/lang/ - Languages

>>79

>>86

>>899

Individual kana characters are actually harder to learn than individual kanji. Of course, there's very little in comparison, but I wouldn't mock people just because they are having trouble with kana.

>>90

I skipped katakana.

>>918

I can't imagine a single Kanji for which this is true. Maybe those who are pictograms but even they have multiple readings and sometimes meanings.

The almost 100% regular and phonetic morae that make up hiragana and katakana definitely are not the hardest part of one of the modt complex writing systems of any language.

>I skipped katakana.

The fuck? Katakana are an essential part of the Japanese language. That's like saying you skipped learning capital letters when you started learning an alphabet language. How do you learn to better differentiate between kunyomi and onyomi readings then? Usually you learn the onyomi in Katakana.

>>919

Well, that's my experience. I'm learning kanji much faster than I learned hiragana. In fact, the most hairy kanji seem to be the ones that stick in my head the fastest. I think it has to do with being less abstract and less subtly different from each other.

It's also more fun because once you learn the on-yomi you can figure out a lot of jukugo by combining them. It becomes easy to pick up jukugo from watching anime. Kun-yomi sucks though.

As for katakana, I'm going to learn it eventually, and I did study some already, but I found it to be nonessential for a beginner.

>>920

Fair enough, if your method shows progress to you, then there's no point in critizising it and everyone learns differently. You should come around learning katakana one day, though, because modern Japanese is riddled with katakana loanwords.

Doing my French homework and chatting on sharedtalk, albeit shortly.

Uhm… I'm listening to German music, does that count?

>>937

Depends on which phase of language learning you are or how you learn your language in my opinion at least.

For example, if you already are in the 'living the language' phase (the phase when you reduced active study to a minimum) approaching real world material is vital and even necessary for the maintenance of your skill level.

It's also necessary to take part in activities related to your language study that maintain motivation. But if you're at an early stage of learning then it's no replacement for active study time.

>>943

Well, like I said it's not wrong per se. In my opinion, it's great if it keeps you motivated. And you are learning the language to be better able to appreciate cultural works in said language as well, right (at least if cultural affinity used to be a prime motivator from the start or if you developed it later)?

It's just no replacement for real study in fact studying is way more efficient.

Motivation is key. Finding (new) ways to motivate yourself is among the most important aspects of language learning. This can be anything from interesting media, a foreign partner or just a short real life interaction of a speaker of your target language.

I finished two grammar lessons and chatted with a Tunisian cutie.

>>1040

>and chatted with a Tunisian cutie.

Was it worth it?

>>1045

Well, she didn't flash her boobs or anything if that's what you mean and in fact flirting is actively discouraged(and even bannable) on the platform I used, fortunately.

I like this a lot because many websites for language exchanges are swarmed by people who think it's easier to enter a romantic relationship with someone on the other side of the world than in your own home city for some reason, at the expense of language study.

We talked to each other a second time, for more than two hours and both of us could practice. Her skills are pretty good already. I dislike talking to complete beginners since I'm not a teacher and I like to in incorporate and try out new grammatical features as soon as I can.

At this stage I still have to look up a lot of words but this will change with repeated encounter.

Both of us used voice recording for the first time and she proposed to move to skype next.

So a few days ago I finished my French workbook.

Workbooks that involve grammar lessons which are followed by exercises are among my favorite learning resources. I like learning about the underlying rules and laws that seem to govern a language and applying what I've learned immidiately. In the meantime I started studying the words I've never encountered before from the integrated glossary which are about 25% of 1600 terms used in this book with primitive word lists. I'll get these under my belt before I move on to the big B1-B2 workbook of the same publisher.

Yesterday night/in the first hours of this day I had my first skype conversation with a French speaker in French, which has beem my first oral or verbal contact so far part from helping tourists at the train station and telling old ladies the direction to the nearest ice cream parlor in crappy school French.

We had some very light conversations about the stories of the movies we watched in our target languages recently, college stuff and what we did during the weekend in French/German while explaining stuff, discussion features of languages, joking around and talking about cultural differences in fluent English. She also let me butcher some Arabic words.

I also couldn't help myself from testing the waters and talk about some controversial topics like religious practices. I teasingly confronted her about ignoring the call for prayer while talking to me which I could overhear from her microphone to her surprise. And she straight-up revealed to me a very empiricist attitude. So I guess that she's already grown to trust me a bit.

I know that learning a language from a non-native speaker is risky but she told me that's been pretty much raised bilingually, she already spoke French before she started to learn it in school as a subject and I could unsterstand most of what she talked about. So as long as I get to practice I don't mind. I just have to draw my input from several resources.

Her German pronunciation was pretty good already, in fact it was almost perfect apart from what I perceived as typically French intonation and stress. Arabic speakers have no problem with the guttural sounds and consonant clusters which are some difficult features of German while my accent is pretty terrible at this stage although I'm already forming sentences with subordinate clauses which she does way less.

It seems like our different learning approaches will complement each other well and I plan to turn this into a long-lasting language exchange because she seems to be very committed to learning German and non-flaky, having already signed up for the next German course in fall and being a fluent speaker of three other languages.

>>1116

I should've proofread this.

apart from

discussing features

that she has been raised pretty much

she had spoken

I GOT 70 POINTS ON DUOLINGO ITALIAN

I'M EXPLOSIVE

I realised I should probably start practising my German soon.

Is reading Mein Kampf a good idea?

>>1193

Con 70 punti non ci compri neanche la schiuma da barba!

>>1194

It's not a particular good book tbh.

The only real reason to read it is to destroy the myth that surrounds it.

>>1196

Beh, forse dovrei leggere e anche leggere i classici anziché giocare con Duolingo, ma aspetta! Fra alcuni mesi avrò 100% di Scioltezza!