Can you think of a word or a thing that you know the name of in a second language, but don't know in your native language? And I don't mean grammatical constructs, past tenses and stuff like that. I mean nouns, names of objects, verbs, etc.

My examples (Czech native, English is my second language):

• Some tools, since I watch a lot of makers: auger, router, mill (as in a milling machine)
• A lot of math/physics/programming terms: algebraic constructs (groups and the whole hierarchy), sub-atomic particles and terms from quantum theory... So many original english terms in IT are generally used "as-is" that I don't even know if some of them have a czech equivalent. I know some do, but I'd never use them in a conversation.
• Some exotic animals, but I can't think of any right now...

I know I could easily find the translations. However, I don't usually get into a context where such words would appear in other language than English. And it feels like I've mastered the language when there's a thing I fully understand the meaning of, while only learning abou it in English without the need to translate.

I've been studying Japanese full time for just under 2 years, around May 2024. Started on Duolingo, then migrated to MaruMori September that year.

Tried out Spanish later that year, tried various other apps besides Duolingo, but nothing really ever felt like it was really getting me far, so I ended up just giving up on apps for the most part and just stuck to Busuu and Duolingo.

Irish I started just a few months ago, and using Irish with Mollie alongside Rosetta Stone from my Spanish purchase a few years back.

My goal at the start was to just be more supportive of my family, and also join in on my friends, as they said they were going to pick up Japanese also. All my friends eventually gave up, but my family didn't, so I stuck with the Japanese, and I still see myself continuing far into the future sticking to it.

I started off the journey just on Duolingo doing 5 minutes a day on Japanese. Eventually was doing 30 mins of Japanese. Then added Spanish and was doing 30 mins of Spanish as well, or sometimes hours depending on motivation. At some point in the journey after that it was down to 15 minutes each.

Sometime in 2025, I had a lull, where I felt I wasn't getting anywhere in my Japanese, or my Spanish, so I ended up retaking all of MaruMori again from the very start, and my Spanish also suffered from lack of effort. 2024 and early 2025 were a very stressful time to me too.

At some point down that line, I was maintaining a 30 minute upkeep of both JP and SP, and later still, I realised I was actually getting nowhere. Japanese flashcards alone would take the vast majority of those 30 minutes, so if I actually wanted to progress I'd have to do at least an hour, nevermind the listening practise you also need to do. So sometime late 2025 and early 2026, I really ramped up the time I spent on my languages. And despite the 2 odd years at learning my languages, it only feels like now I'm actually making progress. Which is weird, because I still feel like I'm at a level where I've only just begun to learn, I can read a fair amount of Spanish, but can't manage to do any decent output. Japanese is the same for only basic videos, but I routinely get sentences wrong, despite knowing all the words.

My Irish is very recent, but I have the added benefit of growing up and living in Ireland, so there's a few words I never had to study recently where I just know from exposure.

I know right now, I dedicate an hour to my languages, and then only 30 mins to immersion, but my goal is to reach B2 levels of JP,SP,IE and then reduce the dedicated studies while I'm in C1+ territory and just indulge in content more instead. So I feel like at some more advanced state, I can just stop dedicated study, and free up my day more. I'm sort of naive in thinking this though, as I'm not sure if that will ever happen, or I'll always have to dedicate large chunks to more advanced grammar points.

I've been doing this for a while now, but sort of don't want to tell anyone new to me I study languages, as I feel I have nothing to show for it. Which, I know isn't the case, but it sure feels that way.

So how has your progress been since you started? Any ups or downs or warnings you can give other users? My own piece of advice would be if you're doing something very difficult like Japanese, you'd really need to spend at least an hour a day if you want to get anywhere. Apps like Duolingo can advertise 5 minutes a day is enough, when it's really not, if you want to learn in any sane liveable amount of time.

TLDR:

I'm interested in hearing everyone in their language learning journey. Where/why you started, how it's been for you and what you plan to do in the future.

Do you feel there's a station you'll get off at and just enjoy the scenery, or will you keep chugging ahead aiming for that obscure goal of "fluent"?

Your thoughts?

There's so much beginner advice out there, and I'm hesitant to add yet one more beginner-based rant to the mix. But hopefully this content is useful to someone out there.

Despite 6 months of daily effort, it is clear that my overall language journey has only begun. I'm comfortable to call myself around an A2 these days ("advanced beginner"), but its extremely clear how limited my German is. Nonetheless, I'm surprised at how "useful" A2 seems to be in browsing the internet and consuming German media.

I can truly watch news reports in native German and get the gist of what is going on. I can watch comedians tell jokes, that I don't fully understand but can feel the puns and rhyming schemes. I can enjoy music and understand the majority of pop-song chorus (at least, with a few minutes of study and maybe a 2nd or 3rd listen). Its not much, but its a solid foundation for continuing my language learning.

