Μαθαίνω ελληνικά. - I am learning Greek.
I am at the point of being able to read Greek, introduce myself, ask and respond to “how are you” and how to say “I am still learning Greek can we speak English”. haha
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I’m learning Esperanto because everything I do has to be esoteric. I understand the fundamentals of the language and my pronunciation is perfect i’d say. I’ve been learning for a few months and I can read and write basic sentences. I also want to learn Spanish (mostly to flirt) but it’s hard to find the time. I’d also like to learn Indonesian, German and Afrikaans.
Edit: I’d also love to learn Polish but it’s so fucking hard.
Edit 2: Oh and Finnish. I really like languages and I get excited about them.
Learning Spanish 2 before learning Spanish
Interesting
I prefer Italian light
Eh, esperanto il like the family guy Noah’s ark meme, there’s a mishmash of languages. Learning volapük would be esoteric
All of Volapük’s speakers could fit on one bus.
And they may not understand each other
Curious, why is that?
I don’t think it’s up to date with modern tech and terminology it would be akward now
Probably not, luckily Esperanto is. I’d be curious about Interlingua however. I think it does still have a community behind it.
I learned a bit of Esperanto, many years ago. It’s crazy how easy it is to progress in that language, compared to natural languages.
I think you could enjoy looking into toki pona.
I’m familiar with it. I have Sonja Lang’s book on it.
I’ve been learning Portuguese for well over two years now. I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on sentence building. The grammar of verb tense is sometimes still somewhat confusing and I think I’ve got a lot of words to learn still.
But if I read posts on Lemmy in Brazilian Portuguese, I kinda get the gist of it.
What made you decide to learn Portuguese?
Portugal is a lovely country and I’ve decided to go visiting it a lot in my life. I feel more comfortable abroad if I at least kind of speak the language. English and German are no issue for me, French goes in a pinch so I’m pretty comfortable in western Europe but I’d like to be more comfortable with the Mediterranean languages. In due time I might try learning Italian as well.
I’m about a month into learning Mandarin Chinese. I expected the character set to be the challenge but really it has been the inflection and intonation that I’ve had the hardest time with so far.
What got you interested in Mandarin?
Honestly I love language and languages in general, so I rarely need an excuse to go study one haha.
That said, Mandarin Chinese was attractive to me for a few reasons.
Firstly, a LOT of people in this world speak it, so it has high utility potential and may even come in handy for me professionally.
Secondly, I think the culture and history of China is interesting and that my default lens for it is likely heavily biased. I’ve always found that reading source material and opposing positions or narratives has helped me understand the truth of a matter with more (albeit still imperfect) clarity.
I’m learning swedish, and have been on and off for almost ten years now. I can read a book in swedish on my kindle thanks to the built in dictionary, but it is so rare that I can talk to someone in swedish that i almost never do it. Listening to Swedish people in real life gets confusing fast as well, as I am just not used to the different pronunciations and the speed i need to process stuff at
That is one of the harder things I have noticed about learning language in general. There is always a clear difference between how a language “should be spoken” and how it actually is in practice with native speakers.
A few years ago I considered learning Greek. Abandoned the plan because Greek has the triple whammy:
- quite a hard language, with tricky grammar and different alphabet (phonetics easy tho)
- only spoken in one small country - not very useful (tho good for general culture - 6% of English lexicon comes from Greek)
- the locals all speak English (coz tourism) so you’ll have trouble getting a chance to progress
So: good luck.
I found the alphabet and grammar easy to understand personally, which is why I am able to read before I can do basically anything else.
Greek is spoken in Greece and numerous other countries because of the Greek diasporas in the world.
Coming from a Greek family, while the locals may speak English they generally prefer to and appreciate speaking in Greek especially in Greece.
Thank you for the well wishes.
はい、私は日本語勉強します。(Yes, I’m studying Japanese.) I’ve been doing it for the past year but not consistently. I can say and understand basic phrases but I’m far from being able to hold a conversation.
