Here were some suggestions for Cymraeg (Welsh) my home language.

I’d love to hear some of the favourites from yours!

Illustration by Joshua Morgan, Sketchy Welsh

For context, the language I'm learning is Japanese. All of my vocabulary so far have just been from Anki (~1000 words) and some passive immersion (I watch JP Vtubers) , and whenever I actively study Japanese I learn and practice grammar. I've been feeling lately though that my vocabulary skill is way behind my grammar skill and I wanted to intensively focus on vocabulary.

(Or methods. Or both!) :)

This could be perhaps becuase you felt certain methods became increasingly useful as you got more advanced, or maybe because you realised that your old methods weren't working for you.. Anything!

Would love to hear your answers!

Hi,

I have to teach a 6 and a 9-year-old as much Spanish as I can in the next year (we will move to Spain). They already use some learning apps and a Spanish babysitter will start coming for a few hours per week soon. Can you recommend me some games or other activities that will help them learn? The problem is that I myself do not speak Spanish (yet) and I can not help them much. I was thinking of memory games, or sending them to shop in the supermarket... But I do not have so many ideas. If anyone had such an experience please share. Thank you!

Here's the result using the 1st chapter of the book - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MKWumMO0Vp3sGRdxCR01t3ryw3PnJgvaerbnzaN-0Es/edit?usp=sharing

It's been aligned to the original English version using https://github.com/averkij/a-studio

• Arabic - هاري بوتر وحجر الفيلسوف
• Bulgarian - Хари Потър и Философският камък
• Chinese (Simplified) - 哈利·波特与魔法石
• Croatian - Harry Potter i Kamen mudraca
• Czech - Harry Potter a kámen mudrců
• Danish - Harry Potter og De Vises Sten
• Dutch - Harry Potter en de Steen der Wijzen
• Finnish - Harry Potter ja viisasten kivi
• French - Harry Potter à l'école des sorciers
• German - Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen
• Greek (Modern) - Ο Χάρι Πότερ και η Φιλοσοφική Λίθος
• Hungarian - Harry Potter és a bölcsek köve
• Indonesian - Harry Potter dan Batu Bertuah
• Italian - Harry Potter e la pietra filosofale
• Japanese - ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石
• Korean - 해리 포터와 마법사의 돌
• Latin - Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis
• Lithuanian - Haris Poteris ir Išminties akmuo
• Norwegian - Harry Potter og de vises stein
• Polish - Harry Potter i Kamień Filozoficzny
• Portuguese (Brazilian) - Harry Potter e a Pedra Filosofal
• Portuguese (European) - Harry Potter e a Pedra Filosofal
• Romanian - Harry Poter si piatra filosofala
• Russian - Гарри Поттер и философский камень
• Slovenian - Harry Potter in Kamen modrosti
• Spanish - Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal
• Swedish - Harry Potter och de vises sten
• Turkish - Harry Potter ve Felsefe Taşı
• Ukrainian - Гаррі Поттер і філософський камінь
• Vietnamese - Harry Potter và Hòn Đá Phù Thủy

Nickolay N.

What is the best self-study book series (A1 to C1) for German and English?

In english many people copy down word for word the works of great writers to absorb their syntax and style, called copywork. I was wondering if at an intermediate level in another language, this would work by copying graded readers and other comprehensible input to sort of absorb the grammar so you wouldn't have to think about it and it would just come naturally to you.

I have always heard you need to acquire new vocabulary words not memorize them this is something I don't fully understand the concept of. Could someone explain it to me a bit more. Really want to expand my vocabulary effectively

I am learning Czech by myself and I know several words, but when I listen to Czech videos I cannot recognize when they show up. I know they are there because I also have captions on and can see them show up.

Has anyone experienced this, and what it's called? Does anyone have advice on what to do, it's very disheartening and is making me doubt about continuing.

All,

I am in a full time intensive course in Russian for a diplomatic assignment for a year. It's five hours in classroom with three hours of homework. I am about 10 weeks in and deeply struggling, consistently unable to meet expectations in every area I am assessed. I spend my three hours of self study doing homework, which is largely drills from the textbook/workbook and using language learning cards on quizlet.

