#target language

[nenelonomh]

español resources

- better than duolingo lesson platform; exam style questions - tongue twisters in spanish - best spanish homepage (it has everything) - spanish tutors - quite costly - translation of 'silly phrases' - basic spanish 1 - basic spanish 2 - basic spanish 3 - coffee break spanish (youtube) -foreign service institute basic spanish - foreign service institute programmatic spanish -foreign service institute headstart for spain - foreign service institute headstart for latin america

[onigiriforears]

Seitokai Book Club Master List

Hi!

Sometimes, life gets the best of me and I'm not able to make my usual announcement post on here about what the current Seitokai book club read is. However, I do actually update it on the master Google Doc (links to associated vocab lists included), my Natively profile, and on the Seitokai instagram. These include the books from the start of the club in 2022 until present day.

If you're not particularly interested in the vocab lists or you hate accessing Google Docs bc it takes up Google Drive space, you can also see it on THIS NATIVELY LIST.

Or if you're thinking "ALL OF THOSE OPTIONS SUCK, I'M NOT LEAVING TUMBLR!," fair enough, I can't argue with that. You can always DM me, send an ask, or even @tokidokitokyo might make a post about it as well.

[thatsuncleharrytoyouyoungman]

i love the term target language like yh i'm going to get (fluent in) you (:

[german-enthusiast]

what is your target language? :)

Spanish and French!

I know a good deal of french but am quite at that intermediate plateau of i can understand fine enough with enough time but producing writing or speaking?? hahahahelp but in August I'll probably be spending a couple weeks immersing myself in the south of France!

Spanish I just started out and am struggling to find the time for. I have a venezuelan friend who's helping me but I'm at that weird struggle of "i know lots of and about romance languages and can understand a bunch but barely have any vocab or grammar to produce with" :')

[359midnightburgers]

pro tip: if you use your vpn to go to the country of your target language, youtube ads just become little language practice exercises.

[lameravigliadoro]

my langblr introduction! hallo!!

age : 22 yo stress ball

name : klara (you can call me klar)

pronouns : she/them

my target language during the 2023 summer : german

languages i know : italian (advanced), chinese (beginner to intermediate, french (native), english (fluent) (i hope)

centres of interest : linguistics, politics, impressionism, arts and crafts, cinema, queer history

i'll post my german journey as much as possible. i'm going to live for at last one year in germany, so i need to get back to german and get better at german. like a lot of french high schoolers, i studied german as part of the compulsory course but did not actually enjoy it nor did i learn anything from it. so the main goal here is to reunite with my inner teenager and make peace with them ⁀➷

what i like to do when studying languages is journaling/writting in TL, revising lists of vocab and going through the grammar points one by one.

then, i'll look for podcasts in german and youtubers, radio broadcasts, free online newspapers and TV series so that i can practice my listening comprehension.

anyway, don't hesitate to interact, and if we share a common TL/language, get in touch, i love to make friends and getting to know more abt this world <33 also i don't wanna let my italian die, quindi raga, parlami in italiano!

see you soon! a presto, tschüss!ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

[beneath-thestyx]

heya!

I'm a Brazilian who's trying to learn German and obviously talking to ppl in that language will help so

does anyone who speaks German wants to be my friend and also give me some tips? 👀

[asluffyy]

Ciao !! We’re finally on day 4! I had time today at work and I asked myself what my vocabulary list should be about ? So I searched for themes, the one that came first was “things in my room”. I find it very interesting to list everything that was in my room but finally I decided, the first, more obvious, was… Hotel lexical field !!! I am now working for 4 months in a hotel with people I love and I think this was actually a good everyday idea for proper communication with customers. I actually believe this is a good idea for people who want to book rooms, even if there is a problem with something, you will always have these words next to you. My native language is French and I know a lot of people are learning it so I decided to do a three version of this vocabulary; one in Italian, one in English and also one in French. if you think i made mistakes or if you think we can say anything else for some words, don't hesitate to say it ! <3

