this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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Language Learning

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How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 weeks ago by emb@lemmy.world to c/languagelearning@sopuli.xyz
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Sorry for the late post. It escaped me that we're back at Sunday already!

How has your week gone, learning-wise?

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[–] Ashtear@piefed.social 4 points 2 weeks ago

Just had a nice victory here, I understood 100% of one of the podcast episodes I listened to today and didn't have to verify with the transcript! I've been sorta documenting my struggles with listening here for a while and it's really nice to have a clear marker of progress.

That said, my overall pace has slowed and it's still not quite back where it was in December (not just language learning, effort in general). Could be I was just running hot for a while, could be a natural cycle. My general workflow is still relatively new, so I'm trying to give myself the grace to have hiccups here and there.

[–] recursive_recursion@piefed.ca 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I've switched from learning German to learning French due to an unexpected roadblock I encountered.

Not sure how it's gonna turn out but I've got less than a week to learn at least the basics.

[–] sik0fewl@piefed.ca 5 points 2 weeks ago

roadblock-> opportunity 🙂

[–] emb@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

Personally, I finally started digging back into my Japanese textbook. I enjoy going through the lessons, and this chapter (15 of Genki) was pretty quick. That and got through my Kanji and Anki card review backlogs (tho my JPDB stack is still backed up). Always nice to be mostly caught up!

Also picked up another Spanish language novel (Marina), going to try and keep up with one of the book clubs on Natively. I've mostly switched to Japanese, but for reading my Japanese isn't high level enough for long form yet. Might as well be reading something not English.

[–] arxaseus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago

Depression and anxiety have hands, but I'm getting back into the swing of things... Slowly. Also more bad news, so it's just been a real struggle of late to continue, but still trying.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Tried DuoLingo. Hated it. Tried Mango this week and not enjoying that either. Thinking of taking an actual sit down class instead.

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 weeks ago

Which language and are you just starting? For beginners I'd definitely recommend actual classes, they'll get you started and you can then continue to learn on your own. Apps are great for vocabulary, but that's mostly it. Especially Duolingo will not teach you any grammar, you'll have to figure that out from the sentences it throws at you.

[–] piwakawakas@lemmy.nz 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

좋아요! 하눅어 좀 배우고있어요. 토요일에는 소업이 갈 거 예요.

This is probably full of errors, but I'm enjoying it at the moment

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Just a few typos, the important thing is that people understand you. How long have you been learning Korean?

If you want some corrections

spoiler

하눅어

Did you mean 한국어? And I think you need to add an object marker 를

배우고있어요

배우고 있어요, space between 고 and 있다

소업이

I think you mean 수업에, you're going to a course, right?

거 예요

Should be 거예요 (no space), 이다 directly attaches to nouns.

And have fun with the course.

[–] piwakawakas@lemmy.nz 3 points 1 week ago

For the corrections!

I've been learning off and on for a couple of years, but more dabbling. Nothing serious.

I finally signed up for Talk to me in Korean just before Christmas and it's been really good. And yes, I've joined a local class which will start soon

[–] piwakawakas@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 week ago

For 수업 I put a subject marker 이 but to be honest, I still get confused about when is the best time to use topics, subject and object markers

[–] GiuseppeLasagna@mander.xyz 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Haven’t been diving too much into the study aspect of it lately because I started grad school last month, and that’s been taking up most of my time.

I did end up creating an XMPP public group for Italian-English language exchange and learning. It’s at https://xmpp.link/#italian-language-exchange@chat.disroot.org?join if anyone is interested.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I started Pokemon Weiße. It starts with...

