this post was submitted on 22 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 1 week ago by emb@lemmy.world to c/languagelearning@sopuli.xyz
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[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

It was a "wall" week for me, at least psychologically.

I started looking up a lot of the lyrics to the new songs I'm listening to, and am realizing that I've been totally mishearing the lyrics. It has taken me 2 hours (!!!) to reach the 1st Pokemon center in Pokemon Weiße. I've been getting like 70% on Anki this past week, etc. etc.

Its just one of those weeks, I'll keep practicing but its a downer this time. Sometimes progress feels like a step back rather than a step forward.

I'll share "Wann fängt mein Leben an?" (Tangled German version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S6l7Dazg-8

As far as Disney songs go, this one is on the easier side. Especially with the video. Its basically Repunzel going over her morning routine, so its a lot of "simple" and "beginner" words (ex: read a book, do a painting, clean and cook).

[–] emb@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

It took me like 8-10 hours to finish the first 2 or 3 hours of Pokemon Z-A probably. I know the feeling, it seems so slow!

Good call on the song, a lot of the daily routine would be really useful vocabulary, and that's a fun one to learn some of it. I'm surprised that video doesn't offer captions though, at this point I thought Youtube just did those automatically.

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

Hah, I know the feeling with gaming. It recently took me almost an hour to unlock manual saves in Animal Crossing New Horizons, and that seemed ridiculous to me until I realized it probably takes a native 10 minutes!

[–] azimir@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The big news is that I took a placement course and it suggested I should be in the first level of a CEFR B1.1 course! Last fall I was going to be placed in a A2.2, so apparently something is sinking in.

I finished another manga book (VizBig style Ranma 1/2 #1) in German. It's very interesting how the different authors of the different series would use vocabulary. Getting a more diverse set of words was great for the vocab.

I'm applying for a job that would start April 2027 and would require significant German language skills by then. The clock is ticking!

Gotta have my B1 by May 2027 for residency. I've got about 68 weeks until I qualify. Continuing the countdown.

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

Sounds like you're well on the way! Great job on the B1 placement, and good luck on the deadline. Let it motivate you!

[–] Ashtear@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Almost done with the Tobira chapter on haiku, I'm mostly writing it off as one that was just largely too difficult. Esoteric terminology, abstract/rule bending language that demands grammar mastery I don't have, and way too many new words thrown at the student in general. On the plus side, I did find a couple that I really liked and I'll probably look into a couple poets more down the road. Hopefully the workbook goes better.

Everything else is pretty good. Listening is fine, flashcards flowing as normal. I'm being more aggressive dropping cards from the deck, and I think I going to give myself a nice buffer to really lock in some of these words by December.

[–] emb@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Sounds rough. Yeah, don't let it bog you down. I barely understand a lot of English (my native) language poetry... trying to squeeze the beauty out of language can really lead to deep cuts. Tho it surprises me that the textbook showcases ones that hard.

[–] arxaseus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Doing 30 mins of Japanese, 30 mins of Spanish and 30 mins of Irish again. Also yeah I know for languages like Japanese, it's still not enough. Though I am watching a fair amount of shows that incorporate the languages. Still need to go to comprehensible input videos for all though.

Also thinking about picking up a proper language course that might start in the next few weeks, but I'm unsure if that's a good idea or not. It's a 10 week course, that spans 2 hours per week, and it'll cost roughly 200 euro. So it's like a tenner an hour or something, which is decent, but I'm not sure if I can afford it just now is the thing, but then again I'm unsure if they'll have these courses again in the next few months. I have about a week or so before courses fill up, so I'm limited for time, so I'm just mulling these things over in my head wondering if it's worth it or not.

[–] Ashtear@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Don't know how far along you are in Japanese, but I just about universally recommend a starter class for it. The grammar structure is just too different not to have initial guidance in it, and I was glad to commiserate over the initial rote memorization. Kanji gets a lot easier as you go, but that initial period with it and the kana sucks and there isn't a great way around it.

[–] arxaseus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Based on Duolingo, I'm N3 (lies), and MaruMori/other apps I'm N5. I have seen all vocab for N5 and have about 300 mastered words out of the 1000 or so words. I still to this day keep forgetting katakana just because it's not very common in loan words I'm given on the MM path. I could honestly make do with a proper course as well, you're probably right about that. I haven't really looked into group activities for Japanese, but now that you mention it, it would be a good idea to help get my foot further in the door.

Also I can't seem to see your comment on my Lemmy instance for some reason, but I can get the reply for some reason in PMs?
What's that about?

[–] Ashtear@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah, just one of those things that'll take practice. I'm approaching N2 level and something like the original Legend of Zelda or robot speech is still brutally slow for me because I'm just not used to seeing full sentences with katakana.

And dunno, sometimes there's hiccups with content federating properly.

[–] emb@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I've heard it said that an hour every day for most hobbies would be plenty, for language learning it's just the start. Makes sense, most activities I do throughout the day use language, so for at least your first language you naturally practice all day.

Always gonna be a hard call when affordability enters the picture. I think courses are pretty fun and motivating so it sounds like a good opportunity. But you gotta do what works best for the situation.

[–] arxaseus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 6 days ago

It was like 10 euro an hour, which, I mean, if I really really really tried, I could make something work, but I think at least for the start of this course, it'll help set me up for success, because I'll be able to at least attempt speaking the language properly, getting the phonetics right, and that being important. Then the reading, and phonetics to readings and etc, and dialects, and understanding nuances of gender based grammar better (Duolingo is absolutely shit for explaining any of that), and well, just overall language attempt. This will be my first actual proper course I paid for, as I try to be self learned, but I guess for this language I've completely given up on finding decent sources, since everything good is still all over the place.

[–] lalah@sakurajima.moe 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

@arxaseus what are you using to study Irish?

[–] arxaseus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 6 days ago

I use Duolingo with the audio turned off for a bit. Sionnach at an odd time if I want to see if the apps updated to something with more of a bite, but my main go to has been Teach Yourself Complete Irish by Diarmuid Ó Sé. I also tried the book Gaeilge Gan Stró, but it felt too touristy in its approach to teaching it, learning whole sentences before they explain the individual words. Complete Irish is more explained, however condensed and to the point which is a bigger strength to me, but also sort of a bad point too.

I sort of want a longer grammatical explanation and then examples, and then maybe some SRS to work with like an Anki card deck. There's a lot of Irish resources out there, but none of them are good. And the best you can get are just old hardcopy books.

In a while, whenever the depression fully goes away, I'll probably automate my own Anki card word-lookup Deck. But yeah, just I need my energy back firstly.

[–] lalah@sakurajima.moe 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@emb I've been reading lots in my mother tongue, English, and I wish I could read so easily in Japanese... I need to find some good books for beginners. And by that I mean regular reading, not manga. I do have manga I want to read too but it's different...

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

Yeah, right there with you on that! Can't wait until the point where reading better books is more comfortable.

Are you already aware of https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/ ? They are children's book that have pictures, but they aren't manga. And they cover a range of levels starting very low.

[–] lalah@sakurajima.moe 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@emb yes but I'll take another look

[–] emb@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Hope you're able to find something enjoyable! If those are too basic, there's also Tsubasa Bunko stuff, which is more novel-y, but with furigana and occasional pictures. I picked up a copy like that of a novella (時をかける少女) and it seems like a good step, but ultimately my ability's just not there yet. Right now I look at that and (even though I can figure it out if I take my time and have a dictionary), it's like 'ahhh, so many words!'. For me, I just gotta keep grinding. Even the level 3 Tadoku stuff (30ish pages with quite easy language) takes a lot of stamina to get through.