#aspiring polyglot

[mireya44]

god I love to meet people with different cultural backgrounds so much and it feels so good to explore their cultures and customs which makes me wanting to learn a language they speak so bad especially as a someone who is in love with language learning

[m4rmaladet0ast]

underrated language learning tip: listen to asmr in your target language! (if that sorta thing doesn't give you the creeps) I find asmr is usually very easy to understand, with lots of repetition, and lots of over explaining. (plus it's super relaxing if studying is stressing you out!)

[sakorispolyglot]

Self-Learning Troubles

I have for a long time had troubles with learning languages by myself. I was doing Duolingo courses for German and the way I was doing them probably contributed to how I was able to maximize my time learning and also maximize my recall afterwards. Back in 2019, I was doing a tech internship and when I would go on my lovely state-mandated breaks (oh how I miss them now that I've moved to a state that doesn't have them), I would take the time to do some German Duolingo lessons (this was before the re-tool to make it more like the CEFR scale, obviously, if that makes a difference; I don't believe it would but this is an aside just for your information; I have digressed, anyway...). Of course, my life has much less structure now than it did then (plus those breaks at work are now non-existence because different state laws so), so I don't think I'd be able to do something similar.

I have since tried to just be a sponge for the languages that I'm learning. Listening to music in the language, attempting to read things in the language, and continuing to say to myself that I'll make a goalpost of trying to take a certification exam for the language that I would then have to study for and eventually hope to pass. I've been looking at said exam for German for a while now, so you can guess how that has gone.

My ADHD and other relevant neurodivergencies make it difficult for me to learn things the normal way, and I don't think there's a way to replicate the way I learned ASL (where I would often watch interpreters and listen to what was being interpreted and attempt to pick up on signs; I have actually attempted to look into this, although the answers that I got were basically "you could try to do it, but I doubt you'll get good results out of it"). Another reason that would be difficult is that I took a class for ASL where we were only allowed to use ASL during lecture hours. That added on the pressure of being graded and since I graduated university two years ago, that definitely won't work.

Tbh I don't know why I decided to write this post. I'd love to be able to study languages daily and make some kind of routine where I could sit down (or probably more accurately, carve time out of my busy work schedule) and practice/learn the languages I'm learning at the time. I feel like I haven't found the right method for me. It's waiting out there somewhere, and I just have to find it. All of the conventional methods haven't worked for me as of yet, so I guess I keep searching.

This is a jumble of word salad, and if you'd like to add a proverbial salad dressing to help me out, feel free. Or don't; this is the free internet, and I have no say in what you do with it.

[peridotglimmer]

Had a big "whyyy do I promise to do these kinds of things??" moment today, when I realised that suggesting having a peace week celebration in town but not inviting the 150 Ukrainian refugees that live here is a bit weird and that I would post a Ukrainian invitation on the church's Facebook page, means that I actually had to write, said invitation.

Belle, you speak Russian (barely). Not Ukrainian.

(Pretty sure the post is correct; as far as I can judge it anyway. It should be legible at the very least.)

[willinskiasinwill]

I feel so genuinely sad when i see a text on Tumblr in a language I don't understand. Like that may be a priceless piece of thought and i just what? Can't place silly letters together? Damn.

[battlescarsh]

langblr introduction post !

hello everyone !

my name is bani, I've always wanted to be a polyglot, but only recently started working on it.

(I don't study many hours a day, nor am I willing to pay to learn too, I'm kinda casually learning.)

finally, the languages i'm learning are:

🇰🇷 - mainly bcuz of kpop n kdramas, but I also really like the writing system. I can read hangeul and have a small vocab, I'm currently learning grammar. (my Korean name is 이 지원).

🇹🇭 - i wasn't going to take it seriously but idk I got really into it recently lol, i also really like abugidas so... I'm still getting used to it's intonation, and I'm also learning the "alphabet". (ist tonal languages will kill me someday).

