I was reading that the reddit community “languagelearning” doesn’t allow language-specific posts and comments. Fortunately we are not on reddit and we do allow it!
There’s quite many of us keeping an eye on this community, so if you’ve got questions/thoughts/personal wins or losses: don’t hesitate to post!
I’m going to try reading a book in my target language and look up/write down definitions of unfamiliar words. Although I miss the convenience language learning apps offered, I felt like the courses weren’t paced well and that I was stagnating. It would be helpful to have someone to practice with in person but right now it’s not an option.
How’s it going for you?
Maybe participating in forums and groups for/in your target language would help keep training?
That sounds like a good plan. I can recommend writing them down on a paper with a pen to reinforce your memory.
And yeah - apps are convenient but my experience with learning through apps wasn’t the best. A course book helped a lot (but that does require more self discipline I admit).
It’s … Stagnant :( thanks for asking though! Real life has been a bit tough. I feel like I’ll need another course in autumn to get my momentum back.
Just doing my reviews. They are always a lot. And learned a few new grammar points like 〜でしょう which is a sentence ender that says something like “right???” or “probably”.
My last motivation high is tanking, so I hope my habit building worked well enough that I can keep the paste!
Are you using anki or somethings else for your reviews? And those kind of things are sooo useful to be able to actually use the language, keep it up!!
Sending you my motivational energy to support yours ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Hope you can push through! Motivation is temporary, your habits will carry you through!
I am using two services with SRS features:
- Wanikani, to learn new Kanji (Chinese characters) and vocabulary, there is a massive amount of these and it’s very helpful to have a service designed entirely for it.
- Bunpro, to learn grammar and use the words I learned in actual sentences, which is also hard because words seem to have 10 meanings sometimes, or there are words which mean roughly the same but not really.
Wanikani is especially good, because it offers an API. I have a browser extension that marks every kanji red or blue depending on if I theoretically know it. It also shows my notes, the readings, the meanings, and mnemonic for the kanji if I hover over them. Bunpro can work with this API too, so it’s all well integrated.
The resources that exist for 日本語 learners are pretty amazing!
Thanks for sharing! Honestly this would deserve its own post - hope people learning see this!
I also extensively use browser tools on my learning path and try to read stuff online since I can translate and instantly take notes. Pretty neat that you have an extension to do all that and that there’s an API you can use. I use my Joplin notes but might have to consider something similar…
And yeah resources are plenty it seems and that’s good. German also has plenty of online resources so I’m happy, but sadly many other languages don’t have much yet :(
What are a few of the resources you’ve found most helpful for German? I’d like to dabble in it some day, even though I’ve currently got my hands full with Japanese.
One of the online resources that really helped me in the beginning was from deutsche welle: https://learngerman.dw.com/en/learn-german/s-9528
Another one was “coffee break german” podcast on spotify. Slow, easy and enjoyable podcast that helped me get used to speech!
dict.cc has been awesome online dictionary between english and german, and https://www.duden.de/ for e.g. figuring out the article of a noun.
Studying German’s being a bit weird. I keep defaulting to Norwegian for some reason. Still, since I’m policing myself, hopefully I can separate them, as it was with Spanish/Portuguese.
Also since I have some more free time now, I’m back at reading, with some Japanese works as a focus.
I struggle with german as well, mostly because I sometimes assume things that just are wrong (when I’m guessing the meaning of a figure of speech).
Hoping you’ll enjoy your reads!
