I've been studying Japanese for a few years. I was recently in Japan for about a month, and while I was able to read and understand a lot of what people were saying, I could barely speak. It was like my brain kept freezing up. It was frustrating, but I'm glad I got the opportunity to know where I'm at. I'm also starting to learn Spanish because I want to go to some South and Central American countries next year. For now, my goal is just to get the basics down.
I'm currently learning Mandarin, I started earlier this year so I think I've been at it since February? With a break of one month to focus on college in between. I started with HelloChinese (similar to Duolingo but better built) but later dropped it off, and started experimenting with different things. Right now I'm doing an Anki deck and going with the immersion approach, I'm working my way through a graded version of Journey to The West and I like watching Comprehensible input and Donghua.
In the future there are other languages I want to pick up but I want to be able to understand native content I'm interested in without too much issue beforehand. I don't like studying it formally because it feels like I'm wasting my time, I have the most fun looking at content and looking up words I don't understand. I feel like I learn more like this like I'd do with grammar drills, Duolingo, or speak early approaches
I have been studying Italian for over 10 years now. I started because I was going on vacation there and simply fell in love with the language.
I'm using Duolingo daily to keep my active knowledge up, and I'm subscribed to two Italian podcasts. In church, I read along on a Bible app.
It's a bit of a routine but it's also a bit of a drag, because I don't get any real life practice. Last time I was in Italy was in 2018. I feel like I've come a pretty long way since then but I'd really like to test whether I can have a normal conversation.
It's 'not going' at the moment due to life events. I want to pick up Spanish and Russian again when I'm ready.
I've been learning German since October. It's gone fairly well, when I focus on it I improve very fast, but I have motivation issues and have plateaued, or maybe even regressed a bit in the past two months.
what resource(s) are you using?
The most important thing of mine for learning German is I keep a notebook of every word I learn. I have pages dedicated to nouns, pages dedicated to verbs, and pages for everything else.
I always put the article of the noun before the actual word to remember gender. For verb pages, it is set up in columns so I can write down each conjugation of it, which helps with memory even if verbs are conjugated the same way nearly every time.
This notebook is vital in remembering, studying, and looking over German words. I suggest everyone does it.
To learn more words, I'll use Duolingo every now and then, though I'm not a fan ever since they've axed the old tree layout. I also use the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-eDoThe6qo](Nico ist Weg) movies on YouTube that are made at each level of German, helps greatly. [https://www.youtube.com/@EasyGerman](Easy German) on YouTube is also fairly helpful. Besides that, I just try to interact with the language whenever I can.
I’m putting more effort into learning Spanish. It’s going pretty slow, or at least it feels that way. On the other hand I live in Mexico now and that’s going pretty well.
living in a country where they speak your target languages makes such a huge difference!
Ukrainian. I started shortly after my wife, who is Ukrainian, and I got married. It didn't last long before I stopped/gave up since she wasn't too interested in speaking it other than to her parents. Her family came to America when she was very young (and the youngest of 4), so she's much more comfortable with English.
Fast-forward to last February where I picked it up again after Russia invaded. Got through the Duolingo course, but feel like I hit a plateau of sorts and need to get motivated again. I have a physical book, pimsleur, lingq, and anki cards--just need to practice and build up more vocabulary.
🇺🇦 Слава Україні!
