver is.
I'm excited! And feel all helpful! Here's some links to things that help me out in my language learning (focusing around Japanese and French), which might be interesting to a few of you.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/fr/ - NHK also puts out a daily news & culture podcast.... in French! ^^; It's centered around Japan, but hey, it's good quality and free! (PS - if you look at the bottom of that link, they do the same in Arabic, Russian, Urdu, Bengali, Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese, Burmese, Hindi, Persian, Swahili, Chinese, Indonesian, Portuguese, and Thai. Gotta love that well-funded and functional Cultural Affairs Bureau...)
http://www.bbc.com/ws/languages - The BBC news in a preposterous amount of languages. Includes Japanese, and African-focused French!
http://www.nhk.or.jp/radionews/ - This is a Japanese podcase of the Japanese news. It has a "ゆっくり" button, but uh, this one's pretty advanced.
Other than that... I listen to a lot of French stuff on Youtube. Recently I throw on a French Let's Play guy in the background while I'm at work. Also, I listen to French pop all the time. I got good at Japanese by buying manga in Japanese, then translating it, with my endless amounts of free time I used to have in high school ^^; I think the key is to immerse yourself in as much media as possible, ideally media you really like. (I don't like Japanese music or French movies/novels, so have had to be creative ^^;)
Oh! And don't be afraid to do weird/stupid tricks to learn languages either. My dumbest Japanese learning technique was to translate all the volumes of Naruto by hand, little by little, while sitting on the toilet. My dumbest French learning technique was to write down one word a day in French for every day Donald Trump remains in the presidency. I've got over 700 words and counting. Today's word is "bouillir" for "to boil". Good times!
I was using HelloChinese and Lingodeer as I want to learn traditional characters
(My listening is... ok, spoken fairly poor, and I only know sub 100 written characters)
I keep wanting to try to read or watch something in Mandarin with subtitles, but the problem is that I hate watching most TV shows and can't help rolling my eyes through standard historical/nonhistorical plotlines
Perhaps I should try non-fiction? If anyone has any recommendations, I'd be all for it
I'll throw out a few recommendations, but it if none of it speaks to you, let me know what your preferences are! I may be able to dredge something out of the old memory banks.
As far as TV goes, I enjoyed 痞子英雄, a buddy cop action/comedy set in Taiwan.
If you're looking for movies, there's a ton of stuff out there with Mandarin dubs: this includes most all the Hong Kong kung fu stuff (Ip Man, Jackie Chan, etc.), every Pixar film ever, and a lot of mainstream American cinema.
On top of that I'd encourage you to check out Red Cliff, Infernal Affairs, and maybe a comedy or two (I vaguely remember enjoying 搞定岳父 and 不见不散).
+2
mightyjongyoSour CrrmEast Bay, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
I was using HelloChinese and Lingodeer as I want to learn traditional characters
(My listening is... ok, spoken fairly poor, and I only know sub 100 written characters)
I keep wanting to try to read or watch something in Mandarin with subtitles, but the problem is that I hate watching most TV shows and can't help rolling my eyes through standard historical/nonhistorical plotlines
Perhaps I should try non-fiction? If anyone has any recommendations, I'd be all for it
I'll throw out a few recommendations, but it if none of it speaks to you, let me know what your preferences are! I may be able to dredge something out of the old memory banks.
As far as TV goes, I enjoyed 痞子英雄, a buddy cop action/comedy set in Taiwan.
If you're looking for movies, there's a ton of stuff out there with Mandarin dubs: this includes most all the Hong Kong kung fu stuff (Ip Man, Jackie Chan, etc.), every Pixar film ever, and a lot of mainstream American cinema.
On top of that I'd encourage you to check out Red Cliff, Infernal Affairs, and maybe a comedy or two (I vaguely remember enjoying 搞定岳父 and 不见不散).
Red Cliff is fairly rooted in historical/old lit though, so it may not be a good pick
Yeah, to be clear, my recommendation is not so much "you must watch all of these", but rather "hit up IMDB, check the ratings, read the synopsis, and see if it's to your liking".
I think the biggest part of learning a language is learning words. If you know the words then you can at least guess at what is being said even if you aren't all there on the grammar.
I love etymology and finding out the story of how a word came to be helps lock it in my head. A lot of these are loan words. Which are doubly easy because they already sound like the English word.