🇮🇹🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇫🇷

L’albergo - Hotel - L’hôtel

Il bagno - Bath/bathroom - salle de bain

La doccia - Shower - La douche

Il parkeggio - Parking - Le parking

Il frigobar - Minibar - Le minibar

La camera singola - Single room - La chambre simple

(we actually often using these english words in french)

La doppia - Twin - La double/Chambre avec deux lits simples

La camera matrimoniale - Double room - La chambre double

La coperta - Blanket - La couverture

Il letto - Bed - Le lit

Il cuscino - pillow - Le coussin

Il portacenere - Ashtray - Le cendrier

La sedia - Chair - La chaise

L’armadio - Wardrobe - L’armoire

La lampada - Lamp - La lampe

La vaglia - Suitcase - La valise

L’asciugacapelli - Hairdryer - Le sèche-cheveux

La saponetta - Bar of soap - La savonnette

Il sapone - Soap - Le savon

Il tavolo - Table - La table

La carta igienica - Toilet paper - Le papier toilettes

L’asciugamano - Towel - La serviette

Il termosifone - Radiator - Le radiateur

La lavatrice - Washing machine - La machine à laver

Il televisore - Television - La télévision

La campana - Countryside - La campagne

L’aria condizionata - Air-conditioning - L’air conditionné

Il quartiere - quarter/district - Le quartier

La colazione - Breakfast - Le petit déjeuner

Il garage - Garage - Le garage

La vacanza - Holiday - Les vacances

If you love this, I will try to make it again for other subjects !

[acrowseye]

i'm conducting an experiment. everyone who's from an english speaking country state your country, regional area and what you call the following images. i need to see something

[lexaprolexicon]

Working on creating an Anki deck for my Korean studies at the moment instead of working on my actual class homework. I just don't feel like creating a marketing budget at the moment and writing a six page paper. It's due tonight, but I trust my ability to do it this afternoon all in one go. 🫶🏻

[nenelonomh]

en españa

[onigiriforears]

Sept. 2024 Seitokai NOVEL Book Club | 君は月夜に光り輝く

Starting in Sept. 2024, the Seitokai Book Club is splitting into two (2)--a manga book club and a novel book club. We've decided to do this to better service our members.

After a tough vote and a tie-breaker, our inaugural Japanese Novel read for Sept. 2024 is 君は月夜に光り輝く. This book follows two classmates, one of which is diagnosed with a terminal illness that causes her skin to glow under the moonlight. She glows brighter as her time of death nears. This book has currently been graded at an upper intermediate/N2 level on Natively.

Come join us in the discord server! We can't wait to see you.

Get some more info below:

What if I've never read a book in Japanese yet? I'm not confident in my skills. That's fine! Not only do we ALWAYS have a group vocab sheet that we collectively (and anonymously) add to, but we have ongoing discussions about whatever book we're reading. That means you're free to ask questions, send screenshots, rant about a character or anything like that. You'll definitely find me asking about certain grammar points or if using a particular set of kanji for a word changes the nuance in a particular sentence.

What's the goal of your bookclub? Well, we're interested in fostering confidence in reading in your target language without feeling that you have no one to turn to. Our server has people of all levels of fluency, meaning that there's always someone who can answer your question. And if we can't, we have people we can reach out to ask. We won't leave you hanging!

You don't seem to choose books I'm interested in--how can I change that? Well, we take suggestions and vote as a bookclub for what we'll be reading next. If your book doesn't win the first time you submit it, try try again! A lot of our books have been suggested more than once before finally winning. Don't be discouraged! And now that we have two Japanese book clubs, you don't have to worry about your novel suggestions competing against manga suggestions.

I can't afford a copy of the book. Message me on here, discord, or instagram. Or send a message in the bookclub channel of the server saying that you need a copy. Someone will help. We're aware that Japanese learning resources are not available or readily accessible in multiple areas around the world. We all want to help each other thrive at meet out target language goals.

