Languages

Hello, Lainons! For a while I've been thinking about learning another language, but I can never decide which. I'm kinda interested in everything and the ones that do stand out are difficult to learn or lack resources, so I can never decide which one to start. My native language is portuguese, I studied italian and, well, english. But since I know ITA+PT I can understand spanish and scratch at esperanto. My goal is to simply be able to understand and take it as a hobby. I found italian to be... useless (except for films/music) and I don't really use my native one that much, so I kinda wanted a more lively one. I don't plan on traveling/living anywhere, just want to be able to access their online content/culture. Which could show me the more interesting/different scenario? Russian - Chinese - Japanese - Arabic Apart from the Arabs, the others are pretty lively on the web all around. And Arabic doesn't really have a standard language, it's kinda of a bunch of dialects from what I've seen so that makes it less interesting for me. But maybe I don't see/know much especially because of language barriers! Chinese I admit to not knowing much but they've been showing up a lot, they definitely have a different culture and seems to have a nice amount of cyberpunk-ish content. Japanese I definitely ran across millions of times, felt the need to know it, however their contents are pretty popular and even without knowing it I managed to read/watch/play a lot of stuff because there's always a translation here or there — I don't even need to get out of my way to get in touch with japanese culture, it pretty much just shows up at my face. I'm studying CS and am interested in pretty much everything this imageboard encompasses, if that might help. Any suggestions? maybe another one? And also - which languages are you interested in, Lainons?

I'm learning Chinese right now because it's a quickly developing country and the chinese-speaking world is relatively isolated from the rest of the world, so there's a lot of useful information locked up behind a language barrier on the internet. [1] Besides this utility I started with an interest in chinese philosophy and culture and lifestyle. I've been learning it for 3-4 years and have progressed to a HSK 5 level, which is about B2 CEFR by my estimate. This was accomplished by studying for about 3 years in university and one year in china, with a combination of class time (reading texts internally and out loud, practicing vocab with flash cards and repetition, watching media, having conversation with language partners, giving speeches among other things) and living in China (reading signs, interacting with people, using apps, hearing the language, obvious lifestyle stuff like this). It took me longer to get to this point of fluency than others, but everyone is different in their natural abilities and effort they put into it. After all this time I can have good conversations with non-english speakers, but I still end up sounding like a fool sometimes (a lot). What I want to stress is that learning a language (taking in mind my only experience is chinese) is VERY VERY HARD. It takes so much effort. It's feels like learning piano from nothing to the level you would be comfortable tackling most of Chopin. Honestly you have to be kinda crazy to do it and have a lot of perseverance, especially during those long nights practicing a speech or those times that you talk with peasants who can't even read characters properly but can run circles around you in conversation. However if you get to the country and spend a bit of time immersing yourself in the local culture, you'll learn it quickly -- the brain is very good at learning languages compared to other skills in my opinion. You will NOT become fluent by duolingo, memrise, anki, or software alone. You will only become fluent by immersion and hard effort. Your fluency will be a function of the time and effort you put into learning and practicing and socializing. > I'm kinda interested in everything and the ones that do stand out are difficult to learn or lack resources, so I can never decide which one to start. > Any suggestions? maybe another one? If I had to give a suggestion for choosing a language and then learning it, it'd be to follow this path: 1. Decide on a language: When you choose a language you choose a culture, so spend some considerable time (a week) reading about the countries that speak this as a first language and their culture, asking friends, finding people from this country to talk with about their culture, etc. Understand how long it would take to learn this language on average [2]. Obviously for languages closer to your language on the tree it will be much easier due to shared vocab, arabic chinese and japanese are notoriously difficult. Understand that some languages might not be that useful (German since they all speak English anyways, or Swazi since not many people speak it) and beyond personal motivations think of utility. But do not choose a language you are not interested in or you won't want to learn it! 2. Once you decide, if you want to learn it well you'll be dedicating a long time to it. You can take the long approach of few hours over a long period of time (5-10 years) or go for intensive programs. With this in mind develop a program for yourself -- Spend a week reading through blog posts and reddit, asking people that studied languages how they did it. Write down these as a list for yourself and understand what resources are available to you. 3. After all this prep is done there is nothing to do but work hard! Practice practice practice. Use the resources and people available to you to practice at the least an hour a day on average if not more. 4. Go to a country that speaks this language and speak the language. Enroll in a language program at a college which usually aren't too expensive. If you're trying to purely learn the language/culture and not make business connections, go to a "tier 2" city, (for example Chengdu or Hangzhou compared to Beijing or Shanghai if we're talking about China) where there isn't as much foreign influence and native english speakers. Engage with local speakers and be social. Learning a language is also learning how to be confident sounding like an idiot and finding opportunities to flex your new language. 5. Realize that the plan you originally came up with in step 2 wasn't really realistic and find what works best for you by trial and error. Then try to take tests associated with your language (HSK for chinese, JLPT for japanese for example) so you can have something concrete to work towards. If your or anyone is interested in chinese as a language I can dump some resources and stuff to put people in the right direction. [1] See diagram on the bottom of page 24 of attached cta-2018-1010.pdf [2] See attached languagedifficulty.png which is the US Foreign Service Institute's estimates

>>10123 oh and I'd love to talk to any other chinese speakers/learners if they want to come out of the woodwork

>>10123 This should be interesting.

If your criterion is being able to access some online culture that's currently out of your reach, then Chinese or Russian. Personally I would go for Chinese: its obscurity/exoticism makes it alluring, there's tonnes of media new and old with a lot of variety, and the language seems very nuanced (I remember reading about Baidu users staying one step ahead of the Firewall using elaborate wordplay to discuss sensitive topics). Actually I want to learn it myself but I plan to travel to the Americas next year so I'm gonna learn Spanish instead. But as the other lain said (and all their advice was good!) immersion is really the key to learning any language, and I don't know how far you could get with any language (let alone these complicated ones) just self-studying. I lived in Cairo for about six months: the vocab and pronunciation I learned in the first week already outstripped all the self-study Arabic I'd done beforehand. To clarify the dialect question for Arabic (and a native-speaking lain can correct me if I err): Basically, don't try to learn Modern Standard Arabic ("fus7a") but pick a dialect and stick to it. If you speak one dialect well, and know the places where it differs from its siblings, any decently-educated Arab will be able to understand you. (This doesn't apply to Maghrebi, which is a weird special Franco-Arabic hybrid language.) Egyptian or Levantine are probably best. You could also check out the Mezzofanti Guild, he's a hyper-polyglot blogger who sometimes has good advice about language learning.

>>10123 Since I'll try to make this a quality thread from the start I'll drop some resources for any lainon that wants to learn chinese. Maybe someone can give some resources for other languages. I'm going to try learning Spanish when I come back to the states so maybe someone could give me some advice and resources! This is less about "how to learn Chinese" and more about getting resources in front of you, so an eager learner knows what to look for when they're starting. > Preface - You will need to work hard, spend hours studying, blah blah blah... Same with every language. Maybe record every hour you spend practicing the language and track this over every week so you can keep yourself accountable. - You will need to go to China at some point to learn the language seriously. I'd recommend studying for a year or two in your country if possible first so you can have basic conversations immediately and maximize your time in the country, but there's a strong argument for immediately going to China. It's not too expensive to spend a semester at a public school (Beijing University, Nanjing University, University of Sichuan etc); I'm paying about 10,000元 or ~$1440 a semester in tuition and insurance. It's not hard to get accepted and once accepted you can get a 0.5-1 year visa. Also check out the Confucius Scholarship, or your country may provide a scholarship since it's of "strategic importance." - Enroll in a chinese class somewhere and stick to it. - Learn simplified characters unless you plan to work with Taiwan or Hong Kong specifically. Even then, they'll be simplified in the next 100 years when/if china forces them to switch. - It will be very hard to understand some of the chinese-native media listed below if you have little language experience or an HSK1-2 proficiency. Try anyways or keep grinding that vocab. - Nothing beats talking to native speakers. Do online chats if you are aren't around chinese people, or move somewhere that has a chinese population if you're serious. - Really, nothing beats talking to native speakers. It's just how our brain works. - Spend less time reading about learning chinese and more time actually being with the language. If you have a question about "should I learn x vs y" just choose whatever's more popular or one at random. Just do it! > Language Resources - Pleco is an app that is a chinese dictionary on steroids. Every foreigner I've met in china uses it. If you are serious about learning the language for more than a couple years into the future, it's worth the money to spend $60 on the professional pack, but the standard free version is still fantastic. It also has a (cheap but paid) flashcard function so you can add words you look up to flash card categories, and go through these flash cards with a lot of tweaking in terms of algorithms and interface. Pleco is god. - "A Grammar of Mandarin Chinese" (ISBN 9027212279) is a great resource for learning the basic grammar more academically since it takes from an authentic corpus of chinese oral exchanges, including filler words and flow of conversation. - For other textbooks just go on libgen and look up keywords like "Mandarin" or "Chinese" or "汉语". Find some entry-level stuff or look around on reddit for people's advice. - 成语 will be very important around your HSK4-6 level and some are simply four words referencing a story -- think of a pointer that points to a certain cultural touching point. For example 草船借箭. Find some books about this, like 成语故事 to help you learn both 成语 and children's stories in chinese. > Chinese Native Media Resources - Check out 爱奇艺, 腾讯视频, and 芒果TV for TV programs and movies. For web videos check out bilibili. 豆瓣 is chinese metacritic. For more recommendations look at the winners of chinese film festivals on wikipedia. I'd recommend watching 西虹市首富，推拿，and 前任3: 再见前任 for starters. Don't bother with court drama TV shows. I haven't found an entertaining chinese TV show yet, but the closest was 人民的名义 (communist party house of cards) - For social media, look at 抖音('chinese instagram', most popular with youth right now)，微博(twitter)，a岛匿名版 (2ch/imageboard), and maybe 知乎 (chinese quora). There's some chinese telegram or matrix groups too. - Download wechat and use "people nearby" to chat with chinese people, or hellotalk to match with chinese trying to learn english. Friends of mine have dated girls they met through hellotalk. - For music, most people I know in china use 网易音乐 but 虾米 is gaining popularity. 喜马拉雅FM is audiobooks and podcasts. - Games: 王者荣耀 is knockoff LoL, 绝地求生 is PUBG. Both are very popular right now and have voice chat. - Any chinese apps including wechat are probably spying on you, and everything you post and your viewing history is able to be seen by the CCP. Get used to dealing with it if you're seriously learning the language or have a burner phone. > Online English Chinese Resources Don't spend too much time on these (spend more time with the language!!) but we all need a break. - Check out "/r/chineselanguage" or "/r/china", but then graduate to "/r/ccj2" when you've become a jaded expat and want an english vocabulary to china-specific concepts. - On youtube, SerpentZa and laowhy86 got me excited about china with their motorcycle videos but they are kinda clickbaity today. Still they have some valuable insight but be warned. AvenueX is good for recommendations on chinese drama but is more geared towards stuff girls like (which is most dramas). Mamahuhu is humor videos aimed towards expats. For actually learning the language I have no idea what channels are good, but there should be some resources -- just look around for channels on reddit or recommended videos. - For podcasts I'd recommend Slow Chinese and 学英语聊美国 which are language learning podcasts. The former is for learning english but it's in Chinese which is pretty understandable. For learning about china, anything on the Sinica network is far and away the best, with Laszlo Montgomery's China History Podcast at a close second. The China in Africa Podcast is pretty good too. - cantolounge.com/complete-guide-learn-cantonese -- It's about learning cantonese but 95% of it can be applicable to mandarin. Please look at the "shadowing" section for a really effective tactic! I hope this convinces you to learn mandarin :)

