Language learning thread

[Anonymous No.18923585]

We've had some of these lately and they've been very interesting, and covered ground not covered by similar threads on /int/.

>What languages are you learning?
>Any tips (in general or for specific languages)?

I have a question to get started. Do flashcards really help? How many 100s or 1000s of words can you realistically learn just by doing them? Does your brain really assimilate them to long term memory after enough repetitions?

[Anonymous No.18923616]

CAPAX•DEI

[Anonymous No.18923649]

>>18923585
Flashcards can help to establish some initial vocabulary and phrases or to supplement your learning once you get started with reading and listening. I do find sentence mining (i.e. writing down words and sentences you encounter in the wild and reviewing them with flashcards) is especially useful since it has real significance to your brain rather than merely being an irrelevant collection of words.

[Anonymous No.18923677]

>>18923585
Learning japanese to read Soseki, Murakami, and Nagatoro

[Anonymous No.18923693]

>>18923677

[Anonymous No.18924445]

After looking into Latin for about 5 seconds, it already help me contextualize the language I'm learning: Italian. If I come to a phrase of some sort that causes me trouble, I just think to myself, "Oh, wait a second, this is just Latin, but ugly!" This has increased my understanding tenfold.

[Anonymous No.18925167]

>>18924445
just wait until you look at french and spanish

[Anonymous No.18925284]

This thread might not be perfectly fitting but since I'm not a native English speaker, I will use it to ask my question.
If I wanna say that there have been five missions in total (2 of them military and 3 of them civilian), how do I express it?: "with a total of five military AND (?) civilian missions"?

Using "and" sounds like there are 10 missions in total. Saying "or", though, sounds like I don't know whether they were miltary or civilian.

[Anonymous No.18925336]

Any anons studying /wierd/ yet /rich/ languages? Something like Tibetan, Sogdian, Avestan, Akkadian, Coptic, Old Irish, Tocharian, etc.

[Anonymous No.18925352]

I will never EVER learn a language that does not belong in the Indo-European family

[Anonymous No.18925377]

>>18923585
I only learned modern languages until now but I'm planning on speedrunning the classic ones now. I've been memorizing grammar from Greek: an intensive course, and reading from Athenaze. Once I finish both I will start with latin (Wheelock+LLPSI) and then sanskrit (Devavanipravesika for grammar, still haven't investigated readers).

For modern languages, I used to memorize about 5000 words with Anki. At that point I could get the gist of nonfiction and TV, so i just kept consuming material to improve my vocabulary. For greek/latin/sanskrit i'm not memorizing vocabulary though, except that required for the book's exercises.

[Anonymous No.18925380]

>>18925352
King!

[Anonymous No.18925416]

>>18925284
Just say "there have been 5 missions: two of them military, three civilian". You expressed it perfectly in the post, so why not just write it in the same manner?

[Anonymous No.18925434]

I'm going to start French again when next semester begins. I've had it in high school a long time ago, and I also used to have Latin and ancient Greek, so I'm pretty confident I'll be a quick learner. Plan is to do half a year of classes to brush up my forgotten knowledge, and then continue with self-study

[Anonymous No.18925475]

>>18925416
Because my sentence is five lines long and changing it like that destroys the whole sentence.

[Anonymous No.18925503]

Did a B2 German course recently. Now I'm going through Hemingway's Der alte Mann und das Meer and have Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre stacked as an end-boss.
Any recommendations for simpler, yet good quality literature I could learn before tackling the real stuff? I am very well acquainted with the Russian canon, so I was thinking perhaps some German translation of one of the Russian classics, but whom?

[Anonymous No.18925582]

I am currently studying Latin, Greek, French and I will start studying German next Monday.

[Anonymous No.18925613]

>>18925582
Nice. Do you find studying multiple languages at a time to be effective?

[Anonymous No.18925622]

I'm in the very early stages of learning ancient Greek, but I'm struggling with memorizing the case-endings. I feel like brute-forcing them is the most efficient way to learn them, but if anyone has some suggestions, please enlighten me.

[Anonymous No.18925688]

>>18925622
Brute forcing definitely works over time. In my Greek exams I would take out a massive piece of blank parchment and write out one or two full paradigms purely from muscle memory. That isn't a testament to my memory either, it's just how embedded they had become by then. But there were still things I struggled with too. I had certain "routes" I would take through the paradigm to eliminate ambiguities (easier to remember what form X looks like if you've already done forms F and T which are the ones you confuse with it most often and which "blur" your memory when trying to think). Rote memory really works. Eventually you just "feel" the structure of the table and you can fill it out by process of elimination even if you don't perfectly remember everything in 0.1s flat. But the more you do it, the more stuff will pass from "remember it with a second of effort" to "remember it because I just remember it." This happens through reading as well, but it's a nice boost to have the rote memory exercises on your side, and vice versa - you will eventually "feel" most of the obvious conjugations just from reading them so often.

Try using tricks like, obviously, remembering the signposts for very obvious conjugations (imperfect, aorist, perfect). But another key trick is to dwell on the thing I just said in the last paragraph: habitual use will make more and more of the conjugations come by feeling rather than a cognitive effort. Remember you're not going to be digesting a textbook forever. Soon enough you will be reading and translating, and much of what you currently find slipping from your mind will be ingrained in it. This will make the actual difficult or weird stuff that much easier to remember, because you will be expending the same amount of cognitive energy, but focusing it on fewer and more isolated things.

Trust in that process and in yourself. There's nothing magical about Greek. You WILL learn it if you just keep going. Imagine watching a TV show three or four times, then ten times. You'd start anticipating things you didn't even know you remembered, things you don't remember remembering. You could be an inattentive shitty passive viewer and you'd still be absorbing a thousand subtleties from the sheer repetition. That's happening in the background every time you feel like you're struggling.

Another trick is to remember that not all the conjugations and constructions are equal. You will mostly be encountering easy "bread and butter" ones, for the same reason the future perfect exists in English too but is super rare. When you do encounter hard ones, they'll stand out AS hard, and you'll be able to open your grammar and check them. That's normal. Don't get it in your head that you're "learning Greek" to be like a Greek-processing machine who recognises every form and decodes every page. Hate to break it to you but that's never going to happen. It happens even when you're a champion who has been reading Greek for years.

[Anonymous No.18925734]

>>18925688
Just finishing off this post. Above all remember the last bit, you aren't reading to have perfect memory of the textbook. Look at it this way: right now you are mostly digesting and remembering grammar and morphology facts. At some point, you'd like to be able to pick up a book and just read it. That's the simplest way to look at what "learning a language" is. But it's also too simplistic. The reality is there is a vast middle period between those two extremes, a hybrid period where you will have both a text you're working with and the textbook or grammar open. You will always be consulting dictionaries, glosses, grammars. What happens over time is not that you pass from phase 1 (assimilating and reviewing facts about language) to phase 2 (reading the language), but that you do less and less of 1 and more and more of 2, never really reaching the abolition of 1 altogether.

Not realising this was my big mistake when learning Latin and Greek. I stayed with the textbook and grammar way too long out of autistic devotion to being perfect before I was allowed to leave the shallows and really swim. But there's nothing to be lost and lots to be gained by just wading out and failing.

You could literally learn to read Greek reasonably well by half-learning morphology and just winging it with real texts, returning to the grammar as necessary. It'd be slower and (for most people, but maybe not for some dispositions) more tedious, but this has always been a valid and venerable way of learning. What you're doing by putting effort into memorising morphology is a modification of this strategy designed to make it easier and faster in the long run, not fundamentally a different strategy. Don't reify the textbook or deify the morphology tables. You can always cheat. Language learning is one of the few places where cheating is usually just another form of winning. Just saying all this because this is the advice I wish I had gotten.

[Anonymous No.18925758]

>>18923585
I've started working through Wheelock's Latin when it occurred to me that my understanding of English is not as rigorous and well conceived of as it ought to be. I was wondering if any ESL anons or anons that felt they needed remedial English training can recommend a definitive textbook on English grammar? I've noticed that whenever I write or speak in English my grammar comes from a place of feeling and intuition which I would like to correct.

[Anonymous No.18925891]

>>18925284
>with a total of five missions, military and civilian

[Anonymous No.18925975]

>>18923585
>>18924445
At this link you can download the ISO of an encyclopedia in which you can find Eneide, Iliade, Odissea, Divina Commedia + 10s of other Italian literary works from XIII to XX century, + Italian Constitution, Civil Code, dictionary of synonyms, and a collection of aphorisms.

Run the iso
Install the program
Run OmniaPBib.exe while the iso is running

You might have to run the exe in compatibility mode W95/98 or something like that

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bBBIkUSasdoZkuQX93NaWA_SJh2CkaYO/view?usp=sharing

[Anonymous No.18926040]

ama on gaelic

[Anonymous No.18926629]

>>18926040
how many variants are there

can you go from one to another easily or do you have to start over with each one

is there enough to read in them

[Anonymous No.18927305]

i study korean because i love kpop girls

[Anonymous No.18927789]

>>18923585
Learning Japanese because they're going to be the USA's main partner in colonizing/industrializing the Moon, and I'd like to be able to talk to the Japanese engineers I hire for my mining company in their native language.