More questions that I didn't answer here? Message me on here, discord, or instagram! Or @tokidokitokyo!

Hope to see you there! Server | Studygram | Server Instagram

You might see some familiar names from tumblr in the server 😉🤗 We don't bite and you can watch in live time as we scream in agony over book characters, obscure kanji, and plot holes in any given book that we're reading.

[starry-songs-canvas]

All Plans Fly Out the Window

There’ve been quite a few long lost twins Damian and Danny meeting at galas, right? All very cute, happy, relaxed, etc.. Well what if we add a little twist?

——————————————————

Vlad Masters.

A very suspicious figure that only in the last few years rose to wealth and power from almost thin air. Companies that were doing decent simply handing over the keys. No court has ever been able to prove foul play, all judges siding with Masters even when counter mind control measures were in place.

Any evidence or stories implicating Masters were either retracted or removed with great speed.

Bruce did not want another Lex Luther to deal with, and yet he first needs evidence. All of his computers were tightly secured with little connection to the Internet, and the ones that were refusing to be hacked. (“It’s almost as if it’s… alive, B.”)

Therefore, while risky, a more hands-on approach was needed.

Tim and Bruce were to stay in the spotlight, keep Masters eyes on them. While Damian would sneak away and snoop under the pretense of, “being bored”.

However, all of this went out the window when Masters introduced his godson, Daniel Fenton who when shaking their hands said in the League of Assassins dialect in a pleasant tone,

“What the **** are you doing here?”

[blindbisexualgoose]

That moment when you’ve stayed up until 3 am and just read the most earth shattering, heartbreaking, sob worthy chapter of a fanfic and have to wake up in a few hours and do things and carry on like your entire fucking worldview hasn’t been reshaped by a stranger’s writing about two fictional gay dudes

[primal-con]

Wanted to draw robots again so I’m going back to my roots

[meichenxi]

Language learning: slow learning versus toxic productivity

Or: the process in crisis

Five years ago, all of the productivity advice I read (and gave out) as a successful self-learner of many different languages had one basic premise: that I was not doing enough, and that I could always be doing more.

Several burnouts later, running headlong from one mental illness into another, I'd like to invite you to entertain the exact opposite idea: there is a limit to what you can do. I have run face-first into mine on multiple occasions, and burnt out. At many points I've stopped learning the language at all. Most importantly, I've learnt to be distrustful of the very premise that all of the so-called productivity or optimisation advice is based on.

More is not always more.

Listen to a podcast in the target language whilst you exercise. Exercise to give yourself more energy to learn your target language. Talk to yourself in the shower in your target language. Do Anki whilst eating breakfast. Listen to Glossika whilst walking to work. Change your phone settings to your target language. Bullet journal. Manage your time. Make friends in your target language. Control your time. Write a diary. There's always enough time. These are all things I have done myself and recommended others do, to increase exposure to the language, to increase productivity.

Productivity? What productivity? What, exactly, is it that we are producing? I am producing sentences and words but - for who? Who is listening? Nobody's here, in my room, at 7am on a Sunday. If productivity were just speaking or writing, I'd be productive in my native language too, by virtue of speaking out loud. Or conversely, in language learning circles, should we measure it in terms of input? How many hours did you spend listening to Chinese yesterday? What about today? Is there anything you do in your life, in your daily life, that you could optimise? You're wasting time. There's time here, for those that want it. If you want to get ahead, to be successful, to be a good language learner, you have to know how to use that time. Go online, and debate over which tools are the best; watch your videos. What exactly is it that is being produced?