E.g. Mihingare (there are a variety of spellings). The word for the Anglican church. Because it sounds like missionary. You can see the story there.
Whereas Katorika is more direct.
Catholic.
English is Ingarihi. And I bet you can guess who/what Wīwī is...
French/France! Which is delightful.
In general I don't like loan words. I feel like they imply that languages are 1:1. Some words are to start with, but you cant rely on that and assuming something is the same can lead to getting egg on your face.
Plus the non loan words are more fun. Like ngote puehu or "dust sucker" the word(s) for vacuum cleaner.
There's been efforts to remove loan words from use and replace them with more sensical words. With the days of the week and months of the year being given new/old names that actually mean something. As opposed to names that just replicate the sound of the English words.
I don't know the meaning of all the new names but Rāhina is "moon day" which is a nice change from a "meaningless" loan word to a understandable translation.
Rātapu is "sacred day" as it'd be the day you go to church. Tapu is a more complex idea than "sacred" but it maps well enough to the Christian idea of sacred that it is used as such. E.g. Te Paipera Tapu. The Holy Bible (paipera is also a loan word).
Learning the names has been pretty helpful. Rāhoroi means cleaning day so I tend to clean more on Saturdays now. It's not just a lazy Saturday, it's cleaning day! I gotta tidy my shit!
Mere is a type of club so that'd make Fridays clubbing day? But that's just how I remember it. I don't think that is the intended meaning.
But my favourite word *is* a loan word.
Waea is the word for telephone.
But it doesn't sound like telephone?
Ah yes. But it does sound like "wire" as in "telegraph wire". And as the technology developed and was replaced by telephones the word stuck around. I love it because of the history.
Oh. Something similar that I also love:
Kia ora, which is "hello". But it literally means "be well". Similar to our "goodbye" which means, uh, "goodbye" but literally means/meant "God be with ye". It's fascinating how words become themselves/the thing they represent time and the original meaning gets left behind. You notice it especially with place names.
I don't watch TV. I don't catch many movies either, aside from marvel superhero stuff and sci-fi? I enjoy reading sci-fi and fantasy, but I suppose modern day crime or legal drama could work too
I guess I should clarify that I'm not opposed to actual historical stuff or stories well grounded in a historical era. It's just that my mom seems to watch a non ending plethora of "people wearing fancy anachronistic clothes" court dramas with the same five plotlines (this is perhaps slightly unfair) and I don't want to fall into that hole
I don't watch TV. I don't catch many movies either, aside from marvel superhero stuff and sci-fi? I enjoy reading sci-fi and fantasy, but I suppose modern day crime or legal drama could work too
I guess I should clarify that I'm not opposed to actual historical stuff or stories well grounded in a historical era. It's just that my mom seems to watch a non ending plethora of "people wearing fancy anachronistic clothes" court dramas with the same five plotlines (this is perhaps slightly unfair) and I don't want to fall into that hole
Mandarin subtitles or English subtitles? Trying to get some recommendations from my wife :P
French! I am learning French right now! I will join a French party J'aime les langues! Elles sont trés interresant! Je ne sais pa quelque chose, mais, j'ecoute le nouvelle en francais chaque jour!
Also, I learned Japanese for 15 years and worked in Japan for 2, and passed the JLPT 2 back in the day. I used to earn my bread as a translator/interpreter back in the day... it's been a while now, but 皆さん、何でも聞いてもいいですよ！ ^_^
Any recommendations for apps? Paid or free.
I took German in HS and remember very little, but would actually like to learn French for no particular reason.
I don't watch TV. I don't catch many movies either, aside from marvel superhero stuff and sci-fi? I enjoy reading sci-fi and fantasy, but I suppose modern day crime or legal drama could work too
I guess I should clarify that I'm not opposed to actual historical stuff or stories well grounded in a historical era. It's just that my mom seems to watch a non ending plethora of "people wearing fancy anachronistic clothes" court dramas with the same five plotlines (this is perhaps slightly unfair) and I don't want to fall into that hole
Mandarin subtitles or English subtitles? Trying to get some recommendations from my wife :P
Either would do! My listening skills are OK, so I'd understand even if it was Mandarin subs and it'd help me learn the word shapes. English subs would help enforce a tighter connection between the spoken word and the meaning, I reckon :P Thank you for asking your wife!