🇨🇳 - i like it because the grammar is simple, but I'm still kindergarten level lol. (my chinese name is 王晶 - I'm not sure if this name makes sense or sounds natural so I will happily take advice and constructive criticism !)

~

langs that I wanna learn but ain't studying rn:

🇫🇷, 🇻🇳, 🇷🇴, 🇷🇺 and 🇪🇸

also, i already know 🇧🇷 (natively) and 🇺🇲.

[nell-is-cold]

sometimes i wonder if i will get bored of grammar when learning a language but then i go and do an exercise with a transcript and some of these stories are wild. i just sat down to do some preposition practise in German and suddenly i’m reading about a guy taking advantage of stranger’s pity for his disabled parents so that he can eat out regularly without paying.

[willinskiasinwill]

you can start with any language that is historically related to English (ex: French or German), it will be much easier then strating from scratch, like youd have to do with Japaneese, Arabic etc.

It will be difficult nonetheless, though. The point is: Japaneese will be difficult from start to finish, but for example studying German will become challenging when you get to cases/word forming/word order.

I already achieved C1 in my target language, the next aim for me is German!! I also really need to shake the dust off of my Polish vocab, and at least try to keep it A2. But for now yeah, German!

Although, i find my subjects of studies too Eurocentric. I barely know anything about middle-eastern or central Asian culture and languages, even the heritage of Indigenous people of Canada where i currently live is very vague to me. I'd love to pick travel even further, and so study languages from somewhere thats not Europe lol.

i want to learn a language but idk which,, i have interest in german, turkish, japanese, etc. but they all seem really difficult for english native speakers. any advice? any recommendations for fun languages? ramble about your target language in the replies!

[geekyglot]

I have finally reached Diamond League after the app telling me for two lessons that I was still in Obsidian. It's been a roller coaster tonight.

[mireya44]

live laugh love language learning

[m4rmaladet0ast]

so, I'm not really sure how many people this might help, but I just HAD to talk about this because it's amazing. there's this book called "Stories from Welsh History for Standard III" by Owen Morgan Edwards. not sure about apple books??? idk what iphone uses lol, but on google books, it's free (at least in canada). it's a great book in my opinion, with interesting, simple stories with the translation in English on the next page. it has some key vocabulary at the top of each story in case you get stuck. really good resource, hope it helps!

[millylouedward]

1.9.24 - feeling like i’m literally in the show community bc i’m taking spanish 1 at community college starting today. i haven’t been a student in years and i’m excited to be back in the classroom. let’s all manifest that i do well so i can become the hot polyglot i aspire to be

[amourdeslangues]

at times, being an aspiring polyglot and learning a lot of languages means broadening my horizons. unlocking new perspectives. gaining more and more knowledge.

and sometimes, it just means being illiterate in four languages instead of just one

[benkyoutobentou]

How to study languages without studying

Whether you're just starting out and have had bad experiences with textbook learning in the past or are getting burnt out from prepping for the next proficiency test, it's never a bad idea to put the textbooks away for a time and just enjoy your target language. If you're new to the world of immersion, here are a few ways to get you started.

Follow along with the lyrics of a song. Spotify's not-so-new-anymore lyrics feature is great for this, especially since it has timed lyrics, but it doesn't have every song.

Expert mode: Write out the lyrics and underline/highlight/make note of all the words and grammar structures you don't know. Learn these unknowns until you can understand the whole song!

Extra challenge: Translate a song from your target language. I usually tend to stay away from translations in my study, but for those of you who aspire to be translators (or already are!), the poetic nature of song lyrics can be a fun challenge.

Watch a show or movie. Netflix has now introduced a feature where you can sort by language! If there's nothing made in your language that you're interested in, it also gives the option to sort by shows and movies that have the audio or subtitles available. Internet Archive also tends to have lots of foreign films that I'm looking for.