[Anonymous No.18927836]

Does anyone know any valuable source for learning romanian?

[Anonymous No.18927976]

>>18923585
>covered ground not covered by similar threads on /int/.
What have they covered?

[Anonymous No.18928141]

>>18925734
>Language learning is one of the few places where cheating is usually just another form of winning
This is true. I remember when I was learning Latin I became fed up with all the grammar and morphology and just decided to jump into real texts. I started reading through De natura deorum on perseus and simply clicked on any word I didn't know and looked up translations when I encountered a particularly difficult passage or construction, and I made a ton of progress simply doing that, even if it constitutes cheating to a purist.

[Anonymous No.18928227]

>>18923585
>What languages are you learning
I'm learning Spanish and Latin, and will soon be starting some basic middle-Egyptian. I've just started reading some primer material for it, and I'm pretty intimidated lol. Luckily, I'm fortunate to have the opportunity to learn the latter two languages with a credentialed classicist/egyptologist, and they've studied a mind-boggling number of languages.

>Any tips
Listening to music and consuming lots of material has helped me with spanish. With Latin, although I'm not especially far into Wheelock's, it seems like it's best to drill the declensions to death until you know them well. I tried to look for some way to "cheat" and get a faster, better understanding of them rather than just brute memorization, but that seems to be the best thing to do.

>>18925758
I'm a native English speaker, but judging from your post you seem to grasp the language very well. I don't see any errors or clumsiness with your writing.

[Anonymous No.18928397]

>>18928227
I'm a native English speaker as well and have very good intuitive English reading comprehension. Throughout school/multiple degrees at university I've never studied for an English exam because I could always just guess and be mostly correct on test days. Beginning to study Latin made me realize that I don't actually know much of anything about English in the formal sense. If I were to take a test on English grammar that was written in such a way as to prelude me from intuitively guessing the answers, I would fail. I went ahead and ordered an English grammar textbook published by Oxford University and I'm going to study it along with my Latin. The realization that I'd been cheating all this time struck me kind-of hard. I've probably been hampering my cognitive and conversational ability for a long time due to laziness.

[Anonymous No.18928413]

>>18928397
Oh, I see. I'm in the same boat. Learning Latin has really shown me how little I understand English in a formal sense, although studying latin through Wheelock's has helped me tremendously. My school didn't teach much English grammar or terminology, so I've always felt lacking, but didn't realize how bad it was until recently. Good luck with your study or English alongside Latin! If there are more threads like these, please let us know how it goes

[Anonymous No.18928463]

what are /lit/'s thoughts on duolingo? is it a good tool to learn languages?

[Anonymous No.18928536]

>>18928463
Waste of time for me
The gamification is annoying and it "teaches" by constant translation rather than immersing you in the target language

[Anonymous No.18929755]

>>18928463
Good for practice and not much else

[Anonymous No.18929796]

You should try the Toucan navigator app, which randomly turns words on the page into the aimed language. For example, if you read a wikipedia page, some random words will be turned in spanish, german or whatever language you chose to learn. Then you can click on the word and see its meaning in context which is great for leaning efficiently : always learn foreign words in context.

[Anonymous No.18929804]

>>18926629
>how many variants are there
Three
Scottish, Irish and Manx. And there are varieties within those around 4 in Ireland.
>can you go from one to another easily
Well no one speaks Gaelic anymore but you can't really.
>is there enough to read in them
There is.

[Anonymous No.18929806]

>>18927789

[Anonymous No.18929887]

>>18925758
>I've noticed that whenever I write or speak in English my grammar comes from a place of feeling and intuition which I would like to correct.
Nothing to correct. That's how grammar works naturally. That's not to say that you can't learn grammar for personal satisfaction, development or whatever but you shouldn't strive to replace your intuition with it. You've got it backwards.

[Anonymous No.18929922]

Learning mandarin currently. It's going to be comfy being on the winning side of history.

[Anonymous No.18929945]

>>18928141
I have never studied Latin, when I see a random sentence I can more or less understand the topic, but I would be unable to correctly translate it. How much grammar did you know when you started just immersing yourself in texts?

t. Italian

[Anonymous No.18930221]

>>18928463
good as an exposure to vocabulary when you're new. you can almost think of it like a booster pack-- "finish the duolingo tree for your language, and you will gain 500~1000 random words of vocabulary"
there's not much use for it long term, and it doesn't teach grammar. but there's almost no reason not to spend a few months finishing it (15-30 minutes day)

[Anonymous No.18930989]

>>18929804
Are those three mutually intelligible?

[Anonymous No.18931036]

>>18927789
I'm studying Japanese and Spanish because when America falls to the brown hordes, the nips will be our only allies left. Spanish people really like Japan for some reason.

>>18923585
Flashcards are necessary since repetition is essential. There's no point in working through a page of a book and not making flashcards from it. You will forget information unless you keep a bank of it and repeat until it's internalized. Even if you try to make mnemonics out of everything, which is time consuming, you will forget them. Write down every piece of solid information you can find.

[Anonymous No.18931086]

>>18925688
>>18925734
Based effort poster. Many thanks for the posts. Would you have any recommendations for someone trying to break into the intermediate level? I can read really simple adapted texts with some effort, but having trouble getting into the actual literature. Should I just bite the bullet and get a tutor?

[Anonymous No.18931107]

>>18931086
An amicable interaction on 4chan. The holy grail. Thank you all. You've improved a tired black mans week.

[Anonymous No.18931126]

>>18930989
Yes, Scottish Gaelic and Ulster Gaelic are actually closer than Munster Gaelic and Ulster Gaelic.

[Anonymous No.18931130]

>>18923585
>Studying to get a C2 in english
>Read, read, read

[Anonymous No.18931134]

Not sure if I should focus on Spanish or Latin :3

[Anonymous No.18931165]

>>18928463
Absolute shit,it teaches nothing of the underlying grammar necessary to understand a language and leaves you with no knowledge or help to learn more imo ( someone that has done duolingo classes will have little to no advantage in learning seriously a language compared to someone that has not learned anything about the target language). Additionally, the idea of locking out content for a time period if you mess up, coupled with the extreme stictness of what it considers correct and the fact you retain basically nothing from the lessons ime makes it a terrible learning device.

[Anonymous No.18931208]

>>18925352
Based

[Anonymous No.18931655]

>>18931036
>brown hordes
>spanish people
???

[Anonymous No.18931933]

>>18929945
I would say most of it, barring some more unusual constructions, but it never really began to stick until I started reading. That's when the grammar all starts to make sense. It's like struggling to swim at first but it's the fastest way to learn.

[Anonymous No.18931946]

I want to learn Russian or Arabic but I am learning French because it is useful for me. Unfortunately I hate French

[Anonymous No.18931966]

>>18923677
don't you lie you filthy fucking weeb, i said the exact same thing when i was learning japanese but i really wanted to watch anime

[Anonymous No.18932006]

>>18923585
Any opinions on the Language Transfer courses? Did they aid you acquisition or are they only good if you want to get to the point of forming simple phrases quickly?

[Anonymous No.18932248]

>>18923585
Learning Russian for almost 2 years
Anki is very useful for memorizing words and for russian specially since you need to remember all the grammar rules

[Anonymous No.18932574]

>>18931126
>Scottish Gaelic and Ulster Gaelic are actually closer than Munster Gaelic and Ulster Gaelic.
Not really true.
The, now extinct, varieties of Scottish Gaelic that were understood in Ulster were really just Scottish varieties of Ulster Gaelic.

[Anonymous No.18932630]

>>18931165
>>18930221
>>18929755
>>18928536
what would you guys recommend?

[Anonymous No.18933025]

>>18932630
Kinda depends on the language. I'd recommend a textbook or two to learn some grammar, basic vocabulary, and the general feel of the language, then a combination of input and tools like anki or memrise.

[Anonymous No.18933059]

>>18932630
Reading the wikipedia article about the grammar of the language you want to learn just to get an idea, then finding something on youtube that is easy enough for you to understand, then listening to it a lot and progressing from there. If you're learning a popular language chances are I can recommend something.

[Anonymous No.18933144]

>>18928463
Okay for practice and just getting started. Most useful just for keeping your head in it but I found its focus on everyday topics tedious and non-motivating. I kept wanting to get to higher levels to see if they became more like prose but then I figured why not just read wikipedia and newspaper articles that interest me instead of begging an app for something interesting maybe. Still not bad if you do it every day just to keep your head in the language, that's the main benefit I've seen, it stops you from just failing to study for 3 months and losing half your shit and it becoming even harder to start up again.

>>18932630
A basic non condescending textbook called something like "Learning Italian" or "Teach yourself Russian" that teaches grammar. It's a bit of an art to find the one that works for you. If you understand grammar well you'll probably prefer barebones so you can just get to the point. If you are totally new you will probably want something more meaty. Some languages have really good ones for /lit/ types (Brown's Penguin Russian Course, Sandberg's Reading for German/French, Jannach's Reading for German) while others have too many textbooks aimed at immigrants with overly condescending "Karl geht ins Kino mit seinem Handy" boring shit.