https://www.pokewiki.de/Professor_Esche/Zitate

„Hallo! Wie geht's? Willkommen in der Welt der Pokémon! Ich bin Prof. Esche! Die Leute nennen mich auch die Pokémon-Professorin. Wie du vielleicht weißt, wird diese Welt von Wesen bevölkert, die man Pokémon nennt. In den Pokémon schlummern geheimnisvolle Kräfte. Begegnen kann man ihnen beinahe überall und es gibt eine große Vielfalt an unterschiedlichen Arten unter ihnen. Die Pokémon und wir Menschen ergänzen uns ganz ausgezeichnet! Wir führen ein Leben in Eintracht mit ihnen und helfen uns gegenseitig, wo wir können. Um das Band der Freundschaft zu seinen Pokémon zu stärken, ist es sehr beliebt, mit ihnen gegen die Teams anderer Trainer zu kämpfen. Tja, und ich habe mein Leben der Erforschung der Pokémon gewidmet! Aber genug von mir… Erzähl mir doch lieber ein bisschen was über dich! Bist du ein Junge oder ein Mädchen? […] Aha, ein <gewähltes Geschlecht> bist du also! Habe ich das richtig verstanden? […] Jetzt wüsste ich noch gern, wie du heißt. Verrate mir doch bitte deinen Namen! […] heißt du also. Ist das richtig? […] … Das ist aber mal ein toller Name! Gut, dann will ich dir jetzt noch mal deine treuen Weggefährten vorstellen. Ihr seid ein unzertrennliches Gespann! Dieser Junge hier heißt Cheren. Manchmal gibt er sich ein wenig mürrisch, aber er ist ein aufrichtiger Bursche. Dieses Mädchen hört auf den Namen Bell. Sie geht alles ein wenig gemütlicher an, aber gibt immer ihr Bestes… Ich werde euch dreien jetzt einfach mal vertrauen und jedem von euch eins meiner kostbaren Pokémon schenken. Hör mir gut zu, ! Von dem Augenblick an, an dem du dich für ein Pokémon entscheidest, beginnt dein ganz persönliches Abenteuer. Auf deiner Reise wirst du mit unzähligen Pokémon und Menschen in Berührung kommen, die nicht immer dieselben Ideen und Auffassungen teilen wie du. Ich hoffe, es gelingt dir, durch diese Begegnungen herauszufinden, was für dich im Leben wichtig ist und was nicht… Ich sehe, du verstehst mich! Das große Ziel deiner Reise sollte es sein, über den Umgang mit Menschen und Pokémon reifer zu werden und innerlich zu wachsen. So, jetzt aber mal los! Geh und stürze dich kopfüber in die Welt der Pokémon!“

This is very above my level. But I can get through it by looking up every word I don't understand. It takes me a long time to make progress, but I'm actually 100% understanding the grammar. Its only the vocabulary that's tripping me up.

dict.cc is very useful at looking up set phrases that occur. Bianca (English) aka Belle (in German) exclaims "Hopfen und Malz verloren", which actually means "they're hopeless". It used to be hard to look up set phrases/idioms like this, but fortunately dict.cc just has a good database of these and found it instantly. Aside from the idioms... the most advanced grammar is the "subjunctiv". Which is a "hypothetical' case in German. (Ex: the German word for "can" can be turned into subjunctive form, which then means "could" in English). You are greeted in this game with a few words from Professor Esche in the subjunctiv.

Aside from that, its banging my head against all the (tons) of vocabulary I don't know yet. But with modern computerized dictionaries, it really isn't bad to look them up.

Now the words may be difficult, but the game makes it easy. With graphics, sound-effects, and music playing over the text, you can get a good "feeling" of what any phrases are. And because Pokemon's sound design / music design is so integral to the story and so iconic, you'll always have a "gist" of what's going on even if you cannot understand the words in front of you. So the only question is how hard do you want to work at understanding these words?

I haven't made the decision yet on how "hard" to work on understanding everything... But I do think playing this game in German will 100% help me learn the language.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Example:

NPC: Also, dann werde ich dir jetzt aus dem Expeditionshandbuch vorlesen.

Hmm, I struggled with this sentence. I thought I understood it. I click next and...

Hier steht: Für Trainer ist der X-Knopf unerlässlich! Vergiss das nicht!

Ohhhhhh. He's reading (vorlesen) from the Expedition-Handbook. The next sentence makes everything so clear, even if the grammar of the first sentence was so difficult for an A2- like myself. (Its... an A2 level sentence. I "should" have been able to figure it out, but I'm not very well practiced with this yet).

In a lot of these cases, there's "play". I don't have to achieve full understanding from the first sentence, the 2nd or 3rd sentence helps explain the earlier sentences.

In Pokemon White / Black, it is the first time you depart as a group, a set of 3 where Bianca took the pokemon you were strong with, while Cheren is more of your traditional rival.

Professor to the group: Oh, ihr habt eure Pokemon schon kämpfen lassen. Das is ja großartig!

This is the first time I've had the opportunity of "someone" calling out to me with "ihr" (you-all in German). This is especially good practice because "ihr" also means "they" or even "hers", depending on context (yeah... German is weird). It actually took me a while to "understand" that ihr in this sentence was referring to me + Biana + Cheren all together.

It makes me appreciate the changes Pokemon did over the years. Earlier games was just "you" vs "rival" (You vs Gary, for example). Adding additional "friends" so that more group words, or other such "roleplay" situations really adds to the language-comprehension of this game.

[–] emb@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Love the Pokemon games for language learning! Enjoy the playthrough!

[–] TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

pissed my teacher off... :(

[–] emb@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

How did that happen?

[–] TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago

had to travel so had to delete whatsapp, which is how we schedule and communicate. forgot it was the day of class and couldn't reach out because i couldn't reinstall while away. yay USA in 2026. i should've told them beforehand but forgot. i suck.