neristudy

[neristudy]

I usually do not share stuff like that, but I really love this app and really, why not be proud for a sec xD

[neristudy]

Burnout is hella strong. But I must be stronger (⁠;⁠ŏ⁠﹏⁠ŏ⁠)

But it's really hard, esp with how much my mental health is making a nose dive... Oh, man.

[neristudy]

i love the phrase "wieder was gelernt" it's just so huh. yeah. alright. knowledge unlocked. moving on!

and its brother "man lernt nie aus" - so true. you really never stop learning new things. such a grounded way of recognizing that. go off i guess

[neristudy]

bread, they could never make me hate you baby

[neristudy]

Vincent Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo, dated 23 December 1881

[neristudy]

German Pluralmarkers

In my Language Acquisition course, we got to the topic of plurals. Why are they difficult? Because there's SO MANY!

My prof criticized the tip "just always learn the plural when you learn the word" because yes, that is helpful but wouldn't it be more helpful to know that there's some regularity?! Just like the gender of nouns is not completely random (post about that here) Here are some of my prof's slides about the rules/probabilities:

the rules above cover around 40% of german words. there's more, of course, but they only cover around 4%:

[neristudy]

LanguageTransfer is this audio series that’s free and super easy to find online.

They have Spanish, which I have used personally. They also have Arabic, Turkish, German, Greek, Italian, Swahili and French.

Si hablas español y quieres aprender inglés, LanguageTransfer tiene un curso para eso.

It really explains grammar in a way that makes sense, helps you see parallels between your language and your target language, and helps you discover useful patterns.

A fair warning, at least for Spanish, the first episode was him talking about how important and superior the series is. It’s annoying, but after that it really, really does help. So give it a chance.

[neristudy]

maybe I gotta make big and in-dept reviews on apps that I had been using for language studys... can be really useful (─‿‿─)

[neristudy]

I would really like to share this app with all of you - Polygloss!

The premise is really simple - you are given a picture, and you need to describe it in a way that the other person will understand! Then, you'll be given the other person's description, and will need to figure out, which picture it is!

I cannot say enough how good it is for your brain. And if you will make a mistake, don't worry - other person can correct it, and you'll be able to give them a lil' reward as a thanks!

As you can see, I have a long road ahead. But maybe, we can go on this walk together!

Feel free to join me! (⁠つ⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)⁠つ

Also yeah, there's a lot of languages, not just Eng and German owo

[neristudy]

Materials that helped me pass the DTZ B1 exam and not lose my marbles

YouTube

Benjamin - Der Deutschlehrer

My favorite channel for specifically preparing for the exam. Very good at explaining letters, conversations, that sort of thing. Also very helpful with advice on what to add or take away in the delivery to make it sound more b1 rather than a2.

LordPappnase

I love his gameplay videos and his way of speaking. But frankly, he's more as an example here - go to youtube and type in your hobby/special interest/favorite game/favorite media + deutsch into the search box and you'll get a lot of auditory training, which you won't be bored watching! I have to admit, I get terribly bored watching all these videos that are specifically designed for language learners - they look in places like they think I'm an idiot >.<

Android Apps

Babbel

The best program for learning German in my eyes. Grammar, drills, interesting topics - it's all there. But, a small nuance - it is the best for those who know Ukrainian, because then you will have a full course without ads and restrictions. I do not know why. But it's worth taking advantage of if you have the opportunity!

Flashcards // Anki // Drops

You will always benefit from a program which is simply a deck of useful words to memorize.. I used Flashcards like 90% of the time, but the other two will also do the job if you like them better.

Tutor Lily

I can't put into words the usefulness of this app. It's a chatbot with whom you can talk a little every day - and thus literally force your brain to lay down the neural pathways of how you should communicate in a particular language. I credit my 97/100 on speaking to this program alone. It is 100% worth it.

Polygloss

Shows you images that you have to describe in your target language. It doesn't sound particularly helpful, but one part of the DTZ exam is literally describing the picture! So it's actually insanely useful - including the fact that it forces you to look up words to describe different objects, events, and the like (or think of what you can call it if you forget a specific word).

Clozemaster

Read more about how I use it here and here!~

Additional notes:

I'm sorry, but there is no way to “learn a language in two weeks”. They're lying to you. You have to sit and study, half an hour a day, ten minutes - even five minutes. Every day. Or every other day. Learning a language takes time, and even if someone was able to memorize a few lines for an exam to pass, factually speaking, it's a Pyrrhic victory - they still have to learn it all over again if they want to really know the language and not just pass the exam (which may work on b1, but good luck with b2 then, me dude).