Once you have enough grammar to read decently, look into graded readers, or just start translating easy shit like wikipedia.

[Anonymous No.18933360]

Learning German rn because I'd like to study there some time in the future. All I do is read books and grind audio sentence decks in anki. Feels like it's not enough but there's nothing more I can do and I do feel a little bit of improvement each day.
For the past 8 months I also grind some Japanese words in anki because I'm bored and I'll probably try to read some Japanese literature soon but I'm too stupid to understand the sentence structure sometimes.

[Anonymous No.18933381]

>>18923585
Learning German rn, afterwards will try Russian, ancient greek and maybe Portuguese ir something else. Im a novice but from personal experience what’s really effective for me is the books completely in the language in question and you just keep reading while you piece things together, then just read children's books and other things like grammar from there. /int/ is a crap board but the /lang/ thread has great resources

[Anonymous No.18933494]

>>18933360
Random German music I like (I don't really speak German, I just understand some words)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxuEtL7gxoM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrwzHK8aX8w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQIYEPe6DWY

[Anonymous No.18935470]

bump

[Anonymous No.18935941]

inpoot

[Anonymous No.18936116]

>>18931966
Nope, I pretty much got away from anime, but an autist friend who's a real weeb started sperging out about going to Japan and learning Japanese a few months back so I joined in. I looked at literature they might have and some seems interesting, but I don't trust translations.
I actually had to restart watching anime for immersion, and it's boring. I enjoy reviewing cards on Anki more than watching anime, because most of it is shit. Plus the fact that I can't keep rewatching the very few that are actually good.

[Anonymous No.18936121]

I don't want to sacrifice my verbal IQ in English by immersing in another language long enough to learn it.

[Anonymous No.18936127]

>>18936116
Watch Kimagure Cook on yt, he's pretty enjoyable. Most of his videos older than a few weeks are fan-captioned in english too.
You'll end up with a lot more cooking and fish related vocab, but hey.

[Anonymous No.18936132]

>>18936121
Your English verbal IQ isn't good enough to worry about sacrificing it, don't worry

[Anonymous No.18936222]

>>18923585
I know Dutch and English and have had Latin, Greek, German and French in school, but I ended up dropping all of those except for French. My mom is from Brazil, so I have some basic understanding of Portuguese, but it's not much better than my French. My French skills (comprehension at least) are ok and German shares a lot of vocabulary with Dutch, but I wouldn't consider myself multilingual. I still like to read or watch something in French every now and then to brush up my skills.

From my experience, vocabulary is much more important than grammar. Most meaning is conveyed via words. If you try to learn many words, you'll be able to understand a lot of what is going on and you'll be able to consume more content in the target language, meaning things will follow quite naturally from there. You don't need to memorise grammar tables, it's a waste of time. With language learning, input is very important. Try to consume content in the target language. And as with any skill, good habits and repetition are very important

[Anonymous No.18936315]

>>18925758
I had the same experience with Dutch and learning another languages in high school (Latin, Greek, German, French). I used to be bad at Dutch, mostly because of some slight dialectal things that weren't considered "correct" in the standard language. Learning those other languages, mostly so the ancient languages Latin and Greek, gave me a much better understanding of how language works and made me able to understand Dutch grammar better. I don't think you need to formally learn English grammar separately. Just look up the things you might occasionally struggle with or aren't sure about and your knowledge will grow over time. I did follow a more advanced English course in high school to get a Cambridge Proficiency Certificate, and we used pic related. I remember some of the grammar exercises being surprisingly difficult at times, because it really went into nuance differences that many native English speakers would probably even struggle with. It doesn't really have any explanations of the answers or grammar, but it may be interesting to test yourself with and can be a starting off point for finding things you struggle with and googling why certain answers are correct. Now, it is targeted at ESL's, so it may not be a right fit for you, but the grammar exercises — especially the so called "Exam Folders" — may be interesting

[Anonymous No.18936426]

>>18936127
Cooking and fishing vocabulary sounds enjoyable. Thanks anon for the recommendation

[Anonymous No.18937847]

[Anonymous No.18937999]

Czech because i live in czechia. Mainly because having a comfier life and also because respecting the country

I am having a big problem of thinking in terms of declension cases . I know what are they, but I am shit at grammar and things as explaining in terms of direct/indirect objects...i am null.

Truly having a bad time memorizing cases, when to use some prepositions and not others...

[Anonymous No.18938007]

>>18923585
yeah anon, flashcards definitely work. I use anki, which I've become very good at. I recommend you do the same.
>>18925167
french is miraculously easy to do this with
t. latin speaker
e.g.: tempête = tempeste = tempestatem (if u know what the ˆ accent means)
>>18925336
yeah i studied sanskrit for some time. something interesting i learned is that indians treat sanskrit like modern greeks treat ancient greek. they're extremely overconfident in their capabilities with it (much like modern europeans are with english).
>>18925377
luke smith viewer? i learned about devavanipraviseka from his library, everyone else I've met who knows about it also watches him.
>>18925758
this isn't your english capabilities being flawed, it's your understanding of grammar proper being flawed. as you learn other languages, you'll learn the grammatical categories and phrasal syntax and that'll make everything easier.
>>18928463
maybe i'm just a contrarian fag, but duolingo (for modern languages!) is better than basically any other source that covers the SPECIFIC RANGE OF CONTENT THAT DUOLINGO DOES (the 1-8 former months of learning).
yes, the gamification sucks, but it doesn't disable the content. also, fellow oldfags will know duolingo on the phone used to be MUCH better. sadly, now it's only usable on the computer. DO NOT use it on the phone.
>>18932630
if duolingo doesn't fit the current context you should be learning in (this will often be the case), it all comes down to the resources in your given language. some of them have very few, and you'll have to roll with the punches then. some, like Greek/Latin/Sanskrit, have such a surfeit of information that you can sort of learn it however you want, it just comes down to knowing yourself and how you like to learn.

[Anonymous No.18938458]

>>18938007
> luke smith viewer?

Someone else suggested that book to me, but thanks for mentioning the name, I had been trying for a while to find that blog again. Is he a /lit/ user?

Also, do you have any other resources you can suggest for Sanskrit? Especially in the category of graded readers or easy books to tackle after you are done with a basic course, I haven't found much discussion, unlike for Latin or Greek.

[Anonymous No.18938923]

>>18937999
How are the blonde female specimen there?

[Anonymous No.18938997]

>>18923585
I’m learning Russian but struggling with the overlap of words since I already speak Serbian. Difficult not to mix them up, especially when grasping for a word.

[Anonymous No.18939124]

>>18938997
Doesn't it help? I know a Serb who hasn't spoken Serbian since he was 6 and forgets most of it and when I tell him a Russian word he amazes me by guessing the approximate meaning half the time.

As someone whose first language is a romance language that makes me jealous. The hardest part of Russian is the alienness of the vocabulary. Every word is a new slog to learn. They might as well all be "vbnndnldluistrbststrtevuite" at first. I think that might be an actual Russian word.

[Anonymous No.18939142]

>>18939124
It does help significantly, I mean I already know the alphabet (only had to learn like 5 new letters), I could already understand 1/3 of it, but when speaking Russian I’ll accidentally use the serbian word for something. The bleeding over is terrible, I have to separate two languages in my head that sound the fucking same sometimes.

[Anonymous No.18939171]

>>18927305
based k-chad

[Anonymous No.18939258]

There’s so many Chinese novels that I want to read that aren’t translated into English (like the Crane Iron series) that I feel at times a bewitching need to learn Mandarin Chinese, but then I remember it isn’t worth the effort and that thought makes me feel sad yet accepting.

http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

I wonder if there is an “easier” language to learn that has had a reasonable amount of Chinese media translated into it.

[Anonymous No.18939329]

>>18939258
I've learned 5 languages and Chinese is the easiest of all. It only seems difficult at the beginning because of the tones, the alien alphabet and the lack of cognates, but once you get beyond these hurdles (1 year?) it only gets easier and easier. No weird syntax, no declination or conjugation, no plurals or gender bullshit, you can often guess the general meaning of unknown words from their components. To say nothing of the fact that it has so many learning resources that it's almost unfair. You have learned only 150 words? No problem, there are adapted novels you can read right now, and even a website that will create a simplified version of news you can read.

[Anonymous No.18939377]

>>18938458
I've seen Ruppel's Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit recommended to potential students of Sanskrit along with Lanman's Sanskrit Reader and an interlinear translation of the Bhagavad-Gita edited by W. Sargeant. Check out the Clay Sanskrit Library as well for more Sanskrit books.

[Anonymous No.18939400]

>>18938007
>interesting i learned is that indians treat sanskrit like modern greeks treat ancient greek
I heard from my Indian friends that Sanskrit is considered "the easy subject" in school over there. Phonologically, they have much less trouble learning it than, say, a Frenchman would.

