book's to learn x language

Hello lainons! Share your favourite books to learn languages and ask other lainons for books about languages you are interested in! I'm searching for books/resources to learn russian and latin.

I normally just use dictionaries, never really thought about a book specifically for that, I pick up grammar later by reading books in the language I'm learning but I guess it could be useful for that.

Personally speaking I would say it's much more useful to learn by immersing yourself in the language, in the case of latin then would say you're better off finding a book for that like you said. There should be books related to latin (and other languages) on https://1lib.us/ that you can download and read. While learning Japanese years ago I mainly used books to practice kanji and get a better grasp on grammar otherwise I talked to my penpals or via chats online and we helped each other learn Japanese<->English. In my opinion the best book for learning Kanji was Essential Kanji by P.G. O'Neill as it does a great job going through them quickly with stroke order included, so if you can find a copy irl I highly recommend picking it up. Book recommendations for people learning Japanese - Essential Kanji by P.G. O'Neill - Genki by Japan Times For just learning how to say a couple of phrases on your trip to Japan or something then pickup Easy Japanese by Samuel E. Martin, it presents the phrases in romanji so there's no having to learn kanji/katakana/hiragana.

>>6444 The penpal idea is just great, I tried using various sites to find penpals but I never got one. I know lainchan is not exactly that place but... if anyone (bonus points if russian so I can practice) wants to penpal I would love to, we can discuss how to exchange mails later. great lib website too!

>>6446 Definitely interested. I'm learning russian and a penpal would help. If anyone wants to learn french, I'd love to help as well. @glowing:matrix.org or drop your email

>>6506 hey anon, I dont know russian but I'd love to learn french better. I'm having a hard time with grammar.

Studies have shown that the Natural Method is the best way to learn languages, hands down. It is, afterall, how newborns do it. The definitive that I know of is Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, but others exist. I think one does for Mandarin Pinyin as well. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PB5HPz2wBDgqWXPnn5ONgZicOPv8P7LbODvkCxjpI3w/edit

>>6511 You know you can upload pdfs and epubs to lainchan, glownigger?

>>6436 >latin I haven't learned or gone through the books myself but I know of Lingua Latina (also mentioned by >>6511) and Collar and Daniell's First Year Latin I'm currently reading through random books of the Lutherbibel and am studying words I don't know in order to improve German

>>6512 Yea, I didn't make the doc and it has more than just the PDF in it. Please actually click links before responding to posts. >>6528 I also have a copy of Collar and Daniell's First Year but wouldn't really recommend it. It uses outdated and archaic terminology and is really only good for its exercises. Read it on archive.org if you want, but don't buy the repress, it's a soykafty print.

>>6446 lainchan@kaguya.ru

>>6436 Remembering The Hanzi by Helsig. Both books + Anki flashcards helped me learn 2k Chinese characters in 2 months

https://archive.org/details/mongolian-grammar-4th-edition/page/221/mode/2up Kullmann is the absolute best resource for understanding, memorizing and reviewing Mongolian grammar and should be any learner's study companion.

>>6628 >I can recognize 2K hanzi and still can't speak or read a sentence of chinese because all I know is isolated characters.

>>6436 >book's >book is please finish learning english first

>>8163 the " 's " either means "is" or works as a possesive "paul's wife", but I've seen native speakers use it sometimes, my guess is that it's just a typo, but maybe there's something else that I'm missing. I'm not OP btw.

I am curious about illuminating german language resources

>>8459 Goethe Hesse pic rel grims fairytales Easymode: Stuwwelpeter by hoffman Hardmode: Anything written by Hegel

>>8460 forgot pic boody is too short

for latin i'd suggest commentarii de bello gallico cause it's pretty easy compared so something like cicero

>>6436 I'm also interested in learning Esperanto. I heard Stano Marček made a good Esperanto textbook. https://lernu.net/ is also a good site (but Duolingo is like kicking dead whales down the beach. I used it when I was learning Japanese). If you are interested in Esperanto's history, you might be interested in this site: https://zamenhof.info/en/ Also, does anyone know a good Esperanto-English dictionary? >>8476 Thanks! I'm planning on to start learning Latin at some point. Is Nova Vulgata good for a beginner? Also, for anyone who is interested, there is this site that has a ton of Latin texts: https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ Also, do you know a good Latin-English dictionary?

>>8477 >when I was learning Japanese If you are native English speaker, get the Genki textbook series. It's good. Some links: >https://itazuraneko.neocities.org/learn/kana (start with this!) >https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar >https://www.imabi.net/ >https://jisho.org (dictionary). Alternative: http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-bin/wwwjdic?1C >https://kanji.sljfaq.org/draw.html (look up kanji by drawing it) >https://www.tofugu.com >https://www.youtube.com/@JapanesePod101 >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%8Diku_kanji (this is reasonable order to learn the kanji) >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kanji_radicals_by_stroke_count >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_j%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Japanese The best way to learn kana (hiragana + katakana) and kanji is to also write them on paper by hand (print out some practice sheets/drill sheets. Use Searx to find them.). Follow the correct stroke order (very important, not just nitpicking). Be sure to learn both hiragana and katakana before you start learning kanji! You can find out the correct stroke order for kana here (or from some other place): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Table_hiragana.svg + https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Table_katakana.svg Avoid rōmaji (even as beginner!). Write sentences in kana on paper (and later start adding kanji characters). Kana and kanji character should be much larger than western/Latin characters. I recommend you buy notebook that has squares. Use about 4x4 (or even 6x6) squares for 1 (!) character when you are learning them. Try to get the proportions right. If you make a mistake, don't correct it. Instead start writing the character again (from the beginning). You may want to use Anki but don't overuse it. It's best to also start reading (Yotsuba to! is good first manga) and remember to practice writing as well. Pro Tip: If you use GNU Emacs, you can use M-x set-input-method to change the input method to Japanese (start with japanese{-hiragana,-katakana}. Pro Tip: You can add Japanese keyboard to your Android keyboard (gboard). Go Settings --> System --> Languages & input --> Virtual keyboard (under Keyboards heading) --> Gboard --> Languages --> "add keyboard". Then just find Japanese. (you get Japanese style emoticons/kaomoji as bonus). You can switch the keyboard by pressing and holding spacebar or by pressing the dedicated button for switching the language. While you are on the Gboard settings, be sure to disable the telemetry (IIRC, it's under advanced settings).