Easy mode: Watch with English or your native language subtitles. When doing this, try to still listen to what's being said and pick up on words and phrases that you know, or match new words with their translation in the subtitles. Note: reading one language and listening to another is a skill in and of itself! Don't be discouraged if you can't do both at the same time yet, you're brain is still making the connections in intonation and cadence of the language.

Hard mode: Watch with captions in your target language. This helps you connect listening and reading, especially in languages where the spelling isn't exactly phonetic, or it uses a different alphabet than what you're used to.

Expert mode: No captions or subtitles! But who knows, maybe you're better at listening comprehension than I am. Make sure you're getting comprehensible input here; some shows and movies are much harder than others. But above all else, watch what keeps your interest. A movie where you can catch half the dialogue but is super engaging is better for you than an "easy" movie that you're going to spend your time ignoring.

Polyglot mode?: Watch something in your target language with subtitles in a different target language. This adds just one too many layers of obfuscation for me, but if you're into the challenge, more power to you.

Watch YouTube. You can change your language preference on YouTube, and with that, the Explore section will give you recommendations in your target language. Going into the trending tab with your target language can give you a good idea about what people are interested in in the countries where your target language is spoken.

Read something. It can be a book, it can be a comic. There are plenty of webcomics out there in a number of languages! There's also probably an English language listicle with recommendations of easier to understand webcomics for learners, too.

If you're just getting started in immersion, you can choose whether you focus on intensive reading or extensive reading (this actually goes for all kinds of immersion, but is easiest to control with reading since it happens at your own pace). Intensive reading is reading with the goal of understanding everything 100%. If you don't understand a word, or a grammar point, or the reading of a character, look it up. Extensive reading is reading just to get the gist of things. Look up words and grammar points only if they stop you from understanding the general meaning of the sentence or section. And of course, the more you immerse, the less you'll have to look things up, but remember that difficulty varies between materials, even within books of the same age range, genre, and medium.

A small digression: If you decide that you never want to open a textbook on your language learning journey, more power to you! It can be done and I know people who have gotten to proficient levels of their target language without textbooks. If you want this to be you, extensive immersion is your best friend. You also might want to get comfortable with the flashcard program anki, because, if this is your goal, all those unknown grammar points and words will probably end up there. But at the end of the day, language learning is an intensely personal journey, and what works for others won't necessarily work for you. Finding what works for you is just part of learning a language.

Play a game. Lots of games are region locked (hint: Pokemon Sun/Moon isn't! If you start a new game, you can choose which language you want to play it in), but there are plenty of free online games still lurking in the corners of the internet. With a bit of googling, you can probably find something in your target language. Just the other day, I went out to find one of those hidden item games in Japanese and ended up finding an entire site dedicated to user made browser games.

If you're learning Japanese or Korean, picrew might be fun to look through as well. I noticed that plenty of picrews have basic anatomy vocabulary. I'm not super familiar with picrew myself, but the ones I've seen tend to be in Korean and Japanese

And lastly, don't fully give up on textbooks before trying them out. Don't be discouraged if textbooks truly aren't your thing, but studying a language on your own time can feel much different than studying for school. Don't put too much pressure on yourself and just have fun with your language. Additionally, if you'd rather learn in a video format, many languages have full courses uploaded to YouTube for you to try. Finding these can be difficult for some languages though, so don't hesitate to reach out to other learners and see what they recommend!

Got your materials ready? Great! Now go forth and immerse!

[achillessulks]

I've read your 'guide' on how to read faster, but I have a few questions of my own, if you would have the time to answer, please! And thank you, in advance, should you do it.

So sorry if you have answered any of these beforehand.

How many languages do you speak, exactly? I've seen you write in korean, english and french, but I assume there's at least another two? Also- do you have any tips on learning languages faster? I am currently learning french and russian, although they come a little easy to me since my mother tongue in romanian, and I live in a very russian-populated area.

