VizionEck

Off-Topic => Off-Topic Community => Topic started by: Legend on Dec 20, 2016, 06:31 AM

Title: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Dec 20, 2016, 06:31 AM
Lots of us are multilingual or trying to be. Why not have a thread for this?

I'm a native English speaker and was near fluent in Spanish but now I'm rusty. I've been wanting refresh myself and for a while tried Duolingo for a bit.

I'd like to learn Japanese before going there one day.

I'd also like to learn American sign language. I live next to a huge blind community so it's not like this would be practical in day to day life but basic sign language feels nice to know. Plus I'm a nerd and sign languages have interesting grammar.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Dec 20, 2016, 12:53 PM
Use to know Spanish, to some extent.  

Learning Japanese.  Can introduce myself, get directions and stuff.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Dec 20, 2016, 04:38 PM
Japanese is a very cool language.  

They started out with a spoken language with no writing system.  They borrowed a lot of Chinese characters.  Kanji.  
From these they developed their own writing systema. Katakana which they use to write foreign words that kind of thing.  And Hiragana which they use to write Japanese words.  
Hiragana and Katakana have 46 characters, which all have one specific sound.  Kanji sounds very on context.  And some words use the same kanji for very different sounds.  
Sunday is nichiyoubi.  The kanji for bi and the kanji for nichi are the same in this context.  

Japanese is also SOV sentence structure.  
In English. We might day "Mike threw ball"
In Japanese, instead it'd be "Mike ball threw"  
I study Japanese.  
Becomes :
I Japanese study.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Xbro on Dec 21, 2016, 06:06 AM
I'm learning C++. It ain't easy
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: nnodley on Dec 21, 2016, 05:49 PM
I took french in high school.  But it never really stuck with me.  I can tell someone what my name is though and still know how to say most of the alphabet.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Dec 27, 2016, 03:31 AM
I took french in high school.  But it never really stuck with me.  I can tell someone what my name is though and still know how to say most of the alphabet.
In high school I took 3 years of spanish, didn't stick with me very much.  :P

One thing I didn't really like about class in high school, is that we had to pick a Spanish name. 
Whereas in my Japanese class, we were shown how to write our actual names in Japanese.  Which I really appreciated.  Did not have to pretend to be Timoteo or something... like I did in Spanish class. 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I usually had like a list of like 10 languages I would like to learn in my lifetime.  Wasn't always the same list, but usually was like:
Japanese
German
French
Chinese
Russian
Spanish
Latin
Greek
Italian

Well there's 9 at least.
Arabic would probably be pretty useful.
---------------------------------------
On my plane ride, there was a gentlemen next to me who was Chinese and he was reading a Chinese book.  I thought it was pretty cool because I recognized a handful of symbols.  (I could tell it wasn't Japanese, there weren't any Hiragana/Katakana.) 
It is actually making me pretty interested in learning Chinese now.  More than before.  There are a lot of similarities with the writing. 

I'd like to learn Japanese before going there one day.
The Japanese major at my school uses the Genki books. There are 2 books + a supplement for each, and that basically covers the introductory Japanese (actually the first 5 classes).  And then Tobira is the book they use next.  Tobira has 2 supplementary books.  But those books cover the language learning at the University here. 

Don't know if that interests you at all, but I thought I'd mention it.  :D

--------------------------
On like a fourth note, I think my fiance will be learning Japanese with me.  Also at least one of my friends will be as well. 
Pretty cool. 
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Dec 31, 2016, 07:35 AM
I wish there was more software for language learning.

I've posted a couple times already, but imagine Skyrim for language learning.  
A huge world where you get to explore and are able to make conversations with characters.  
You could have the game start with English and progressively go to some other language as the player learns more vocab and grammar.  Etc.  

I bet it would be the best language learning software ever.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Jan 07, 2017, 11:37 PM
I've started learning Dutch. Sentence structure seems very easy for an English speaker but they have a few odd words compared to us. Has a third neutral gender unlike Spanish which is fun to get used to.

I wish there was more software for language learning.

I've posted a couple times already, but imagine Skyrim for language learning.  
A huge world where you get to explore and are able to make conversations with characters.  
You could have the game start with English and progressively go to some other language as the player learns more vocab and grammar.  Etc.  

I bet it would be the best language learning software ever.  
Would be really hard to make it have a good learning curve.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jan 08, 2017, 12:19 AM
I've started learning Dutch. Sentence structure seems very easy for an English speaker but they have a few odd words compared to us. Has a third neutral gender unlike Spanish which is fun to get used to.
Language Difficulty Ranking | Effective Language Learning (http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty)

Dutch seems to be a fairly easy language.  

This is interesting:
Frisian languages - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages)

Would be really hard to make it have a good learning curve.
There are tons of aspects to it, that really would need to be figured out.  

How to teach:
I could imagine some sort of classroom experience.  You have to go somewhere and get taught by a character.  
I could imagine language options in a menu.  Where you could go to the menu and be taught a lesson, and enable/disable grammar lessons.  
Or find books along the way, that you'd read as you go along that would unlock those things.  