[Anonymous No.18939545]

>>18928397
Given that you have a university education, I'm willing to bet that your textbook won't teach you very much besides some formal terms. With Latin it's important to learn A LOT about grammatical case & moods since it's so integral to an inflective (fusional) language. You spent most of your time in K-12 English classes learning about and drilling sentence construction and mechanics because that's the most effective way to acquire and master an analytic language such as English. So, while there are plenty of facts you don't know about language in general, you understand quite a bit about the most important aspects of the English language. IMO you're better off continuing with Latin then applying what you learn there to English and doing some supplemental and more specialist reading in areas of English that interest you. Nevertheless, it can't hurt to have a grammar textbook on hand.

[Anonymous No.18939629]

>>18939124
>As someone whose first language is a romance language that makes me jealous. The hardest part of Russian is the alienness of the vocabulary.
I remember seeing a book like "1000 English words you already know" in a Russian woman home. I guess that might give you a boost.

[Anonymous No.18939641]

>tfw no 부산사투리 gf

[Anonymous No.18939757]

I am learning Korean (English is my native language), only just started but enjoying it a lot. Any resource recommendations would be appreciated. Not a K-Pop fan really so I'm not looking for music suggestions. Hangul is a really nice writing system. Finished the basic lessons on Duolingo up to roughly the first of the 3 checkpoints.

[Anonymous No.18939825]

>>18927305
Hella based

[Anonymous No.18939908]

Im learning polish because i am an autist with no friends and i think by learning it that people will like me

[Anonymous No.18939930]

>>18939908
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2bmY5qXBU4

[Anonymous No.18939935]

>>18939908
Wrong video sorry. It seems there are no more Necro video with polish subs :(

[Anonymous No.18939947]

Anyone use this? I've started learning Greek through it and it's quite good.

[Anonymous No.18939954]

>>18939947
forgot pic https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY3M77wNeopjQbL9mpSVvLg

[Anonymous No.18940144]

>>18939947
>>18939954
I've used the Spanish course and liked it a lot. I've read that the Greek course is especially good. He does a good job of teaching strategies for remembering grammar concepts and how to use commonalities between your target language and English to your advantage. A good example for Spanish would be cognates like words ending in -ion. He also teaches the basic sounds at the very beginning. There's an emphasis on production (speaking) in his courses, but they're still quite good at teaching grammar and other features of the language in an easy way so you can just treat them as a primer and move onto input, if you like. People compare Language Transfer to Michel Thomas, but the former seems better to be, based on my limited experience. I'd definitely recommend LT courses to anyone just starting out learning a language, assuming he's done a course on whatever language the person would want to learn.

[Anonymous No.18940187]

tfw Latin With Ovid's stories are better than LLPSI but thats just imo

[Anonymous No.18940197]

>>18939757
first thing I would suggest is Talk to Me In Korean's "essential korean" series. 10 levels, about 30 lessons each, 15-20 minute podcasts. very good for basics, enjoyable, highly recommended (and free). they put out a lot of other content as well, including videos, podcasts, books, etc.
if you like 'textbook' style learning, check out the site HowToStudyKorean: a guy became obsessed with learning korean, moved to korea, got a korean wife, wrote down everything he learned, and then put it all into a series of 150~ lessons, complete with vocabulary lists, audio samples, and grammar explanations (also completely free). it's kind of dry, but the site really does have an incredibly large amount of content. he even has 60 hanja lessons.
also here is a protip. instead of google translate, use naver papago: the translations are better, and when you type a word, you will get a list of translated sample sentences that show you the word in context (pic related). this also works english->korean
there's more to say but if you work through those you will have a strong grasp of korean grammar and structure. vocabulary is a different beast... inpoot always helps. good luck

[Anonymous No.18940245]

>>18940144
Thanks man. It's my first time learning a second language so I wasn't sure. The guy running it seems pretty based, too

[Anonymous No.18940421]

Does Modern Hebrew have any literature?

[Anonymous No.18941679]

good bread

[Anonymous No.18941902]

>>18925622
I’m a year into koine greek. Although it’s simpler than ancient Greek, i memorize paradigms by writing them 200 times. At the very least you’ll be able to recognize them very easily after that

[Anonymous No.18941909]

i do at most one duolingo lesson to not lose the streak
i dont think it really counts as learning french tho

[Anonymous No.18941928]

>>18931655
Very few Spaniards in America relative to our southern neighbors who come to visit indefinitely

[Anonymous No.18941959]

is there anything worthwhile written in modern greek? I just want some excuse to learn modern and use it as a bridge to ancient greek later
or should I just jump straight to ancient greek?

[Anonymous No.18942051]

>>18925352
Why?

[Anonymous No.18942104]

>>18931966
I was watching anime much more eagerly before starting to learn Japanese
Now it feels like a chore and I only watch it for easy immersion, but I can't force myself to watch more than one episode, it's just kinda boring
The only format I like now are short anime (1-12 eps) and anine movies.
Other than that I prefer actual movies and visual novels

[Anonymous No.18942138]

>>18941959
If you want to learn Ancient Greek, learn Ancient Greek. Learn the language you want to learn, not another language as a bridge to the language you actually want to learn.

[Anonymous No.18943178]

>>18939908
Poland is a super cool place and I like to fly there to chill out now and then. I tried to learn Polish but there was no good TV and very little literature (the only authors I found in translation that I really really like are Gombrowicz, Szymborska and Lem) so I wasn't motivated that much. I succeeded in learning Russian though, thanks to the massive amount of stuff available, so maybe I will get back to Polish sometime.

[Anonymous No.18943190]

>>18940197
TOPIK level achieved? I work and live in Korea, with a high proficiency for a foreigner, and let me tell you papago is as fucking awful as google translate. Never use that shit, use naver dictionary and actually learn.

[Anonymous No.18943501]

>>18941902
How are you learning?

[Anonymous No.18943505]

>>18942138
I don't know, I think AG might be an exception, given the scarcity of resources for it. Still, I'm too lazy to do that, but it makes sense.

[Anonymous No.18943786]

my ancient greek course starts in 2 weeks and I'm very excited

[Anonymous No.18943798]

I wanted to learn French but then remembered that the way I learned English was basically surrounding myself with English works and immersing myself in English-speaking social spheres.
I know three languages and none of them I've learned "by the book" or in school.

I have no material attachments and I'd relocate to France for work, but I'm afraid that Paris is expensive and I don't want to live in bumfuck nowhere.

[Anonymous No.18943802]

>>18943505
There's plenty of resources for Ancient Greek in many languages (English, French, German, Russian, Italian, Modern Greek, and so on). I personally used "Learn to Read Greek" by A. Keller and S. Russell

[Anonymous No.18943804]

I'm doing latin on duolingo. Anyone tried Assimil le latin?

[Anonymous No.18943896]

>>18943505
>>18943802
To add to this: Athenaze, Greek: an intensive course, Griechischer Lehrgang, JACT's Reading Greek. These are the ones I can vouch for, but there are is a ton of good resources for ancient greek.

I mean, it's studied in a lot of high schools and universities around the world. I don't have any numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if ancient Greek had more resources than modern Greek.

[Anonymous No.18943899]

>>18943178
What level is your Russian and how did you learn it? I am so far gone in polish that any other language sounds like shit to me.

[Anonymous No.18943941]

>>18943899
I learned it mainly for reading, so I don't think I could qualify as a B1, B2, etc.

I read a newspaper and non-fiction books without a dictionary (usually getting the unknown words meaning from context, but I will look some if I think it's important). Same thing for simple TV (sitcoms and cartoons). For fiction, I need to look up a lot of words. I learned by first memorizing the basic grammar rules (noun and adjective declensions, conjugations, comparatives), then a few thousand of common words and then reading.

Care to talk about your journey in learning Polish? Resources, interesting material, motivation, and so on? Since I will probably try again in the future I'd like to hear about that.

[Anonymous No.18944039]

Reading comprehension (98%) begins at 8k-9k word families.

One might get 99%+ reading comprehension with 12k to 14k word families, but to be able to pick up anything and have 99%+ comprehension a vocabulary in the native range is required, over 17 thousand.

Just some figures to keep in mind.

[Anonymous No.18944058]

>>18943190
papago is linked to naver dictionary, and you get ko-en definitions directly from naver dict on papago. i suggest papago for beginners because typing a korean word, seeing the definition, and immediately seeing sample sentences is quicker on papago than doing the same thing on naver.

[Anonymous No.18944638]

>>18943896
As a diaspora Greek that tries to improve his Modern Greek, you are totally right. Modern Greek has very few resources sadly while Ancient Greek has many, almost as many as Latin. I feel like being ~C1 in Modern Greek gives me an edge in learning Ancient Greek as well, if only for the fact that I can read it easily, which always seems like a big hurdle for many people

[Anonymous No.18944678]

>>18939258
It's hard, but not THAT hard. There are a lot of things that seem confusing at first but really aren't, Chinese is extremely logical. Just make sure to thoroughly learn pronunciation first, pay attention to stroke order, don't be the idiot who completely refuses to learn tones for whatever reason, and you won't have too much trouble.

