Jack-O start casually practicing some japanese regardless if you have interest at all. it's not hard to learn the first two alphabets, takes a couple days and some practice reading and writing over time. get to really learning most kanji when you're ready to actually commit. it saved me a lot of time. i learned one other language while getting the basics of japanese out of the way, arguably the fun parts, the only fun parts. a language like dutch wouldn't get in the way at all either.

if you watch anime, with dutch subtitles and have learned a lot of japanese you might find yourself relying on either language when you don't understand whether you're reading/hearing something you haven't learned. that'll help you learn more. i did this with one target language and watching anime. it made me happy when i would look away and would just understand the japanese without looking at any subtitles. second greatest feeling of my life.

      harukoto

      harukoto when you're ready to actually commit.

      really is about that, its difficult for me to learn more complex japanese because I study for a couple days but then lose focus when I skip a day of studying.

          8 days later

          I gave japanese a go in june of last year and managed to learn about a thousand kanjis before anki finally burnt me out and I don't think I'll ever have the heart to give it another shot. :/

          Anki suffocated me. In the beginning, I'd do it every morning and that was fine, but towards the end, I'd procrastinate every day until late into the evening, and I wouldn't allow myself to go about my day until I did all my cards.
          So, even though it only took me 30 minutes to do, the fact that I had to do it weighed down on me for entire evenings and was suffocating.

          I still vividly remember the day I decided to give up: I hadn't felt so free and happy in a while.

          12 days later

          I am fluent in English and Spanish. I speak Italian good enough to have simple conversations and fairly understand harder ones, although I lately set it aside I hope to be able to reside in Italy one day and become fluent. I also gave turkish a try and I learned some basic stuff. I would totally love to learn mandarin at some point but that´s a far away dream right now. Also if anybody wants to chat in order to practice a language I´m down 🙂

          speak Ukrainian good enough, know English to the point that I'm able to post silly texts in the forums like this,
          I am also learning Karelian (Karjalan kieli), as it is my native language, but my family was too assimilated by another culture to teach me when I was a child. so it's kinda... re-learning, actually.
          and I'm actively trying to forget language I was forced to learn.
          maybe, MAYBE, after I will feel more connected with my mother tongue, I'll try Estonian (same language sub-group) or Belarussian, but that's uhhh not soon.

          do y'all know those moments when you just... switch languages mid-sentence? or you remember some information, but can't recall which language it was written in? : D
          sometimes I'm like "man, that's just crazy, явахуї, як так взагалі можна- oh"

          17 days later

          I guess my native languages would be English and Serbo-Croatian (was raised with both) however I'm rusty with the latter but understand things just fine and can talk extensively in it. I'm currently trying to learn Mandarin, it's been fun and I really enjoy the language! I gave Mandarin a shot end of last year because I wanted to learn an East Asian language and yeah I love how it sounds (most don't but I'm odd), love the writing system, and the grammar isn't hard for me. I remember giving Japanese a shot in 2019 but was totally overwhelmed by the grammar, conjugation, and kanji inconsistency. Still Japanese is a wonderful language, just not apt for me. Occasionally I like surface level studying other slavic languages because as a Slav myself I like other Slavs lol.

            gingermilk
            I'm native anglo. Know Italian to a high enough level that "studying" now just means reading,watching stuff in Italian. Currently tackling French.
            I would love to learn a Scandi language, but every time I do that I think "why waste time on this when German is Germanic too and has 10x the speakers and all of the media and literature". Then I try German and think "Man, I just can't get on with this, why not learn a Scandi lang instead?" and thus the cycle continues.
            Would like to do Japanese too, but I don't know if I'm enough of a Weeb.

              7 days later

              I am brazillian, and I have learnt english from...
              actually i have no idea.
              I just gained consciouness at like 8 and learned stuff just by watching content and reading forums
              I've always wanted to learn german, or italian, or french, or japanese or any other cool language.
              Just for shits and giggle, like a cool party trick.
              Imagine learning a entire language without telling your friends.
              you are on a normal talk with your friends then suddenly you start speaking fluent german

              Phenazepam Tell me if you need help with Mandarin since I am a native speaker!

              Just an update on my language learning journey. I used to be obsessed with learning languages, but the craze has slowed down a lot since obsession does not automatically lead to diligence and efficiency, which results in me wasting time.

