Yeah I started the Duolingo thing and I kinda want some teaching so I can actually learn the Hiragana. Right now I am just giving some of the shapes names and even then I can barely identify some.
I don’t think “little cross playing the tuba” is a long term strategy.
Is there another way to learn a foreign alphabet besides straight memorization?
what i want to do is follow some spanish language news sites on twitter so i'm forced to stop and try and read them when i'm scrolling through
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
For listening practice i would really recommend both the Duolingo Spanish podcast and 'Coffee Break Spanish' (all the coffee break series' are great), both are on Spotify.
Coffee Break Spanish is more lessons that pure listening practice, but it's still useful. The Duolingo podcast flags itself as 'Intermediate', but i'd say it's more towards the beginner end due to how slowly they speak.
I also quite like 'El gabfest en Espanol' on Spotify, which is a political podcast - it's quite advanced/quick Spanish though.
This brings up a good point: I strongly recommend that you take the time to write the characters as you’re learning them; it should help solidify them in your mind.
I have also used the following apps on and off the past couple years:
Lingodeer (Apple and Android apps - teaches composition and grammar in addition to spelling, and you can choose the alphabet you’d like to use)
Innovative (learnjapanesepod101.com, apps on Apple and Android - I use this one every day for listening and reading comprehension, but you should know the alphabets first for it to be most effective)
Drops (Apple and Android app stores - This will teach you vocab starting in your chosen language and gradually ease into the Japanese alphabets, but some familiarity helps)
Japanese! (That’s the name of the app on the Apple App Store - it teaches all the characters and how to write them as you go along, and quizzes you)
Pastel Kana (Apple App Store - Good for quick recall)
Others I’ve been recommended and haven’t done much with (These are all on Android, haven’t checked for them on Apple)
Kanji Senpai
Kanji Tree
Easy Japanese
Infinite Japanese
*When I mention alphabets, I’m referring to Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji is a different beast.
I’ve been using Japanese! for a long while now, and it was super helpful to review hiragana and katakana.
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
i am happy to see this continuing
also re: esperanto, i went to a restaurant in stockholm called fandado that was thematically inspired by esperanto and it was one of the best meals i've ever had so +1 for esperanto
Years ago I got a Japanese language tape for travelers and I learned such important things such as:
"Sutkeso wa doko desu ka?" Where is my suitcase?
"Pantsu wa doko desu ka?" Where are my pants?
Y'know. Important things.
Pantsu is pants like underwear.
Zubon is pants like trousers.
I learned that teaching over there... after using “pants” as my go to fill in the blank word for example sentences while teaching for several months.
Japanese has a lot of loanwords but many don’t come from English or to be more specific American English in the case of pants. Pan is another that jumps to mind, meaning bread and deriving from Portuguese.
I’m sad about how much my Japanese has atrophied since moving back and sometimes I want to brush up on it, but it’s atrophying because I’m not using it.
Thanks to the Holiday thread, I decided to check out the Duolingo Japanese course. I last studied the language ~13 years ago, as an undergrad and English teacher in Tokyo (I was living in Takadanobaba, after a semester at Kansai Gaidai).
So far it's been fun getting a feel for how much I still recall, but also immensely tedious having to tap through a million katakana recognition screens.
I know little bits of a bunch is different languages. My elementary school was also the school for the deaf, so we had mandatory* sign language classes.
Took 3 years of French in high school.
A semester of Japanese in college. ( Which I was doing really well at, but then my girlfriend, who was taking it too, dumped me and at the time I had no car and the closest place that taught it was like 40 miles away. )
2 semesters of Chinese a few years ago.
Maybe I should fire up Duolingo and see what that's all about. Try to recover some of my Japanese.
*except for my 6th grade class who were really shitty one day and made the sign language teacher cry. They made every student write her an apology letter, but they also I think gave up on us, because i don't remember any more SL classes after that.
Tofystedeth on
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
Thanks to the Holiday thread, I decided to check out the Duolingo Japanese course. I last studied the language ~13 years ago, as an undergrad and English teacher in Tokyo (I was living in Takadanobaba, after a semester at Kansai Gaidai).
So far it's been fun getting a feel for how much I still recall, but also immensely tedious having to tap through a million katakana recognition screens.