>>10123 Interesting pdf. Thanks! >>10126 I just wanna clarify myself since I said it in a way that made me sound lazy: I don't wanna take it only as a hobby and don't immerse myself fully... I'm simply unable at the moment and for, I'm guessing, the next 5 years. After that I'll definitely try! What I'll try until then is move to a city that has a considerable amount of chinese living in it (like São Paulo?) and the Confucius institute, but even then it's hard right now. Oh, and a local class until then, definitely. >>10138 After some thoughts and research I decided to go with Mandarin, was just going to ask to drop resources now! Thank you! I have a friend who studies Spanish, I'll see if I can fetch some resources. I know that there's the /int/ wiki with language guides, maybe you can find something good in there! I'll be scheduling a new routine to include your suggestions. Thanks a lot <3

>>10123 good post. thanks lain in terms of utility.... how useful is it becoming fluent in russian?

>>10148 Depends on what you're going to do with the language. I knew a guy who was a real estate agent. He took regular trips to Russia and was quite Russophile. This was way before 2008, so he's probably living out of a car now, but obviously knowing the language would be useful in that case. Russian literature is widely respected as well. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc. Nothing like reading, watching or listening to something in the native tongue. Lots gets lost in translation. I once wanted to learn Russian so I could watch the Russian superhero/supernatural film Nightwatch without subtitles. Didn't pan out, though.

>>10119 If you are interested in the languages themselves I can't help because I don't know any of them. However in terms of the cultures surrounding them I would definitely recommend Arabic or Chinese. What you say about Japanese is true which is why I would recommend Chinese instead. There is a dense Cantonese speaking population in my city, and mandarin at my school. In terms of the themes of this board it's definitely up there, and current relevance i'd place it the highest. They have tons of information that we simply never see over here in the English speaking world, loads of hidden subcultures, and in certain fields in tech and networking they are ahead of us. You would gain access to a lot of stuff that takes weeks or months to finally get received over here. However I also know it's an endless timesink almost, one of my professors mastered 8 dialects and even could read some ancient Chinese writings and it had taken most of his life to get to that point, he was about 50. However the international students said he knew it better than they did. I know that reading/writing it and speaking it can be very different, obviously they are very related skills but reading/writing takes significantly more time than learning to speak it. There is a chinese book that was translated and got fairly popular over here i'd reccomend to see if you'd be interested further, "The Three-Body Problem". It's a very bizarre and surreal science fiction book about a VR simulation with a lot of historical and cultural background relating to China. It's kind of like a very abstract and weird enders game. Personally though i'd go for Arabic. I don't think it's very relevant to your fields of interest though. However in terms of science, philosophy and religion it is absolutely invaluable. Almost all scientific knowledge and philosophy of the ancient world was translated through Arabic, and often from there into English. It's importance is massively understated because of it being the language of the Qu'Ran and the Islamic world, which the west does not like. In addition the fractured state of the middle east can cause a perception that it's a dying or irrelevant language. However it's my personal opinion we will see the rise of a very strong if not dominant middle eastern power. Even outside of that the language is pushed if you are a foreign Muslim, as unlike the other Abrahamic religions, even in todays world there is a very big emphasis on the Qu'Ran needing to be spoken or sung to be understood, not read silently. And Islam is definitely on the rise, it's gotten a very large following in places you wouldn't think of like China and even parts of America. You didn't mention why you were interested in Russian but I see it kind of like how you talked about Japanese. I don't think there is that much info or media in Russian you wouldn't be able to find in English. It might take a bit more digging than with Japanese but I don't think it's at all on the same level as what's hidden from us behind Chinese or Arabic. Of course with any language things get lost in translation and that's a huge motivator to learn languages in general, it's always a whole new world from what I hear. However I think you might find exclusively with Chinese and Arabic very important things you would never see even IN translation. But again this is coming from someone who doesn't speak these languages, just knows people who do and has taken classes on the countries and groups that speak them.

>>10157 Sort of the Russian interest was due to their shady image and frequency of Russian posts on chans that I follow - out of the cited languages, this interest wasn't really based on the whole picture. There were was also the book argument but it was just that .. I admit just having ever read Chekhov. > which the west does not like > However it's my personal opinion we will see the rise of a very strong if not dominant middle eastern power I'm not that politically informed/savvy in general and I've been ignoring the middle east situation for some years to give attention to my own country, but I admit that I was expecting way more, I don't know, cultural sharing? But then again I doubt most would be willing to let they get visibility easily. And that was one of the bigger motivations, because it seems to be a strong ostracization, and I'm not sure how much can I even trust the news that reach me since, well, you know; it's all western. I wonder if Chinese would give me a different insight on how things are about this subject? hmm

>>10157 >And Islam is definitely on the rise, it's gotten a very large following in places you wouldn't think of like China and even parts of America. It sounds like you're implying that people are converting to Islam, in reality it's more like Muslims are leaving the middle east with their savage culture on their backs and outbreeding local populations. >It's importance is massively understated because of it being the language of the Qu'Ran and the Islamic world, which the west does not like. As should anyone with a brain and an ounce of respect for humanity. >However it's my personal opinion we will see the rise of a very strong if not dominant middle eastern power. This sounds like a bad bet on the face of it. Are you only basing this on history? The Fertile Crescent had massive advantages in terms of natural resources and geography relative to anyone else in the ancient world. Through the invention of food production it became possible to store food and feed citizens who could go on to prioritize other things besides attaining food. This marked creation of human civilization. But that's not the say there is anything deep or superior about middle eastern culture, they just had enough help from nature to pass some early development milestones ahead of others from that period. As an entire geographic region their only contribution to the modern world is oil. And it won't last for ever.

>>10157 You speak like the Uyghur muslims are a recent addition to China, they have been there a while. And there wont be any ME strong power for a long while, that thought died with Yom Kippur. SA is a mess which pushes humongous amounts of money into their military yet cant conquer Yemen. I dont know what Egypt is doing, but getting powerful is not it. Iran has made some large gains though through Hezbollah and the succesfull intervention in Syria, but they are too isolated and blocked by regional powers such as Turkey and SA to gain any significant influence, their grasp is weakening on Iraq as well. Islam is not a monolithic entity. Sure, they read the same book. But the practice differs wildly . This is especially true for muslims in the US with its diversity. Would you really say that an Indian immigrant working at Google in the Bay Area is comparable to a Palestinian shwarma seller? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_United_States#Demographics Too bad that the best reason to learn Arabic has passed, the Syrian civil war, now that was some spicy stuff.

>>10213 Im aware of what your saying but I dont agree. No religion for the most part is monolithic, I recognize this.

>>10214 Im quite interested how/where you think this power will emerge.

>>10216 i'm a pretty simple dude. I know for whatever reason the US is and has been terrified of the middle east, and so I assume there must be a good reason. I think it will rise as soon as the US is out of the picture. I'm aware the ME is not Islam but I am confident Islam will rise too. The lack of iconography and the vagueness of the Qu'Ran relative to the Bible makes it not trumped by the sciences. Perhaps just something like Sufism in the west, but one thing will lead to another as far as i'm concerned. I don't think God is dead, I just think God as we know has died and Islam will play a part in the west of creating a very new concept of God. I think we are seeing the starts of it with the kind of fetishization of eastern religions over here. I don't think I can be convinced otherwise even if faced with strong evidence to be perfectly honest. I figure time tells all anyways, if by the time i'm on my deathbed I can't even see the start of it il admit I was wrong. However I did say Chinese is more realistic at the moment, I think China will rise as a dominant superpower (if you don't believe it is already) quite a bit before the Middle East ever does. So when you say "for a long while " I don't know that I disagree it just depends on how long you are speaking.

>>10217 >I know for whatever reason the US is and has been terrified of the middle east, and so I assume there must be a good reason. it's dangerous to assume that everything has a good reason. You end up supporting anything that those in power put in front of you. The Middle East had its rise and fall already. Baghdad used to be more or less the center of the world. Then it got fuarrrked up by various central Asian warlords, the whole Ottoman thing happened, and then here we are.

>>10218 perhaps im pretty contrarian. I don't try to be it just happens. Still we will see we will see! im standing by myself on this one. Its not like something that rises and falls can't rise again.

>>10217 >i'm a pretty simple dude. I know for whatever reason the US is and has been terrified of the middle east, and so I assume there must be a good reason. Simple is not the same thing as superstitions and ignorant. Reasons the US is interested in the middle east: 1. oil 2. Israel 3. Missile range to Russia (mostly historical) >I think it will rise as soon as the US is out of the picture. Before US investment in the 1970s, Saudi Arabia had no electricity or running water, people threw their garbage on the streets and goats ate it. What a glorious Islamic civilization. If the US falls then so will SA and Israel, which will definitely change the politics of the region, but a global super power in the middle east? lol no. More likely in my opinion is the oil runs out and entire region goes back to being a 3rd world desert wasteland nobody gives a fuarrrk about. >The lack of iconography and the vagueness of the Qu'Ran relative to the Bible makes it not trumped by the sciences. Religion is just an information virus for human brains. Instead of exploiting buffer overflows and use after frees, religion exploits cognitive biases and logical blindspots in our wetware and then spreads from person to person. There is nothing profound about it, it is literally a weapon against human rationality. Smart rulers in the past have harnessed religion for the purpose of controlling human populations but with the rise of our global financial system it has become redundant and fallen out of favor in developed countries. Those that cling to Islam do so because they are not capable of moving to a more efficient system of controlling their subjects.

>>10220 How about talking about language instead of cluttering up the thread with armchair philosophizing? On topic, I watched some really great music videos on youtube by a Russian band called "Leningrad" and it inspired me to learn some russian during some time off from my mandarin education in February. My ukranian roommate has been really eager to help me with some really basic stuff like "I am X" and "I am not X" or "fuarrrk off." So my question is anyone got any entry-level book recommendations for someone like me that's starting from literally nothing and probably wouldn't learn it past a survival level? Also attached is some chinese rap music I used for a research paper a while back; someone might find it interesting.