I think the second option would probably be optimal for learning curve.  Let the player set the curve, but if they are too aggressive, they might get frustrated.

There's a few function decisions right there, and those don't cover how to handle the game switching over to another language. Vocabulary would also need a functional decision on how to be taken care of.  And those are completely disregarding the rest of the game.  

I just think there's a crazy amount of potential for a game like that.  So much of language software, I think it's very difficult for the average person to sit down for an hour even.  

What other medium do people sit down and consume for hours and hours at a time.  Plus there's no very little comparison for the amount of immersion you could pull off, without actually going to a certain place.  

Difficult, but at the same time there just feels like there's a crazy amount of potential there.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Jan 08, 2017, 07:51 AM
Language Difficulty Ranking | Effective Language Learning (http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty)

Dutch seems to be a fairly easy language.  

This is interesting:
Frisian languages - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages)
It's also fun for me since this is my first second second language. Most dutch words are forms like English but the ones that aren't, well they tend to be close enough to spanish.

Language Difficulty Ranking | Effective Language Learning (http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty)

There are tons of aspects to it, that really would need to be figured out.  

How to teach:
I could imagine some sort of classroom experience.  You have to go somewhere and get taught by a character.  
I could imagine language options in a menu.  Where you could go to the menu and be taught a lesson, and enable/disable grammar lessons.  
Or find books along the way, that you'd read as you go along that would unlock those things.  

I think the second option would probably be optimal for learning curve.  Let the player set the curve, but if they are too aggressive, they might get frustrated.

There's a few function decisions right there, and those don't cover how to handle the game switching over to another language. Vocabulary would also need a functional decision on how to be taken care of.  And those are completely disregarding the rest of the game.  

I just think there's a crazy amount of potential for a game like that.  So much of language software, I think it's very difficult for the average person to sit down for an hour even.  

What other medium do people sit down and consume for hours and hours at a time.  Plus there's no very little comparison for the amount of immersion you could pull off, without actually going to a certain place.  
It's fun to talk about this since I've had to do similar for VizionEck's language  :-X


With your skyrim example I think it'd work well with different cities speaking different languages. IE the closer you get to the capital city, the more common the new language is. Then have the game's quests align with this so that progression is always moving players closer and closer to the capital. Maybe have undercover missions where you're posing as people and if you can't respond correctly in their language, you're found out and forced into a fight. Also could have people talking in the language with you eavesdropping. If you understand what they said, it could lead you to a quest or save you from future danger.


Difficult, but at the same time there just feels like there's a crazy amount of potential there.
Games in general have a crazy amount of untapped potential and I'm shocked no one seems to be working on it. In the past I've posted about how great games can be for education by letting people learn through experience, but Life is Strange made me realise games can even reprogram the way we think.

After a long session of Life is Strange I had a very amusing feeling for about an hour where it still felt like I was mentally in the game. People asked me to do something for example and my brain jumped at the opportunity to increase my standing with them. I also made a joke that no one cared about and instinctively went to rewind time.

It's kinda like a few years ago when I played Sleeping Dogs. I remember driving after that game and for a few miles feeling a strong desire to drive in the left lane since that's how it worked in the game.

This video talks about the brain rewiring itself in general:




To some extent I think we experience things like this with all games, but imagine the potential here. It could be something simple like overwriting an addiction or it could be advanced inception like things that change our values as a person.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jan 08, 2017, 11:53 PM
With your skyrim example I think it'd work well with different cities speaking different languages. IE the closer you get to the capital city, the more common the new language is. Then have the game's quests align with this so that progression is always moving players closer and closer to the capital. Maybe have undercover missions where you're posing as people and if you can't respond correctly in their language, you're found out and forced into a fight. Also could have people talking in the language with you eavesdropping. If you understand what they said, it could lead you to a quest or save you from future danger.
I really like that idea.  Would really fit the language into the lore and stuff, and has some very awesome gameplay possibilities.  But I do feel the player would have to be somewhat constrained.  Throwing basically native language too soon at a player, because they get too close or something, would probably frustrated.  A lot of difficulty with setting the curve appropriately and open world gameplay would likely have to be constrained. 
But ridiculously awesome idea to think about. 

Alternatively we could have invaders, and as the player completes grammar lessons, the invaders would be more common.  Could even have the natives that were already there start learning the language.  Eventually the invaders and the natives are all speaking the same language.  That way the player could still be free to do whatever and basically set their own learning curve, and also keep the language as part of the lore without it being inconsistent.   

Games in general have a crazy amount of untapped potential and I'm shocked no one seems to be working on it. In the past I've posted about how great games can be for education by letting people learn through experience, but Life is Strange made me realise games can even reprogram the way we think.

After a long session of Life is Strange I had a very amusing feeling for about an hour where it still felt like I was mentally in the game. People asked me to do something for example and my brain jumped at the opportunity to increase my standing with them. I also made a joke that no one cared about and instinctively went to rewind time.

It's kinda like a few years ago when I played Sleeping Dogs. I remember driving after that game and for a few miles feeling a strong desire to drive in the left lane since that's how it worked in the game.