That said: みんなさん頑張ります!
i will say my biggest problem with duolingo is how tedious the practice gets once you're at the point of just trying to keep stuff fresh in your mind
do i really need to do 25 practice questions for the "girl/boy/woman/man" lesson just because i haven't reviewed that one recently?
i guess it's just the way the system works but i think it would do wonders to have the practice section just pull from all areas instead of specific lessons
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
Thanks to the Holiday thread, I decided to check out the Duolingo Japanese course. I last studied the language ~13 years ago, as an undergrad and English teacher in Tokyo (I was living in Takadanobaba, after a semester at Kansai Gaidai).
So far it's been fun getting a feel for how much I still recall, but also immensely tedious having to tap through a million katakana recognition screens.
That said: みんなさん頑張ります!
i will say my biggest problem with duolingo is how tedious the practice gets once you're at the point of just trying to keep stuff fresh in your mind
do i really need to do 25 practice questions for the "girl/boy/woman/man" lesson just because i haven't reviewed that one recently?
i guess it's just the way the system works but i think it would do wonders to have the practice section just pull from all areas instead of specific lessons
More insidious method of getting users to "upgrade" to the paid product:
Theodore Flooseveltproud parent of eight beautiful girls and shalmelodorne (which is currently being ruled by a woman (awesome role model for my daughters)) #dornedadRegistered Userregular
David_TA fashion yes-man is no good to me.Copenhagen, DenmarkRegistered Userregular
I keep starting languages on Duolingo and then dropping off when I feel like nothing actually sticks. I think it's because I usually have no reason for using any of them in conversation, it's purely for my own enjoyment. Or whatever you want to call Gaelic.
I've used Duolingo a bit for Chinese and while it can be fun, it inevitably frustrates me to the point that I stop wanting to use it. I find a lot of the translations to be awkward in that they kind of force Chinese grammar structure onto English. And then a lot of translations are just kind of wrong in that they translate the words directly but somewhat mistranslate the meaning/usage.
For example, I remember a sentence like "你可以幫我 _verb_ 嗎"？ Being translated as "Can you help me _verb_?" - which is exactly how a Chinese speaker with okay English would translate it, but what it actually means is "Can you _verb_ for me?" / "Could you do me a favour and _verb_?". 幫 translates to 'help', but it doesn't really mean the same thing in a lot of contexts.
At a certain point I found myself submitting "my answer should have been accepted" multiple times a session and couldn't take it anymore. Months later I got a few emails telling my they are now accepted, it's nice that they do that.
The other thing that drives me nuts with Duolingo is when I go to the next level of a 'circle' and it tells me "You will be presented with more difficult content" - and it's a complete lie! It's just the same set of 7-8 sentences again and again forever.
This brings up a good point: I strongly recommend that you take the time to write the characters as you’re learning them; it should help solidify them in your mind.
I have also used the following apps on and off the past couple years:
Lingodeer (Apple and Android apps - teaches composition and grammar in addition to spelling, and you can choose the alphabet you’d like to use)
Innovative (learnjapanesepod101.com, apps on Apple and Android - I use this one every day for listening and reading comprehension, but you should know the alphabets first for it to be most effective)
Drops (Apple and Android app stores - This will teach you vocab starting in your chosen language and gradually ease into the Japanese alphabets, but some familiarity helps)
Japanese! (That’s the name of the app on the Apple App Store - it teaches all the characters and how to write them as you go along, and quizzes you)
Pastel Kana (Apple App Store - Good for quick recall)
Others I’ve been recommended and haven’t done much with (These are all on Android, haven’t checked for them on Apple)
Kanji Senpai
Kanji Tree
Easy Japanese
Infinite Japanese
*When I mention alphabets, I’m referring to Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji is a different beast.
as I said in the holiday forum, I sense a distinction between guides that are designed to teach the student how to speak or write in a language and one that teaches the student how to read.
Tae Kim's work is better than most - stuff like 'attaching' particles helps a whole bunch - but, "Hopefully, you’ve managed to get a good grasp of how grammar works in Japanese and how to use [it] to communicate your thoughts in the Japanese way." (from the section Other Grammar) This kind of encapsulates my feelings: I'm not communicating. I'm in the audience.
For writers, it's really important to use the right verb forms, to have the correct particles, to build the sentence in a particular way.
For the reader, I'm looking at already-constructed sentences and have to apply those rules in reverse.
so, yeah. Assuming that makes sense: if anyone's run across a grammar guide for the reader, something that might help with working backwards, I'd really appreciate it.