You will be bored. You will feel like nothing is happening. That's part of the process - and there's no avoiding it. And that's okay.

Find something that lets you dip your feet into the language, but doesn't feel like bloody agony - for me, it was listening to the German podcast Easy German on the way to and from my courses. By the time of the exam, I had listened to about 70 hours of this podcast, which is 70 hours of uninterrupted German. By the end, I was even understanding it very well!

If you like playing video games, put on German voiceovers. Even if you leave the text in your native language, it's still an unconscious imersion - and every minute is worth it.

While you're at it - put German dubbing in your movies and TV series too. It may be strange at first, but it also helps a lot!

And in the name of all that is holy, don't use chat gpt. No, chat gpt's “wonderful courses and explanations” won't help you. No, if you throw your letters into it, it won't analyze them and give you a worthwhile assessment - it'll hallucinate and give you some faulty answers.

Please. We really don't need another person starting their German letter with “Guten Tag,”, as did at least 3 of my coursemates <.<

And good luck!~

[neristudy]

My Lehrerin had given me a nice tip, and I share it with you all! Basically, the idea is (and it works best if you already have some knowledge of the language, i.e. somewhere around A2 and above) to buy a book in the target language, read it, translate words you don't understand, and thus read the entire book.

This way, you familiarize your mind with the language in a natural way and simultaneously learn new and interesting things!

But... this can be very difficult! There are so many words on a single page of the book! So many, it's overwhelming! And children's books with little text quickly become boring to read...

So, I adapted it.

Buy a manga book (or find one online, whichever is easier for you) and do the same thing, but with it!

Or comics. You get the idea.

There is text in manga/manhua/comics/etc, but not much of it — at least, it's broken up into small pieces. Plus, the images help add context to phrases that might otherwise be unclear!

Plus, you can choose them based on your interests — for example, I've gathered a small collection of yaoi manga because I've never mentally grown older than 16, and I'm proud of it.

Have fun!

[neristudy]

I don't even know what's harder for me—the fact that we study five days a week and have mountains of homework, or the fact that we actually study instead of listening to the teacher's monologues xD

oh man.

I just hope I'll survive until August, bc then we'll have 2 weeks of rest xD

[neristudy]

[neristudy]

🐾 Baby-talk Mandarin for Talking to Your Cat

What are you even doing? 你在干嘛嘛～？ N�� zài gàn má ma~? You doing what mm? Whatchu doin’, hmm~?

What do you even know? 你知道啥呀～？ Nǐ zhīdào shá ya~? You know what eh? What do you even knooow~?

You don’t even care. 你才不在乎嘞～ Nǐ cái bú zàihu lei~ You totally don’t care eh. You don’t even caaare~

This cat has a death wish. 这只猫咪不想活啦！ Zhè zhī māomī bù xiǎng huó la! This kitty doesn’t wanna live anymore! This kitty’s got a death wishhh~!

Trying to trip me, I see. 你是不是想绊倒我哇～？ Nǐ shì bú shì xiǎng bàndǎo wǒ wa~? Are you trying to trip me eh~? You tryin’ to trip me again, huhhh~?

Why are you trying to trip me? 为啥老是想绊妈妈啦？ Wèi shá lǎoshì xiǎng bàn māma la? Why always trying to trip mama~? Why you always trippin’ mamaaa?

She’s a good girl. 她是个乖乖喵～ Tā shì ge guāiguāi miāo~ She’s a good good kitty~ She’s a gooood girl~

She’s just a baby, your honor. 她她她只是个小宝贝嘛，法官大人～ Tā tā tā zhǐshì ge xiǎo bǎobèi ma, fǎguān dàren~ She she she is just a lil baby, Your Honor~ She’s just a widdle baaaby, your hooonor~

She’s just a baby girl. 她是小小女孩呀～ Tā shì xiǎoxiǎo nǚhái ya~ She’s lil-lil girl~ She’s just a baby girrrrl~

I love you so much, cat. 猫猫，我好爱你呦～ Māomāo, wǒ hǎo ài nǐ yōu~ Kitty, I love you so much yo~ I wuv you soooo much, kittyyy~

She’s purring. 她在呼噜噜噜啦～ Tā zài hūlū lūlū la~ She’s purring-purring~ She goin’ purr purr purr~!

Do you want some snacks? 要不要吃小零零呀？ Yào bú yào chī xiǎo línglíng ya? Wanna eat some lil snackies~? You want some snaccies, hmm?