Hi MichaelLC! I currently use a flip-phone, so I'm not up-to-date on the latest and greatest apps. But in the before-times, when I had a smartphone and a long bus commute, I bashed my way through Duolingo French. I got half-way to completion before the bus commute stopped being a thing... I think it was helpful, though!
Since I seem to be a fan of the "bash your head against wall until wall gives in" type of study, one of the most helpful language-learning tools I had was actually this Youtube video:
It is 258 minutes of regular-speed (though simple), untranslated French conversations. Watching it would probably make your eyes fall out from boredom, but I had a really boring job for a while, and I managed to listen to 10 "episodes", podcast-style, per day, getting through the entire video over the week. I had plenty of time to close my eyes and see if I could understand what they were saying without any references. The first time, you understand nothing, but by the 12th time? You understand most of it! Progress!
Last recommendation is the following video, for the amazing time capsule of Paris in the '80s. (Crowning jewel: the scene where a man's wife tells him she wants to work, so HE goes to the employment office to sign her up to be a temp, while the (FEMALE) receptionist takes down the information with a poker face? Done with zero sense of irony!) Actually, everyone should watch at least 5 minutes of this. It's a treasure.
...Okay I can't help myself. I haven't watched the video, but the difference between は and が always seemed simple to me. It's a matter of where the emphasis falls in the sentence. If you want to emphasize the subject of the sentence - the first word, typically - you slap a が on there. If instead you think the object or verb, namely the latter part of the sentence, is more important, you use は. It always seemed very simple to me... possibly because I started out reading manga, which loves its dangling sentences ending in が, lol. OKAY DONE NOW. THANKS EVERYONE FOR TALKING ABOUT MY ONE REMAINING HOBBY AFTER MY SON WAS BORN.
I learned some Japanese a long time ago. More recently I've tried to refresh my skills and learn some new stuff. I've had technical issues with Duolingo, and so I've tried Longodeer and had a lot of success with it, I think. A lot of it is vocab-focused, with some basic grammar.
I think wrapping my head around the grammar is going to be the most difficult part... and Kanji of course. I remember some of the basic ones but that's it.
picked up Read Real Japanese yesterday. Japanese on the right-hand page, "tentative" translations on the left. I'm not thrilled with the format, but it's at least another tool for the box. An appendix of sorts provides a bit more detail. And I put tentative in quotes because that's how the editor / translator describes their translations. That's a little odd, but I understand the impulse. Even if I kind of want an authoritative translation. A rock upon which to build, so to speak.
Tamin on
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MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
Oh hey, thread. This thread and my love of Terrace House got me to download duolingo again and try learning some Japanese. It's pretty fun! Also pretty complicated...but not quite as complicated as I figured it would be? I can read the thread title now!
Or at least...I can deduce the meaning of the thread title despite the one or two characters I struggle to remember. :P
Not totally sure I wanna stick with Japanese in the long term or switch to something more "practical" but I'm havin fun for now so who cares
Just starting getting kanji and more vocabulary, so the complexity is increasing rapidly.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited January 2019
Duolingo’s lack of structured lesson plans is starting to chafe me. It doesn’t really give advice on how to learn these things, it just lays them out in front of you and wants you to learn from gross repetition.
Some of the best memorization I have had for the hiragana came from outside sources. Duolingo seems nice for testing yourself like a better version of flash cards, but I really need some kind of book with a lesson plan and teaching in it to really grasp all this.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Duolingo’s lack of structured lesson plans is starting to chafe me. It doesn’t really give advice on how to learn these things, it just lays them out in front of you and wants you to learn from gross repetition.
Some of the best memorization I have had for the hiragana came from outside sources. Duolingo seems nice for testing yourself like a better version of flash cards, but I really need some kind of book with a lesson plan and teaching in it to really grasp all this.
Duolingo uses a much more naturalistic approach to language learning, exposure and inference through context. It is very good and very clever but if you’re the kind of person who prefers to have things very clearly explained and laid out for you so that you can systematically take it apart and understand the pieces, then yes, you will feel much more comfortable with a more traditional approach.