>>10221 I dont know if its in Russian or Ukrainian but i love this music video, eastern slavs can sound so gritty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iedLfigIHOc

>>10221 I like listening to the Red Army Choir! I don't know much about Russian, but if you want some stuff to watch there are a lot of soviet cartoons that seemed nice. Kid's stuff is nice to grasp language, I think. There was a girl in my class who loved the soviet LOTR and I think there were some other adaptions from popular west stuff. As for music in general, I highly recommend the site Every noise at once I found so many good bands in there. from the site: "Every Noise at Once is an ongoing attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 2,377 genres by Spotify. The calibration is fuzzy, but in general down is more organic, up is more mechanical and electric; left is denser and more atmospheric, right is spikier and bouncier." Maybe try searching up the name of your band, and see which ones fall close to it on the map! You can also let it play a bit of each song on the map - I usually do this, save the name of the musics that I like, go to my account and make a playlist. Then I remove the ones I disliked, and check the albuns from the songs I liked.

>10222 It's russian >10225 Check out the 'Roadside picnic' (or better yet 'Пикник на обочине'), the book that inspired the movie - both are astonishing works. While at it, what techniques if any do you use to remember new words?

>>10220 there's no need to be reductive.

>>10227 I use my chinese dictionary app (Pleco) which has a built-in flash card engine. But I will admit that I've been using it less and less lately since it's really easy to burn out with this method. I also have a small notebook that I'll put words in that also functions as my daily planner, so whenever I need to use the notebook I'll see the words. And in spare time I'll flip back through previous pages to review. But another strategy that has worked well for a friend is having a dedicated flat space (say a door or closet door or wall) that you can put a bunch of postits that have words you're trying to learn. Every day look at these at least three times. With so much repetition you are bound to remember them. But I'd really recommend checking out gwern's essay about spaced repetition: gwern.net/Spaced-repetition -- It has a lot of research and tools you can use. >>10226 Awesome site, thanks!

>>10229 >there's no need to be reductive. Dude made what I thought was a weak argument for why Arabic is relevant in 2018. I made what I thought was a stronger counter argument for why not. Feel free to elaborate on your own response instead of crying about it. On some boards that's actually encouraged.

I always wanted to learn Farsi, but I never found the will to actually start.

I really want to become fluent in English. If anyone wants to learn Tamang(my mother tongue), Hindi(Indian national lang), and Nepali(Nepal national lang.) then reply this and in return teach me English.

>>10287 If you wrote this post yourself, then you already seem quite fluent.

>>10295 Not to answer for Lain here but many people come across fluent in their writing very far in advance of the way they speak the same language. I've known people for months or even years online and never had trouble reading their posts but could barely understand a word they said when I finally heard it.

>>10295 Like >>10296 said I can write quite well, but when it comes to speaking face to face I'm like a rusty gun.

>>10245 I didnt think I was crying about it or that there was an argument. I was saying that for you, but if you don't think it's reductive then I suppose it isn't. I also am that dude.

>>10311 >reductive First of all >>10220 has far more detail than the post it's responding to >>10217 Second, if it was a 10000 word essay covering all angles and caveats instead don't pretend you'd actually read it. >crying You don't agree on an emotional level but you can't articulate a logical argument so you try to brush the whole thing away with a vague label like "reductive". That's called crying.

Does anybody speak the Frisian language? Can someone tell me what "ststststststststst" means in Frisian?

>>10329 unedited screenshot

I also want to train my pronunciation! If anyone is interested in Portuguese or simply wants to chat in English I'm up for it. :) >>10287 I don't want to learn your languages, but I'm interested in the culture if you'd like to talk about it!

Would you recommend any online course for Chinese? I don't have any where I live and studying on my own has been hard.

Whoa, think this thread will become my "home away from home" for a while. Languages are not only an interest but also a necessity for me, as it turns out. I'm from ... well somewhere, and I've been in the software world for a few years now. English and Russian go without saying, then. Russian is still in the hobby project zone, and it's slowly but steadily becoming a skill. A couple of years ago with my first software job I've dealt with Scandinavian languages which allowed me to learn quite a bit. I'm not with that team any longer but there's so much of those languages left in my head that I'll eventually have to invent a way to keep learning. Currently, though, I'm happy to be working on software heavily involved with languages - Arabic first and foremost. At the very moment, as I'm typing this, I'm researching some properties of the language needed to perform my job. This will, I believe, make it much easier for me to immerse myself into said language and its varying cultures. Where to start, though, I have no idea. Visiting dvach every here and then helps with Russian, but what of Arabic?

Any finnbros here? I started learning Finnish a couple of months ago and it's really interesting! I haven't made it very far because of college, but I really want to move to Finland one day (or at least visit).

>>15038 Here we go again, looking for sentence examples for a word in Arabic and all google results gave me the standard "X translations, X meanings, in ABC language in DEF language". All but contdict.ru which actually gave me a nice list of proverbs in both Arabic and Russian. Not understanding the tiny bit of Russian I do would have cost me a lot more unneeded research.

>>10119 Perhaps you should focus on which language you see online the most I ended up learning german.

Learn latin, lainon. Everything else is useless. https://youtu.be/Ab0f_NJ3Tsg

>>15426 Why? >>15044 I've started manuscripting programming documentation from Russian, combining pleasant with useful.

Of all the people of the Earth, which are the ones you would most enjoy talking to? That would be a good language to learn, I think.

>>15659 And I'm toying with the idea of translating tech articles, documents & zines that you can only find in Russian. p3 so nb

Hello dear Lainons, how does one gets good in speaking and writing German. I am currently at the C1 Level but can't seem to excel at both speaking and especially writing. My speaking is good enough to speak in an academic environment but on the contrary my writing is like a 4th grader's. Do you have any recommendations like websites maybe videos or use this book etc. Also, wieso muss ich mich besser vorbereiten?

Posting because I'd also like to start learning German.

>>16627 bump

>>16626 Gratuliere dir, dass du es überhaupt so weit geschafft hast. Es ist bekanntlich schwer, die deutsche Sprache als Fremdsprache zu erlernen. I didn't learn German as a second language, so I can't exactly put myself in your shoes. But I'd say immerse yourself into not only the language but the culture, try to talk with real people, watch movies, listen to songs, keep a journal, etc. If you want a real challenge and journey into the german language, try reading some books that are typically read by german high schoolers in Gymnasiums. Like something from the epochs Sturm und Drang, Romantik, Realismus/Naturalisums (my favorite), pick whatever sounds interesting. Alot of students are absolutely bored to death by these books though, so it takes a certain something to appreciate them, I guess.

>>16717 >Gratuliere dir, dass du es überhaupt so weit geschafft hast. Es ist bekanntlich schwer, die deutsche Sprache als Fremdsprache zu erlernen I feel proud to be able to read that and get about 80% of what you're saying without resorting to dictionary. Too bad I can neither write nor have conversations in proper German, but I suppose that's all on me for half-assing my classes. >>16626 At any rate, if you want to develop your German comprehension, I'd recommend a youtube channel "Easy German" (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbxb2fqe9oNgglAoYqsYOtQ/videos ). They have conversations in German and they've provided subs for 'em too, so it's a pretty neat way of familiarizing yourself with dialect(s), sentence structuring and pronunciation. In case you want an inspirational reading, I urge you to pick up Goethe's Faust in the original language. The first time I picked it up, I was immediately fired up and taken in to it's hypnotic flow - even though it took hours and an insane amount of effort to understand even a single line or stanza. One last general advice, which is almost too obvious: you learn by doing. So, as >>16717 suggested, keeping a journal doesn't sound too bad at all. And if you need someone to proof read it, I guess you could ask someone from an imageboard (4chan's /int/, for instance) to check 'em, though I haven't got much of experience on how fond they are of doing stuff like that.

>>16717 >talk with real people, watch movies, listen to songs, keep a journal, etc. I second this. It may be a good idea to start with children's books due to their simplicity. Another thing that I've enjoyed is finding good music sung in German. "Konny Kleinkunstpunk - Ortsmitte" ( /watch?v=MP3-Cf8BOo8 ). The whole channel has good songs and a lot of them are in German. Having a German dictionary is a nice helper if you prefer that method of finding words, otherwise I'd recommend reverso for an online assistant. Another thing I just thought about and checked is popular youtube channels having subtitles in different languages. It may help watching with subtitles on or even making the german subtitles for videos as a project. Example video with german subtitles: "Tom Scott - Why 1/1/1970 Bricks Your iPhone" ( /watch?v=MVI87HzfskQ ). All in all the most helpful thing I've found is just playing so of course experimentation is encouraged, so make sure to have fun lainon.

Hm, since I'm a native speaker, this is difficult for me to assess, but at C1 you should be able to read most German literature, no? I don't know if this is the way you want to go about learning German, but it is the way I went about learning English. I just read a lot, and since I often was online I also wrote a lot back, but just reading should help you a lot. Somebody else here mentioned children's books, but I think it better to at least read books that interest you, as long as they aren't to difficult. That said, anything by Karl May is worth a try. I also like the new translation of a song of Ice and fire, and I think they are relatively readable books, perhaps I even prefer them over the English original. Anyhow, since those are fairly long books, with 10 parts, if you got through them, your reading and writing should get a lot better. Pic related is the first page of the eighth book, first I could find. See if this is too difficult.

>>16626 The easiest way to git gud at german is like others said to immerse yourself. ZDF has some really good documentaries in german that can help with understanding grammar and vocabulary through listening. you can find many of them on youtube by searching "zdf doku" https://www.zdf.de/doku-wissen Watching german news is also a good ay to get current on information (if you watch it in your native language, then in german it will make more sense). Like others said listen to music, germans have pretty mch every genre of music as english, so everything from rap (like Bushido, Motrip, Sido, etc.) to alt rock, punk, singer songwriter and folk (Silbermond, Nena, Lena meyer-landrut, or Heino if you feel like some older music). A unique german genre is "schlager" (lit. "hits") and you can find radio stations that play all kinds of german music and radio channels at https://www.radiokoeln.de/ radio berlin has stations, but they are on other streaming sites, kologne has a nice website that has all the streams on there. You can read german newspapers or tabloids, here is an article that you might like https://www.bz-berlin.de/liveticker/corona-app-nur-auf-freiwilliger-basis Translation hint: discussion of cell phone metadata use the site is a berlin news publication https://www.bz-berlin.de/ they used to have NSFW softcore pron on the front page under "culture", but it looks like that is gone and they now have an english section. Some good german movies with english imdb links: >Die Welle https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1063669/ >Er is Wider Da https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4176826/ >Unter Dem Sand https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3841424/ >Kein System ist sicher https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3042408/ >Der Baader Meinhof Komplex https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765432/ >Der Untergang https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363163/ You can also find german dub of the (dutch) series "New Kids" and the movies New Kids: turbo and New Kids:Nitro Audiolith is a german record label with decent light rock and some electronic german music Viel Glueck Lain!