True to form. 你就是你喽～ Nǐ jiùshì nǐ lou~ You just you, huh~ That’s my lil chaos queen~

Come on (the bed). 来嘛，上床床～ Lái ma, shàng chuángchuáng~ Come eh, get on bed-bed~ C’mere, get on the beddy-bed!

Come on, Paz. Paz宝贝，快点儿嘛～ Paz bǎobèi, kuàidiǎnr ma~ Paz baby, hurry up eh~ Come on, Pazzy babyyy~

👶 Notes on Cutesy Mandarin

Reduplication is often used in baby-talk or pet-talk:

床 → 床床 (chuángchuáng – “bed-bed”)

抱 → 抱抱 (bàobào – “hug-hug”)

吃 → 吃吃 (chīchī – “eat-eat”)

Final particles like:

嘛 (ma), 啦 (la), 呀 (ya), 哇 (wa), 呦 (yo), and 喽 (lou) add playfulness or whining/emotive tone

Small suffixes like 小 (xiǎo – little), 宝贝 (bǎobèi – baby/darling), or 喵 (miāo – meow/kitty) are affectionate and common when talking to pets

[neristudy]

language-learning advice from a pro

(I started writing this post just now as a message to a friend who asked for language-learning advice. But I’m a GIANT NERD when it comes to language learning, so it got wayyy too long to be a message. So I’m posting it here in the hopes that it might help others as well. I have not edited this or even read through it all yet – it just poured straight out of my fingers – so please let me know if you spot any typos!)

Okay, first of all, there are two parts to language learning: active learning and passive exposure. You can choose to do only one or the other, but you’ll have the most success if you do both.

ACTIVE LEARNING

Active learning is pretty much what it sounds like: actively focusing on the language, learning new words, sounds, phrases, idioms, etc. It’s often centered around a textbook, sometimes with accompanying audio, but you can do active learning in other ways too. For example, you can read a news article online and check a dictionary for every word you don’t know. Or do the same thing with a foreign film – when you hear a word you don’t know (or see it in the subtitles), pause the movie and look it up.

Active learning makes you progress fast, but it also tires out your brain and overwhelms it with new information, making it easier to forget things you’ve already learned. That’s why it’s best to space out your active learning sessions and fill the gaps with passive exposure.

PASSIVE EXPOSURE

The goal of passive exposure is for your brain to randomly encounter words and phrases it learned recently and go “Hey! I recognize that!” This is SO important not only for reviewing and consolidating your memory, but also keeping up your motivation! If the only place you ever encounter your TL (target language) is in your textbook, on some subconscious level your brain will think it’s not that important… because after all, you never encounter it out there in the real world, do you?

Passive exposure can include any of the following and much more: listening to music in your TL; watching a movie in your TL (either with English subs, or with no subs at all and just don’t worry if you don’t understand everything that’s going on); skim-reading a book or a short story or a news article or a blog post in your TL and looking for words you recognize, even if you can’t 100% remember what they mean; finding speakers of your TL in real life and eavesdropping on them; watching instructional YouTube videos or short documentaries in your TL (the visuals ought to help you understand some of what’s going on, even if there are no subtitles); etc.

The idea is to let your TL wash over you without straining your brain at all. Zero effort, just relaxation and fun. You will inevitably notice and understand a few words or phrases, and that percentage will increase as time goes on, but you’re not actively studying when you’re doing passive exposure. Remember the two things you’re trying to achieve with passive exposure: 1) effortless review/practice, by inevitably re-encountering some stuff you’ve already learned; 2) reminding your brain that this language is a real cool thing out there in the world, not just a boring chore located in a textbook.

But there are also two more extremely important benefits to passive exposure that are drastically neglected by most language-learners: 3) picking up the correct pronunciation and accent; 4) gaining an instinct for natural, native-sounding language.

These are two things you will not learn in a language class or from a textbook. You can’t learn them except by doing a LOT of listening and reading in your TL. But the good news is that it doesn’t need to be the “Active Learning” kind of reading and listening; it can absolutely be the “Passive Exposure” kind, and you will still pick this stuff up.

The most important thing, above all else, is to figure out a method of passive exposure that works for YOU personally. This means: do NOT force yourself to repeatedly do something that you don’t enjoy, because you won’t benefit from it. To pick the right method, think of your interests and the things you like to do in your free time: watching movies? reading books? listening to music? writing in your journal? surfing the internet? You can do any of this in your TL, too. Yes, you will encounter a lot of stuff you don’t understand at the beginning. But A) that’s good for you, it helps you learn patience, which every language-learner needs, and B) the internet has free translation tools everywhere you look.