Strictly speaking, this is a matter of degrees and comfort, as both approaches are useful for language learning (the Duolingo approach being much more important at higher levels for development of fluency). You should continue to use Duolingo, but I expect you will blaze through the basic levels much more quickly with a textbook.
ouzaru on
0
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Yeah. I can't speak to the more complex stuff at all, but it would help to know little things like, how an apostrophe changes the way a hiragana character is pronounced.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Yeah. I can't speak to the more complex stuff at all, but it would help to know little things like, how an apostrophe changes the way a hiragana character is pronounced.
Yeah. I can't speak to the more complex stuff at all, but it would help to know little things like, how an apostrophe changes the way a hiragana character is pronounced.
Generally, it adds voicing.
k and g are articulated in the same place In your vocal tract, one (g) requires the use of voicing, the other (k) does not.
The little circle is only used of はひふへほ and indicates labial interference: ぱ>pa, ぴ>pi you get the idea.
ouzaru on
0
StragintDo Not GiftAlways DeclinesRegistered Userregular
I bought book 1 and 2 of Genki: an integrated course in elementary Japanese a few years ago to try and get things going with learning. I kind of fell off learning due to stress and work but I want to start up again.
Are the Genki books still a good place to start? I was also thinking of using Duolingo to help as well.
PSN: Reaper_Stragint, Steam: DoublePitstoChesty
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Not great if you're at beginner level, but for reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition, I've been enjoying a game called Lapse. I think it's one of a series of similar games (I think the main one is called Reign) where you are the ruler of a government - in this case post-apocalyptic - and are presented with problems and choices from your advisors. It's a card with some descriptive text, and you swipe left or right to make a binary choice about what to do. The game is trying to keep your resources from running out. You have money, weapons, population, food, and maybe something else. Every decision causes bars to go up or down. Any of them hit zero and you lose.
Anyway the great thing is the game supports multiple languages, so I find it to be a fun way to practice my Mandarin and learn subject- relevant vocabulary like "radiation", "genetically modified", "mutant", "corruption", "intelligence agency" and so on.
Can be picked up and put down easily. I have it for Android, not sure about other platforms.
I have been thinking that maybe playing a dating sim in japanese might be help in learning due to being invested emotionally wise with the characters
Persona 5 might be overkill though
I tried learning french at one point and got purty far into the DuoLingo lessons but then lapsed LIKE A CHUMP. I never really got good enough to understand somebody talking but my reading comprehension was like, a 4 year old? Which for 3 or 4 months of practice ain't bad maybe?
Anyway I started over and I'm trying to burn through everything as a refresher. As far as immersion goes I'm just watching Wakfu on netflix and reading a very young children's book series about a rabbit that is a goddamned little shit and I hate him.
Posts
Also, I learned Japanese for 15 years and worked in Japan for 2, and passed the JLPT 2 back in the day. I used to earn my bread as a translator/interpreter back in the day... it's been a while now, but 皆さん、何でも聞いてもいいですよ！ ^_^
...
I’m moving to Korea.
https://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/ - This is a super easy lesson set on basic Japanese put out by the Japanese government. It's free!
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/fr/ - NHK also puts out a daily news & culture podcast.... in French! ^^; It's centered around Japan, but hey, it's good quality and free! (PS - if you look at the bottom of that link, they do the same in Arabic, Russian, Urdu, Bengali, Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese, Burmese, Hindi, Persian, Swahili, Chinese, Indonesian, Portuguese, and Thai. Gotta love that well-funded and functional Cultural Affairs Bureau...)
http://www.bbc.com/ws/languages - The BBC news in a preposterous amount of languages. Includes Japanese, and African-focused French!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french/ - A bunch of French lessons for all levels. Not updated anymore, but still a helpful resource!
http://www.nhk.or.jp/radionews/ - This is a Japanese podcase of the Japanese news. It has a "ゆっくり" button, but uh, this one's pretty advanced.
Other than that... I listen to a lot of French stuff on Youtube. Recently I throw on a French Let's Play guy in the background while I'm at work. Also, I listen to French pop all the time. I got good at Japanese by buying manga in Japanese, then translating it, with my endless amounts of free time I used to have in high school ^^; I think the key is to immerse yourself in as much media as possible, ideally media you really like. (I don't like Japanese music or French movies/novels, so have had to be creative ^^;)
Oh! And don't be afraid to do weird/stupid tricks to learn languages either. My dumbest Japanese learning technique was to translate all the volumes of Naruto by hand, little by little, while sitting on the toilet. My dumbest French learning technique was to write down one word a day in French for every day Donald Trump remains in the presidency. I've got over 700 words and counting. Today's word is "bouillir" for "to boil". Good times!