This video talks about the brain rewiring itself in general:




To some extent I think we experience things like this with all games, but imagine the potential here. It could be something simple like overwriting an addiction or it could be advanced inception like things that change our values as a person.
Yeah, I really like that video.  The brain fascinates me to no end.  It's so weird.  We take our memories for granted, but we forget things, our brains sometimes completely make things up. 
We take even common sense for granted, but it's probably not so different.  Our experiences make up way more of what we interpret of things and events than most people give them credit for. 
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jan 10, 2017, 12:45 AM
I bought 2 japanese courses on Udemy for 20$.
They seem pretty good.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Jan 12, 2017, 12:49 AM
I've started to subconsciously understand Dutch spelling. It is really starting to screw me over with English spelling. I've made more typos in the past few days on the forum than all of last year.

Plus I'm tired so that can't be helping either.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jan 12, 2017, 04:04 PM
I've started to subconsciously understand Dutch spelling. It is really starting to screw me over with English spelling. I've made more typos in the past few days on the forum than all of last year.

Plus I'm tired so that can't be helping either.
Better than Japanese typos.  

"What are all these characters?"  
"That says I love tacos."
"WTF"
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jan 27, 2017, 01:22 AM
Not a language I'm learning but Hindi has some interesting characters.
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/cf/d4/e6/cfd4e6fd8b9c7f82fdaa2d55129cd4cb.jpg)
I think the straight horizontal line that is present in most of the characters is interesting.  
It leads to some interesting looking words with a horizontal bar across the whole thing.  

It's an interesting consistency to come about with the characters.  
Japanese Hiragana:
(http://kanaquest.com/lessons/images/media/hiragana-chart.gif)

Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: darkknightkryta on Jan 27, 2017, 12:18 PM
I can speak Italian.  But I want it fixed.  Though when I do start a conversation it starts flowing more naturally.

I can also speak C, C#, x86, Objective C and Java ;o
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Jan 31, 2017, 01:50 AM
Somewhat language related.



I knew about Harald Bluetooth but I didn't realise there was actually a connection with the names.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Mar 27, 2017, 08:40 AM
I'M really happy with my Dutch progress. I'm loving just listening to people speak Dutch and being able to pick out a lot of the words. With reading I can understand a lot of the grammar too.

IT is funny though how much English they use. Duolingo teaches proper Dutch not street Dutch I guess.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 04, 2017, 11:05 PM
Duolingo (https://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/ja/en/status)

I'M really happy with my Dutch progress. I'm loving just listening to people speak Dutch and being able to pick out a lot of the words. With reading I can understand a lot of the grammar too.

IT is funny though how much English they use. Duolingo teaches proper Dutch not street Dutch I guess.
Lol, I literally came here to see if you use a program, and share the thing above. 
Is Duolingo pretty good?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Apr 04, 2017, 11:44 PM
Duolingo (https://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/ja/en/status)
Lol, I literally came here to see if you use a program, and share the thing above.  
Is Duolingo pretty good?
I Think Duolingo is great if you already know a second language and/or are willing to go outside of Duo when you want clarification on something.

THe problem with Duolingo is that it follows the "show don't tell" rule 100% of the time. Ie in Dutch zij can mean she, they, or "are" and I had to learn this on my own. Would have been nicer if Duolingo had a note or something saying "yes, this is the same word as before but it means something else when used this way."

DUtch also has genders and if I didn't already understand the concept from Spanish, I'd be super lost.


THat's awesome they are adding Japonese. I've been trying to get neverdies on duolingo and that's the language he wants.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: darkknightkryta on Apr 05, 2017, 03:38 PM
I need something to fix my Italian with.  I can understand most of it, and I can speak fluently enough when I get going, but I want it "fixed"
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 06, 2017, 11:03 PM
Shorthand - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand)

This is bizarre as heck...  

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Eclectic_shorthand_by_cross.png)
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on May 15, 2017, 04:07 PM
Japanese Duolingo is apparently 99% done.  

Quote
The Japanese team currently is putting a lot of efforts in finalizing the tree. The course will launch into beta phase on May 18. Please be patient until we support the course on all platforms. Because of "something new", we'll need an extra effort to support the course on different platforms. Thank you for understanding and look forward to the Japanese course!

Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on May 25, 2017, 02:41 PM
I've been worried I've been losing my progress with writing.  
But I did some writing yesterday, and I was able to pick up what I hadn't practiced in months in a few minutes.  
Also seem to be picking up new characters pretty quickly this morning.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jun 01, 2017, 02:29 AM
I've never had a day like today.
I haven't exactly kept track, but I am sure I spent over 6 hours just today doing japanese stuff.  Doing vocabulary/grammar/writing.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jun 01, 2017, 12:56 PM
Some cool things to think about:

Languages that have sounds that we don't, and don't have sounds we do.  
This is kind of cool to think about, sounds we use all the time in our language, people in other languages have trouble making those sounds.  They aren't use to it.  In Spanish, there's rolling their r's.  In Chinese, they don't have the "he" sound as in "hello". So they have trouble saying that.  Japanese people have trouble differentiating between "l" and "r".  And they don't have a "th" sound, which is probably one of the most common sounds in English (the, their, etc.).  
We don't have the japanese "f" sound, it's different from the English "f" sound.  