How did I get here? My month-by-month breakdown is as follows:

October 2025: I learn of a trade show in Germany scheduled in May that's relevant to my professional career. This is my inspiration moment. I want to learn German so that I can comfortably visit Germany. But ... am I even truly interested? I immediately download "Learn German in your Car", and "test" myself. If I'm able to continue studying German for a full month, I'll know for certain that I'm doing this seriously.

In hindsight, the "Learn German in your Car" lessons weren't very useful, but they proved that I had long term interest in this subject. It was quick and easy to try, and because of my daily drive to-and-from work, it wasn't hard for me to stick with the schedule of daily practice.

November 2025: I've researched extensively on the Internet different learning schemes. I begin Nicos Weg. I purchase grammar textbooks. I begin 20-cards/day on Anki. I realize that the A1 German deck on Ankiweb is full of mistakes and am forced to start over. I buy flashcards on Amazon.com. I try everything to learn German.

December 2025: I start posting on Learning German Discord. My sentence structure sucks, I'm told to study the basics and review the beginner grammar. People don't understand me at all in voice chat. In response... I read through all of my Basic German grammar book (Its only 200 pages and I skipped the exercises. I just wanted an overview). I'm over 500 words into Anki. Anki begins to feel oppressive, I drop down to 10 words/day.

I purchase "Cafe in Berlin", and read it through entirely. (A1/A2 graded reader). After completing it, I purchase "Short Stories in German" by Olly Richards. (A2/B1 graded reader) Despite my failures in speaking on Discord, its clear my reading skills are pushing into the A2 level. Its clear that my reading skills are pushing into A2, but how do I improve my speech??

January 2026: I enroll into a local private tutor program that's close to work and home. I sign up for 10 weeks, 1.5 hours twice a week (30 hours scheduled, 40 total lessons each 45 minutes long). It turns out that I tested into A2.2 (!!!!), despite my somewhat depressive first jump into the Learning German Discord, its clear I was making progress. However, I know that as a self-learner my study habits are full of holes. I instead choose to drop down to A2.1 instead and meet with my teacher.

My speech is awful. Despite working hard on learning "German R" as self-learning, I'm messing up ei, ie, z, ö, d, sp, st, and many combinations of letters. My tutor says I should read every section of the work to him throughout the tutoring session. I'm unable to do any of the roleplay sections, despite dropping down a level.

At this point, I post my 3-months of German through song topic (https://lemmy.world/post/41037513). I know I have a long way to go, but testing into A2.2 gives me a major confidence boost, I'm actually further along than I thought, even if I feel the need to drop down a level. I'm able to browse a large chunk of German-Wikipedia introduction paragraphs.

February / March 2026: I trust the language course and my teacher, and mostly just do the assigned work / homework. I memorize 600+ new words from the class. I manually input these into my custom Anki deck for daily practice. We practice those words every class, I have homework involving listening exercises and speech practice. My speech improves, I'm slowly building up the ability to roleplay effectively. I end the course with an 85% on the final and a certificate for A2.1 (remember, I dropped down a level on purpose). I wouldn't say it was "hard", but its clear I learned a lot from the class.

Anki continues to feel oppressive, I drop down to 80% FSRS retention.

I start Pokemon. Somewhat a bad idea, its more like a B2 level read rather than A2. Still, I enjoy the exercise and look forward to returning to Pokemon later.

Around this time, I'm noticing that its no longer necessary for me to listen to children songs. Regular German pop-songs (and even German rap) have the same level of understanding as the Kinderlieder. (Notice: I still don't understand Kinderlieder or Pop songs in their entirety. I just notice they're the "same difficulty" now). Seriously, some of those children-songs are very difficult, while the easiest of pop-songs use such common language that its surprisingly easy to pickup the main chorus (albeit I'm missing most of the verses).

April 2026: With my class over, I return to self-study. Now with a solid foundation of pronunciation, and an idea of what it takes to learn vocabulary (in context, speaking in different circumstances, etc. etc.).

Despite my speech improvements, my grammar became the weakpoint in the class. I can speak clearly, but with improper conjugation, using "das" far too often and am unable to use "ein" or other articles.

I purchase "Grammatik aktiv", and complete 1 lesson daily. I purchase additional A2 readers: "Carsten Tsara blickt nicht durch", with printout + .mp3 file. I review my tutor material weekly in the car (~40 minutes of recordings covering my coursework), I still got it, I'm still able to listen and understand.

I know I have so much self-study to do (more reading, more grammar exercises, more listening, and now I need to find a new source of speaking practice somewhere). But its a start.