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
So far I’m not actually learning any new vocabulary, but that’s fine.
I’m not gonna lie, it’s a bit of an ego boost.
oh god i’ll watch this and still never get it right
Fake it till you make it.
I'll throw out a few recommendations, but it if none of it speaks to you, let me know what your preferences are! I may be able to dredge something out of the old memory banks.
As far as TV goes, I enjoyed 痞子英雄, a buddy cop action/comedy set in Taiwan.
If you're looking for movies, there's a ton of stuff out there with Mandarin dubs: this includes most all the Hong Kong kung fu stuff (Ip Man, Jackie Chan, etc.), every Pixar film ever, and a lot of mainstream American cinema.
On top of that I'd encourage you to check out Red Cliff, Infernal Affairs, and maybe a comedy or two (I vaguely remember enjoying 搞定岳父 and 不见不散).
Red Cliff is fairly rooted in historical/old lit though, so it may not be a good pick
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
I love etymology and finding out the story of how a word came to be helps lock it in my head. A lot of these are loan words. Which are doubly easy because they already sound like the English word.
E.g. Mihingare (there are a variety of spellings). The word for the Anglican church. Because it sounds like missionary. You can see the story there.
Whereas Katorika is more direct.
In general I don't like loan words. I feel like they imply that languages are 1:1. Some words are to start with, but you cant rely on that and assuming something is the same can lead to getting egg on your face.
Plus the non loan words are more fun. Like ngote puehu or "dust sucker" the word(s) for vacuum cleaner.
There's been efforts to remove loan words from use and replace them with more sensical words. With the days of the week and months of the year being given new/old names that actually mean something. As opposed to names that just replicate the sound of the English words.
Turei - Rātū
Wenerei - Rāapa
Taite - Rāpare
Paraire - Rāmere
Hatarei - Rāhoroi
Rātapu - Rātapu
I don't know the meaning of all the new names but Rāhina is "moon day" which is a nice change from a "meaningless" loan word to a understandable translation.
Rātapu is "sacred day" as it'd be the day you go to church. Tapu is a more complex idea than "sacred" but it maps well enough to the Christian idea of sacred that it is used as such. E.g. Te Paipera Tapu. The Holy Bible (paipera is also a loan word).
Learning the names has been pretty helpful. Rāhoroi means cleaning day so I tend to clean more on Saturdays now. It's not just a lazy Saturday, it's cleaning day! I gotta tidy my shit!
Mere is a type of club so that'd make Fridays clubbing day? But that's just how I remember it. I don't think that is the intended meaning.
But my favourite word *is* a loan word.
Waea is the word for telephone.
But it doesn't sound like telephone?
Ah yes. But it does sound like "wire" as in "telegraph wire". And as the technology developed and was replaced by telephones the word stuck around. I love it because of the history.
Oh. Something similar that I also love:
Kia ora, which is "hello". But it literally means "be well". Similar to our "goodbye" which means, uh, "goodbye" but literally means/meant "God be with ye". It's fascinating how words become themselves/the thing they represent time and the original meaning gets left behind. You notice it especially with place names.
I don't watch TV. I don't catch many movies either, aside from marvel superhero stuff and sci-fi? I enjoy reading sci-fi and fantasy, but I suppose modern day crime or legal drama could work too
I guess I should clarify that I'm not opposed to actual historical stuff or stories well grounded in a historical era. It's just that my mom seems to watch a non ending plethora of "people wearing fancy anachronistic clothes" court dramas with the same five plotlines (this is perhaps slightly unfair) and I don't want to fall into that hole
Switch: SW-7603-3284-4227
My ACNH Wishlists | My ACNH Catalog
Mandarin subtitles or English subtitles? Trying to get some recommendations from my wife :P
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
Any recommendations for apps? Paid or free.
I took German in HS and remember very little, but would actually like to learn French for no particular reason.
Either would do! My listening skills are OK, so I'd understand even if it was Mandarin subs and it'd help me learn the word shapes. English subs would help enforce a tighter connection between the spoken word and the meaning, I reckon :P Thank you for asking your wife!