For a lot of people, these differences are so hard to overcome, that people will say that it's genetic.  You are either able to say it, or you aren't.  I think it's just weird to have to move your mouth, lips and tongue in ways that you never have before to make a sound you never have made before.  That probably comes easier to some people, perhaps even by accident.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jun 01, 2017, 02:10 PM
Also, while Japanese has ~2300+ different characters, what you find is that it gets a lot easier to write them and recognize them.  The first 100 are probably going to be the hardest 100.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Jun 01, 2017, 03:00 PM
I like the glottal stop. It feels like a weird foreign feature to English speakers, yet we subconsciously do it all the time.

Like the in Uh-Oh.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jun 03, 2017, 04:31 AM
So my goals are to study as much as I can throughout the summer.  
Finish the two textbooks I have, that'll put me at an N4 level; by the end of the summer.  Then get another book, which will put me at about N3, and finish that by the end of the next school year.  Etc.  
I'm hoping to be at N2 by the time I graduate, that would be amazing.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jul 26, 2017, 03:42 PM
Japanese has a very specific way to write each character, and it's pretty standardized. 
I have been getting it down pretty well though. 

What's interesting is that sometimes when I try writing English characters, I write it the way I would write Japanese characters. 
It doesn't happen very often, but it's interesting when it does. 

So my goals are to study as much as I can throughout the summer. 
Finish the two textbooks I have, that'll put me at an N4 level; by the end of the summer.  Then get another book, which will put me at about N3, and finish that by the end of the next school year.  Etc. 
I'm hoping to be at N2 by the time I graduate, that would be amazing. 
I'm not so sure how realistic this is. 
Might still be possible, but I have to work pretty hard.  And for the most part, I haven't so much...
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 02, 2017, 05:12 PM
Been using Anki to go through tons of vocab.  
Been spending around 2 hours a day it says.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Aug 02, 2017, 06:03 PM
Been using Anki to go through tons of vocab.  
Been spending around 2 hours a day it says.  
Have you checked out Duolingo's Japanese course yet?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 02, 2017, 06:09 PM
Have you checked out Duolingo's Japanese course yet?
I used it a bit a while ago.  It doesn't have a huge amount. 
It's pretty good for an intro, but it doesn't have much beyond that. 

I have been reading a lot about resources. 
The Japanese N5 test is basically covered by Duolingo.  Roughly the same level as using Genki I (I think a little less in Kanji).  I'm towards the end of Genki I. 

Then Genki II basically covers the N4 test.  I already have this book. 
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 04, 2017, 04:05 PM
Apparently Korean is coming to Duolingo.  
I don't know if anyone is interested...  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Aug 24, 2017, 09:45 PM
Apparently Korean is coming to Duolingo.  
I don't know if anyone is interested...  
Would be fun/easy to learn. The writing system was constructed to be simple.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 24, 2017, 09:58 PM
Would be fun/easy to learn. The writing system was constructed to be simple.
Easyish.  Still supposed to be one of the most time consuming language for English speakers to learn.
Learning Japanese is making me interested to learn other stuff. 

But progress is slow right now.  :(
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 02, 2017, 02:43 PM
Been slacking a lot.  Haven't even looked at anything the past few days at all.  :(
Very far away from making my goals.  Didn't even do half. :(
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: VGPolyglot on Sep 02, 2017, 03:05 PM
Been slacking a lot.  Haven't even looked at anything the past few days at all.  :(
Very far away from making my goals.  Didn't even do half. :(
Hey, just remember, if you ever want to practise just hit me up with a PM on Discord =) I almost never check this site out though, so I probably won't know if you attempt to contact me here.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Sep 02, 2017, 03:18 PM
I'm wanting to learn my conlang. It would be fun to become fluent in a language that no one speaks.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 11, 2017, 10:40 PM
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vnx5VpRXy6c/U44796n_NiI/AAAAAAAAAb8/_3SZYBw1NvI/s1600/kanachart.png)

Cool chart that shows how a lot of the kana developed form Kanji.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Sep 21, 2017, 10:58 PM
Chile to be the first American country to ban plastic bags in coastal cities : worldnews (https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/71kf0n/chile_to_be_the_first_american_country_to_ban/)

I didn't know this but "America" in English and "America" in Spanish are not 1 to 1 translations. In Spanish North and South America are a single continent and all parts are considered american. When referring to US things, they don't use american.

Lots of people seem to have issues with this and project their understanding into the other language  :P
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Oct 10, 2017, 11:27 AM
Chile to be the first American country to ban plastic bags in coastal cities : worldnews (https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/71kf0n/chile_to_be_the_first_american_country_to_ban/)

I didn't know this but "America" in English and "America" in Spanish are not 1 to 1 translations. In Spanish North and South America are a single continent and all parts are considered american. When referring to US things, they don't use american.