Productivity is a measuring tool for concrete output: the productivity of a field means how much crop it can yield per harvest. The productivity of a factory is how many mobile phone chargers it can bring to market per year. There are direct and measurable ways to increase this sort of productivity. But what is productivity when it comes to knowledge work? Cal Newport's work, The Minimalists, Essentialism: they all run into the same problem, which is that nobody seems to know what 'productivity' for knowledge workers means at all. You can look at a factory line and see which parts need greasing up, figuratively or literally: it is very difficult, on the other hand, to look at the work of a self-contained writer and tell her where she is going 'wrong'. (And by 'wrong', I mean - slow.) And language learning is an even more particular subset of that particular subset of work.

You could judge a novelists' productivity two ways: by the 'busyness' of her daily writing routine, or the amount of novels she produces. But what exactly is being produced when we learn a language? What is the end product?

In some ways, language learning as a hobby is even more playful than traditionally thought of arts and crafts. (By 'play' I mean something which is done for its own sake, and which is pleasurable, and which may yield next to no monetary reward.) We might think of the poet as sitting on a tree and dangling his feet in the river, a vision of artful indolence, but at the end of the day there is output - a poem. A knitter has a jumper. A potter has a pot. But language learning doesn't follow this [work] + [time] = [tangible output] structure. We can't even use the second metric of 'productivity' to measure it at all. Something is being done, of course - I can learn to speak Greek, and speak it markedly better after two months than one - but my point is you can't look at a day's work and say, this is exactly how much I learnt. Learning is not memorisation in the short term - it's receiving input, and practicing how to wield and use a structure. It doesn't happen over the course of a ten-minute podcast.

Learning happens - encoding happens - when the brain is doing other things. In other words, much like every creative process, you need downtime. You need rest, and sleep, and fun, and brightness and joy in your life. You might 'remember' a bunch of words on Anki, but you need to sleep before you can review them again: that's the whole point.

There is a much wider problem here, a culture of goals and optimising your life and glowing up, and to be honest, I find it disturbing. I think that for a very long time my language learning metrics were a stand-in, a relic, for the kinds of unhealthy and obsessively perfectionist thinking that gave me an eating disorder. How many of us truly believe - genuinely, with every inch of our heart - that we are better people if we 'better' ourselves? Learn more. Exercise more. Study more. How do you feel about yourself at the end of a day, exhausted, because you've completed day 75/100? Do you feel better about yourself because you've achieved? I'm guessing that you do.

For many people - including for myself - this wider culture has spilled over into their hobbies. Hobbies like language learning in particular are a target for this because they are so easily quantifiable - and we are encouraged, if we want to succeed, to quantify them. How else will we know how to improve?

Over the last few years, after burning out, after living off grid and without wifi and doing extreme minimalism and a lot of other lifestyle experiments to try and understand why modern life is so fucking hard, it's become clear that most systems of 'productivity' measure 'optimisation' by getting the most done in a day, but they don't stop to question whether you should be doing those things at all.

They don't stop to ask: what matters? They don't stop to ask: why am I trying to write a novel, finish my dissertation, pursue a romantic relationship, get healthy, learn ice-skating, learn to cook, look after my aging parents, and learn guitar at the same time? They don't ask: how do I prioritise, and where do I find silence? They ask: how do I cram more time in the day? They don't ask: how do I slow time down? They don't ask: how can I know what matters, if I never give myself space to think?

In other words: 'productivity' in language learning is measured by 'busy-work', by how much you can see from the surface.

You can't measure how well the learning is going, exactly, but you can measure how many hours a day you show up and grind. Whether or not that struggle is the best use of your time, or whether you're spending the time on things that will truly bring you value and quality, is a different question altogether.

And it's not one most 'productivity culture' will ever ask.

There will be things in your language learning journey that, to borrow from self-help terminology, no longer serve you. Habits and relics and resources and mindsets that worked for you once, or no longer did. Those books that are too advanced that you feel like you 'should' be able to read. That textbook that's been sitting beside your bed for a year. That habit of scrolling social media in your target language that was helpful when you were at a more intermediate level, but does little for you now that you're advanced.