I did want to ask a quick question while I was here:
In this book, また is used to start two successive sentences. Should I treat that as "and again" each time? Or would some variation on "first ... second..." be more accurate?
I've used Duolingo a bit for Chinese and while it can be fun, it inevitably frustrates me to the point that I stop wanting to use it. I find a lot of the translations to be awkward in that they kind of force Chinese grammar structure onto English. And then a lot of translations are just kind of wrong in that they translate the words directly but somewhat mistranslate the meaning/usage.
For example, I remember a sentence like "你可以幫我 _verb_ 嗎"？ Being translated as "Can you help me _verb_?" - which is exactly how a Chinese speaker with okay English would translate it, but what it actually means is "Can you _verb_ for me?" / "Could you do me a favour and _verb_?". 幫 translates to 'help', but it doesn't really mean the same thing in a lot of contexts.
At a certain point I found myself submitting "my answer should have been accepted" multiple times a session and couldn't take it anymore. Months later I got a few emails telling my they are now accepted, it's nice that they do that.
The other thing that drives me nuts with Duolingo is when I go to the next level of a 'circle' and it tells me "You will be presented with more difficult content" - and it's a complete lie! It's just the same set of 7-8 sentences again and again forever.
The thing with Duolingo is that most of its material is crowd-sourced, so the process of its curriculum development is long and slow. It’s free, the business model is essentially that it launches with a base and develops/improves over time.
as I said in the holiday forum, I sense a distinction between guides that are designed to teach the student how to speak or write in a language and one that teaches the student how to read.
Tae Kim's work is better than most - stuff like 'attaching' particles helps a whole bunch - but, "Hopefully, you’ve managed to get a good grasp of how grammar works in Japanese and how to use [it] to communicate your thoughts in the Japanese way." (from the section Other Grammar) This kind of encapsulates my feelings: I'm not communicating. I'm in the audience.
For writers, it's really important to use the right verb forms, to have the correct particles, to build the sentence in a particular way.
For the reader, I'm looking at already-constructed sentences and have to apply those rules in reverse.
so, yeah. Assuming that makes sense: if anyone's run across a grammar guide for the reader, something that might help with working backwards, I'd really appreciate it.
I did want to ask a quick question while I was here:
In this book, また is used to start two successive sentences. Should I treat that as "and again" each time? Or would some variation on "first ... second..." be more accurate?
That is hard to answer out of context, can you include the sentences?
Posts
Is there another way to learn a foreign alphabet besides straight memorization?
I've heard "naranja'o" some times.
I think I like this channel a lot
I just found it
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
For listening practice i would really recommend both the Duolingo Spanish podcast and 'Coffee Break Spanish' (all the coffee break series' are great), both are on Spotify.
Coffee Break Spanish is more lessons that pure listening practice, but it's still useful. The Duolingo podcast flags itself as 'Intermediate', but i'd say it's more towards the beginner end due to how slowly they speak.
I also quite like 'El gabfest en Espanol' on Spotify, which is a political podcast - it's quite advanced/quick Spanish though.
This brings up a good point: I strongly recommend that you take the time to write the characters as you’re learning them; it should help solidify them in your mind.
I have also used the following apps on and off the past couple years:
Lingodeer (Apple and Android apps - teaches composition and grammar in addition to spelling, and you can choose the alphabet you’d like to use)
Innovative (learnjapanesepod101.com, apps on Apple and Android - I use this one every day for listening and reading comprehension, but you should know the alphabets first for it to be most effective)
Drops (Apple and Android app stores - This will teach you vocab starting in your chosen language and gradually ease into the Japanese alphabets, but some familiarity helps)
Japanese! (That’s the name of the app on the Apple App Store - it teaches all the characters and how to write them as you go along, and quizzes you)
Pastel Kana (Apple App Store - Good for quick recall)
Others I’ve been recommended and haven’t done much with (These are all on Android, haven’t checked for them on Apple)
Kanji Senpai
Kanji Tree
Easy Japanese
Infinite Japanese
*When I mention alphabets, I’m referring to Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji is a different beast.
also re: esperanto, i went to a restaurant in stockholm called fandado that was thematically inspired by esperanto and it was one of the best meals i've ever had so +1 for esperanto
Je ne parle pas francais
its pretty similar to Breton in many ways
daijobu desu ka????
iie!!!!! 😭
"Sutkeso wa doko desu ka?" Where is my suitcase?