Lots of people seem to have issues with this and project their understanding into the other language  :P
Continent - Wikipedia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent)

Some countries combine Asia and Europe.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Oct 26, 2017, 10:57 PM
So I've been spending about an hour the past few days, studying Japanese.  I actually feel like I'm making more tangible progress than I did over the summer.  I had to relearn some things, but I feel like I've learned more over the past 3 days (despite the fact that I only spent about 3 hours on it), than I did over the summer....  

Weird.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Nov 02, 2017, 01:12 PM
Not really related to language learning.  

Some people have weird ideas of language learning.  Like on this other site, there's a bunch of people asking questions like "can bilinguals think in their weaker language?".

Just thought it was super weird that people ask these kinds of questions.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Nov 02, 2017, 07:36 PM
This is probably going to be a disaster.  

But I'm gonna try browsing VizionEck in Japanese on my phone.  At least till I get sick of it.  :P I am hoping it'll give me opportunity to practice and expand my vocabulary.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Nov 04, 2017, 09:31 PM
This is probably going to be a disaster.  

But I'm gonna try browsing VizionEck in Japanese on my phone.  At least till I get sick of it.  :P I am hoping it'll give me opportunity to practice and expand my vocabulary.
I need to do that with Dutch. I haven't practiced it in the longest time.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Nov 04, 2017, 09:56 PM
I need to do that with Dutch. I haven't practiced it in the longest time.
It's really hard in Japanese because there aren't any spaces.  
And I only recognize a few hundred words right now.
So every time there is a handful of unfamiliar words, it's hard to look it up because the words blend together.  
And Google translate isn't always that great.  

I still find sentences I can read though.  Pretty cool.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Dec 17, 2017, 11:38 PM
So, I'm trying to work on making a better game.  

Has to be entertaining enough, that it'd be addicting.  
Simple enough to be implementable in a reasonable time.
Expressive enough to actually test and develop language skills.  

If anyone has ideas, I'd love that.  
Currently I'm looking into making a card game, similar to Yu-Gi-Oh.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Dec 18, 2017, 12:12 AM
So, I'm trying to work on making a better game.  

Has to be entertaining enough, that it'd be addicting.  
Simple enough to be implementable in a reasonable time.
Expressive enough to actually test and develop language skills.  

If anyone has ideas, I'd love that.  
Currently I'm looking into making a card game, similar to Yu-Gi-Oh.  
You could have loot box like mechanics and lots of flashy pizazz. Would surely help make it addicting even if the gameplay loop isn't that great.

Are you wanting to make it a game that uses words and feels like a learning game, or is it more of a game that teaches as a byproduct?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Dec 18, 2017, 12:25 AM
You could have loot box like mechanics and lots of flashy pizazz. Would surely help make it addicting even if the gameplay loop isn't that great.
I'm not sure the best way to present that.  
But I like it.  

Are you wanting to make it a game that uses words and feels like a learning game, or is it more of a game that teaches as a byproduct?
Ideally the latter, Here's what I'm thinking so far.  
Cards are basically just letters.  For English, we might have h,e,l,l,o is a hand.  Obviously these can make a word.  Separately they can be played, but you can combine them to make a single more powerful "monster".  

So far, it's probably my favorite idea.  It's simple enough to not require any kind of language knowledge, but language knowledge is advantageous.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Dec 18, 2017, 12:37 AM
I'm not sure the best way to present that.  
But I like it.  
Ideally the latter, Here's what I'm thinking so far.  
Cards are basically just letters.  For English, we might have h,e,l,l,o is a hand.  Obviously these can make a word.  Separately they can be played, but you can combine them to make a single more powerful "monster".  

So far, it's probably my favorite idea.  It's simple enough to not require any kind of language knowledge, but language knowledge is advantageous.  
I like it.

Would you want to have a grammar component or just leave it at vocabulary?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Dec 18, 2017, 12:45 AM
I like it.

Would you want to have a grammar component or just leave it at vocabulary?
Probably just vocabulary.  
Unless I could come up with a good consistent design to incorporate grammar.  Some grammar would be pretty easy to add, but I can imagine running into issues with adding some other parts.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Dec 26, 2017, 09:31 PM
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91Ky%2BMwlAeL.jpg)

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51QaTusLccL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81OIAmbTijL.jpg)

These are the 3 books I got.  
Third one is still being delivered.  First two bought by sister.  Last bought by my wife.  

Watched "The Girl Who leapt through time".   Was cool to be understanding a fair amount of the dialogue early on in the movie.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Feb 10, 2018, 09:19 PM
I decided to scrap my card game idea.  Just a lot of issues that I wasn't really finding good solutions for.  

Like I wasn't sure how I wanted to handle the writing with Hiragana, vs Kanji vs the English meaning.  Like some Hiragana words have several, completely different meanings, and that's why Kanji is really important.  Then I was thinking maybe have a separate deck of Kanji to match the Hiragana word (so that the player has the words to match them to), but I didn't really like that either.

And I wasn't sure how to handle the deck.  What happens if the player can't match any of the characters.  Imagine if you got a hand that said "hhhhh", what are the players options.  I don't like the idea of having super large hands, or an infinite deck.  