Damn, I’ve been learning for half a year and was thrilled to try and read that, but I’m missingbthe Kanjis 勉強. I assume they are the Kanjis for learn (minus the shimasu at the end). And why did you use the Hana 語 Kanji to say JapanESE ? Is it pronounced go there for form Nihongo? Sorry, don’t have the Japanese alphabet loaded into my keyboard yet
From what I understand (Don’t take what I say as correct as it may be wrong) but when 語(はな) hana, which is derived from 話す(はなす) hanasu which is the verb to speak, is paired with a nationality, with some exceptions of course like English which is 英語(えいご) eigo, it describes a language. So, pair 語(はな) hana with 日本(にほん) nihon, Japan in Japanese, then you get 日本語(にほんご) nihongo, meaning Japanese. Another example is French which is フランス語 (Furansugo).
And 勉強 is the Kanji for べんきょ(benkyo) which means study.
Yeah, that was what I assumed. For now Duolingo still uses the ご hiragana for the go part in Nihongo. And the Kanji for べんきょ wasn’t introduced yet
I’m using Busuu along with Anki and independent stuff I find online. I used Duolingo for a big part of my study but when I switched to Busuu I quickly realized I didn’t know anything about sentence structure, grammer, or even kanji. So, in my opinion, Duolingo is great for learning words and the three writing systems but not so great about learning everything else.
Just to add a small note—“勉強” is written as “べん きょう”(ben kyou) in hiragana.
I knew it! I knew I was wrong but my stupid brain said otherwise, thanks
話 and 語 are different kanji though. One is talk and one is language. 語 does not seem to have 「はな」as a reading according to jisho.org
Ah nice. Thanks. Really need to get better reading Kanji
Ah, I didn’t even catch that. OK then I might be wrong about it being derived from 話す, ah oh well, we’re all learning
All good. I’m just glad to get the opportunity to get to talk about this with someone :D
Trust me, I feel the same
Japanese is a language I have on the burner to learn. I have had a full course on it for years but never got around to getting beyond basic greetings.
After I am done learning Greek, I am going to refresh and learn more French, and then Japanese is next because I love Anime and Manga and want to watch/read it as it should be.
That’s cool being to speak and understand multiple languages. I started learning it because I think it sounds neat when people speak it. Plus, I want to go there one day for a visit and I don’t want to be a typical 外人 (Foreigner) haha
日本語の勉強頑張ってください！
日本旅行にきて日本語ができなかったとしても責める人はいませんが、ある程度理解できていたほうがたのしめますもんね！
応援しています
On the other hand, I’m studying English myself. I’m still only at around a Japanese middle school level, but I hope to reach the point where I can interact with people in places like this.
That said, I’m still relying on AI to write this.
日本人ですか。英語は勉強しますか。場語はドイツ語。二年以上日本語を学勉強しています。難しいですけど、日本語は美しい。英語、頑張ってね。
I hope I didn’t make too many mistakes there! I try to write a few sentences per day lately, and for more complex sentences, I use a translation service (https://deeply.com/) and a dictionary to check. The key to language learning is to do at least a little every (or most) days. It’s kind of amazing that I can use English to learn other languages nowadays.
I’m studying Japanese for over a year now. I recently had another motivation spike after seeing my favorite singer, Ado, live for the first time and understanding just enough to understand that I don’t really understand. I have been doing mostly kanji and vocabulary practice with Wanikani over the past time, but since about 2 weeks, I’m going strong again with daily studying.
I think I’m currently reaching the tipping point where my sentences start to become meaningful, but still take some time to formalize. Having made it a habit to write a few short sentences in 日本語 is something I would definitely recommend, at any level probably. It helps train the learned stuff and adds an immersion factor that is very fun.
Definitely, I try as much as I can to use the Japanese keyboard and reading in Japanese. It’s a cool language and same, there are some songs that I like that I have no idea what they’re singing about
I’m learning French, when I remember to. I did not put too much effort into it until now, because I understand a lot from articles, conversations, youtube videos. It is similar to Spanish, which I learnt up to native level I guess, also mostly speaking without a foreign accent. But back to French, I find it very hard to write it, so many accents and ‘s and letters that are not read. I have what they call a “musical ear”, so I do distinguish a lot of sound variations and tones, but the writing in French is brutal.
Another language I will forever learn and not be able to get to it as with my Spanish or English is German. I mess up the articles all the time, I am sure, but I just keep going. I am perfectly comfortable reading German literature or having a conversation, but it bothers me that after so much time being exposed to it, I still make poor choices of articles.
I started at some point learning Portuguese, but I found it frustrating that it was so similar to Spanish, all the words would come in Spanish in my mind.