[Anonymous No.18944722]

>just learn chinese bro
>just memorize 5000 different signs to get a basic vocab

[Anonymous No.18944731]

>>18944722
The more signs you know the easier it gets though.

[Anonymous No.18944742]

>>18944722
Have you heard of radicals?

[Anonymous No.18944760]

Is swedish worth learning? Most swedes already speak english

[Anonymous No.18944783]

>>18944760
Learning Swedish for what exactly? For living there or just travelling through Sweden?

[Anonymous No.18944793]

hi i am latvia

[Anonymous No.18944879]

What do you guys think about the natural approach/contextual induction? I'm reading Lingua Latina per se Illustrata right now and it's amazing

[Anonymous No.18944901]

>>18944879
It obviously works but I find it works best when supplemented with some grammar study, however minimal.

[Anonymous No.18944910]

>>18943804
It's legitimately a terrible way to learn latin, anon. Switch to Henle's or LLPSI before it's too late.

[Anonymous No.18945017]

>>18939258
>>18929922
>>18944722
I am morally obligated to post this

[Anonymous No.18945246]

>>18945017
Damn it, maybe I should try korean instead

[Anonymous No.18945319]

>>18944793
Hello latvia

[Anonymous No.18945333]

>>18945246
Just learn Chinese and never tell your boss you have learned it.

[Anonymous No.18945347]

>>18945333
Just learn Japanese and don't help to encourage the global domination of commie dog eaters.

[Anonymous No.18945409]

>>18944783
Originally, I had a friend who was from there but we stopped talking. I Iearned the basics, not sure if I should keep going.

[Anonymous No.18945415]

>>18945347
This is a literature board anon are you sure you're in the right place

[Anonymous No.18945462]

>>18945246
Lol, Chinese people aren't so bad at all; they're quite friendly in my experience. Image is nothing more than a meme

[Anonymous No.18945465]

>>18945462
shoo shoo, xi

[Anonymous No.18945487]

>>18938007
i just open duo on my phone browser

[Anonymous No.18945916]

>>18944722
It's not actually 5000 separate characters. For example:
韋 wéi 'tanned leather'
衛 wèi 'to guard'
違 wéi 'to disobey'
偉 wěi 'great, extraordinary'
圍 wéi 'to surround'
緯 wěi 'woof, latitude'
諱 huì 'taboo'
The vast majority of Chinese characters consist of a phonetic component (giving the approximate pronunciation) and a semantic component (giving the rough category of meaning.) For more about how they really work, see this piece:
http://zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm

[Anonymous No.18945924]

>>18944901
But LLPSI does explicitly teach grammar, it just introduces it by examples first and then explains it.

[Anonymous No.18945938]

>>18945409
I'm learning Danish and enjoying it. I think the nice thing about Scandinavian languages is that when you can read one you can do a reasonable job of reading the others, so it's a little bit like getting three languages in one.

[Anonymous No.18945942]

>>18944879
I’m also going through Lingua Latina and it is a blast

[Anonymous No.18946038]

>>18945409
It is a really easy to learn language if you speak English or another Germanic language, since you can just guess most words

[Anonymous No.18946142]

>>18945924
I was speaking more in general.

[Anonymous No.18946489]

>>18940197
Thanks for the suggestions. Just downloaded a hangul keyboard onto my phone so when I get a bit more advanced I can make my shopping lists etc in Korean. Bought a few different kinds of books on eBay (textbooks, children's books, dictionaries) for cheap so if any prove to be excellent resources I'll report back here for fellow learners.

[Anonymous No.18946507]

I need some help with my English, guys: Can you say "X is in trend"?
I'm a German native speaker and I worry this might sound too germanised.

[Anonymous No.18946528]

>>18946507
Definitely not right. You can say trendy. Or à la mode.

[Anonymous No.18946547]

>>18946507
>trendy
>in style
>fashionable
Never heard in trend though

[Anonymous No.18946549]

>>18946528
"Trendy" just sound a bit unprofessional as I want to use it for an academic paper. Or is this just my impression?

[Anonymous No.18946556]

>>18946549
*sounds

[Anonymous No.18946557]

>>18946549
Can you give an example context of what you are trying to say? There are a lot of subtleties to different ways of saying something is "popular" in this way, and some ways might not be appropriate for an academic context

[Anonymous No.18946559]

>>18946549
Your impression is right. Follow >>18946528's suggestions then.

[Anonymous No.18946560]

>>18944879
That's the way. For a rundown watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61Kk7VkoWbc

[Anonymous No.18946564]

>>18946557
My sentence is "The juxtaposition of international organisations in peacekeeping is in trend."

[Anonymous No.18946586]

>>18946564
To elaborate: I wanna say that it is a new phenomenon that international organisations work alongside nowadays. But because this is my very first sentence, I want it to be more to the point.

[Anonymous No.18946590]

>>18946564
The juxtaposition of international organisations in peacekeeping is trending.
Or
The juxtaposition of international organisations in peacekeeping is in fashion.
Would be correct.

[Anonymous No.18946597]

>>18946559
Wrong post. This guy's>>18946549

[Anonymous No.18946609]

>>18946590
And is "juxtaposition" the right word for saying that IOs are operating alongside in peacekeeping? Because I think that it can also mean that they are contrasting each other rather than merely a being next to each other.

[Anonymous No.18946617]

>>18946590
>>18946609
I'll take "in fashion" by the way, thank you for that!

[Anonymous No.18946634]

>>18946609
I would associate juxtaposition more with contrast yes. "Cooperation" would probably be my preference for word choice.

The cooperation of international organisations in peacekeeping is in fashion.

[Anonymous No.18946635]

anyone tried italki? thoughts?

[Anonymous No.18946645]

>>18946634
Cooperation already means that they are working together though. I just want to state the fact that there simultaneously are more than one IOs next to each other.

[Anonymous No.18946663]

>>18946645
I see, in that case juxtaposition is fine.

[Anonymous No.18946677]

>>18946590
Trending is too unprofessional, "in fashion" is probably better but has a mildly disdainful feel to it, as if it's "merely a fashion," like the people who enjoy it are just following fashions. One more option is "in vogue." To my ear, that is a bit more neutral than "fashion." Something being in vogue seems somehow more serious and less frivolous. A management technique could be in vogue, for example, but a bit of managerial jargon would be in fashion. The implication being that the latter is somewhat more superficial, it's something catchy as opposed to spreading because of deliberate choice. That's just how I hear it though.

I've been trying to think of a more neutral way to say it for a couple minutes now and coming up blank. The best I can think of is circumlocutions of this kind
>In recent years, ... has come into general use in the ... community.
>... has become a familiar fixture of the ... community in recent years.
etc.

I also don't know what you mean by juxtaposition in this context. Maybe that's just because I don't know your discipline and its discourse, but to me the sentence is very sterile, like management jargon actually. The problem might be that "juxtaposition" is too vague, at least by itself.

[Anonymous No.18946722]

>>18946677
Original question poser here: I definitely agree with "in vogue". I had considered "in fashion" and "in vogue" previously as well and I came up with the same solution.

Concerning "juxtaposition": My thesis is about how the UN partners with other international organisations to get help for its peacekeeping efforts. But before I start actually saying that they are cooperating, I just wanna describe that several crises are treated by more than one international organisation (the UN), i.e. there are several IOs next to each other who work on peace processes.

[Anonymous No.18946770]

>>18946677
>>18946722
I was just browsing for synonyms and looking at a dictionary: Would "concurrence of international organisations" be better? Or does this also already imply that they are in some way or another agreeing on something?

[Anonymous No.18946794]

>>18943941
I begged my best friend at the time to let me live with him in Poland as a neet and he said i could if i learned Polish.

Then I listened to Polish ten hours a day for four months, as well as using memrise. I was then able to understand simple youtube videos and simple conversations.

Then I lost all my friends that I have known for almost ten years

Then I burned out listened to Polish for ten hours a day and went back to English media.

Then I got a irl polish gf and resumed my learning.

Then we broke up five months ago and i've been disillusioned ever since. I keep being asked why am I learning Polish and the truth is sunken cost fallacy and the fact that I physically cringe at any other spoken language. Polish sounds like music to me and anything else, like French, which once sounded beautiful, sounds like chalk on a chalkboard.

I just want to achieve something for fuck sake.

[Anonymous No.18946836]

>>18946722
>>18946770
It almost sounds like an idiom like "has become the norm" is better, then? Because it sounds like the "in vogue"-ness of this practice is not a deliberate strategy done with oversight, but something that simply happens because of how many of these IOs there are (and so forth).

For the juxtaposition thing, I'm not sure. Based on this, I think juxtaposition is a bit too vague for what you're trying to say. It makes me "work" to figure out what you mean, which is bad for a first line. (But maybe it's just me.)