I'm not sure if those issues make sense, but I just didn't like any solution for them.  

I kind of decided I didn't want to go through with it a while ago.

I woke up this morning and I pretty quickly found myself with a new idea, to make an RPG.  With the card game project, the more I thought about it, the more that I felt that it couldn't really work the way I was wanting it to.  With this RPG though, the more I think about it, the more exciting it is.  

It kind of ties in with the Skyrim project that I posted on the first page, except I thought of some really nice ways to structure it.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Feb 10, 2018, 09:25 PM
Glad you're still figuring things out even if the first idea didn't work.

So would this rpg push the language back to just being an element of the world, or would gameplay still be dependent on it?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Feb 19, 2018, 08:38 PM
Scots leid - Wikipedia (https://sco.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_leid)

Reading the page about Scots language in Scottish.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 02, 2018, 09:40 PM
Sometimes it's kind of crazy to think of all the things in language that native speakers don't even really think about.  

Like just think about stress in English. Here's an example that wikipedia had.
I didn't take the test yesterday. (Somebody else did.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did not take it.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did something else with it.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took a different one.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took something else.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took it some other day.)


Or take adjective order.  
The beautiful big dragon vs the big beautiful dragon.  They just feel different.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Xevross on Apr 02, 2018, 09:43 PM
Sometimes it's kind of crazy to think of all the things in language that native speakers don't even really think about.  

Like just think about stress in English. Here's an example that wikipedia had.
I didn't take the test yesterday. (Somebody else did.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did not take it.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did something else with it.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took a different one.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took something else.)
I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took it some other day.)


Or take adjective order.  
The beautiful big dragon vs the big beautiful dragon.  They just feel different.  
Yeah I hear that its subtle things like that which make English a baby to learn how to speak. Learning to read/ write it is a lot easier.

The big thing that my step mum complains about is the different pronunciations of the same chains of letters. Like why does adding an s in front of laughter make it sound like slaughter?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 02, 2018, 09:45 PM
My nephew is 6 years old, and he's been learning Spanish in his classes.  Wifey says that he is better at Spanish than she is, even though she did like 5 years of Spanish in school.  

Yeah I hear that its subtle things like that which make English a baby to learn how to speak. Learning to read/ write it is a lot easier.

The big thing that my step mum complains about is the different pronunciations of the same chains of letters. Like why does adding an s in front of laughter make it sound like slaughter?
I'm pretty glad I'm a native English speaker.  Don't even have to think about most of these things.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Apr 03, 2018, 03:47 PM
Like why does adding an s in front of laughter make it sound like slaughter?
Because spoken language has a couple thousand sounds yet we only have 26 letters. If you want to keep the language an alphabet, it'd be impossible to not have letters affect the pronunciation of other letters. Not that English couldn't do with a spelling reform but that could never get rid of all different pronunciations for the same chains of letters.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 03, 2018, 04:54 PM
Because spoken language has a couple thousand sounds yet we only have 26 letters. If you want to keep the language an alphabet, it'd be impossible to not have letters affect the pronunciation of other letters. Not that English couldn't do with a spelling reform but that could never get rid of all different pronunciations for the same chains of letters.
Just spell slaughter as slawter.  

There's a lot of reasons why English spelling is bad.  
Pronunciations change, and the spellings don't. For example the words knife and knight, once upon a time you'd pronounce the 'k'.

We also borrowed a lot of words from other languages like French especially, Greek, and others without properly changing it.  

Japanese doesn't have that issue, but it largely helps they have fewer sounds as well as a strictly phonetic character group.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Apr 03, 2018, 05:06 PM
Just spell slaughter as slawter.  

There's a lot of reasons why English spelling is bad.  
Pronunciations change, and the spellings don't. For example the words knife and knight, once upon a time you'd pronounce the 'k'.

We also borrowed a lot of words from other languages like French especially, Greek, and others without properly changing it.  

Japanese doesn't have that issue, but it largely helps they have fewer sounds as well as a strictly phonetic character group.  
If slaughter becomes slawter, then what about lawyer and other words with "law" that doesn't sound like law?

Yeah English definitely has a lot of history that screw it up, but it's impossible to avoid completely. Would be interesting to see a computer attempt a spelling reform to try to get as few alternate pronunciations as possible. Or better yet, let the computer start from scratch and calculate how many letters are needed to get no alternate pronunciations within standard words.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 03, 2018, 05:15 PM
If slaughter becomes slawter, then what about lawyer and other words with "law" that doesn't sound like law?
loiyer or something.  

Would be interesting to see a computer attempt a spelling reform to try to get as few alternate pronunciations as possible. Or better yet, let the computer start from scratch and calculate how many letters are needed to get no alternate pronunciations within standard words.
There's pretty much a whole field dedicated to this already.
Help:IPA/English - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English)


There are some languages that have hundreds of sounds not in English, but English uses a pretty small subset of sounds.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Apr 03, 2018, 05:20 PM
loiyer or something.  
There's pretty much a whole field dedicated to this already.
Help:IPA/English - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English)


There are some languages that have hundreds of sounds not in English, but English uses a pretty small subset of sounds.  
Oh I didn't mean IPA. That's something every conlanger deals with. Guess it's pretty similar though.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 03, 2018, 05:37 PM
Have you ever watched this?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jun 02, 2018, 04:43 PM
I will probably have to take a Chinese course in the fall.  They aren't offering the Japanese course I could take, and I need another language credit.