>>16750 Pretty good recommendations, are you a fellow german, lainon?

>>16717 Makes good sense. I am reading some books from the Fischer Bücherei's Bücher des Wissens series. >>16718 I will check it out. I also watch Lectures of University of Wien, mostly physics and mathematics. >Goethe's Faust Speaking of Goethe, I am actually a member of the Goethe Institut, I bet can get the book from there. >>16739 I prefer the original material and was shocked when I discovered how different the children's tales are. >>16750 Ich muss das sofort ausprobieren! Ich schaue den Tagesschau jedermorgen und Tagesthemen jeder Abend. Ausserdem höre ich Kraftwerk und Rammstein gern aber mein kentnisse über Deutschemusik ist nich so viel. >Er ist wieder da War komish muss ich sagen. Die skizze mit die Turkische Oma war auch komish. >Der Untergang Absulut klassiches Movie. Die andren würde ich absolut sehen!

>>16750 I forgot to mention that I used to ( before the lockdown) read monthly the P.M. Neuigerig auf Morgen und Bild der Wissenschaft. I rarely watch Tatort also. Thank you all for he suggestions, I will share if I pass my TestDaF exam!

>>16752 In ein anderes Leben war ich für eine Zeit Deutsch, aber dieses Leben ist jetzt weit hinter mir. Es freut mich aber mit Leute Deutsch zu sprechen. Danke Lains, bleibt aber Gesund in diesen Gefahr Heutzutage! I really like this song, and so might you :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-vCoh1QU80

>>16626 >especially writing. maybe you can use your favorite document processor and run a spellchecker while typing a book

Watching anime from AST4U lol

I've just started learning German. Anyone else in the same boat and wants to exchange poorly written emails?

Have some theme relevant content: https://www.youtube.com/user/mediacccde/videos Chaos Computer Club is a german club that does a lot of hacking and other related content. The group got cyberhumped over the last years like everything else and its 50% political insider trades now but theres still a lot of quality content to be found. And here's why this might be really good: They do english/german translations of their talks. If you dont get it in german you can compare the german original to the english one. Should make it really viable for learning.

>>16756 >In ein anderes Leben war ich für eine Zeit Deutsch, aber dieses Leben ist jetzt weit hinter mir. Es freut mich aber mit Leute Deutsch zu sprechen. Danke Lains, bleibt aber Gesund in diesen Gefahr Heutzutage! judging by the contents of your sentence, you don't necessarily want to be corrected, but if it helps anybody, a version that I hope is more correct: >In einem anderen Leben war ich für eine Zeit deutschsprachig, aber diese Leben ist jetzt weit hinter mir. Es freut mich aber mit Leuten Deutsch zu sprechen. Danke Lains, bleibt gesund in dieser Gefahr heutzutage! In German you can really have your way with words and produce a semantically "identical" sentence using different construct. Here's how I would've chosen to write that statement: >In einem anderen Leben war ich für eine Zeit deutschsprachig, aber dieses Leben liegt nun weit zurück. Es ist mir aber eine große Freude, mit anderen Personen Deutsch zu sprechen. Danke Lains, bleibt gesund in diesen gefährlichen Verhältnissen heutzutage! Somehow a lot of lains started expressing thei desire to learn German, I cannot reason as to why, but I hope this helps.

What language do you recommend in learning in this modern day? I already know spanish fairly well. And I am planning to learn russian in the near future

Latin and Greek will always be useful.

>>16948 Esperanto. Relatively few people speak it, true, but nearly all of those who do are intelligent, which puts it leagues ahead of every other language.

>>16949 >>16951 >Latin and Greek will always be useful Useful for what exactly?

>>16951 More intelligent people spoke Latin and Greek. At the moment, there's few fluent Latin speakers, and modern Greece isn't exactly famous for its vast influence on international thought. >>16952 You can read a lot of old texts in the original, from the time of Alexander on through to the Renaissance. Much of that hasn't been translated either, or the translations are themselves long forgotten. Only really worth it if you have specific niche interests this applies to.

>>16948 German, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, in that order.

Anyone else just can't learn? I even used to take classes in college on Russian but I couldn't progress beyond bare basics when other students were doing advanced grammar. I sometimes think that I am genuinely retarded to be honest.

>>15038 Been learning Danish for a couple years on and off, it's kinda slowed down now, any advice you've found with the scandi languages?

I'll put a handful of links here to start off https://www.livelingua.com/fsi/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/ https://apps.ankiweb.net/ (flash cards) https://www.duolingo.com/ (this ones controversial, but I believe it's good as long as you pair it with other resources) https://wikitongues.org/ https://en.wiktionary.org/ https://lang-8.com/ Post any other resources you all know (pdfs, videos, podcasts, courses, lectures, etc.) either specific to certain languages or more general. (Any resources relating to learning Mandarin and Arabic would be greatly appreciated by OP)

>>16968 >bare basics when other students were doing advanced grammar This is why I avoid classes and socialized learning for what amounts to an interesting hobby. Don't compare nor measure anything, do it at your own pace and make it fun. If you wanna compare to worse and feel good about yourself leave a throwaway email and I'll include you in my learning process described >>15659 and >>16334 here. >>16971 >advice you've found with the scandi languages Never stop. Once you start something keep going, language learning included, keep going either until you die or there's simply nothing else to do (literally impossible). I was reading something in Danish recently and was surprised at how much I can actually understand even though it's in a language close to the one I'm rusty at being barely competent at for like 4 years now.

I kinda droped japanese these last few weeks, might start Esperanto tho >>16968 i only managed to learn by having interactions with the language every day

>>16950 >nearly all those who do are intelligent source? >>17185 >do it at your own pace and have fun sounds like a great way to learn nothing. i cant lean anything outside of a physical classroom with a human teacher and a paper textbook

>>16967 why german and russ

>>16803 Hey, I'm game. My email is ksy at waifu dot club, my pgp key is the following: -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- mQGNBF6sQaIBDACqdzFm3irNQEZD2Mdt+Uw0HgDIHuldP2FP3RbA89637rx9Bcjp RVFTYVU9anxuAATLq+zN4dBpUpSF4xwuPudFyf0MGe7+zIx4UEV8CJSY5j3ALCyA HjaeRpYX7g1SwFaI9iLCwiU9U/gvZ2YmozI0Aen2Do+rydf5AbsgIEFSIA42BxgU 7VegOzYfp4+d9W+fM52mF0ffnEGGsRhaUGWqF67qRPGrSiP6qVOLJ2c+sxYhfk0D FTMHG/50tZZIhVXDn+fcYuoCnIBM0/pCfHFNnwghYx92/eDpcNqacacO9GQfFhji FOZCu2QEi2v2jZnshRnJ2GRmB5fa34GP0kvW3UDo0kNjyNLmv3Q7Q20JTWTky0u/ N8pnVTgCBf19pSGUJQu8PL6ylkV2QSBi6eGxm9fLLYlm1ZAE4tYyh45KgyN0gY8r K+l6xJkPBgn82qENcG7ouqgyd4mSlhhm4quk9sFkYE+43KSRQcrDFBJXI/Hl7hiX XiXc5fYFvuaOkocAEQEAAbQeUmFuZG9tIFBlcnNvbiA8a3N5QHdhaWZ1LmNsdWI+ iQHUBBMBCgA+FiEE65lU3sKxd7tbjnM5+bffG7PM1bcFAl6sQaICGwMFCQPCZwAF CwkIBwIGFQoJCAsCBBYCAwECHgECF4AACgkQ+bffG7PM1bfF3AwApyJhFlAkQway CwzIhx05kxr0l+KbaQIR+K8HttCqxZk4Ikz3OvmBi/O8zOpFmgku8VPiM4prTVrY 6AgZUD5+oHHShVRM9pk1KRR1lviqz3kC6uW2Kn+l6mgvVJMtujX/m18DTxV13jHQ Jbs1HxSjq2+q7TvdyODbK7yOdTxKiTW5wayuw0sztv25lqs5x2vhK/TquM0CyZ3q pLe59JUL8e0Z+eNSi5UlXSaWZ4wyKEZ3JKxpBpwNsATOuRO17AsrPOlpmgdcE/09 BQlChQnnPX9JiCopbmco6LNS2Cr6AuJVVfW0DGKkFaooK17dkG9Ve2RGUaY+xz06 DTqQGse/3E/gVLM+1666M3/GQTTfV6X+1S6aZW7/JRsnT6yJkmR36cqXT3jNPinJ s/qHL2yzGU7eTpBY/Cj44i+1d3a34/Q5/16Rsh/dvhl8yGLhk8uqJSILTWO5o6lW HSTkrCkbu6lhCXokQlA3IVmwAPs1ZwUtY1dIe+/Q7wHfHHs3c12LuQGNBF6sQaIB DADO8qxpM/pLjHjbwjRU8z72/0c9wdgEq6f+ov0n5S03IE65IKpppB7ytyxN54Bf AIPvv08zlj7i6+d+LRX58feqZmc1q1M2O2aSJtrJnrPgMQnqXeSa0m/Q4GfxJOrO cgXJSCa0bc0GaQosY75YxFbffHrpHRd1E2+wWyjlKyPSyfAXUa6IL55r0OsWHh+X ci7sZsddC3PuLr8/9tYy94dW6P44fqm3ga1rdkp8T8teN/eVRQ7LQ2mpP3LQ0lGX ATgjTRgAoMWIEuOwtu4Vd60S2q5wEDu7pEV7LwB2A6z0id3nWiy4Pqyx1kI+Pgcj KHRNHh2FgYWdDvSGsFoW0kCcZt+OCixQTd8i5r453/HBC5v9d4Hs57CG8PJYekWo Wj0/d8hJdK1Oc10PU+Drfbx3VtUplXGNjQkoqYnu7L37S4josBUOTZj5K/vD2WX3 UYzKe9WSK2DNujprHLWJ3vgLUXy+eA6BLHRsLB9stdubP8oGa4avI1AyaO876Ky4 JH0AEQEAAYkBvAQYAQoAJhYhBOuZVN7CsXe7W45zOfm33xuzzNW3BQJerEGiAhsM BQkDwmcAAAoJEPm33xuzzNW3Oy4L/17GB1CTBRtF1R/RSRAbR48DWmiRQlzgGjBl eC0Zhs7Rg0G2icqpva8qAOL9pn6+sj8KAZjmql/NeW0+dKopNxVFGrSI7GPPBeLU NJk5+ULV6IIitz4GHFCT5Mb6wzHQotZnRWHaq+kfcnygHyE8OG7oNWPA6y9rK1VX wyEhp6ohbKrZhx9pNSJTDuiUoYPauyNYri1u+FIuSYw8QF9Qq6dAKcL3YXRSzFsy aJT3j7lic0k8t+icxBY/6mO4Q/oPD6NM37DsV2uYupAV5UhymIH4neK7+PHJIRt7 xApUNYTIH3jQP/77B4KJNkvGqPC4SkMQKNyEA9Dzb3M3yUwnX2oXwX/W9QvwQ5BA hsSpDplJxJkXAkR/bIM8Y6xVPxe9kDIupEvtnKnv2leTmCV1EIGX1pvJsfvMJ7Ez P3qCUufh+j6Pp/MV59aqFQHtdFd+3OAsbS7S9ZfaG634iPPkWylxzw64pASd8WG8 eE7+k7zG4Vk/6tG2gT87DUaSCF+Gbg== =LUjB -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Also, if anyone's interested, I'm a native Russian and Ukrainian speaker and would love to chat with anyone. Oh, and for Russian, there's a very famous Russian website for tech people https://habr.com/ru/ (it also has some English articles at https://habr.com/en ) . If you haven't checked that out yet, you probably should.