I think concurrent sounds neutral, i.e. doesn't necessarily imply cooperation. But by itself, again, still too vague for my ear. What about something like
>In recent years it has become the norm for multiple IOs to be involved in a given peacekeeping effort, concurrently though not always in active collaboration.

Not necessarily this specific wording, but the basic thrust.

[Anonymous No.18946847]

>>18946836
Fucked up the comma placement, should be
>>In recent years it has become the norm for multiple IOs to be involved in a given peacekeeping effort concurrently, though not always in active collaboration.

[Anonymous No.18946879]

>>18946836
I do not want to say whether they are cooperating or not though. I just want to state the fact that there are more than one IOs coexisting next to each other in recent times. With no word on whether there is cooperation or not. So based on this, you'd say that "concurrence" would be such a word? Because my English-German dictionary would say that this rather means something like "agreement".

[Anonymous No.18946886]

>>18946879
I was thinking of something like

>The concurrence of multiple international organisations (IOs) in peacekeeping next to each other is in vogue/has become in vogue.

[Anonymous No.18947239]

>>18923585
learning german because I want to do my residency there after finishing medschool
learning japanese because I like anime girls

[Anonymous No.18947243]

>>18923585
Could anyone put forward some good Greek works for beginners to work through? Would any of the Theogony of Hesiod, the Homeric hymns, or Aeschylus/Sophocles/Euripides be appropriate for someone to work through who is relatively inexperienced? Would be optimal to read the fine works whilst also having a didactic effect with the Greek I think

[Anonymous No.18947253]

>>18931086
>>18947243
https://geoffreysteadman.com/xenophon-anabasis-i/

>>18931107
Based black man

[Anonymous No.18947258]

>>18946794
How is you accent after this kind of exposure?

And do you ever get this feeling when you know painfully well that something very specific is wrong with your pronunciation at some point but for the life of you you can't fix it? Drives me crazy with my English even though these are usually quite petty things but being aware of them hurts.

[Anonymous No.18947273]

>>18947253
Thank you very much anon, that link is a gold mine

[Anonymous No.18947693]

>>18923585
Hello, I'm a Brazilian that has been living in the USA since he was a child and never had proper schooling in Portuguese, can any BR's lurking here recommend any classical books for me to read?

Oi gente, sou Brazuca que fui criado nos EUA e nunca fui escolhido em português, vocês pode me ajudar em recomendar livros clássicos que foi lido na suas escolas?

[Anonymous No.18947788]

>>18947693
Depends upon what you want.
O Guarani is quite good, despite José de Alencar being somewhat insufferable in his romantic descriptions. Machado is a no-brainer, as I am sure you know. His Várias Histórias might offer you the possibility of tackling some of his best works while not committing to a full novel, which may be advantageous if you are not that comfortable with the language. Euclides da Cunha should also be mentined. Alvaro de Azevedo is interesting regarding Byron-like short stories, if that's your thing.
As for poetry, some names that may interest you are Cruz e Souza, Gonçalves Dias and Casimiro de Abreu.
I am somewhat biased against the modernists, so do not count on me regarding them.

[Anonymous No.18947802]

>>18947788
I have zero knowledge about any Portuguese literature besides "The Alchemist" so this is already more than I already knew, obrigado!

[Anonymous No.18949074]

>>18946794
How I see it, the sunken cost thing is not necessarily a fallacy, as long as you evaluate the situation in terms of future effort/result instead of past effort.

For someone starting now, it's an effort of thousand hours of meaningless dialogues, memorization and drills, in exchange for the ability to understand Polish.

For you, it's just: keep watching a few interesting videos, read a book now and then and maybe schedule a weekly chat on Italky with a cheap community tutor (in the case you don't have Polish friends anymore). That's not a big price to pay to keep/deepen your fluency in a language.

[Anonymous No.18949078]

>>18947258
funnily enough, only the phrases that I have practiced the pronunciation of and have said repeatedly are said to have native like pronunciation. However, people are either really nice to other's learning their language or super critical, so my accent is probably shit. For instance, I have said Czesc and Jestes Piekna (cba finding out how to do the accents on my keyboard) so many times that it just rolls of the tongue, but anything else just makes me sound obviously american.

Your question made me reflect on my learning once more, thank you. I think it is necessary to practice pronunciation to at least me comprehensible to the average native. I need to learn how to roll the r sound.

[Anonymous No.18949538]

>>18939400
Can confirm. We were taught Sanskrit from 5th grade onwards, and had the option to choose either Sanskrit or another foreign language (German, French) in 8th Grade. Most took Sanskrit because it was closer to Hindi than either of the other two and was generally easier to not fail

[Anonymous No.18949586]

>>18923585
Niggas, I'm learning italian and I'd like to optimize my time listening to some audio lessons at work. Where can I find them? Preferably in spanish, but I don't mind if they are in English.

[Anonymous No.18949652]

Does anyone know any good Italian textbooks or learning methods? At the moment I'm just leaving vocab from flashcards but I haven't paid much attention to grammar or conversation yet

[Anonymous No.18949696]

>>18949652
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkhfQonvCySTrKEUV742WzshJ
The recordings are not complete yet but you can find the whole book for free.

[Anonymous No.18949873]

>>18949586
>>18949652

Here >>18925975 some stuff has audio, it can help with pronunciation

[Anonymous No.18950902]

>>18925352
your loss

[Anonymous No.18951184]

I still can't decide between learning latin or greek first, any tips?

[Anonymous No.18951204]

>>18951184
Latin first. You'll have an immense corpus to read for your entire life. Also the majority of classical greek texts has been translated into latin in the past. Also: latin is difficult, but greek is the absolute pain in the ass.

Go for latin.

[Anonymous No.18951207]

>>18951184
I know neither, but Latin might be a bit easier because there's more loanwords in English, and if you happen to speak a romance language already then of course there's a lot of similarity there. On the other hand Greek might be more interesting to you precisely because of its disfamiliarity. Learning a language is a huge time investment so you should always choose the language that is most interesting to *you*, otherwise you will surely give up.

[Anonymous No.18951210]

>>18951204
>classical greek texts has been translated into latin
Where do you find those?
t. different person

[Anonymous No.18951216]

>>18951210
mostly on archive.org, fren. To find a specific text just search the latin version of the greek title, e.g. "Homeri Ilias".

[Anonymous No.18951241]

>>18951204
>>18951207
thanks bros, I want to eventually know both but I will learn latin first now

[Anonymous No.18951311]

hello, /lit/. I'm hispanamerican and I think I know English quite well, so I've been thinking about trying my skills into translating something. Any recommendations on a book to start, and/or books about translations in general?

[Anonymous No.18951315]

Any resources for intermediate/advanced french?

[Anonymous No.18951369]

>>18951315
Inner French is a podcast I like

[Anonymous No.18951574]

>>18951311
You should choose a book that (a) you like, (b) you feel like you have a good chance of rendering faithfully into English, and (b) hasn't been translated into English yet.

[Anonymous No.18952163]

>>18943804
I don't recommend Assimil for languages with lots of declinasions.
I'm started 2 weeks ago LLPSI with the audios (to learn how to read) and A companio to Familia Romana, a book that covers the grammar points and helps you LLPSI.

[Anonymous No.18952178]

>>18951315
http://www.litteratureaudio.com/

read along to audiobooks

[Anonymous No.18952322]

Torn between learning French or German, or alternatively taking my Japanese from Intermediate to Advanced

[Anonymous No.18952361]

>>18952322
Work on the Jap anon, it's better to have one sharp sword than 2 dull ones

[Anonymous No.18952451]

>>18952361
>>18952322
I have achieved mastery in comprehension in both German and English, so I might as well have two very sharp swords.
All my other languages are not and probably will never be as good as those, simply out of the circumstances of my life.
However, I don't think that I will need to be able to express myself in Spanish or Greek or Chinese to such a degree, that trying to master them would yield any benefit beyond a few more synapses. For understanding and reading and even talking about important things, getting to a level where you can understand literature and be able to speak on a level at which you could hold a negotiation are sufficient, in my opinion.

If I were to find myself in a place where I desperately need to express myself, I could do so in German or English to my hearts content. I could never write a novel or a treatise in any other language, but I don't think you need that level of mastery for most languages.

So to make my long answer short, I think learning German or French is preferable to improving your Japanese, if you mean Mastery by "advanced" and could already easily get by in Japan

[Anonymous No.18952457]

>>18952451
*simply due to the circumstances

[Anonymous No.18952493]

>>18952361
>>18952451
It is a weird place to be skill-wise, you guys might understand it. I am good enough to read most things with a dictionary in hand, and express most thoughts in conversation using simple grammar, but when people speak quickly or there are texts with lots of jargon then it's difficult to keep up. But it's a skill level where you feel as if you've "broken through" the barrier of the language so much of that initial motivation is gone. In other words, when you can experience anything you want to in a language so long as you have a dictionary at hand, it feels like you're already good enough, even if you still have a lot to work on.