But I'm nervous.  

Chinese is super different.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 16, 2018, 04:24 PM
I didn't realize how uncommon the "th" sound is.  

From wiki:
"Among the more than 60 languages with over 10 million speakers, only English, various dialects of Arabic, Standard European Spanish, Swahili (in words derived from Arabic), Burmese, Greek have the voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative."


And this:
Quote
Two languages kept the th sound. One was Icelandic, which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows how Icelandic works - namely, keep-all-the-everything-from-Old-Norse-and-make-up-new-Old-Norse-words-for-things-the-Norse-didn't-have. It don't do change so well. So, of course, it kept the th sounds. It even has fun letters to represent them with: þ and ð.

English, in an extraordinary turn of events, was the other language. English is Icelandic's antithesis: it changes things, borrows words from everyone, chops them in half, mutilates the spelling, and serves them with a fine whigne. It should have gotten rid of the th! It makes no sense that it kept the th!
Is it a coincidence that Icelandic, Faroese, and English all have the dental fricative sound? - Quora (https://www.quora.com/Is-it-a-coincidence-that-Icelandic-Faroese-and-English-all-have-the-dental-fricative-sound)
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Aug 16, 2018, 06:14 PM
Yeah it's funny that English has one of the hardest sounds for people to learn. As natives you'd never think of the th sound being odd.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Aug 17, 2018, 08:43 PM
Have you ever watched this?

I've seen it now. Thanks!
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 17, 2018, 09:26 PM
Yeah it's funny that English has one of the hardest sounds for people to learn. As natives you'd never think of the th sound being odd.
It feels really strange that "th" tends to be replaced by other sounds. Feels like a center piece of the language practically.

I've seen it now. Thanks!
I thought it was a fun video
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 27, 2018, 03:25 PM
I usually had like a list of like 10 languages I would like to learn in my lifetime.  Wasn't always the same list, but usually was like:
Japanese
German
French
Chinese
Russian
Spanish
Latin
Greek
Italian
So I have no idea if I'm going to be able to successfully learn 1 language, Japanese is incredibly difficult.  But as I start to get competent, I'd still like to try learning more languages.  Basically in this order:

Japanese
Chinese
German
Spanish
Norwegian
Korean
French


I want to be fluent in Japanese for sure, and Chinese.  But after that, something near conversational for the others would be awesome.  

The nice thing is that the European languages might take less time combined than just Japanese will...
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 06, 2018, 02:43 PM
Chinese is a bit frustrating for my first day.  

"The g sounds like the k in sky, and the k sounds like the k in kite."

"The b sounds like the p in speak and p sounds like the p in pork."

Chinese has a couple vowels that English doesn't have and consonants are like ever so slightly different for most of them.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Sep 06, 2018, 02:58 PM
Chinese is a bit frustrating for my first day.  

"The g sounds like the k in sky, and the k sounds like the k in kite."

"The b sounds like the p in speak and p sounds like the p in pork."

Chinese has a couple vowels that English doesn't have and consonants are like ever so slightly different for most of them.  
What made you want to learn Chinese?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 06, 2018, 03:02 PM
What made you want to learn Chinese?
It fit into my schedule and it's a language I've wanted to learn for a long time.  
I couldn't take any of the Japanese courses this semester.  Otherwise I would have done that.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 06, 2018, 07:12 PM
Forum | Duolingo (https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/28745855)

What made you want to learn Chinese?
Quoting again.  

I have to say though, that my desire to learn Chinese increased a lot while learning Japanese.  The writing system is similar(with many of the same characters) and the grammar is simpler and closer to English.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 07, 2018, 07:19 PM
(https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-90921f6a35976360cb0318580f392992)

There's a language called Oksapmin that has base 27, that counts similar to this diagram.  They use the same word for the body part as the number.  
So they also have different words for left wrist and right wrist.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Sep 07, 2018, 09:40 PM
(https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-90921f6a35976360cb0318580f392992)

There's a language called Oksapmin that has base 27, that counts similar to this diagram.  They use the same word for the body part as the number.  
So they also have different words for left wrist and right wrist.  
Odd that they'd go through the trouble of inventing that system without just using multiple digits for body counting.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 12, 2018, 03:31 PM
The sounds that I have to get straight:
q, ch (one described as the "ch" in cheese, and the other as the "ch" in chirp)

x, r, sh (r is pronounced the same as sh, except the vocal cords vibrate. Sh is pronounced as you'd expect.  X is described online as the "sh" sound, except your have the tip of the tongue at the bottom of your teeth.).