>>17234 i dont understand

>>17235 he's saying his email is ksy@waifu.club

>>17187 My personal experience with Mensa. Loads of Esperanto speakers and an entry requirement of an IQ > 130

>>17187 >i cant lean anything outside of a physical classroom with a human teacher and a paper textbook This may be true currently, but stating it as an enduring fact is needlessly self limiting.

>>15661 A personal conlang it is then.

>>10119 English is my native language and that only one I truly know and can think in. All of my Latin, Greek, and French studies have coalesced into merely improving my English. I've taken a few Chinese courses, but I'm not even at the level of a small child, I don't think; I wasn't concerned with speaking it, but reading it, and I can barely do that when I recognize the characters, though. I have no issue learning a new programming language, knowing many which are very different, but these are of course an entirely different beast. It's trivial to accept a new mode of thought, a new set of conventions, and to think about in any of these, but I suppose one major difference, sans the lack of human communication, is that this is all deliberate, higher-level thinking, which is the opposite of fundamental human language. I started learning Toki Pona, but the only copy of the book I can find from stores is in French of all languages, and I won't purchase a book from that online store I won't name. My goal for learning Toki Pona was to finally be able to actually think directly in a language other than English; I wanted this to transform my mind and then move on to other languages, such as Esperanto or improving my Latin, but I've taken a break and not even done that. I think I'll resume with my Toki Pona soon enough, because this is still the best path I see, even if it is a cheerful Newspeak.

>>17266 good luck with toki pona I started with esperanto as my first conlang because it's very close to languages I already know, and also because it's more spoken than tokipona

Forvo for pronunciation practice Anki for memory training Tandem for learning how to actually communicate with others

Im studiying latin to read Saint Thomas Aquinas and another philosophers and theologians in their original language. I also speak portuguese(my native language) and english.

I just thought of so,ething right now, maybe it's been done, I have no idea. Since it is so common that a person would learn another language to read about a specific domain of discourse, say, russian for physics, perhaps a good idea would be to have books on language learning tailored to such domains? Currently books on the matter seem to be for travelling or social intercourse. The variation I am thinking would be a more concise kind of book. Focusing on grammar, perhaps with reference sections, deemphasizing details on pronunciation, but perhaps emphasizing morphology (new technical terms are often made from different lexemes). But the key point I believe would be, rather than handling a general vocabulary, to instead have a more specialized one. I have found that the real hassle in language learning is vocabulary. Grammar is relatively straightforward, one can usually learn the main outline watching out for exceptions and the like, but learning how to say house, good morning, please, glasses, belt, pants, and so on, when one wants to learn in order to read about mathematics, serves to complicate things. I don't think it need be a hindrance for moving on to a broader context. By being able to read and follow a train of thought in a specific field one is actually acquiring the language, and unfamiliar words will have to be looked up in a dictionary either way. But I myself have found that reading technical books aids to fluency quite optimally. Any thoughts? have you seen that approach taken already somewhere?

>>17274 I only now thought to ask. How did you learn Esperanto? I haven't found a good resource yet.

>>17187 Learning at your own pace and having fun with it sounds like a great way to learn nothing? The point is intrinsic motivators, you personally have no reason to learn something unless you are in a specific environment. Considering the lainon >>16968 has already failed in learning in that specific environment it goes without saying that the rewards their subconscious perceives are not the same as yours. Which means, then, that they need to figure out some way to convince their subconscious that learning is in fact rewarding. For example watching subtitled comedy movies in which a specific language is spoken/written will connect the dopamine reward of laughing/amusement to the idea of said language. This is why I'm experimenting with manuscription and translation of interesting articles. Personally, I'd say that the purpose of exploring languages is a simulationary experience of exploring cultures, and as cultures are independent manifestations of problem-solving and thought processes; so what you are doing by learning a new language is you are enriching your problem-solving skills which can then be transferred to material gain. Once your subconscious is convinced of this it becomes relatively straightforward. This lainon gets it >>17371 I'm experimenting with articles. An article to be precise. It's a slow process with a slowdown feedback loop because by the time I'm halfway through I'm exhausted to hell and the topic of the article becomes a chore and no longer interesting but boy is it rewarding. Perhaps if I had more time to dedicate there it'd be a bit easier - as I said I'm experimenting with it yet. Perhaps I should dedicate a vacation to doing this when I'm absolutely free to have concrete results on whether it actually works or not.

>>17372 duolinguo and a lot of comprehensible input with youtube videos. I'm not fluent yet though

>>17227 >the only superpowers that matter sorry france... and french speaking african countries who will soon be speaking chinese anyway Not him, but it gives you a leg up in any communication >german as a technical language enabling more technical learning and the ability to access references for technology and STEM (the language you speak determines your thinking and perception abilities, so german will help you view the world as technical instead of perceptively) also that dank kraut humor and classic literature like goethe. >Spanish for general conversations with all of the americas (this is more a "useful" language instead of a practical one) >Mandarin - because it will probably be the dominant language in 30 years, also several small 2nd and 3rd world countries have started implementing mandarin into schools along with English because there are so many Chinese "investors" who are not trying to buy out the countries Present Day, Present Time! AHAHAHAHAHA!. If you are not learning it now, you are making a mistake with your time. >Russian because it allows you to converse with russians and read russian information, basically the same as with spanish but more niche if you do not live in russia (their defense and cyber and industrial base rivals china and the USA)

>i am form china >here is lots of people knows >and documented is chinese >the time comllexity is need you test youself >and you will find it — wenwei peng You know those "broken english" passages from chinese people? Well I've writing chinese to practice and I am painfully aware that my chinese is just as broken, and probably looks just as funny to a native speaker. 当然，我也该写一个例子，为母语人的享受。你都会一定看见不少错误，不过，如果你看得懂也能指正我的语法，请来吧，我很感激你的帮助。

Is there any recommended resources for learning Russian online?

>>17389 Duolingo and Anki flashcards and open up a newspaper in Russian online everyday to try and read it

>>17389 I use the memrise app and soon will use https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/ to practice while watching netflix

>>17394 >proprietary spyware >proprietary cable TV

>>17389 I personally did learn basics on grammar using a textbook and continued vocab using anki. Nowadays I am expanding my knowledge by reading Russian forums and imageboards. 8kun /cafechan/, 2ch.hk and rutracker are my favorites at this moment, I am no means fluent but I am improving daily.

>>17376 I appreciate the answer. I saw the duolingo course before, but don't believe I'll ever use it, since it's a service that wants me to make an account and other things, which I refuse to do. I suppose if I can't find a good copy of the Esperanto book or related books at some point in the near future, I'll just learn a true natural language instead.

>>17394 >>17397 >>17414 Thanks for the suggestions, lainons. I'll grab a grammar book off of LibGen and get started on their character set.

>>17414 >2ch.hk it's bad place to learning russian. Only stupid kids and political bots sit there

>>17431 https://mega.nz/folder/x4VG3DRL#lqecF4q2ywojGLE0O8cu4A/folder/tslkDRTZ

>>17461 >lainchan.org it's a bad place for learning english. Only stupid kids and political bots post there

>>17482 So which are you?

I have a question for any Chinese-studying lains. I'm interested in learning a lot of different languages, most of them southeast Asian, do you think that by learning Mandarin Chinese I would be able to find more resources than are available in English for learning say, Thai or Burmese? I have an interest in all of these languages but even if I don't succeed in that approaching it from this perspective will at least get me to start learning one as opposed to what I've done thus far picking up what amount to useless bits and pieces of each.

>>17461 хотя /diy/ и /p/, аноним?

>>17491 goteem

>>17494 Same guy, as an addendum I was thinking about the most common languages for media to receive translations to and subtitles for. Again asking in the realm of southeast Asian media, does anyone know if it's more common for media from that region to receive Mandarin subtitles? Like how the most common language for South American media to be subtitled in is English?

>>17502 Wish I could provide a better answer but... At least your last question I think is a yes, SE-Asian countries seem to have mandarin as the cultural/commercial language, so people there are somewhat familiar with the language, their phonetics being less alien to one another. Now chinese script is the same throughout china, but pronunciation is way different across dialectal varieties. Southern countries have phonetics more closely resembling cantonese. You might also find resources for thai/vietnamese/etc in mandarin. But learning a single language is already a lot of work, and trust me, one without a phonetic alphabet means more work. If you intend to use it as a mere vehicle for yet other languages, I doubt it's cost-effective. Have you conidered tamil?

>>17502 >>17522 Crap, nevermind tamil, it's irrelevant to the region I think you mean. What exactly are your goals? Thai, Vietnamese, others? I forgot to mention that in malasya (马来西亚) most people speak fluent mandarin, if that helps anything.

>>17523 The SEA languages that appeal to me most are Thai and Burmese. I do have a desire independent from that to learn Mandarin, and I'm mostly trying to think of which order to approach the languages I want to learn in. Since there aren't that many great resources for English speakers to learn Thai or Burmese, but there's a large Chinese presence in both of those countries so my thought process was that there would be more resources in Chinese for learning Thai or Burmese since there aren't that many in English.

It's pretty sad that this graphic doesn't show the semitic root. Which encorporates the three languages of divine Abrahamic revelation: Hebrew (Torah (Eloah), Aramaic (Ellah), Arabic (Allah). I'm learning Qur'Anic Arabic right now, and it's really written and read like a melody. And the letters are bound organically. Truly Fascinating.

hey lainons. i want to learn german. i'm usually good at learning things from books but i've found that learning languages out of a textbook is difficult for me. should i just give in and use some botnet app like duolingo or are there good alternative options out there? i'm a complete beginner so i can't just find germans online and talk to them yet.