Of course it's not quite good enough to read literature at a normal pace due to the tedium of looking things up, but it does feel in a way that you are good enough at that point, so needing to study more can feel less rewarding. That's what prompts the idea of starting something new instead. Still, in the end polishing the Japanese is probably the right decision after all.

[Anonymous No.18952619]

Does anyone here have experience learning, shall I say, "exotic" languages? "Exotic" meaning any combination of:
>geographically restricted
>internationally irrelevant
>small and/or mostly untranslated literary output
>scarce learning resources
>unfamiliar grammar and vocabulary

I'm interested in learning Pashto at the moment, and briefly tried to learn Ossetian in the past. Would love to see if somebody here has tried something similar.

[Anonymous No.18952632]

>>18952493
perhaps creative writing could be a way to cultivate higher-level ability in the language without feeling bored or plateau'd.

[Anonymous No.18952639]

>>18952619
> t. becomes interested in languages when the people who speake them are having a civil war

[Anonymous No.18952656]

>>18928141
It's not cheating if it works. Why only the painful methods are considered honest?

[Anonymous No.18952663]

>>18928227
Lingua Latina per se Illustrata

[Anonymous No.18952694]

>>18940187
I like it too but having 2 paragraphs per chapter is not enough inpoot

[Anonymous No.18952699]

>>18952493
Yes certainly.
You can also do both; keep practicing Japanese by reading, talking and watching things in Japanese and on the other hand start another language. German and French are both rather easy if you are a native English speaker and are capable of learning a language like Japanese. Good luck, anon

[Anonymous No.18952714]

>>18951315
I like to watch documentaries from a youtube channel called Culture Tube, there's a whole series there about French painters and writers. I try to watch one a day and it gives me much pleasure to see both my vocabulary and my knowledge of French culture augment with each.

[Anonymous No.18953861]

honhonhon

[Anonymous No.18953901]

I've been studying Japanese for years and always had trouble understanding speech, even though I can read pretty well.
I bought a pair of 10 dollar Sony headphones today and my listening comprehension jumped up to like 98%. It turns out my tinny horrible speakers have less bass than the cheapest headphones in existence, so I couldn't hear half of what people were saying. You know how Japanese variety shows have celebrities in the corner saying stuff? Until today I thought they were just making faces and didn't have microphones.
Invest in your tools. Don't be like me

[Anonymous No.18954047]

>>18953901
Jesus christ dude. Just wait till you try an audiophile set up one day. You'll simultaneously cry and orgasm

[Anonymous No.18954145]

>tfw learning Chinese in glorious illiterate Pinyin
On an unrelated note. HEILGE SCHEISSE! The amount of Indiana Joneses hear learning Sumerian and Linear B. We should all do a meet up in Afghanistan to do some field work.

[Anonymous No.18954148]

>>18954145
Forgot pic

[Anonymous No.18954367]

>>18928141
that's not cheating, that's literally how you're supposed to learn a language

[Anonymous No.18954476]

>>18954367
For many people it feels like cheating because they never think about it this way. So it's fun to realize that you're actually encouraged to cheat.

Like taking off weighted clothes in dbz.

[Anonymous No.18954709]

>>18946609
>>18946590
I would phrase it "A recent trend in peacekeeping is cooperation among international organizations" or something like that.

[Anonymous No.18954712]

>>18946794
im B1/B2 in french rn and i can confirm it already sounds like shit to me. i mostly regret learning so much should have gone for italian instead

[Anonymous No.18954750]

>>18954712
Look on the bright side. You can go visit Africa

[Anonymous No.18954991]

>>18949696
>>18949873

thank you :)

[Anonymous No.18955352]

>>18954712
I don't get it. Do you only want to learn good sounding languages? Do they not have any utility?

[Anonymous No.18956503]

>>18954712
Why do you say that?

[Anonymous No.18956991]

>>18924445
>>Oh, wait a second, this is just Latin, but ugly!
>this but for every romance language
based, latin is above all and i dont even speak it. as a matter a fact it is probable that i am a barbarian nigger for not knowing it.

[Anonymous No.18957317]

>>18925336
>Akkadian
This.

[Anonymous No.18957330]

>>18923585
is there an equivalent of Ogden's "Basic English" (Controlled Language) for other languages?
how do I learn the absolute basics of multiple languages quickly?

[Anonymous No.18957396]

>>18957330
>Controlled Language
> learn the absolute basics of multiple languages quickly

I am absolutely new to such a thing. Thus, I second this.

[Anonymous No.18957416]

>>18946507
i don't think anyone would be put off by that phrasing desu

"in vogue" is a common phrase too

[Anonymous No.18957432]

where can i find german a1-b2 stories in text format? i like to read with the help of FLTR, which requires a .txt file. most pdfs don't have good OCR so you can't just copy paste. and when i pull stuff from youtube captions the formatting is awful.

[Anonymous No.18957449]

Wish there were as streamlined self-teaching books for Arabic/Quranic Arabic like there are for Greek and Latin, ala Athenaze, Wheelock, etc.

[Anonymous No.18957461]

I'm learning French and I've recently completed both Assimil - Le Nouveau Français Sans Peine and Assimil - Le Francais en Pratique but I'm not sure where I should go from here. Do you guys have any suggestions?

[Anonymous No.18957466]

>>18923585
Any good books/apps/etc for learning beginner Welsh and/or Latin? Made a bread about this because I’m a silly boy who didn’t check the catalogue.

[Anonymous No.18957507]

>>18957449
Introduction to Koranic and Classical Arabic, by Wheeler M. Thackston.

[Anonymous No.18957546]

>>18957461
If you want to read, French is simple enough that I would just start reading. Use an app with a built in dictionary. Start with something simple like Pennac or Le Petit Nicolas.

[Anonymous No.18957558]

Guys, should I learn Italian or French? I plan to do an art course in Florence in the future but I'm also into French comics. Can't decide.

[Anonymous No.18957562]

>>18957461
>Assimil - Le Nouveau Français Sans Peine and Assimil - Le Francais en Pratique

What's the difference? Are they like two parts to be read in progression or something?

[Anonymous No.18957613]

>>18957546
I was considering doing this but I've found it very slow goings reading in French, but maybe I'm just jumping ahead too quickly in my choice of texts. I'll see about starting with something simpler as you suggested.
>>18957562
Sans Peine is the beginner course, en Pratique is the more advanced course.

[Anonymous No.18957629]

>>18957466
For Latin just watch this and you will know what to do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oJctKy_r6s&list=PLU1WuLg45SiyrXahjvFahDuA060P487pV&index=71

All the books mentioned are available on libgen. Good luck, anon.

[Anonymous No.18957641]

>>18957546
I forgot to ask: do you have any recommendations to improve listening abilities? I've heard some people recommend watching French language films with French subtitles.

[Anonymous No.18957645]

>>18957613
>Sans Peine is the beginner course, en Pratique is the more advanced course.

Thanks. And how would you describe your abilities after completing those? Do you have a rough idea to how many words you have been introduced?

[Anonymous No.18957662]

>>18957645
I have heard people say that the promise of C1 level fluency after completing both courses is exaggerated and that it's more like B2, which I feel is accurate after completing the course myself. My vocabulary after finishing the courses is still fairly small, but I understand the fundamentals of the language well enough and I can still read many things in French, though I frequently am reliant on the help of a dictionary.

[Anonymous No.18957672]

Now I'm stuck with the title of my thesis: Is it correct to say "Comparing the United Nations’ Peace Operation Partnerships with the African Union and the European Union"? Or should it be "BETWEEN" the African Union and the European Union?
So the topic is: How does the UN cooperate differently with the AU than from the EU.

[Anonymous No.18957697]

>>18957662
>I have heard people say that the promise of C1 level fluency after completing both courses is exaggerated
Yeah, it's totally unlikely but still looks like a good place to start and get a foothold. Thanks, anon.

[Anonymous No.18957741]

>>18957697
Even with its flaws I would definitely recommend it. I didn't go into it expecting miracles but it only took me 8 months to complete and I'm quite happy with my progress in such a short amount of time. Good luck.

[Anonymous No.18957806]

>>18954709
This is the best way to put it. All others suggested are unwieldy, broken English, or judgemental.

[Anonymous No.18957883]

>>18957558
italian = sovl
french = sovlless

[Anonymous No.18957906]

>>18955352
i dont understand your question. are you implying french is a good sounding language and that it has utility? imo the answer to both of those is it depends on the person. personally its a no from me dawg. i used french as a sort of guinea pig lang to see how far i could get w a language. in other words i used it to learn how to learn languages. instead i learned was what everyone already knows which is that the french (en gros hein) are a bunch of pseudo intellectual pussies w boners for obscurantism and shitty philosophy. but flaubert makes up for it for the most part.

[Anonymous No.18957954]

>>18957883
I find French has the best anki decks bar none

[Anonymous No.18957965]

>>18957906
so much stuff is translated into (good) french and there's tons of secondary literature too. you don't need to bother with french philosophers at all, you can read an obscure foreign text. still i guess this is less impressive if your native language is english.