Take stock of these. Simplify. Do less, but do it better. Productivity culture never stops to ask: what can I do without? It always asks, instead: how can I do more? But maybe - just maybe - the way to do more is to focus on fewer things, but do them well.

Multi-tasking isn't multi-tasking, but switching quickly between different focuses of attention. The average American owns 300,000 things, and watches television for 4-5 hours a day. On average, if you are distracted, it takes you 20 minutes to reach the same level of deep focus: but the average American office worker opens an email within six seconds of receiving it. Are you any better with your phone? How much time do you spend there? If you meditate, that's wonderful, but do you have any time to let yourself think? To walk and to understand how to feel? I don't want to sound like a boomer, but: can you name the birds? Do you live in a place, not just a room?

Stop trying to be 'productive'. Do less. Do it well.

I am now facing a wall in my learning of Chinese, and I'm still not sure how to get around it. The reason for this is because so much of the advice I gave others around language learning, and so much of the advice I found online, is focused on this sort of optimisation. But I no longer want to be listening to something, to be watching something, every second of every day. I have a partner to love and a house to appreciate and I want to spend time, humming and pleasant, alone with my thoughts, and it's summer, dear diary, and I don't want to stay indoors. Routines can keep you afloat, but they can also drown you. Do something different. Do something new. Do something that is not productive, that produces nothing, idle away, walk to work without music and perhaps when you sit down to your language learning that evening, you'll be filled with a renewed vigour and love for it. Do it because you love it, not because you scheduled it in your calendar.

A lesson, related, from my martial arts teacher. He said:

If you are tired, do not train. If you do not train, rest. 'Rest' does not mean go on your phone.

The same principle applies here. If you are tired of learning, which you may well be, rest. Not going on your phone, not watching Netflix. I mean taking a walk and sitting under the tree and looking at the patterning of the sky. I mean lying with your dog and absently scratching his tummy. If you're tired, and you have the luxury to stop - stop. Let yourself be tired. Don't drink caffeine. Sleep.

Last year, I was able to write 340,000 words of fiction because I focused on one thing: writing my book. Apart from things that I literally needed to do to survive and maintain my health and relationships around me, I didn't set a single other to-do. My daily list looked like: write for three hours. Not a word limit. Not exercise, though I ended up doing that, not learning a language. I imagine that if I had tried to focus on Chinese at the same time that I wouldn't have achieved anywhere near half the result. I still learnt Chinese, a very decent amount - I went to China and Taiwan for three months in total! - but I did it because I wanted to, of a whim, on a Sunday, something fun. It wasn't a must, or anything I was forcing myself to do. Many days I didn't do any Chinese at all. It was so immensely freeing to be able to think, at 11am: I'm finished for today. Even when I was at work, because I knew I was just there to pay the rent, I felt serene. Stressed on a day-to-day level, certainly, because all work is stressful, but - there wasn't any striving. I just did the best I could. And that was enough.

I am writing this, now, as I come out of my first ever information-overload burnout. I've burnt out, but I've never experienced one of these before: even looking at a book, at a phone, physically hurt my eyes. I couldn't bear to listen to people speak and would lock myself away in my room. I physically felt I could not talk, and had to take extensive time off work. Even looking at a pen and a blank page was too much; listening to podcasts was too much; reading the instructions for dinner was too much too. The only way I could heal was by doing absolutely nothing at all. That period shocked me deeply, because it showed me how absolutely dependent I was on having some input of information all of the time. No wonder I was tired.

I know, now, that there are lots of movements built around this same idea, by frustrated learners all over the world: the growing realisation that metrics and Excel and polylogger and tracking tracking tracking can't be the only way to learn. That a list of the number of books you've read in one year is hardly indicative of how well you understood those books, and what you learned from them. You've read 20 books this year already - good job. When do you think about them? What time do you spend on reflection? Why did you choose those books? Which chapters, and which characters, hit you the hardest? Why?