As a German speaker, Duolingo, maybe a show with German sound and English subtitles (maybe bs dot to may help with that) and then Books, probably. If you're on the Internet alot, then meet German speaking people and try to learn vocals from them. Also, reading books is going to literally be the easiest and best way to learn grammar and presuppositions and times and all of that, because I couldn't explain it theoretically, but can still use them skillfully, creatively and most importantly correctly in writing. Good old Kafka books will always be typical German lectures, then there's the Swiss "Martin Suter" aswell and countless post/pre/in the middle of-WW2 literature. A certain ethnochinese german kung fu-gaming Youtuber called Ranton may help with understanding German from context, but not sure. As a certain poet once said: Das Leben ist zu kurz, um Deutsch zu lernen.

>>17592 Thanks for the advice. I made a Duolingo account yesterday and it seems well designed for learning the fundamentals, although I definitely plan to take your advice and just read/watch German media once I get to the point where I can consistently string coherent sentences together. Are you from a German-speaking country, or did you just learn the language out of personal interest? I ask because one of my motivations for learning is to be able to travel in eastern Europe more easily, and German seems to be a more common second language than English over there (and the "every German already knows english" thing seems like a myth.. I even had a somewhat embarrassing experience with a non-english-speaking Deutsche Bahn train conductor who was very helpfully trying to explain where to go for the transfer but I didn't know how to tell her that I already knew where I was going.)

>>17591 I started german at school, and was never good with it. But i guess it got me basic knowledge and the duolinguo level. Now I'm not really improving but I watch youtube videos in german to keep up a little, it's a nice channel if you like vidyas plus Nessie's spelling is quite okay https://www.youtube.com/user/NesfateLP

>>16626 French lainon recently arrived in Germany here (I anticipated the covid pandemic ^_^) without any notions of German language whatsoever. I have discovered the site of the deutsch welle through the 4chan int wiki, it is absolutely top tier IMO for beginners. I'm doing one unit a day. https://learngerman.dw.com/en/overview You've got one video then practical questions and in the end they high 1 grammar point per unit. About 15 to 20 minutes

>>10119 I want to learn english because i dont learned it in the school.

>>15042 I really want to learn but I have no discipline, and my only motivation is the vague desire to live there one day. Could I ask what resources you're using?

>>18353 You should start learning Engrish.

>>18854 I am in that.

>>10119 >which languages are you interested in, Lainons? Ithkuil.

Toki Pona is a philosophical artistic constructed language known for its small vocabulary. It was created by Canadian linguist and translator Sonja Lang for the purpose of simplifying thoughts and communication. It was first published online in 2001 as a draft, and later in complete form in the book Toki Pona: The Language of Good in 2014. A small community of speakers developed in the early 2000s. While activity mostly takes place online in chat rooms, on social media, and in other groups, there were a few organized in-person meetings during the 2000s and 2010s. The underlying feature of Toki Pona is minimalism. It focuses on simple universal concepts, making use of very little to express the most. The language is isolating and has around 123 root words and 14 phonemes that are easy to pronounce across different languages. However, it was not created to be an international auxiliary language.

Are you learning a new language, lain? What experiences do you have with language learning? Come and tell us about it! I'm currently trying to learn Russian. Their alphabet is great, but I haven't looked much into grammar yet.

trying to learn german from duolingo atm It's alright as it is, altho i feel like I need to know a bit of the german structure before even starting. What do you guys think?

>What experiences do you have with language learning? I could read latin perfectly fine in school having learned it for several years but its all gone now. I did 2 months in another country and the language learned while there still stuck with me. Its interesting how retention works.

I tried to learn Japanese once. Nailed the hiragana and katakana. Memorized a few of the basic kanji. Learned some of the grammar. Then life got busier and I had to drop it, and it''s been around a year since. The greatest obstacle I faced at the time was the difficulty of practice. The barrier of entry for languages that aren't written in the Latin alphabet is pretty high. Before Japanese, I learned English as a teenager. It wasn't difficult at all. Though I'm not sure if I can hold spoken conversations anymore, my accent must be pretty thick. I'd like to study Spanish in the future. And maybe Russian. If anyone needs help with Portuguese, I know my grammar rather well.

Been learning chinese for idk 4 years maybe, I'm still at a so ewhat lower intermediate level (I'm currently studying to take the HSK4 exam). Though lately I've been much more interested in the classical language. Particularly the poetry. So I've been studying that instead. There is a surprisingly good number of resources for that. Back to mandarin, I have the level to understand most written text but there are always words thst I've either never seen or are uncommon enough that I've forgot them. Or I get caight up with the fact that I don't remember the reading or the exact tone. As for listening, I've been practicing with audio from the books, and I also try to listen to native speakers, but I'm really bad at it. I often just understand common words and expressions, and even the workbook audio makes my brain feel tired (and I don't understand all of it.) But I'm on track and I can only improve. And the content from the old language is very interesting. Any more chinos in lainchan?

>>21723 I think it would be nice to first learn basic phrases and then learn structure. The structure makes more sense when you've seen how it works in practice.

>>21722 Unrelated, but why is the Morocco flag star in a pentagram formation?

>>>/r/10119

>>21722 learning japanese, russian and esperanto. My final goal is to start learning small languages from siberia, which requires me to know eirther russian or japanese cuz the ressources are in these languages >>21723 don't forget to read the duolinguo tips, they're usually enough to master grammar >>21725 >The barrier of entry for languages that aren't written in the Latin alphabet is pretty high. I disagree, learning new alphabets is usually the easiest part of learning a language imo. Although it's a bit different with japanese and chinese, because the ideograms are indeed hart to learn (they're not alphabets)

>>21733 Throw tandem out, it's not worth the time begging people to study with you. Most of them are lazy fuarrrks who don't really want to learn. Also talking to people like some subhuman entity is not going to be a fun experience. There is some evidence suggesting early input is bad if you're a beginner.

My additions: Speechling for practicing pronunciation (and listening) Drops for additional vocab Clozemaster for extra comprehension Find music you like to get inspired and learn the translations italki for conversation and lessons ($)

I feel compulsed to preface this with some form of "IDK if this thread is dead" but it's more productive to just get right into it. I want to make a language learning group of lainons, but in my experience most online language groups, and learning/productive groups in general fail. I think this comes down to a few issues. 1. motivation disparity: There's nothing more frustrating for someone who's serious than to have someone who doesn't care around and there's nothing more disheartening for a beginner than a gatekeeping tryhard. Motivation disparity, when not properly addressed, results in both reduced member retention and reduced successful initiation. 2. proficiency gradient: This is a big one, and there's no real way to prevent this, only to address it. People are going to learn at different rates. Depending on how initiation works, people are going to start at different times. And most of all people are going to start with different prior knowledge. You can't just teach everyone in the same class. Ideally you'd have an established curriculum and the most advanced would have the responsibility of teaching the least advanced (which helps them drill their basics anyway), but in real life some people aren't team players. 3. schedule, study time, and interaction: people will have different availabilities. Peolpe will dedicate different amounts of time to studying. People will have different studying efficiencies. These sorts of general orginization things kill groups. Especially with the anonimity of the internet, where accountability is numbed. 4. target demographic: Too often have I seen 'polyglot discord servers' with hundreds of channels for different languages, most of which haven't been used within the last year and a thousands strong user base that has less than 5% active members. You need to know what languages you're coming from, and which you're going to, and then advertise and structure accordingly. Okay, list over. I'm not going to pretend that I have the perfect formula for group language learning over the net, but anything that addresses these concerns at least stands a better chance of avoiding death in infancy. Personally I would love to administrate a server that worked with this text: https://www.quadrilingual.com/ or maybe just a 'language arts for hackers' type beat, that works on russian and mandarin but focuses specifically on typing, reading and tech-related vocab, but I really don't know if any lainons would be interested in that, leave enough replies and I'll genuinely put effort into putting something together. Oh, and on a final note for those thhinking of making their own lanugage learning group, a great way to just make everything better in general is having a bi-directional group, having native speakers of your target language is a godsend, and it keeps everyone interdependant and engaged.

How to immerse myself? Only reading stuff in the target language? I was trying to play a game entirely in my target language (no similarity with my nother tongue except for some cognates) but i did not understood nothing. I coukd not understand a child story too.

>>10119 As a Norwegian, I'm biased towards my native tongue, but I really think it's quite great. What's great about Norwegian is that it's a bit of a combination of Danish and Swedish, so if you can read/speak Norwegian, it's easier to understand either one of those other languages. I'm learning Russian myself though.

>>10119 Chinese japanese german russian all you need already understand Spanish and for greek you just need some vocab All the usefull languages I can think of are euro user. The only useful ones are japanese and chinese possibly tibetian or mongolian only for anthropological reasons. Cutest languages list for fun: Swedish Chinese Japanese Finnish Irish Gaelic Most scientifically usefull languages: German Greek Chinese Latin French Most useful languages: English Spanish Chinese German French Most badass: Dutch German Norwegian Mongolian Russian Japanese Indo-european Most historical: Latin Old norse islandic norwegian italian chinese japanese proto celtic Greek Hindu Btw the uralic group is bigger then that taking into account of uralic altaic group. The group is made up of japanese, korean, mongolian, finnish, saemi, hungary, turkish and all turkic languages.

>>24839 Russian is usefull

>>24810 Ok say say hunter and hunterS in norwegain, your language hasn't evolved in hundreds of years. >>21723 In any field from science to physics you can find a German who wrote something about it.

>>24839 You could probably learn Arabic instead of hindu.

>>24841 >Ok say say hunter and hunterS in norwegain, your language hasn't evolved in hundreds of years. Actually, the language is evolving rapidly. A lot of common internet vocabulary is being translated, quickly. Hashtag -> emneknagg, for example.

>>17266 I learned toki pona, but it's so useless that it failed to keep me interested, so I can't even remember most of it, despite its small vocabulary. I've resumed with my Latin, however, and it has been much more interesting, along with more practical, although toki pona still has uses as a testing ground for work before larger languages. Continuing with Latin has continued improving my knowledge of English. I now believe I know the etymology of absent, being derived from absunt, being the opposite of adsunt, meaning hic sunt, meaning multiple entities being present. I can also read some fragments of Romance languages now. Latin is fun.

>>10119 > Russian Probably useless If don't have a real reason to learn this language (Like reading books?) > - Chinese Maybe if you go to China? > - Japanese 2021 — Musthave. Many modern shousetsu are realized in this. Internet is full of different japanese website, you must know this language if you are going to lurk the net. > - Arabic Useless, since arabic has many forks of it. (Like persian). If are not going to move to an arabic country, ignore.

>>17461 antisocial credit points

>>24938 >Internet is full of different japanese website, you must know this language if you are going to lurk the net. Personally, I have had more use for Russian in this regard (rutracker.org, for example).