And, what did you study in university, if you attended? I'm assuming something to do with classic literature and/or linguistics?

Thank you again if you've read all this :3 Have a good night, or day!!

Hi, I’d be glad to answer those questions!

How many languages do I speak, actually?

Well, I usually say I’m only functionally bilingual, because I’m only comfortable in French and English. And I’m better at reading and listening than I am speaking (as is the usual situation). I also know Arabic (Jordanian and MSA), on paper, but I’m very out of practice.

I can read and understand most Romance languages thanks to having studied Latin, but I’m best at Italian and Occitan. I know German and Russian pretty well, mostly due to having German- and Russian-speaking friends. I studied Korean for several years, but my knowledge of Chinese is entirely self-taught, and any understanding of Japanese I have is from knowing kanji (as hanzi) and knowing how translation works in general. I studied Ancient Greek for an embarrassingly long time. Technically my first word (‘more’) was in sign language!

Tips on learning languages faster:

This is an impossible question, really, because linguistic comprehension is so inevitably individual. Vocabulary flashcards might work for some people; for others (myself included) they’re useless. The uncomfortable truth about language acquisition is that there’s no ‘secret’ to it, no ‘cheat code’ or ‘one weird trick’ to make it quick and easy. It’s hard, grueling, thankless work. It’s also the best and coolest thing in the world, in my opinion, but it’s not something that can be ‘hacked.’ That said, here are some things that have helped me.

Study the linguistics and grammar of your target language’s family. Knowing how to construct a sentence will be much more useful than having a wide vocabulary; you can always talk around a specific word (‘you know, that thing that you use for doing this?’ etc.), but if you don’t know how to ask for clarification, you’re screwed.

Do as much total immersion as possible. Spending time around normal people who are normally speaking your TL will do more to improve your comprehension than almost anything. Make like a little baby who doesn’t know anything.

Read a dictionary in your TL. This will help flip the switch from mentally ‘translating’ (SL -> TL) everything to defining terms in the TL: e.g., instead of thinking of ‘cauchemar’ as ‘coșmar’ but in French, think of ‘cauchemar’ as ‘rêve pénible dont l’élément dominant est l’angoisse’ (for example).

Listen to music in your TL. Any media will be helpful (movies, TV, radio, podcasts, etc.), but music works the best. Listening to an album or podcast while you sleep is good, if you’re the kind of person who does that. (Personal anecdote: I remember one time when I had a dream entirely in Korean, including with words that I didn’t consciously know, and then when I woke up I just knew those words. Human consciousness is weird.)

Keep in mind that your brain can only absorb and process new information at a certain pace; trying to force it to go faster is only going to slow it down. If I could impart one single piece of advice on aspiring polyglots, it would be to spend as much time as possible immersing yourself in your target language, both listening and speaking.

In general, however, as I said, there isn’t really a way to ‘skip the queue’ when it comes to learning a language. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

What I studied in university:

I studied a very generic ‘classics’ degree, but my specific area of expertise was ‘Euripidean and later interpretations of Homeric canon’ (to paraphrase a very elaborate dissertation title). Functionally this meant that I read a lot of Euripides and Homer and complained about how different scholars throughout history have misinterpreted their corpora. I also did a lot of courses on translation studies. Often it surprises people to learn that I never specifically studied literature or creative writing; I come by that naturally (reading ridiculous amounts of books whenever possible).

Hopefully this all has been at least somewhat helpful/informative, and as always let me know if you have any other questions!

[nell-is-cold]

i never thought that i would find any positive to the shitshow that is language lessons in english schools yet here i am, thanking school for teaching me a basis of german before i started teaching myself german because i have just started learning welsh with no prior knowledge of the language and it is ridiculously difficult. i started with no prior vocabulary, no idea of how similar the grammar is to english, barely ever heard it being spoken before and practically no knowledge of its phonetics. this is probably the hardest thing i’ve ever learnt and i can barely introduce myself.