Obviously this is a pretty international forum, and a comrade asked before which languages we speak, but which languages are you working on? Which ones do you aspire to learn someday even if you aren’t learning it now? I’m a Yank so I know English and took about 5 years of Spanish in HS, I was in the advanced classes, but it was years ago so I can understand Spanish, but I can’t speak it really. I’m learning Russian now because I’ve sorta been learning it informally my whole life, my grandma being born in early 30s rural Belarus meant she always wanted to pass that on to me, she spoke an Eastern dialect of Polish but knew Belarussian and spoke fluent Russian. I just knew basic basic Russian as a kid like Принесите Пожалуйста and Спасибо mixed with other phrases that were very local to her. In the past 2-3 years I decided to officially learn Russian bc the rest of my family is very American (I don’t blame them, that’s where we live and consume the vast vast majority of our entertainment/content from) the Irish side of my family doesn’t give a shit about the history of Ireland nor do any of them speak any word of Gaelic Irish, so at least by learning Russian I can communicate to a few cousins from the old country and my grandma. Realistically speaking Spanish would be most useful to me, being in the US, but if I finish learning Russian I wanna learn Arabic. I want to learn Chinese but goddamn thats one of the toughest ones to learn. I feel like Arabic would be cool to learn. What are yall thinking?
Not learning but I have marked the most important languages in upcoming times to learn, Spanish, Mandarin and Russian. Since I know Hindi and English, that will make me pretty well rounded.
Never forget how hard it is to learn Mandarin tho
For anyone wanting to learn, I recommend an app called HelloChinese.
It’s similar to Duolingo in many ways, but goes above and beyond. Phrases are individually recorded instead of stitched together by a synthesizer. They go out and get volunteers on the street to record some lines. Every unit has a 15-minute podcast attached to it.
It gives loads of additional material to practice on in addition to the core teaching units. I used to use a combination of Duolingo and a reader app called ‘The Chairman’s Bao’ which offered graded texts, but HelloChinese does both and it’s so much better when the two are coordinated.
I can’t recommend it enough.
I’ll try it, I tried Duolingo Chinese and it didn’t help as much as I thought it would
I tried this, but after a certain point it forces you to subscribe to the pro version for any more lessons.
Wouldn’t have been a problem if there was a way it would accept my moneyOh sorry it didn’t work. It’s frustrating when online payment platforms do that. The number of websites that I can’t buy things from because they demand a postcode in the billing address 🤦♂️
Meanwhile me who pretty much requires a credit card to buy anything from (online) stores not local in our country: :)