>>24938 >Useless, since arabic has many forks of it. (Like persian). Farsi isn't related to Arabic. Arabic is spoken by something like 1.5 billion people as a second language.

Can i jump to grammar whike trying to expose myself? I do not think immersion is helping at all.

Lainons im native Russian speaker and i not understand why all anons want to learn Russian Please explain me that

>>25104 They want to read Dostoevsky in the original language or something

>>25104 It's easier to interrogate prisoners of war if you don't have to teach them English first. At least it cuts down total count of waterboarding sessions.

>>25104 A subsection of americans don't wanna live near poopskin people anymore so they think up these fantasies about running away to eastern europe in order to live like kings off their meager western savings. That's mostly it.

> esperanto what about lojban.

>>25104 I am Polish, for me your language sounds nice, is easy to learn, there is a soykafload of immigrants that speak it and its usefulness is a function of Russia's agressiveness.

>>25426 Jealous of the alphabet made specifically for russian. Tired of typing szcz all the time.

Any sites where i can learn speaking english?

>>15426 >>16949 >>17266 >>17320 >latin cheers

>>27595 Hah! I just picked up a physical copy of this book.

>>27595 underappreciated gem. one of the best books about a foreign language / culture ever written

Don't want to create separate thread, so I'll ask here : What is the best ways to get good level in English as for Ukrainian/Russian native speaker ?

Hi Lain, this is an interesting thread. I am trying to learn Japanese, I started about one year ago and I am pretty satisfied with my progress. However, in the last couple of months I couldn't keep doing Anki everyday and now I have about 1800 cards to review. I don't know if I should just ditch this app and focus only on immersion and grammar or if it's worth trying to review those cards and keep using it since it has really helped me in the beginning of my study. If anyone is interested in Italian feel free to ask anything, I am not a teacher or anything but being my mother-tongue maybe I can help.

>>28125 I've been learning Japanese for Part for months and stopped the last two for no decernable reason at all. I don't usé anki. I usé Genki. So you have to pay to usé anki?

>>28173 On ios you have to pay for Anki, while on android and Linux (and I guess also windows) it is free. It's not an alternative to genki anyway, it's just a tool for flashcards which I use to study vocabulary, not grammar. 頑張ってね

How can I motivate myself to learn a language? Learning English has always been a pain in the ass for me. I have been stuck with my mediocre English with almost none improvement for about 5 years. Knowing a language is really useful but the process of learning is long and boring as hell, I have no patience for that. How do you manage to like learning languages?

>>28481 I use english since 2008, A2 here because i never learned grammar, i just learn by typing, listing and reading and it works

I learned Japanese because I was bored and it was fun. Nothing too complicated, I just took one day to read basic grammar rules and then started immersing. I did use Anki for the first two years or so to keep more basic vocab in my head, though once you get fluent you don't really need an SRS as long as you have somewhat frequent exposure to the language. I would like to learn Latin and Russian in the future, but I don't have the time now. Conlangs are a waste of time, prove me wrong. They might be fun to think about, but are literally worthless. I don't get learning Chinese or Arabic outside of being blackpilled and thinking a country speaking one or the other conquers the world.

Latin and Sino languages. Urdu is also interesting but I think it is becoming more modern and might lose its original meanings too. I think the original meaning of all are much preserved with latin, you just have to ignore any modern interpretation or misrepresentation of words with latin origin (such as the word demon). I'm more interested with the origins basically the reason why 8 was considered almost equivalent to "prosperity" was >From Middle English aught, ought, from Old English ǣht, from Proto-Germanic *aihtiz (“possessions, property”). >The use of aught and ought to mean "zero" is very much proscribed as the word aught originally meant the opposite of naught: "anything". >Meaning of "zero" by confusion with naught. Used amongst those who were once called "non-U" speakers of English. Could it be also why 8 looks like two zeroes? However it's hard to find true meanings but I think it's the fun part about learning languages, you uncover true meanings that nobody probably knew by now. I've found other meaning of numbers too but not all. I think it's associated with the numerology interpretations and I'm making my own system.

As a programmer; I've discovered that my programming abilities, eloquence in English as a second language, and even further my vocabulary in my native language, ALL became increasingly eroded due to my attempts to learn a third language. It might be to what is called "native language attrition" where in attempts to retrieve knowledge of a term or grammatical rule in new language X, all the other knowledge "encapsulated" for other languages gets suppressed. I might be wrong, but if I'm not I'd like to warn fellow lainons - as many are programmers as well - of this problem.

>>24840 So many russians now german though. Still see your point though.

>>28790 Your first sentence is missing a verb. So I'm not sure what you are trying to tell us. Of course learning the language of your enemy is a good thing, because it allows you to understand their plans and stay one step ahead of them. Just don't try to get assimilated, that would make you a race-traitor. Learn German to fight Germans, not to become one of them.

>>28793 "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - a german

>>28667 Me again. Still got that itch to study languages though, since it is an exploratory hobby (in the "I'm interested in languages" way not "I want to learn language X") to me I'm considering two things to make it easier on myself: 1. by learn a language to a point where you can fluently read 100 out of 100 articles in said language but not further this is measurable plus it does not require of one to actively _use_ a language, but recognize and understand data written in it. Since the point nr 1 is measurable and **seemingly** not as taxing 2. by making it easier on myself by gradually moving through "nearby" languages and always pulling back to English so in other words, I know English and closest to English is Dutch so study Dutch to 100% (from pt 1) then German is closest to Dutch so study German to 100% then Norwegian is closest ... and so on. Pulling those languages back into English could be done by way of 3. translating contents (articles on subjects I'm interested in) found in those languages back into English so English is reinforced in yet another front. Point being, of all these, it sounds like a sane approach and it might take just enough time for me to escape a **professional** dependence on English - by that time I'd have learned a lot already so I don't have to **halt** current progress. Thoughts?

Where to find language learning communities, where I ask something about the language I am studying and get responded? I am not using hellotalk because it glows, nor discord for obvious reasons. I am a brazilian learning greek and mandarin and intending to learn korean and spanish, in case I need to be specific.

>>29269 >Where to find language learning communities, where I ask something about the language I am studying and get responded? I am not using hellotalk because it glows, nor discord for obvious reasons. I am a brazilian learning greek and mandarin and intending to learn korean and spanish, in case I need to be specific. Why the fuarrrk do you care about something "glowing" if it's just to learn?? You're fuarrrking learning, not trying to overthrow a gov or something. I get that no one should be spying on you etc, even if you "have nothing to hide" but sometimes you guys are looking more like mental-illness paranoid than normal-privacy-nerd paranoid. Do you expect someone to give you a link to a super-secret language learning community only using XMPP and encryption to communicate? Nah, it doesn't exist. Just boot up a VM and your firewall and use the "glowing" places. Find someone on social networks who is native in the language you're learning, try to build a relationship with this person and that's it, you can now try to convince that person to use encryption (good luck on that part).

>>29225 >>28667 Perhaps the whole premise is wrong, I'm debating myself here, but would it not make sense that - if English/native language is crucial but suffers attrition ; instead of reducing the amount of immersion into second/third/etc language it might be wiser to increase the amount of immersion into the English/native language? Balance them out, in a way?

How learn Esperanto? Lernu? >https://lernu.net/

>>29270 > Why the fuarrrk do you care about something "glowing" if it's just to learn?? I'm not the poster you replied to, but having fun makes it much easier to immerse yourself in a language, and those platforms just aren't fun. I'm not even talking about purely technical reasons here, it also makes a difference with the kind of people it attracts. Case in point: Right now I post here in English, instead of engaging with people in my target language on some normal person site, because I can't stomach another minute of smalltalk. > Do you expect someone to give you a link to a super-secret language learning community only using XMPP and encryption to communicate? I'd be happy to just have something like r/language_exchange without the glow. It wouldn't take anything other than a couple of native speakers willing to talk to learners. Hell, it could even be a lainchan thread.

>>30029 I would rather sniff lime than go into any 4chan page, no matter if it's ~"decent"

>>30029 > 4chan's /int/ I've been active in the language learning thread (and in the classical language thread on /lit/) until recently. Can't recommend going there, and I'm very happy with my decision to kick that habit. >>r/language_exchange without the glow > you can use old.reddit to post on reddit without javascript, Tor exit nodes aren't derezzed, and you only need an email (that doesn't need to be verified) to register. (Old) reddit is fine from a technical perspective, my problem is with the people. Most of them want to chat by proprietary platforms, and even if I swallow that pill, I'll be stuck with someone that I almost certainly have nothing in common with. It's not that I hate, say, travel and food enthusiasts, but I'd rather chat with a troubled lainon stuck in his basement.

>>17381 agree with that but you should add japanese >very large economy with wide international ties, does a large amount of product design (smile curve) and hotbed of the creative industry, learning mandarin will cover 80 percent of the effort of learning japanese, sop sentence order, explicitly particled elements and explicit context sharpen analytical thinking, also getting a dead and living language at once

>>30037 >learning mandarin will cover 80 percent of the effort of learning japanese t. Knows neither The only thing mandarin and japanese have in common is the use of hanzi, and nothing more. Learning hanzi will cover, say, 20% of the effort of learning japanese at best.

Hi! I see you have learned a bit of Esperanto, which is great - I thinkconlangs are great. Since you are a CS student, you might also like the constructed language Lojban, a conlang based on predicate logic. It is quite easy to learn, and has a fairly active community on Matrix, Telegram and Discord. https://lojban.io/

What are some useful Arabic resources to use? I'm planing to take my college's class in it in the near future and I want to see what material is out there when I do take it. Also is there a place to look into specific dialects to study? I'm wanting to learn Yemeni Arabic.

>>30697 I think the first step is to learn the abjad. There's a cool course on Memrise (even though I haven't completed it myself) and probably other ressources too. But yeah imo you have to start with the script and then move to learn the language, that's how I learned basic Russian and Japanese. Try to not use romanized script when you can avoid it

Any Lains know the Ukrainian language situation? Supposedly 30%-60% of the population are either bilingual or speak Russian only, and even in the center and west, as long as you stay in the cities, it's still mostly Russian. It doesn't seem as badly off as Irish, but it still doesn't look good. I heard that people are switching to speaking only Ukrainian because of the war, but I can't tell how big of a movement that really is.

>>31419 Ukrainian is a made-up language anyway. It's literally just mix of Russian and Polish. If you understood any slavic language, then you would know that the term "Ukraine" literally translates to "borderland", because it was formerly a border-area between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire, which like a wild-land controlled by Cossacks (essentially bandits and pirates). The Ukrainian nationality is completely made up. There was no Ukrainian nationality or Ukrainian ethnicity to speak of prior to 20th century. The concept of Ukrainian nationality was made up by a fascist leader (and a war criminal) Stepan Bandera, who was in pact with nazis and Hitler. The concept of Ukrainian nationality was invented by German nazis in order to weaken the Soviet Union. Nothing more, nothing less. Learn history. Don't get fooled by the mass media.