              I enrolled in a Persian class during my first semester in uni and I appreciate the fact that I actually got to practice with native speakers, but I did not keep my studies after that due to various reasons. I also tried to pick up German again since there are books I wanted to read in the original language, but gave up too because I have morphed into a lazy ass who cannot be bothered to memorize even just the article chart. I also tried Tamil, but did not study beyond the alphabet. Right now I just spend 10 minutes daily clicking words on Duolingo Indonesian, which I would not even call learning but at least I can feel less guilty.

                  7 days later

                  gingermilk Help would be much appreciated! Don't know how to DM on this forum still rather new, or if exchanging contacts publicly is appropriate but I would very much appreciate some help yes, and thank you for offering.

                      Phenazepam
                      There is currently no DM functionality on SheepishPatio, there was a brief period where we tried it but the extension functionality was buggy and half-baked. (as well as security concerns etc)
                      I host an XMPP instance that you can join and message some users from here, ie gingermilk's reply.
                      XMPP is a bit old-school but it allows anyone on any xmpp instance to talk to others and features proper encryption. I've written a little blogpost on it here:
                      https://sheepishpatio.net/blog/383-xmpp-overview
                      You can download whatever client sounds good and join mine @chat.skyshanty.xyz or if you know anyone else's you can join there.
                      Hope this helps!

                      gingermilk No problem, you can add it to your profile via the social buttons. I'd like to sort out something better integration wise but devs are few and far between.

                          15 days later

                          Curious what people's learning methods are. I listen to the biggest talk radio of the language 30mins-1 hour every day and read for an hour revery day, adding new words into an Anki deck. I also try to write my diary in the language. This is not an interesting method and maybe not the best, but it's intuitive, covers all bases and seems to work for me.

                            sonoko I also try to write my diary in the language

                            I have done that too, but the major problem for me is that no one will fix my mistake so I feel like I am just wasting my time. A friend of mine uses ChatGPT to catch errors and it seems like this method is working, so maybe I will try that sometime.

                                gingermilk You're definitely right, that can be an issue, but getting you thinking in the language is worth the odd error here or there, I think.

                                  16 days later

                                  I'm a native English speaker, and currently learning Spanish. I have been told that I used to know it as a kid, and then eventually forgot it when I moved to an area where no one else spoke it.
                                  I unfortunately know no other languages. I have tried learning some many times by myself, and in school. None of it stuck very well. The best was German when I studied for a year, even then I could only understand on the level of a child. I decided to do Spanish since it is one of the more useful languages where I live, I liked what I know about with Spain, and I have been told they have underrated books and movies. If I learn Spanish to a good degree, I would want to learn German or Russian.
                                  I'm currently running through teach yourself Spanish books and doing their exercises.

                                  gingermilk
                                  Languages I know are Japanese and English.
                                  I have wishes to learn French and Chinese!

                                    I guess I'm learning german, but it's been really on and off for me for a while now. I used to attend a course for it and made it through B1, but I really didn't try too hard and that was a while ago and I ended up forgetting a lot of things. Then recently I started feeling super guilty about that for no real reason and started forcing myself to review some grammar and then started reading a couple pages of a book in german each day. It really worked for a while, but then I got bored of it and now I'm feeling all guilty again.
                                    I feel like it'd be a lot easier if I knew someone or a group of people that had something in common with me and I spoke german with them regularly, but that's probably never happening lol
                                    Language learning is hard...

                                    • Yui replied to this.
                                      17 days later

                                      bakkin113 I'm native and I wouldn't mind talking in german with you from time to time!
                                      Learning japanese myself and got back into it recently, and I know those fustrating feelings, lol

                                        I mostly use English or Filipino in my everyday interactions, but I've been studying Chinese, Japanese and Korean for a long time now (about a decade or so).
                                        As of now, I can read and listen to 8 languages in varying degrees of understanding, but I can only speak three of them comfortably.

                                        I usually learn grammar and basic vocabulary (via books, websites, flashcards, etc.), then I immerse myself in content in that language exclusively, consulting a dictionary, machine translation, or language forums when I find myself struggling to keep up.
                                        But the number one rule is: avoid falling back on your mother tongue as much as you can! the less you rely on translations, the easier it will be acquiring new knowledge later on, even if it's a really steep cliff to climb at first.

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