[Anonymous No.18958250]

>>18957672
I would use between if you want to say that UN treats them differently.

[Anonymous No.18958819]

I'm not sure if this is the correct thread to ask this question, and it's kind of retarded, but I might as well.
What's the best way to improve my vocab, and writing and grammar skills, in a language I'm already fluent in? I'm asking this here, because my grammar and vocab in my native language has become very poor. I'm only 18 and in my last year of HS, but I've spent half my life indoors playing vidya, watching anime, and posting on imageboards for the past few years, and because my language only has a couple million speakers, it has almost no online communities, so all of this has been done in English. I know this will sound really pathetic, but It's gotten to the point where I might just be better at English than I am in my mother tongue, and I can barely pass essays in school anymore. The past couple of months, out of boredom, I've started reading more, and I've read about 10 books in my native language, and I can feel that I'm improving, but what exactly can I do besides just read?
I have started looking at the definition of every word I read that I don't know, and wrote it down in a note taking app, and then I re read those and try to remember them (speaking of this, is there any note taking program, which has a cloud storage which I could use on my phone and desktop, I know I could use an actual notebook, but it's very convenient to be able to ctrl+f for anything I'm looking for). And how do I practice writing essays, or rather, how do I find a topic to write essays on, and is it possible to improve my grammar through writing them, if I have no one to check them over for me? It'd be too embarrassing to show them to my professor, and I have no friends.
Hope this wasn't too blog-y.

[Anonymous No.18958829]

>>18958819
Keep a diary.

[Anonymous No.18958861]

>>18958829
Thanks for the idea, I'll try to. I hope I'll be able to write more than just a paragraph, since nothing much happens in my life and most days are the same. Maybe I'll try to write summaries of whatever I read that day.

[Anonymous No.18958876]

>>18958819
In my opinion you're basically doing what you need to be doing. Other anons can chime in with specific recommendations on which program to use (anki is a common option but I don't know how well it works with mobile).

When it comes to writing essays, you should choose topics that are interesting to you and that you think you have a strong and valuable perspective on! Orwell was a good essayist and if you look at the things he wrote about they varied greatly; from coal mining to British food, from hop picking to Tolstoy's dislike of Shakespeare.

Your grammar will improve even without external input, although of course having people read over your work will help you improve and moreover will make the effort feel more worthwhile. Have you considered finding writing / blogging communities in your native language? Unless you speak a very obscure tongue indeed I'm sure they exist on the internet.

You could even look into grammar textbooks and such like - the sort of things that would be taught to high school kids. In fact, self-teaching yourself the school curriculum might not be such a bad approach, and will give you some structure.

I empathise with your situation, I imagine it is an uncomfortable sensation to feel unmoored from one's own culture. Good luck!

[Anonymous No.18958994]

>>18958819
>The past couple of months, out of boredom, I've started reading more, and I've read about 10 books in my native language, and I can feel that I'm improving, but what exactly can I do besides just read?

You're already doing it right, just stick to it.

[Anonymous No.18959022]

>>18958819
>>18958876
For cloud storage, there's always dropbox with an excel sheet in it. I'm sure there are more agile solutions, however.

Anyways: Go here http://rhetoric.byu.edu/ and translate it into your language. Go bit by bit. Study Rhetoric in English, then find speeches and passages of value in your tongue, and make sense of them in your tongue. Almost everything on there has definitions and then examples. Engage in linguistic purism if you must. If you feel bad about this, it's just using English as a vehicle for Latin and Ancient Greek (half of the website is just explaining the Ad Herrenium in English).

Out of curiosity, what is your mother tongue? Some Baltic thing? Take up nihilistic nationalism and work towards rejuvenating your language's literary scene. Like a third of Estonian's vocabulary is outright made up ex nihilo because of Germoid conquests.

[Anonymous No.18959103]

>>18958876
>anki
I haven't thought of that one, I'll try it tonight and see how well it works.
>essays
My problem is, I think, that I can't find an exact topic to write about for very long, even if I'm interested in them. The essays we write in school have to be 800 words minimum in 90 minutes(our prof goes to the point where she counts the words for each essay just to make sure it's exactly at least that), and I can never manage to write more than 550-ish, 700 at most, and at that point, I'm just repeating every point I make with different wording so they're not the exact same. Will I eventually just improve at finding things to talk about in essays just with enough practice? Sorry if that's a dumb question.
>writing / blogging communities
I've tried searching for them (albeit, I probably could've put more effort into the search), and it really just seems barren. Perhaps it's because we're still somewhat a developing nation, and we're always 5 or 10 years behind more western countries. I really don't think there's anyplace like it.
>grammar textbooks and such like
I was somewhat avoiding this subconsciously , I think, because it seems a lot more boring than reading normal books or writing, but at this point I think I'll just have to do this.
thanks for all the recommendations and help. It makes me happy I'm able to get advice for these things. I appreciate it.
>>18958994
Yeah, I know, but it needs to be faster because my senior year starts in 8 hours and 50 minutes, and I can barely pass my essays, and my prof mocks me in class for my ignorance, which feels pretty terrible since I'm a sperg who doesn't want anyone paying attention to him. I'd really like to improve a lot by the end of my senior year when my matura exams come and I'll have to write a really good essay then.
>>18959022
I've only looked at it a bit, and this looks great. Thank you.
That's a good guess, but it's slovenian.

[Anonymous No.18959316]

>>18959103
Good luck, anon. I can definitely relate to this as I also have this feeling of not being quite as fluent in my native tongue as I used to be. I don't know if it shows externally but I can definitely feel it.

[Anonymous No.18959325]

>>18959103
>The essays we write in school have to be 800 words minimum in 90 minutes
That's pretty bloody difficult desu. I think it almost certainly comes down to practice. What sort of things are you prompted to write about?

[Anonymous No.18959350]

>>18957629
This guy is a nearly insufferable faggot but that textbook looks good.

[Anonymous No.18959442]

>>18959316
Yeah, it's not that noticeable to other people in every day stuff, but it becomes very clear when I'm writing essays or reports in school. It doesn't help very much that my prof strongly dislikes me.
Thanks for wishing me good luck.
>>18959325
If it makes it any better, it was 500 in our first year, and they just added 100 with each year.
Usually, we have to read a book, and then we get a random title for our essay, with a few instructions that are a bit more specific with what to write, that's connected with a book. I can't remember anything with a foreign book specifically, but we got those sometimes too. I think in our second year we had sorrows of young werther and we had to write a letter from the perspective of charlotte after werther's death, or something like that.

[Anonymous No.18959455]

how do some polyglots find the time to learn several languages and how did they learn them so fast?

[Anonymous No.18959470]

>>18959442
I vaguely remember writing these sorts of essays in school. I think the trick really is knowing the book inside out and having spent quite a lot of time thinking about the themes and ideas and then the argumentation flows quite naturally from the pen. Of course it is possible to blag but virtually every good essay ever written has had at least a few grains of conviction at its core.

[Anonymous No.18959488]

>>18959103
>Yeah, I know, but it needs to be faster because my senior year starts in 8 hours and 50 minutes, and I can barely pass my essays,
Then read even more, anon. And most importantly, for the time being, quit this place.

[Anonymous No.18959502]

>>18959455
Once you've learned one foreign language it gets easier to learn others, especially if they're related.

[Anonymous No.18959510]

>>18959502
This and a lot of them are only basically proficient, there is a kind of person who enjoys hitting basic conversation level in a language and then plateaus there

[Anonymous No.18959512]

Thanks for the help, again. I'm going to sleep now so I won't reply until tomorrow morning if the thread is still up, but I'll definitely read everything posted here, even if it gets archived by morning.
>>18959470
Yeah, that makes sense. I can more or less understand the topics in any book I have to read. My problem is that I'm often not able to express these thoughts on paper, because my vocab is too poor, or I end up making a lot of grammar mistakes.
>>18959488
But all my friends are on here? And I don't think the hour or two I spend on imageboards each day would be used for something more productive, since I'd want some time off every day anyways, even if I could quit.

[Anonymous No.18959523]

>>18959502
This. Plus, there is a large distance of time and effort between knowing a language well and very well.

[Anonymous No.18959530]

>>18959510
>>18959523
True, although once you have that basic level you don't necessarily need to keep actively studying it as long as you keep using it.

[Anonymous No.18959573]

>>18959512
>But all my friends are on here? And I don't think the hour or two I spend on imageboards each day would be used for something more productive, since I'd want some time off every day anyways, even if I could quit.

I know, anon, I live a similar life. But it's always a good thing to take a while off to make your presence here less automatic, to sort yourself out a little, as (at least in my case) it tends to become pathological. In any case, you probably should check in some way how much time you really spend here, as people in general massively underestimate such things. And if it turns out to be unreasonable, then you will think.

[Anonymous No.18959623]

>>18959530
Sure, I was talking mainly about immersion. If you're intermediate and you learn a new world you suddenly see it everywhere. If you are advanced though, you might not encounter it in months. But that are exactly these rare words that add up to true proficiency.