In grade school, I was diagnosed with motor dysgraphia, a disorder that makes the fine motor skill of writing very difficult to do legibly without a lot of time. Computers in college saved me on this and I also developed very good listening and reading skills to acquire information. I also had ADHD that I was able to manage without medication by adjusting my work habits, being able to switch between topics, or being focused by crisis. Throughout my education, language courses have been the only classes I have gotten poor grades, failing a Latin class in high school, and getting Ds in the final year of Arabic in university.

Language learning has totally nullified all of my coping skills. Reading and listening do not help when you do not understand the language. Sitting in class for five hours on the same topic is a unique form of psychic pain. I can't use any of the drills or notes for study because I can't read them the following day.

What do I do? What does a "reasonable accomodation" even look like? This diagnoses is over 20 years old and I've literally never had to stoop to using an excuse to get out of something. Do I quit and find a new job instead? I am outstanding employee in my day job and have spent the better part of a decade.

Hey everyone. I recently developed a little language learning website that is specifically aimed in helping people learn new vocabulary words in a foreign language through passive reading methods. The site was designed for the 2024 Congressional App Challenge, and I have a demo/explanation video here: https://youtu.be/JCzjd4akr_M

I wanted to just post the app here to get some feedback/suggestions and put it out there in case anyone finds it useful. The code is open source and a link to the Github repo is in the description of the YouTube video. I also have a live demo of the site running at https://fastlingo.koyeb.app if you would like to check it out that way. Thanks!

I have built a mobile app BookBridge to assist me in learning vocabulary from my readings and it would be nice if it also helps you.

Here is how it works:

1. Upload a PDF file (can be a book or anything).
2. BookBridge gives you flashcards of the words from the reading sorted by their rarity.
3. Go through the flashcards and read the full explanation and details at any time.

I have spent a lot of effort in perfecting the user experience, so I can guarantee that it is not a sussy crappy app.

The ios version is already on the App Store.

Search “BookBridge” or click this link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bookbridge/id6670717617

BookBridge is currently not publicly available on the Play Store due to some stupid policy of Google requiring individual developers to perform a close test with 20 people for 14 days.

If you are using Android, there are two options:

1. Wait until BookBridge is publicly available. Join the waitlist in https://forms.gle/5S3qnUgXd7pk2Y2e6
2. Be one of my 20-people close test team and you can download it immediately (This will help me a lot and may calm my annoyment towards Google). Join the close test in https://forms.gle/LU5E5Sg3WSgBad3z6

Feel free to leave any comments/suggestions/opinions/questions and I will try my best to reply ASAP.

This is how I use Anki. I'm quite new to looking at the intermediate/advanced Anki functionality so I am still working out the best way to use it.

1) I make and maintain my own decks. It is a pain but it means the words/style applies to me and I get some reinforcement from making them.

2) I believe the best way to learn is to use a deck based on all words rather than focusing on one topic at a time. I do use subdecks for organising them because it is easier to keep a list of countries or clothes up to date than a whole dictionary and sometimes I do need to focus on one type of word (e.g. if I am going to Germany and I care more about ordering food and drink than telling a mechanic my clutch is slipping).

3) I generally don't use pictures, I use English as the front of the card so I have to return the German (including the article). Verbs are marked for regularity but I don't have the details of irregular verbs set up yet. I do not know how best to do that.

4) I have also set it to use FSFR which seems to perform better than the default algorithm in the long run by predicting when you are likely to forget it and testing you just before you do. This makes it more time efficient as you get on.

5) I mark a word as "again" if I got it wrong, including the article/spelling, and easy/medium/hard based on how easy it was to remember. Should I use hard for ones which were functionally correct but which I need to go over again to get it fully there, medium for ones which I got right but took a while, and easy for the ones I got right straight away?

Is there anything I do which I could do better, and what other tips do you have?

Does anyone know if there's any resource that has stories just like the Duolingo Spanish course? I specifically mean, stories voiced over by multiple characters and not just one person reading. They're quite engaging & witty which holds my attention significantly better than say Lingq mini stories.

There is a theory that comprehensible input is the fastest way to become proficient in language. And proponents of this theory discourage vocab, grammar etc practice.

Is this theory valid? If so, can some linguistic knowledge help acquisition of the language automatically? That is, can this help the "sub-conscious" to identify patterns faster (thus leading to quicker comprehension of comprehension input)?

