My wife and her family has started speaking in Shanghai dialect more often when I am around, because I still can’t follow it very well, which is both a bit obnoxious, but also validating in a weird way.
I’ve started on my journey of learning Chinese on Duolingo along with my 朋友 @praveen@social.masto.host
你的朋友是中国人吗？
我的 朋友 是 印度人。 他 是 南 的。
Glad to learn about this community :)). Can I make posts here in various languages ??
Yep, I think that’s good. Don’t overdo it with general content just because it’s in another language. But feel free to start/practice discussion in whatever language or talk about languages/learning in any lang.
Had probably the most significant moment yet since I started serious study last summer: a real, tangible level up in listening. I realized this week the podcast I’ve been using for practice for quite a while (Shunsuke Otani’s Japanese with Shun podcast) is starting to feel trivial for learning at times. Decided to try an intermediate podcast (あかね的日本語教室) that I gave up on last year because it felt like way too much. Today, I had 80, maybe even 85% comprehension or more.
Felt so good to see major progress in my weakest area.
Akane is really good! Her unscripted podcasts are still mostly over my head, but the short, scripted ones are approachable. Of all the podcasts I’ve tried, something about that one feels like the best balance of clear, well-spoken, balanced audio with a pace that’s not too fast or conspicuously slow.
I think I just like her content and vibe a lot more too. Shun’s been very comfortable to listen to on a comprehension level but I’d kinda rather hear about Japan, lol.
Plus it’s so much better for me to listen to a fem speaker to emulate.
Relatable. I feel like I’m in the opposite situation, where the ones I enjoy listening to more are usually by women, but I should probably be listening to guys more to emulate. I think the higher pitched voices just seem more detectable to me, for now. Once I’m further along I’m hoping listening to Yuyu and eventually ゆる言語学 will be more fun.
And now … the riskiest thing I’ve done.
I’m going to stop studying for a week. Because I’m going to be in Germany.
I’ve given this some though: there is no amount of studying I can do that compares to just the natural immersion of being in Germany. No amount of Anki cards or grammar exercises will be as good, or important, as another 10 minutes going to a store, bar, restaurant or other activity and just trying to soak in all the natural German I can.
So that’s a rule I’m making for myself. No more studying until I get back from the trip. Catching up to a weeks worth of Anki backlog probably will suck though lol.
Good call! Savor it.
Looking forward to the post-mortem. ;)
I seriously wish you had created this community on some Piefed instance.
I didn’t make it, just filling in since past mods have stepped away for now. Agree Piefed is good, but not sure it’d be worth migrating anything.
Probably you don’t have a hang of Piefed.
Check out this link :
https://feddit.online/c/south_asia_bazaar
This is my community on piefed, and l’m commenting from Piefed.
@emb @MastKalandar what’s the advantage of using piefed? I don’t know much about it
Follow my community !south_asia_bazaar@feddit.online from your Mastodon account. Do you notice any difference ??
2hrs Japanese, 1hr Spanish, 30 mins Irish.
Graduated from N5 grammar lessons to N4 on MaruMori.
Graduated from A2 section on Duolingo to B1.Still need a lot more education than what this is otherwise perceived as, need chock tons of exposure and exercises in the languages still. It feels like I’m a beginner in everything. I like studying, but even with the 2hrs in Japanese a day, it still feels like I’m hardly getting any traction. I have no idea why.
It’s just really hard! It may not feel like any traction toward the massive goal of ‘being fluent’ or whatever, but you know more than you did.
Between stopping and starting and trying different resources, I’m always encouraged when I encounter a word or character in a different context. Gives me that little glimpse of what I call ‘the language folding in on itself’, and seeming connected and tractable.
Well done!
Very demotivated, I learnt from myself and others’ experience that once you tell people in your surrounding that u are learning sth like a language, you’ll likely fail to keep doing it.
Yeah, I feel this somewhat. When you tell people about what you’re attempting, they just immediately have high regards for you, and it can be demotivating living up to these sorts of unrealistic expectations. I have something coming up later this year and they could very well just have a “everyone stand up and talk about yourself” spiel. I study languages a lot in my free time, but I’m definitely not going to tell any of them that.