Switch: SW-7603-3284-4227
My ACNH Wishlists | My ACNH Catalog
https://www.duolingo.com/course/fr/en/Learn-French-Online (in case you somehow don't already have it)
Since I seem to be a fan of the "bash your head against wall until wall gives in" type of study, one of the most helpful language-learning tools I had was actually this Youtube video:
It is 258 minutes of regular-speed (though simple), untranslated French conversations. Watching it would probably make your eyes fall out from boredom, but I had a really boring job for a while, and I managed to listen to 10 "episodes", podcast-style, per day, getting through the entire video over the week. I had plenty of time to close my eyes and see if I could understand what they were saying without any references. The first time, you understand nothing, but by the 12th time? You understand most of it! Progress!
Last recommendation is the following video, for the amazing time capsule of Paris in the '80s. (Crowning jewel: the scene where a man's wife tells him she wants to work, so HE goes to the employment office to sign her up to be a temp, while the (FEMALE) receptionist takes down the information with a poker face? Done with zero sense of irony!) Actually, everyone should watch at least 5 minutes of this. It's a treasure.
...Okay I can't help myself. I haven't watched the video, but the difference between は and が always seemed simple to me. It's a matter of where the emphasis falls in the sentence. If you want to emphasize the subject of the sentence - the first word, typically - you slap a が on there. If instead you think the object or verb, namely the latter part of the sentence, is more important, you use は. It always seemed very simple to me... possibly because I started out reading manga, which loves its dangling sentences ending in が, lol. OKAY DONE NOW. THANKS EVERYONE FOR TALKING ABOUT MY ONE REMAINING HOBBY AFTER MY SON WAS BORN.
I think wrapping my head around the grammar is going to be the most difficult part... and Kanji of course. I remember some of the basic ones but that's it.
Will check those out. Yeah I did some DuoLingo awhile ago so will need to start from the beginning. Would like to become at least verbally competent.
If that employment video doesn't show everyone chain-smoking thin cigarettes, I will demand my money back.
No idea how these are, but for the learning Japanese people, here's a trilogy of RPGs where battles are done via Japanese knowledge, 70% off.
I just bought the Hiragana one for full price a few days ago, so you're welcome, everyone
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
The Hiragana one is fairly primitive but it does the job. They get better as they go, with Persona-style Social Links even!
Or at least...I can deduce the meaning of the thread title despite the one or two characters I struggle to remember. :P
Not totally sure I wanna stick with Japanese in the long term or switch to something more "practical" but I'm havin fun for now so who cares
Just starting getting kanji and more vocabulary, so the complexity is increasing rapidly.
Some of the best memorization I have had for the hiragana came from outside sources. Duolingo seems nice for testing yourself like a better version of flash cards, but I really need some kind of book with a lesson plan and teaching in it to really grasp all this.
And it was the most German thing
Duolingo uses a much more naturalistic approach to language learning, exposure and inference through context. It is very good and very clever but if you’re the kind of person who prefers to have things very clearly explained and laid out for you so that you can systematically take it apart and understand the pieces, then yes, you will feel much more comfortable with a more traditional approach.
Strictly speaking, this is a matter of degrees and comfort, as both approaches are useful for language learning (the Duolingo approach being much more important at higher levels for development of fluency). You should continue to use Duolingo, but I expect you will blaze through the basic levels much more quickly with a textbook.
edit:
Bonus video
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Generally, it adds voicing.
k and g are articulated in the same place In your vocal tract, one (g) requires the use of voicing, the other (k) does not.
The little circle is only used of はひふへほ and indicates labial interference: ぱ>pa, ぴ>pi you get the idea.
Are the Genki books still a good place to start? I was also thinking of using Duolingo to help as well.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Anyway the great thing is the game supports multiple languages, so I find it to be a fun way to practice my Mandarin and learn subject- relevant vocabulary like "radiation", "genetically modified", "mutant", "corruption", "intelligence agency" and so on.
Can be picked up and put down easily. I have it for Android, not sure about other platforms.
Persona 5 might be overkill though
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
You fucking weeaboos.
Anyway I started over and I'm trying to burn through everything as a refresher. As far as immersion goes I'm just watching Wakfu on netflix and reading a very young children's book series about a rabbit that is a goddamned little shit and I hate him.
Wait.
Cette lapin est un beaucoup asshole.