COMBINING BOTH

Personally, I like to pick a well-respected textbook with accompanying audio (Assimil is my favorite; Teach Yourself and Colloquial can also be very good, especially the older editions; Linguaphone used to be fantastic but I’m not sure if it’s still around) and work my way through it, doing one lesson per day if possible. That takes only about 10 to 20 minutes, so that leaves a lot of time for passive exposure. My preferred method is listening to music (I learned a good 50% of my German from just obsessively listening to German pop music in high school), but here are some other things I like to do:

find an internet talk radio station in my TL and put it on in the background

same deal with a podcast

translate a few keywords related to my favorite hobbies/interests into the TL and then paste that text into YouTube and watch random videos in my TL

read a news article in English, and then find a news website in my TL and see if I can find an article about the same topic in that language

watch bad reality TV or soaps in my TL with no subtitles, just trying to guess what’s going on from context

etc.

No Duolingo. No Rosetta Stone. (I’ve written a whole post about the latter here.) You don’t need to spend any money at all, though if you e.g. use a pirated resource to learn and find that it really helps you, I strongly suggest buying it from the original producer after the fact, to say thank you.

MEMORIZATION

This is very much a “YMMV” piece of advice, but: if you’re having trouble memorizing stuff, just don’t. Don’t bother trying to remember anything. Remember that “passive exposure” bit? It does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of memory. If you keep bumping into the same word or phrase over and over again, you will incorporate it into your body of knowledge almost effortlessly. Of course this is easier with more common words that turn up again and again – but you’d be surprised how well you can get by, especially at the lower levels, with only the more common words!

Intentionally memorizing vocabulary can of course be very beneficial, so there’s nothing wrong with it. But I notice that it’s often one of the biggest pain points for language learners, and I believe language learning should be pain-free.

FROM INPUT TO OUTPUT

Once you’ve gotten a good grasp of the basics of the language, a really effective way to consolidate the knowledge you’ve gained is to use it actively and creatively yourself, in speech or writing (or ideally both!). For speaking practice, besides simply making friends who are native speakers of the language, you can search for a physical or virtual tandem. This is when you meet up with someone who’s a native speaker of your TL and is trying to learn your own language. You can meet for, say, an hour, and chat together for half an hour in your native language, and then half an hour in their native language. So both of you benefit!

Don’t underestimate talking to yourself, too. Whether it’s narrating your actions, complaining to your pet (okay, I guess that’s not technically “talking to yourself”), or simply having an imaginary conversation with someone else, it’s actually a good way to practice.

I also really enjoy writing in my journal in my target languages. The act of hand-writing a word does a lot to help me remember it. If you like writing, of course, you could also look up penpals who speak your TL.

And that’s about it. As always, I am more than willing to answer specific questions on language learning, as this is something of a specialty of mine and I absolutely love to help other folks get started on their own language-learning journeys. Please feel free to drop me a line if you need any concrete advice or are struggling with some aspect of your current language-learning efforts!

[neristudy]

Okay, I have finished the first week of my German b2 course!

The good:

Our new Lehrerin deliberately pulls us to talk all the time, encourages class work, and doesn't scold us for mistakes. Even when in course b2 one fool forgot how the word können is declined... Yeah it was me. I really don't know why, it just escaped me mind. She didn't laugh and helped me trought it.

Most of the class is also Ukrainian - but many of them also try, including at recess, to speak German.

The class isn't very noisy, which helps.

The bad:

The five-day school week is a joke and my brains are a puddle.

It's really hot in the classroom.

I spent most of the week sitting with a woman who was constantly yanking me and asking me (INCLUDING TIME WHEN OUR LEHRERIN WAS EXPLAINING THE GODDAMN ASSIGNMENT) about "what we should do", and "when we should do it", and "how we should do it", and everything like that....

And I can hear you saying - oh Neri, don't berate her, it's okay to misunderstand sometimes. But no.

She didn't ask because she didn't understand the assignment and wanted to do it herself. She was asking because she needed to type the assignment fully in Ukrainian into chat gpt, ask chat gpt to do it for her, and then ask chat gpt to translate everything into German for her.

She didn't tried to do things herself ONCE.

Luckily, she switched places with another person who is mostly just quiet and sticks to their phone. The perfect desk mate.

It will be interesting, that's for sure.

[neristudy]

Tomorrow starts my German b2 course which will run until November. That's kind of a good thing.

We'll be studying five days a week instead of four like the previous one. That's bad. Very bad.

I don't know if I'm alone in this, but seriously? Four days is too much. It's a lot. Five days? It's a mockery. How do you even function with something like that?

Ugh.