If I could, I would love to also know Greek, Danish, Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic and many others probably.
Currently taking Japanese classes for fun. I’m about two years in and can have very basic conversations.
Took three years of German 20+ years ago and have German friends (and read German lemmy) so can practice sometimes.
I’m terrible at all of them and not that great at English either. I tend to “vomit language” moreso than speak well.
I’m learning Irish. My schedule is crazy busy, but I do a lot of driving for work so I listen to Irish speaking lessons. I also do this only while I’m on the road because my Irish boyfriend has no idea I’m doing this so I can speak Irish on our wedding day.
I can say things like where I’ve been yesterday, where I am today, where I’ll be tomorrow, what are you doing, what were you doing, it was great craic, I don’t know, I’d like a pint of Guinness, please.
I’ll probably get made fun of for speaking the Ulster dialect (his family is all Dublin), but my favourite instructor that I’ve found is from Belfast and at least I’ll be able to speak it. ☘️
I’ve been trying to learn russian but it’s been hard. I mostly know how to read Cyrillic and a few words and phrases. Everything else has been pretty difficult to make it stick in my head.
2,337 days in on learning German. My goal is to understand all of the band Rammstein’s library of work without needing a translator.
Und, wie läuft es?
Ich spreche sehr bisschen und nicht sehr gut.
Rammstein singt nicht über die Bibliothek.
Sehr schön, weiter so! (Deren Texte sind oft nur auf den ersten Blick oberflächlich, tatsächlich aber mehrdeutig)
I just gave up Duolingo at 1770 days for French which hurt to do. I was mostly just maintaining a streak at this point and with the news of them using AI to replace their employees (even if they retracted it), I decided to quit.
I’ve switched to Babbel now which has been really good so far
As a native french speaker, I can say with confidence that the duolingo french course sucks and that you’re better off using something else.
I’d also recommend speaking to native speakers and watching shows in french, that’s great for learning.
Yeah… I wasn’t actually learning a whole lot. I live right across the river from Quebec though so I’m hoping to move over there to immerse myself in French a lot more.
I’ve always been bitter because my whole Dad’s side of the family is Francophone but never bothered to speak the language with me :(
If you want that, then I’d suggest usinh Bussu and Memrise
That’s a pretty long streak 😯
I’m on day 460 learning Italian.
I can’t learn any languages because I have ADHD
Your english seems okay
I started learning Swedish yesterday. My native language is Dutch. I started by reading a pronunciation guide, but (and this is so childish) I had to put the book away for laughing so hard after reading the Swedish word for meatballs: köttbullar.
Profanity
In Dutch, the word “kut” means “cunt”. It isn’t as profane as the English word and is also often used for the well-known genitals. The guide explained that Swedish “ö” is pronounced like Dutch short “u”. After this I opened my Swedish story book and the first picture had the word köttbullar in it. I then heard myself very carefully enunciate what in Dutch sounds like “cunt balls”. Couldn’t stop laughing.
Today I will make a second attempt. I hope I can keep it contained to a short chuckle.
Thank you for sharing this absolutely hilarious story. Gave me a hearty laugh in the morning. haha
Good luck getting passed it! I know I wouldn’t be strong enough. haha
Ullyfay uentflay.
Tried learning Spanish in school but I never really had a reason to stick with it or keep going. Recently started relearning some vocab and grammar and phrases because there are places I’d like to visit that would be much easier with even just some basic phrases and books I’d like to read in the author’s original words and phrases.
Same here. I learned un poco en escuela, but didn’t pick up that much. I recently started trying Language Think. It’s kind of fast paced, but it goes over a lot of language concepts to help you translate outside of the classroom. It follows a teacher and student learning and the one I’m doing is 90 lessons. I got to take notes and everything.
I recently started trying Language Think.
Did you mean Language Transfer?
I’ve mostly been using frequency lists to restore the vocab I used to have and a dual translation of Don Quixote to expand further & learn more phrases. Once I have some good foundation I wanted to check out more Spanish speaking social media, news, movies/TV, etc to get more immersion
I listen to some conversation podcasts and Spanish songs with the lyrics so I can read along and look up words/phrases that I need to. I think immersion is better for picking up algunos palabras para conversacion.
Those are some good ideas I’ll have to check out too, gracias!
