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
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
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 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.
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Nederlands (Dutch), my native language is Portuguese and I also speak English.
“Hallo, ik ben Cally en ik spreek een beetje Nederlands.” probably translates to “Hello, I am Cally and I speak a bit of Dutch.”
I kinda suck at learning languages so I’m still at what I assume is A1 level, I think my pronunciation is ok, though. Idk how to speed up language learning but I have set my phone to Dutch and that kinda helps. For example, “Instellingen” means “Settings”
Lekker bezig!
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.
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 learning Russian for a few years, I’ve also started learning Serbian and Ukrainian a little bit.
I can speak Russian pretty decently, it’s my girlfriend’s first language so I’ve had a lot of regular practice with it, I don’t consider myself fluent at this point but I can hold conversations with native speakers without too much of an issue
With Ukrainian I can understand quite a bit but I haven’t had much practice speaking it with other people at all yet. I have the basic phrases memorized, things like привіт, будь ласка, доброго ранку, добрий вечір, дякую, як справи, etc. but I don’t think I could hold a conversation speaking only in Ukrainian. I’ve been studying it kind of off and on for a year or so, and I listen to some Ukrainian music fairly often
Serbian I’ve been struggling to learn, I’ve been working on it for about 5 months. I think learning Russian first made it weirdly harder since the sentences are structured fairly differently. When it’s written, I can understand quite a bit, but if someone walked up to me and just started speaking Serbian I’d be completely lost
I can’t learn any languages because I have ADHD
Your english seems okay
yeah that’s what you think
I’m learning Python. Not bad, but I prefer C.
I have no experience in C, but I do like Python.
Rust is calling to me
Python also prefers C
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.
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 :(
That’s a pretty long streak 😯
I’m on day 460 learning Italian.
If you want that, then I’d suggest usinh Bussu and Memrise
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’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.
こんにちは！日本語を勉強しています！
I’m 90 days into learning Japanese. Most of that has been learning kana and I’m now working on kanji and grammar. It’s very different from English but I really like the way information is conveyed. I’m struggling with grammar stuff right now pretty bad, particularly conjugation, but it’ll click eventually. Also the lack of spaces is definitely something to get used to.
Watashi no nihongo wa warui desu yo.
Watashi mo, but getting better every day.
What tools are you using to study?
I started with Duolingo and while it has all the regular duo problems, I think it actually does a good job with the kana stuff. You can turn off the Romaji too, forcing yourself to read. It doesn’t teach grammar, though, so I bought Genki Vol 1, working my way through that, and wotaku.wiki has a lot of good resources.
I really like the Cure Dolly stuff for grammar (though she can be difficult to understand, use the youtube transcripts or if you prefer reading a book someone helpfully wrote it all up). Her approach is totally different from the Genki methods, but I find it easier to understand.
I am also using Anki with the Kaishi 1.5k Kanji deck for kanji and vocabulary. This is honestly pretty painful, I’ve been doing it for like 10 days now and I feel like I’m doing badly every time, but I am improving. I could probably stand to study the radical stuff to understand more how the kanji is constructed but I haven’t found a good resource for that just yet.
日本人です
漢字、助詞、敬語あたりが辛いとよく聞きますが日本語はそこまで厳密に喋らなくてもある程度通じちゃったりもします
漢字を理解するのに部首からいくのはいいですね、部首と旁についてある一定の意味を覚えたら読めなくても意味を理解するのが簡単になります
小学生レベルで1026個ある漢字をとりあえず覚えれば日常で困らないレベルになると思います
頑張ってください
がんばいます！
I appreciate the feedback, this Anki deck should hopefully get my vocabulary to that point. I am actually pretty good at getting the meaning usually and the readings are the tough part, so I’m doing okay I guess. It just feels like a lot, but that’s true of any language I suppose. I’ve learned a lot in the last few months. Thanks for the encouragement!
カッコいい! 皆と同じように僕も日本語を選びました。Lemmyで人気のある言語らしいですね。
でも昔、僕の場合は最初に漢字で勉強し始めたので、予想に反して、読むことや理解することが難しくなってしまいました。昨年から、オンライン新聞とウィキの記事を読み始めたので、単語や文法がだんだん分かりやすくなってきました。一歩ずつ進んでいくんですね！
ところで、日本語を読んで練習するためにおすすめのウェブサイトがありますか？
I hope I didn’t make too many mistakes. Writing is still a challenge!
自分は日本語学習については知らないですが（日本人だから当たり前だけど・・・）、
子供向けの絵本サイトとかは意外といいかもしれませんhttps://ehon.alphapolis.co.jp/
あとはサイト集みたいなのもあるっぽいですね
https://nihongo-e-na.com/jpn/site/tag/読む/
ルビが振ってある日本語のサイトを探すのもいいかもしれないですね、
慣れたらなろうとかで本を読むのも良いかも？？Switchのどうぶつの森を日本語に設定して勉強している人も見たことがあります
ちなみに書かれている日本語は完璧でしたよ！
あっ、すみません、好きなサイトはどちらでも大丈夫です。
きっとチェックします。ありがとうございました～！
ありがとう。
私は質問があります。なぜあなたがフルストップを使わないですか。ドイツ語にはたくさんフルストップがありますから。
I usually do use proper punctuation like the Japanese full stop “。”,
but recently there’s been a trend—especially among younger people—where it’s sometimes avoided.
Some even call it “maru-hara” (short for “full stop harassment”), suggesting that ending a sentence with “。” can come off as cold or aggressive.
I guess that’s why I ended up not using it myself, especially in casual contexts like social media.
あああーなるほど。冷たいあるいは最終的なものと思われるかもしれないです。けど、ドイツ語に慣れた私にとっては、文の終わりがわがところはどこしらないです。習うしました、ありがとう。
This kind of sentence is difficult, so I used some translator help :/
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.
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
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.
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
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.
That’s my impression as well and I’ve only been at it for half a year. In the beginning you would also get grammar help at the start of new chapters, but that stopped relatively quickly, so now it’s mostly diy grammar rules by analyzing the sentences. Maybe I’ll have a look at Busuu
I’ve been learning Dutch, since the Netherlands seems like a nice place to go if I ever have to flee the US. Thinking about joining some Dutch communities here so I can get more “natural” language exposure.
If you ever need a language buddy, let me know.
There is also a Learn Dutch discord that is fairly active.
Duolingo sucks ass for learning languages. Dutchpod101 is pretty good, but the best is a combination of dutch books + listening like dhtchpod101 or some simple news podcasts or so.