>>8478 sorry maybe it's not related, but do you think that learning japanese can be useful compared to korean or chinese? Why did you learn it?

>>8479 >but do you think that learning japanese can be useful compared to korean or chinese? Out of these 3 languages, I'm pretty sure that Mandarin Chinese is the most useful to know (for work related reasons). But if you are learning a language because of work, there might be other options as well (for examples, the languages spoken in your neighboring countries). >Why did you learn it? I was also considering Korean and Chinese but I personally had/have more motivation to learn Japanese (I'm a weeb for starters) and it's easier to pronounce Japanese when compared to Chinese (but I can't remember about Korean). But writing Korean is easier when compared to Japanese or Chinese because Korean has an alphabet (Hangul) and you don't have to learn Chinese characters or kanji (and even though Japanese has kana, you will need to learn kanji as well. There are too many words that sound the same in Japanese but that are written using different kanji, which is why you can't get by just knowing kana.). I heard that Mandarin Chinese has easier grammar than Japanese but I may be wrong. I suggest you open a new text file and start writing bullet points why would you like to learn Chinese, Korean or Japanese. You also could go to your local library and borrow textbooks for Mandarin Chinese, Korean and Japanese and see which one interest you most.

>>8479 The usefulness of a language depends entirely on you personally. Even the most difficult language spoken by a small group may be the best choice if you want to live there for example. I would never want to work with chinese people or go to china

>>8477 I have a copy of Complete Esperanto, but I haven't gotten very far. It seems good so far. I used it and duolingo until duolingos latest update.

>>6436 I agree with >>6438 and the first part of >>6444. Outside of dead languages like Latin I would say it's best to listen to and read the language you're trying to learn over trying to study it school-style, it's more effective and less boring that way. >>8478 Genki is soykaf. It's meant to be used by eternal dekinais who are paying a native speaker to teach it to them over the course of four (4) years. Links are pretty good, here's a great J-J dictionary site: https://sakura-paris.org/dict/ >>8479 I can't think of any reasons to learn Chinese or Korean outside of maybe business (which is a terrible reason to learn a language, and as >>8481 said learning Chinese would mean interacting with chinks). Japanese has tons of entertainment even outside of the stereotypical anime/manga which is why I learned it, and Japan is pretty nice to visit as well.

>>8491 >Genki is soykaf. It's meant to be used by eternal dekinais Limiting yourself to only using Genki (or any other textbook) is stupid but a beginner needs a textbook and/or a beginner course because that's the only way of avoiding beginner mistakes and Japanese has a lot of those (romaji, politeness, anime is not how japanese is really spoken irl, translating english directly to japanese is not the right way to learn it, etc.).

Late life poliglot here. The best way to learn a language is through the tongue and the ear. Only after becoming quote unquote fluent in a language are you of the capacity to begin to learn the larger linguistic-dependent culture with which that language will have proper salience amongst its native speakers, and yourself. In shorter words do not begin to believe that you can learn most languages through writing alone.

>>6436 to me, it really depends on your level in that language; if you're not a beginner I think a poetry book (highly regarded poetry, that is) is superior to any book about grammar or syntax.

any tips on Chinese learning? good and useful resources? Been using for 9 months Assimil and various textbooks but the progress is stagnating, i wish to learn more colloquial terms and situations. thanks

>>9611 I never had any experience with assimil. What I did was read an introductory textbook through and then just graded readers all the way. Do what I didn't and listen to a lot of native content, I recommend Da Peng on youtub. You can find a lot of graded readers on libgen. Chinese has very little grammar to go and learn, unlike, say, Russian, where you need to learn cases, conjugations, aspect, and so on, with chinese you just need to know the basic word order, the most common function words and patterns on them, and after that you can read with a dictionary at hand. It is better to use graded readers to build up a vocabulary gradually, and because they can explain some patterns that may not be obvious at first sight, though usually and with time you will develop an intuition for what they mean, they're actually quite straightforward. It's just the chengyu that are opaque, but learner texts have very few of these.

Good resources or novels for spanish language? I am currently going through 'Spanish' from wikibooks, but it only covers enough for some conversation. I was also considering maybe trying to read spanish websites and books and looking in dict for the words I haven't seen yet.

>>6436 The new penguin Russian course is a pretty good primer. No source will be complete, but I think it does a pretty good job capturing the nuances.

How about Arabic and Pashto? Body too short. Random text for no reason at all.

>>10461 are going to afghanistan or something?

>>10462 nta, but it's a useful language to learn -- alongside english and chinese.

>>10461 Pashto speaker here. There aren't any good books on it as far as I'm aware. As for Arabic, it depends. If you're interested in modern standard then you could try the Mastering Arabic series or Assimil Arabic. If you are more interested in classical Arabic then that's going to be a pain in the ass. There are only two good English textbooks. Thackston's and Alan Jones' Arabic Through the Quran. The latter is easier but doesn't have a lot of practice drills. Once you can read basic classical, you can go through solid medieval grammar books, pick up a bunch of vocab along the way, and those books are way higher quality than anything that comes out of English speaking university.

>>7538 Here's a better scan, with the second part as well.