and if you are, what language is it?? :3c i'd love to know what everyone is studying hehe

i started teaching myself japanese around april!! i started off really strong and motivated (but i was also unemployed so time wasn't an issue LMAO) but my progress has slowed down a lot unfortunately ( ᐛ )و like i still do my flashcards and kanji every day, and try to read song lyrics/listen to podcasts on my work commute, but time is def a struggle DFGHJKL but i'm still enjoying it a lot!! and i'm still making progress even if it's slow

at first i never even considered that teaching myself a language was a thing i could do, but then i randomly stumbled on a yt video of a guy talking abt how he became fluent in japanese by himself and fell down the language learning rabbit hole and that's how i ended up here. which in retrospect it's not that different from how i learned eglish? like yeah i did english in school (i'm italian) but what really got me to improve and learn the language was talking to people online and reading. mostly reading lol

i was working on a couple of languages, welsh via duolingo (lol; fell off that a few years back though i guess for the better considering where duolingo's at now) and toki pona via the books + jan misali's videos (fell off that also unforchies). i'd love to get back on either of them but.... time/energy esp with working full time (esp in a retail pharmacy during flu/covid [vaccine] season). 😔

I'm trying to learn japanese for a few years now but it's not going great. I always lose motivation when I get to Kanji ;_; It's good to know you're making progress! I also think reading and using the language helps a lot. I'm currently learning korean for a change of pace. I'll definitely go back to learning japanese again after a few months. Sometimes I would try to translate my thoughts to either japanese or korean just to see if I can lol.

the time struggle is so real ; ___ ; man toki pona is fascinating!! i never heard of it before but i'm reading up on it now and it sounds so cool? as far as conlangs go when i was like 14 i had a phase where i was into esperanto but that didn't rly go anywhere lol

don't give up!!! kanji can be intimidating but it's def doable! (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑ wanikani and learning kanji by radicals has personally helped me a lot!! that and anki (i use the kaishi 1.5k deck), because at least for me i find it much easier to remember kanji/words if i see them in an actual sentence and oh man yeah translating and writing stuff helps too!! sometimes i'll write down stuff in japanese and plug it into deepl to see if i managed to say what i wanted to say lol. i also keep meaning to start a little diary in japanese to actually use the language in some way (and have an incentive to seek out vocab/grammar structures i don't know yet) but...... lazy.............

I've been trying to learn Japanese for the longest (2007-8?) but I always fall off T_T I know a good amount of Kanji and some Hiragana but I gotta lock in !! I'm working on Spanish right now, I'm a restaurant manager and want to talk with all my staff in the same way.

I saw someone on youtube recommend watching the same movie/show in your target language over and over with subs at first and then turning them off. I believe they used one of the Spiderman (Miles Morales) movies as what they had used to learn spanish. Has been pretty successful for me so far but I'm doing it with attack on titan lol, if i can find the video I'll share the link ^^

oo good luck with spanish!! i used to be fluent since i spent a good chunk of my teenage years in south america, but then moved back to europe and got super rusty bc i just wasn't using it ;; some time ago i ended up translating for a spanish client and surprised myself by how well i understood but also how much i forgot DFGHJKL

rewatching stuff is a really good strategy!! my only issue with that is that it's surprisingly hard to find anime in japanese with japanese subs ( ᐛ )و netflix is the best source for it but i stopped paying for it since i barely used it and don't rly wanna get it again lol............

my go to for listening/watching has been podcasts, vlogs and gameplay videos (◡‿◡✿) i haven't watched anything in a while bc no time but i used to watch this japanese guy's minecraft gameplay on my work commute and it was really entertaining!!

I took japanese and french in college and would love to get back into those someday, but in the meantime, I really, really want to work on spanish or ukrainian! I work in retail (at a pet store, specifically) and I cannot tell you the amount of times we've run into language barriers when trying to explain proper animal husbandry. I'm not mad at it or anything, I think it is AMAZING that people who don't know much english are attempting to live and thrive in a very white american state, but I do want to help them understand the risks and rewards of taking care of certain animals!! I don't see myself leaving petsmart anytime soon, so I really want to motivate myself to do this! no idea where to start, tho, especially now that duolingo is hot garbage. if y'all have any recommendations on free language programs, that would be great!!

I wish I could say I was actively working on learning a language. let me get back to you in 6 months, I guess. I'm in my 🌟healing era🌟 right now and my motivation to learn is slowly returning to me lol

trying to re-up my spanish lately i have been really lapsing and need to remind myself of some basics D:

oh man i actually tried teaching myself french with duolingo way back in like 2016?? but kinda just......... got bored and dropped it after a while DFGHJKL i was in the french-speaking part of switzerland in the summer of 2016 and learned SO MUCH just by going out and trying to talk to other ppl playing pokemon go LMAO

man this might be controversial but. i actually don't think duolingo is that bad ( ᐛ )و at least as far as the very basics go, past that i think it's pretty useless lol

anki is really good!! it's a flashcard program with user-made decks, so tbf you have to look around for a deck that suits your needs but i'm sure someone on reddit made a comprehensive list of best decks (´꒳`∗) honestly language learning communities on reddit in general are chock full of really good advice ime! good luck man!! (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑

Chinese. I have a few learning guides and use Duo, but I often put the language to Mandarin on shows I've watched.

I'd like a more comprehensive program.