"Pantsu wa doko desu ka?" Where are my pants?
Y'know. Important things.
どうしたの？
Lies, pants are body prisons and we don’t need them ever
とても眠いです。
私もです。Baby decided it was awake time and now he needs burping and changing.
Mu looks like a cow.
To looks like a toe.
Wo looks like a person falling over a cliff.
I forget the rest of the ones i had.
It’s got a fucked off toenail though
Pantsu is pants like underwear.
Zubon is pants like trousers.
Oh right. Where is my underwear??
I learned that teaching over there... after using “pants” as my go to fill in the blank word for example sentences while teaching for several months.
Japanese has a lot of loanwords but many don’t come from English or to be more specific American English in the case of pants. Pan is another that jumps to mind, meaning bread and deriving from Portuguese.
I’m sad about how much my Japanese has atrophied since moving back and sometimes I want to brush up on it, but it’s atrophying because I’m not using it.
So far it's been fun getting a feel for how much I still recall, but also immensely tedious having to tap through a million katakana recognition screens.
That said: みんなさん頑張ります!
Took 3 years of French in high school.
A semester of Japanese in college. ( Which I was doing really well at, but then my girlfriend, who was taking it too, dumped me and at the time I had no car and the closest place that taught it was like 40 miles away. )
2 semesters of Chinese a few years ago.
Maybe I should fire up Duolingo and see what that's all about. Try to recover some of my Japanese.
*except for my 6th grade class who were really shitty one day and made the sign language teacher cry. They made every student write her an apology letter, but they also I think gave up on us, because i don't remember any more SL classes after that.
i will say my biggest problem with duolingo is how tedious the practice gets once you're at the point of just trying to keep stuff fresh in your mind
do i really need to do 25 practice questions for the "girl/boy/woman/man" lesson just because i haven't reviewed that one recently?
i guess it's just the way the system works but i think it would do wonders to have the practice section just pull from all areas instead of specific lessons
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
Switch: SW-7603-3284-4227
My ACNH Wishlists | My ACNH Catalog
More insidious method of getting users to "upgrade" to the paid product:
1. Full-on Advertisement Bombardment
or
2. Translate into Japanese: "John"
I am not going to talk to someone i think, i just want to use it to read stuff and understand song lyrics
Unrelated edit:
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
ahhh entiendo. Yo pienso que prefiero “anaranjado” porque mi primera maestro de español siempre usaba la palabra
I had math.
Err... 4. 2?
For example, I remember a sentence like "你可以幫我 _verb_ 嗎"？ Being translated as "Can you help me _verb_?" - which is exactly how a Chinese speaker with okay English would translate it, but what it actually means is "Can you _verb_ for me?" / "Could you do me a favour and _verb_?". 幫 translates to 'help', but it doesn't really mean the same thing in a lot of contexts.
At a certain point I found myself submitting "my answer should have been accepted" multiple times a session and couldn't take it anymore. Months later I got a few emails telling my they are now accepted, it's nice that they do that.
The other thing that drives me nuts with Duolingo is when I go to the next level of a 'circle' and it tells me "You will be presented with more difficult content" - and it's a complete lie! It's just the same set of 7-8 sentences again and again forever.
Probably Cubans.
Ackchewawlly, the term is syllabaries.
Tae Kim's work is better than most - stuff like 'attaching' particles helps a whole bunch - but, "Hopefully, you’ve managed to get a good grasp of how grammar works in Japanese and how to use [it] to communicate your thoughts in the Japanese way." (from the section Other Grammar) This kind of encapsulates my feelings: I'm not communicating. I'm in the audience.
For writers, it's really important to use the right verb forms, to have the correct particles, to build the sentence in a particular way.
For the reader, I'm looking at already-constructed sentences and have to apply those rules in reverse.
so, yeah. Assuming that makes sense: if anyone's run across a grammar guide for the reader, something that might help with working backwards, I'd really appreciate it.
I did want to ask a quick question while I was here:
In this book, また is used to start two successive sentences. Should I treat that as "and again" each time? Or would some variation on "first ... second..." be more accurate?
The thing with Duolingo is that most of its material is crowd-sourced, so the process of its curriculum development is long and slow. It’s free, the business model is essentially that it launches with a base and develops/improves over time.