>>31428 Essentially Ukraine is to Russia what Australia is to UK - just a former province full of criminals going rogue. The problem of Ukraine is that their identity is artificially made-up and promoted by the western powers in order to weaken Russia. Imagine if Russia started to promote an "unique identity of the people of Texas" and then armed and funded Texas secessionists against the US government and the wolrd would be convinced (via mass media) that this is the only right thing to do and thinking otherwise makes you and evil Washington sympatiser.

>>31430 texas has twice joined the USA, I think we can twice leave, too. just sayin. There's a long standing secessionist undercurrent in all of dixie, and texas especially. texas was an independant country before it joined the USA as well, unlike pretty much every other state. It has a much stronger and more visible national identity seperate from that of the USA. Texas is the worst example US state to use for your point. still, if russia did that it would be taken by nato as casus belli just as nato doing it in the ukies is casus belli for ivan.

>>31433 The point is that funding and arming foreign secessionist movements is not far from supporting terrorism, but when the West does it is "for the good" while when the East does it, it's "bad".

>>29841 Is Esperanto hard to learn?

>>31430 Russia should do that. We can all move to Austin to set up the Texan secessionist LARP HQ. A nice little Lainon commune on Vlad's dime. The State Department knows that we'd do little to affect politics of Texas either way, so they will support us as a way of draining Russia's coffers.

>>31433 Afaik Texas was part of Mexico, then the US took it, and they pretty much invade it by force driving everybody out to establish themselves as the new owners. I may be getting some stuff wrong, though. But it WAS part of Mexico, that much is true.

>>31435 Its primary design goal is to be accessible enough for anyone to learn in a few months. Your prior experience with Indo-European language will help and especially if you have any Romance.

>>31439 you're getting it not entierly wrong but nor entierly right. Texas was part of mexico but it fought a war of independance. The war wasn't direcly supported by the US and was basically a nominal revolution/secession war by the texans in sort of the same vein as the US revolution was about secession from the british empire. The war might have been largely caused by an influx of US emmigrants in the decades prior to the war which ultimately gave texas a sizeable population of people culturally distant from mexico, but its not like texas had preivously been a pure spic territory, and it wasn't a war supported by us fedgov/stategov forces. Plenty of people from the US left to join texas, famously david crockett for instance, who then fought and died in the texas revolution. Crockett had been a part of the US government but seemingly kinda quit in a huff telling his former constituents that they could go to Hell, while he would go to texas. For about nine years texas was an independant country, before it was 'annexed' (amicably) by the USA, where it was a member state for about another fifteen years till the war of northern aggression, and we all know how that goes. Other places (much of az, nm, ca for instance) were surrendered by mexico to usa post the mexican american war (pre war of n. a.), and then a further part of southern az was purchased later (not all organized into states for some decades). But texas (by its own account anyway) was a seperate republic by that time, and mexico certainly didn't have noteable control of it even if it claimed jurisdiction (as the ukies don't have practical control of the all the donbas and havent for years even if they draw it within their borders). >>31434 yeah, sure thats a fair point, there's sometimes an attitude of pretending to judge everyone by the same standards when ultimately many things just break down to us vs them, and maybe a lot of things that are considered evil and unforgivable are only considered so because they're done by the enemy. Honesty is nice.

Next week there's a language con in my city, the weather will be hot as fuarrrk but I can't wait to talk to people about their languages tbdesu

>>31456 language con or conlangcon ?

I got the same wild itch lainon. Decided on latin. It's easier than you'd expect; for a lot of the words they often mean what you think they do just from how ingrained the roots are in culture. It was easy (and kind of fun) to learn words with baroque music such as the carmina burana and the UK has a free online course for ecclesial latin. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/latin/stage-1-latin/ just seems important to know. practically every body that commands power scribbles some latin on it like some sort of in-joke.

>>31512 no language con, but I didn't attend in the end because it was 40°C and my friends had to cancel their stand because of covid :( Next year hopefully

I'm speedruning German on Duolingo right now. You can come to hang out if you want: https://www.twitch.tv/lolec407cz

>>31705 Okay, which one of you glorious people has done this? https://www.twitch.tv/lolec407cz/clip/GlamorousWonderfulTigerPlanking-nh3MFgBHqBqkWbyC I was not even aware that anybody is watching me at that point.

>>10119 you mentioned japanese and arabic. they're some of the hardest languages to learn but they're worth it. I'm fluent in japanese and I'm studying arabic. japanese is one of the most beautiful languages especially in how different it is from anything else but maybe korean. also even though there's translations for media, it's never perfect. it's so worth it to learn the language if you're trying to really appreciate the media. same with arabic. I study Quranic arabic and believe me there's no better way to study the Quran than in its native language. every muslim will tell you no translation compares. but other than anime and religion, I don't see any reason to study those languages if you don't plan to move.

>>31707 >quran >native arabic language i believe that is already a translation, the original was a proto-language similar but not same due using apostrophes like è é over letters to denote different words. The language lost the ` ´ later which made it ambiguous in translation which led to the guessing whats the real meaning game. Afaik there is no original fully preserved version available which is why they got stuck theorizing whats most likely true.

>>31709 >the original was a proto-language it was an archaic Arabic, in the same way that Beowulf was originally in Old English. *every* religion is like this, because language evolves over time. There are dozens of translations of the Bible from the original Greek/Aramaic.

>>31716 Most languages don't lose an entire mechanic. Old english is just mutated words, here its same word but without the ´` signaling which meaning it is.

>>31718 >most languages don't lose an entire mechanic they absolutely do, and much quicker than you might expect. Here is some old english: Fæder ure ðu ðe eart on heofenum si ðin nama gehalgod to-becume ðin rice geweorþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofenum. Urne ge dæghwamlican hlaf syle us to-deag and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgifaþ urum gyltendum ane ne gelæde ðu us on costnunge ac alys us of yfle. This is the standard lord's prayer in Old English. Notice how it's not just slightly changed words, it is grammatically different.

>>31718 > Most languages don't lose an entire mechanic Oh yeah? Somehow I can't find grammatical genders in the modern English for example...

>most i dont know who is right but you guys failed the task if your evidence is 1 language against a majority claim.

>>27595 I’m getting close to finishing my reading of the first book. I can’t recommend it enough.

>>36523 I made this post a few years ago, and I just finished my second year of linguistics at uni. Bit of credit goes to that book!

I've been working to forget my other language than english. I am slowly becoming more monolingual. I am happy to be free of that barbaric ugly language

I've always been terrible at learning languages, but I spent a couple weeks in France and was able to pick up the language pretty quickly. Being immersed in a language really does a lot.

Not sure why but buddhist chinese has caught my interest. I read a bit on buddhism and for the most part I don't agree sith its basic premises. Buddhist chinese is also a strange language between classical and vernacular, littered with awful sanskrit transliterations. I might be interested in Zen, but introductory books focus on Mahayana texts. For some reason, though, I keep reading buddhist chinese instead of warring states literature or Tang poetry.

>>36525 My first language was French, but I can't speak it anymore. When did you stop speaking that language? I'm creating my own language (just a written language, not spoken) comprised of "there is" statements and nouns. There will be no adjectives or verbs.

I wanna learn Russian I think it's the English of the future. But I don't want a book that teaches you to say спасибо or где красная плошадь. There is this book called Russian for the mathematician which is p good but very incomplete grammar wise. I want something like that with a more complete grammar and readings without going all the way to a grammar reference (which I'll also be using ofc). I'll be getting most of my input from internet forums anyway, mostly related with /tech/ stuff probably. Even though I'm not a nerd. Anyone know a decent guide?

>>25104 have you seen europe in the last 10 years? there will be no more german or french, just arabic if russia can do nothing for 10 more years it will probably surpass the rest of the old world at this rate

and they tell racism is bad. getting overridden by arabs is much better, sure

Learn what language you want. Some may be harder than others, for example Latin will obviously be harder than French. Your best bet to learn is Literature and TV. My mom (from Japan) gave me a lot of books, dvds, etc. that are Japanese, and they are quite handy. Duolingo is great too if you regularly use it. Out of the languages you presented (russian, chinese, japanese, arabic) Russian is probably the easiest. However it is completely up to you. Learn the language of whatever country is closest to you, or if you have relatives from that country that you visit. Hope you find success in your endeavours.

Learning an exotic language is like acquiring a second soul. It is a psychedelic experience to have two souls. It is also extremely freeing to grow, and then switch to your new, second soul. After all, cultures are virtual realities made entirely of languages. So you are shifting your reality. Unpleasant cognitive disonnances that are living in all our heads 24/7, are actually disappearing as you switch to the new soul/cultural reality. The best method is to learn through context, and one easy way to acquire a lot of context is to read/listen to one sentence in many languages in a row - see for yourself: "Die beste Methode besteht darin, durch Kontext zu lernen, und eine einfache Möglichkeit, viel Kontext zu erwerben, besteht darin, einen Satz in vielen Sprachen hintereinander zu lesen/hören - sehen Sie selbst:" "Il miglior metodo consiste nell'apprendere attraverso il contesto, e un modo semplice per acquisire molto contesto è leggere/ascoltare una frase in molte lingue di seguito - vedi tu stesso:" "La meilleure méthode consiste à apprendre par le contexte, et une manière simple d'acquérir beaucoup de contexte est de lire/écouter une phrase dans de nombreuses langues à la suite - voyez par vous-même:" " / - :" "最好的方法是通过上下文学习，一个简单的获取大量上下文的方法就是连续读/听许多语言的一句话 - 你自己看：" "Najlepszą metodą jest nauka poprzez kontekst, a łatwym sposobem na zdobycie dużo kontekstu jest czytanie/słuchanie jednego zdania w wielu językach z rzędu - zobacz sam:" "El mejor método es aprender a través del contexto, y una forma fácil de adquirir mucho contexto es leer/escuchar una frase en muchos idiomas seguidos - vea por usted mismo:" Your mind probably already started figuring out which part of sentence means what. The trick is also not to translate the words in your head directly, but actually build new symbols, meanings and webs of connotations directly from a new language. I also strongly believe microdosing should help. Shrooms bring your serotonin to childhood or even early infancy levels. And this is the period when you learn languages the fastest. Not to mention that parts of psychedelic experience are completely made of language. There are researchers studying the kind of language you experience on psychedelics (xenolinguistics).

>>37073 > - sehen Sie selbst: > - see for yourself: > - voyez par vous-même: > - vea por usted mismo: It tickles the brain just right to "get" them after the first read, on the level of deep meaning, from context. If there was also a person expressively moving hands as they say these sentences, that would be ideal