Hello, I’m a player from Japan and I’m trying to improve my english a little better!

I’ve played subeta almost 10 years ago and just made a comeback this month! Looking for friends right now (´꒳`) If someone wants to talk in Japanese ( and of course in english too! ) I would be really happy to have a chat♡♡

I have been passively dabbling in Russian for several years now. I've used apps to assist, but dropped out not so long ago. On Duolingo I reached about 1,300 days before stopping.

This journey has been lifelong, sparked by a conversation on an episode of Reading Rainbow on PBS. Which was restarted by Gogo-riki (really Smeshariki in Russian) and a few choice picks in movies.

The only exposure I have now is reading a specific book in Spanish, while listening to a Russian audio of the same text.

I'm learning Portuguese (BR)!

I had been practicing with duolingo on and off over the last few years and thought I wasn't doing too bad. But on my last trip to Brazil to visit my in-laws I was HUMBLED lol.

I decided becoming fluent is going to be my new year's resolution so I've been taking lessons on preply :)

Italian here and been trying to learn spanish on and off for the last 5 years i think, with no success whatsoever (Duolingo, yes)

I have had a moment with esperanto too (it was fun) and i tried (for exactly 1 hour) to learn german (I was convinced it would help me understand Hegel better, poor misguided soul)

I would love love love to learn japanese, but i don't have consistency nor time y_y ...That and i honestly think that somewhere along the way my brain got swapped for a lower-end model...there’s no way this is the same one that learned Latin ò_o

I will take a look at reddit though...might be interesting to try different approaches!

I'm learning Welsh. I used to go to classes and I want to again when I have time. For now I'm just reading welsh magazines and listening to the radio.

Trying to pick up some Japanese just as a casual thing. No intention to become fluent. It's really satisfying to be able to sus out meanings even sporadically though when enjoying JP media that I would've just relied on auto-translation/captions for.

I want to become fluent in Spanish and ASL. For ASL i’m using the app Lingvano.

hii i hope everyone's language learning journeys are going well!! („• ᴗ •„)

just wanted to pop in to share this delightful thing my coworker found and gave me :3c for context we work in a language school and amassed quite the collection of things over the decades lol and lately have been clearing out the bookcases because some of the stuff on there is ancient case in point

this is from 1994!! wow!! i don't even have anything that can read those casette tapes LMAO it's also not particularly useful imo because everything in kana is also written in romaji alongside it which i just find really disorienting. but tbf i think the target audience for this are people who just need to be able to communicate in japanese for work so it probably makes sense for them lol but alas my goal is being able to play videogames in japanese so ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Those books look so neat! I love the guy ZOOMING it makes me think of the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. I had an interesting moment recently when going through my Japanese dictionary (I grabbed a German and Japanese dictionary off amazon on a whim a little while ago). I already knew that "Please" was "Onegai" (-shimasu for formality) but I wanted to look at the JP characters, because so much of the little I know is just romaji as it sticks in my brain better (duh). I think I was trying to remember the visual appearance of "Ne" or something. But I found that in my Random House version, the JP/Romaji prompt-side doesn't have Onegai present (At least where I would think to look, but upon review the "Ne" I was looking for is actually a NeGa{I} kanji), however when looking up "Please" in the English side, it does have Onegai-shimasu as the technically 2nd definition, listed as an adverb after the initial translations (1st definition) which assumes "Please" is being used as in "Give pleasure" (yorokubaseru) "If you please" (yokereba) or "Please yourself!" (Sukikatte ni shiro). Of course, big ups to Subeta itself for having Onegai Maleria as a prominent book, I think about that item often :3

When I asked Google AI how to say Please in the most (extremely) formal manner, it gave a few examples that actually seemed to transcend the simple Onegai, and seemed much more elaborate featuring sentiments that utilize "from the heart" (kokoro). It's a reminder to me that, not everything is as formulaic as I might hope!

I was a little let down that I couldn't find what I was looking for with ease in the Random House book, it boasts of being Up-To-Date and Easy-To-Use with "More than 50,000 entries plus hundreds of new words" including "Eizu" (Aids) "Nyuryoku" (Computer Input) but I find that JP is such an expansive language (To its credit) that I can't really blame this little dictionary for not having everything exactly as I would wish it.

One thing I keep in mind that German, and Herr Nietzsche taught me, is that oft times it's no sin to do away with grammar or established structure! We as a species make new words all the time, and so many words are pieces glued together to make new words, and often people are quite adept at determining the meaning even if it's not traditionally obvious.

One that has haunted me for awhile is the idea of saying (To myself and myself alone, partly because I don't have any need to actually use other languages in daily life, partly to avoid embarrassment lol) Rojin instead of Ronin for no particular reason other than to amuse myself. I used it in a yt comment on a Japanese man's video about unemployment; I just wrote it in romaji. Theoretically I believe it could be used to mean similar if not the same thing, even if that seems reductionist, but I find it charming to imagine that Ronin is more antiquated and even reverent, whereas this possibly made-up substitution could be a modern spin. There are no more wandering samurai, but the modern unemployed might style oneself as such, and might require a variation of the word! (Telling on myself) I have a fair bit of fun even when making "mistakes" :--)))))

This thread seems pretty old but I'm learning Spanish! I recently moved in with my partner and his family speaks primarily Spanish so it seems like a good chance to learn.