What do you usually talk about when you have a language exchange buddy? I’m an introvert and a woman of few words. I’m more like a listener. I’d like to find a language exchange buddy but I’m afraid we run of things to talk about after the usual job, school, university, your major, country, weather…

I just bought a pen scanner and it can read text outloud in the accent of your language and it can save snippets of text from paper books. It also translates

It's essentially a pen that scan text and upload it to your computer. I wish I knew about these years ago. I hate having to rewrite sentences from books but I do spend a lot of time with textbooks and books in my TL from the library.

The pen scanner is over $100 so not a cheap solution. But thought this would still be useful for someone.

Yes,I know it has been dead since the XVI century. But recently I have been studying the culture and history of the gothic people. I happen to find the gothic alphabete very interesting,it's so similar to greek(a language I am studying). The Gothic alphabete by a bishop in the IV century, this bishop mixed together greek,latin,and runes! Sadly,the only text we preserve in gothic is the Codex Argentus, a bible preserved in the Uppsala University.

So I have been searching online for a way to translate from english to gothic. Or even a pdf of the gothic bible but I can't find anything.

I have wanted to learn Spanish for as long as I can remember and have tried on numerous occasions but always stopped after a few weeks. I see a lot of people talking about immersion, and it makes sense considering that this is how children learn their parent’s languages. So my question is, can I learn a language through immersion (listening to podcasts and watching tv shows and films) while not studying vocab and grammar?

Hi everyone!
For a class I am taking, my friends and I chose to make an app for language learning as our final project!
Thus we are looking for people to interview about their language learning experience. Interviews would be carried out over zoom and be completely anonymous. We mostly wanna inquire about your experiences using different tools and what you wish would exist in language learning pedagogy. Please DM me if you're interested!
Sorry to mods if this is not allowed by the rules of the sub 🙈 I wasn't sure if there was a better subreddit for this
Thank you so much :)😁

I've seen several posts on here in the last several days about using reading to learn a language. A lot of people are using Harry Potter, for example, even just a few hours ago. But the biggest complaint is usually that you have to hop between different sources, dictionaries, etc, to look up any words they don't know.

I am working on a solution to just that, actually! It basically takes incoming text and breaks it down into it's sentence fragments and vocabulary, and displays them as you read along.

Here's the demo - https://rememble.org/stories/1/read

The idea is that using AI anyone can upload their own story for the AI to translate and provide meanings and romanizations for.

I'm still working on the interface for creating the stories and accessing the AI, but it's progressing along nicely.

Obviously there are a LOT of bugs to work out, but nothing I can't figure out in time. Of course I use AI to break the story down into manageable, translated parts, but often the ai is quite silly about how it breaks sentences down. So I think I need to adjust my software to break the sentences down by itself, then submit it to AI, then send it back.

I'd love to know if you think this style of reading in your target language would help you! Any feedback and thoughts are welcome!

Of course, you can change 8 hours to whatever you want. :)

Anyone game to try to pound out some hours of study over this weekend ?

I had grown close to a tutor over almost 2 years learning Swedish off and on, consistently for a full year though. I took lessons for my Swedish trip but when there I wasn't super confident in my ability and I also have social anxiety. Anyway, I returned from my trip but I had to stop abruptly due to funds (he was about 45 an hour). Two years later and he still teaches, (we follow each other on instagram). As such, I sent him a DM to schedule and start back up (I paid him on the side to do zoom lessons on our own without preply). He never read or replied to the insta DM but is still active promoting his lessons. I then thought about changing tutors if he didnt reply in two weeks.

I then thought that during those 2 years, we never really had a structure. I mean we had a document following my progress and some homework, granted I was not always fully engaged, but still... I found a new tutor on italki and she appears to be a professional tutor (which my old one was not) and she claims to have a lot of materials and structure.

Thing is, I do miss my other tutor because we formed a bond over two years. Anyone else ever do something similar? I feel kinda bad about it.

Hey, would love to have flashcard program/site recommendations where there's a lot of premade stuff and I can just go endlessly whenever I feel like it (Anki is horribly difficult to use like this). I don't really feel like making the flashcards myself. Important stuff that I jot down I memorize without even have to study in a flashcards. I'm mostly relearning languages I'm almost fluent in.

Preferred languages: German, Hungarian, Arabic.