As a self-study student, my "knowledge" is eclectic. I'm able to understand B1 concepts like relative clauses, passive voice, da-words, wo-words and more. But this is because "Pokemon" forced me to study so much B1 level grammar to understand it.

On the other hand, eclectic knowledge means that I'm missing basic A1 stuff like "eine" vs "keine". Even after taking my A2.1 level course, I never got to practice that. Only after purchasing Grammatik aktiv and systematically reviewing all grammar from A1 through B1 am I realizing how much A1-level stuff I missed.

Its the nature of learning. All these concepts are theoretically organized int courses... but that's not how people learn. You'll pick things up here and there. Your brain has a biorhythm, on "good days" you'll learn material but on "bad days" all your efforts will be wasted. This always leads to holes even if you end up systematically tackling each subject.

I bought another exercise book. Time to ruin it with notes and never look at the notes again after finishing the exercises!

I just became aware of this site, which helps find tv channels livestreaming online across the world.

Feels like it could be useful when you want something to watch/listen to in your target language, but don't want to pick out anything in particular. Not every country has anything listed, but quite a lot do, representing a great variety of languages.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/34234868

The immersion style of language learning essentially entails an instructor who speaks only the target language, not the language you already know. The same way children learn their first language.

Immersion has irrefuted widespread acceptance and respect touted by pretty much everyone as the best way to learn.

I think that needs to be challenged. One of my wise profs once said something like:

You don’t /need/ school. Everything you learn in school can be self-taught and learnt informally the hard way from books and experience. What formal instruction does is accelerates the learning. I am here to organise the information for maximum absorption over time. What you learn here in 4 years would take you a decade to learn in an ad hoc disorganised way…

^ (Paraphrasing from memory). Seems spot-on to me. IMO, immersion is comparable to learning the slow way, by experience. The first language someone learns must be immersion, of course. There is no choice but to learn that the hard way through experience. But then the first language can be used to learn the next.

I was listening to a Brit (possibly Thomas Michael) teaching French on an audio tape. He said (in English) consonants at the end of words are not pronounced, but exceptionally if the consonant is in the word CAREFUL then it is pronounced (the “CaReFuL consonants”). He quickly conveyed a lot of information in a short time because he was able to give an English memory aid. At another moment he said something like: all words ending in TION, TY, ABLE? (I don’t recall all the suffixes) are all French words. Just like that in 1 single sweeping English sentence, I learned thousands of French words. He just needed a minute to give some examples of the French pronounciation (liberty→liber-TAY, revolution→ray-voh-loo-see-own).

In an immersion class that would have been impossible. It would have taken an absurd amount of time playing sherades one word at a time in an immersion class to accomplish the same learning task.

Yes, there are good reasons for immersion. E.g. a gov-administered public French class in a French-speaking region has students with all different mother tongues coming together to learn French in the same classroom. Such classes have no choice but to use immersion style.

But I conjecture that if you have 25 English speakers who want to learn French together, then that group is best served by a teacher who is good (better than fluent) in both languages. Those English speakers have the same uniform advantages and disadvantages that the instruction can account for. E.g. they would all benefit from the vocabulary tip (words ending in TION). They would likely all equally have the same struggle with pronouncing the R’s, and gender of objects. So the instruction can be tailored exploit the language simularities and differences.

I have never met anyone who agrees with me on this. But I think it should be studied (hence the post to !thought_forge@mander.xyz). It would be easy to take two groups of English speakers who don’t know a word of French and teach one group immersion style and the other group without the immersion limitation. Have a race measuring how many hours of instruction and study to reach the same passing level of fluency.

This week I only did duolingo, I was incredibly busy :(

I was just learning about the concept of extensive reading a little while back, and came across this cool website that let's you find media and rank it by difficulty level.

It only supports Japanese, Spanish, German, and Korean for now, and most of the focus seems to be on the former. Still, it seems like a great resource. And it's very easy/fun to jump in and contribute.

I've seen a similar site at https://languageroadmap.com/. It supports way more languages and has lots of media catalogged, but most seem to have no info. As far as I can tell it's kinda dead... but also seems like it'd be really cool if not for that.

To bring it back to discussion - what are some (recent or favorite) books you've read, or shows/movies you've watched in your target language? What are some that you found especially good for learners? And how do you find new material at your level?

I was reading that the reddit community "languagelearning" doesn't allow language-specific posts and comments. Fortunately we are not on reddit and we do allow it!

There's quite many of us keeping an eye on this community, so if you've got questions/thoughts/personal wins or losses: don't hesitate to post!

Apparently I forgot to post the weekly thread last week. Oh well, maybe people here have a two week update for us :)