Minimalism, deep work, 'monk mode', essentialism, every writer's dream to run away and write in a cabin in the woods, slow learning, Buddhism, Stoicism, Marie Kondo-ism, the art of less, project 333, my no-buy-year, slow fashion, slow food, slow travel:

What all of these philosophies have in common is the idea that doing things deliberately ('mindfully') means 1) doing things slowly, 2) doing things well, and 3) doing things one at a time.

I am now at a place in my life where I understand the value of time alone with my thoughts. I don't want to listen to podcasts every minute of the waking day, because I need time to think about them. I need time to let the ideas for my novel grow in the dark. Nothing can be heard in noise; so make space for silence. I am a member of the real, living, breathing world, and that means I cannot devote 8 hours a day to Chinese television shows like I could when I was 20. I have to call my father. I have to do the dishes. I want to flex my creative muscles in other ways. Alternatively - I no longer believe that my worth is tied up inherently with how well I do my hobbies.

You're just some guy. There's freedom in that. You, my friend - you suck <3

Let yourself be bad. Let yourself be mediocre. Let yourself 'slide backwards' or regress, because all that means is that you're putting focus somewhere else. It'll come back. It always does.

I'm no longer comfortable, therefore, with the way that the language learning community tackles productivity. Please don't misunderstand; a lot of us have time spare that we could use to do things 'better' for us. I know. But I just believe now that getting rid of things, like the time you spend on your phone, is going to be more helpful in the long run than trying to force yourself into some gruelling, achievement-centric regime that collapses from within after two months of struggle and self-flagellation.

The other realisation I have had is just how much happier I am spending more time being alive, really alive, and less time in front of a screen. For a language like German or Gaelic that's much easier, because you can study with books, but with Chinese you always have to study to some extent with audios, flashcards, computers. Especially if - like me - you can read novels without a dictionary, but cannot handwrite even your Chinese name. So where next?

I don't have any answers. I'm not sure how to pair the two things together, to be honest, because almost all of my language learning has traditionally made use of technology. It's all been goal-orientated, systems-orientated, and despite the fact that I've failed at using these systems every day for years, despite the fact that Anki has NEVER worked for me, despite the fact that I have spent hundreds if not thousands of pounds on courses here, there, a wealth of overwhelm and five thousand words saved on Pleco, did I read that right? Five thousand. No wonder I'm stressed.

Regardless of happiness, it's much easier to achieve a state of deep focus and work when you're not online. After my period of information burnout, I feel actual physical pain from the weight of choices online. It's exhausting. I'm watching a Chinese show, but I want to go on tumblr. I'm on tumblr, but I feel guilty for not watching the Chinese show. I'm constantly torn between doing this and that, never fully committing to anything, seeing a post by Lindie Botes and thinking, damn, she's good. I should be better. But I don't want to compare myself to her. Do you know what? She is good. I admire her immensely. But I don't want to judge my self-worth by some imagined scale of productivity anymore - and, the more time passes, the more I'm not sure what 'productivity' in the context of language learning even means.

Try slow, focused, deep learning. You might just find it works.

There's something refreshing, almost counter-cultural, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, anti-rat-race, about this thought. Slow learning. I think there's an answer here, somewhere. It's a problem I've been dancing around for a while; and do you remember how you learnt your first foreign language? For me, it was on the floor, absolutely absorbed in German comic books, flicking through the dictionary furiously and scribbling things down in a notebook. I only had one book, and one dictionary, and one grammar book. I want to go back to that sort of simplicity. There was joy in that.

One again: I don't have any answers. I don't know exactly what direction this blog is going to go in, as I wrestle with these sorts of meta-problems. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And for now, if there's one thing I'd like you to take away from this long and frankly absurdly rambling post (thank you for bearing with me!) it's an alternative answer for the question I get so often, about what you can do to learn the language when you're tired, because:

Yes, you could watch reality TV shows in Chinese, or you could give yourself permission to be human. You could rest.

Thanks guys. Meichenxi out <3