J, zh (one described as the "j" in Jeep and the other as the "j" in jerk)
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 19, 2018, 07:02 PM
Koe (声) | The Japanese-learning JRPG by Strawberry Games (https://www.koegame.net/)

Koe (声) on Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/app/672430/Koe/)

A language learning RPG.  :o

Quote
Koe (声) uses research based on communicative language learning and related language acquisition and retainment techniques as its core game design principal. However, we've put the focus on making Koe (声) a game rather than another edutainment-style application. Koe (声) is a full RPG at its core.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Sep 19, 2018, 09:37 PM
Koe (声) | The Japanese-learning JRPG by Strawberry Games (https://www.koegame.net/)

Koe (声) on Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/app/672430/Koe/)

A language learning RPG.  :o

Cool.

You can use it to find out what mistakes to avoid with your game ;D
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 19, 2018, 10:18 PM
Cool.

You can use it to find out what mistakes to avoid with your game ;D
Or show how little I can add to it, already.  :(


Eh, I'm pretty sure my idea is different enough.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 20, 2018, 01:18 PM
I'm really glad that Mandarin is the most popular Chinese language.  But, Cantonese is more popular in America... 

Having more than 4 tones would be beyond awful.  I feel like I might have a chance with 4 tones, but having like 6/9 tones like in Cantonese would be terrible, I think. 

One thing I am really liking about learning other languages is that you learn more about your own language, because you have to be more conscious about the sounds, and structure. 

While learning Japanese, I was more aware of certain English sounds.  Like I felt like there was a missing "a" sound, that we have in English.  It's similar to the "ugh" sound.  Chinese has this sound, in their "e". 
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Oct 20, 2018, 01:26 PM
I know I'm nowhere near ready to understand anything in a game, but I figure it might still be helpful.  But it's kind of hard to find games with Chinese audio.  
I've got a good dozen or so with subtitles, but I can't find any with audio.  

Japanese is much easier of course.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Oct 28, 2018, 02:48 AM
I've been really starting to enjoy Chinese.  I'm getting really excited to learn.

Its kinda awesome how quickly you can learn stuff.

I say kinda because it's still daunting how long all this takes.

Gotta bookmark this:
https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/catalogue.html?utm_source=Reddit%20cat#language=Japanese&country=
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Oct 30, 2018, 04:41 AM
Have you finished Japanese?

I wonder if it's best to do both simultaneously/back to back or if it's best to spread them out.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Oct 30, 2018, 12:01 PM
Have you finished Japanese?

I wonder if it's best to do both simultaneously/back to back or if it's best to spread them out.
No I'm still closer to a beginner.  :(

Biggest reason why I am taking Chinese right now I because I needed a foreign language credit and Japanese didn't fit in my schedule.  

Nice thing is that there a lot of overlap between the two languages.  I can learn new characters.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Oct 30, 2018, 03:04 PM
No I'm still closer to a beginner.  :(

Biggest reason why I am taking Chinese right now I because I needed a foreign language credit and Japanese didn't fit in my schedule.  

Nice thing is that there a lot of overlap between the two languages.  I can learn new characters.
Sounds like a win win then.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Oct 30, 2018, 03:24 PM
Sounds like a win win then.
To be honest, I have been having a really hard time staying motivated with learning.   I'll make good progress for a few days, then I won't learn anything for like a few months.  
School hurts a lot too, because there's a lot going on with it.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Oct 30, 2018, 04:15 PM
To be honest, I have been having a really hard time staying motivated with learning.   I'll make good progress for a few days, then I won't learn anything for like a few months.  
School hurts a lot too, because there's a lot going on with it.  
Any progress is still good progress  :)
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jan 24, 2019, 04:54 AM
I've never felt like I've needed to do something as much as learning Japanese.

But usually I haven't had time.  And even when I have had time, I have been having trouble staying motivated.  

I feel so frustrated.  I have this strong desire to do something, and yet at the same time I don't feel like I have the will.  

 When I'm going through the vocabulary of the first textbook, I know most of it.  Yet I still don't feel like I know enough to go to the second book.

I just have to keep trying.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Mar 18, 2019, 08:09 PM
I'm learning Japanese now! Brother is learning it so I figured this would be a good opportunity. It's my first time learning a language with a unique script so that's fun.

Also seems like Dernebel is learning it too!
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Mar 18, 2019, 08:19 PM
I'm learning Japanese now! Brother is learning it so I figured this would be a good opportunity. It's my first time learning a language with a unique script so that's fun.

Also seems like Dernebel is learning it too!
What are you using to learn?  
The script is a lot of fun.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Mar 18, 2019, 08:31 PM
What are you using to learn?  
The script is a lot of fun.  
Duolingo to start. It worked pretty well when I learned Dutch.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: DerNebel on Mar 18, 2019, 09:50 PM
I'm learning Japanese now! Brother is learning it so I figured this would be a good opportunity. It's my first time learning a language with a unique script so that's fun.

Also seems like Dernebel is learning it too!
I'm not starting until late April.  ;D

Also I'm just doing a 3 month beginners course for starters, see how much I like it and how much I'm struggling with it.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Mar 18, 2019, 11:51 PM
Duolingo to start. It worked pretty well when I learned Dutch.
Duolingo is expanding their Japanese.  

A lot of people complain that Duolingo isn't as good for Japanese.  They recommend LingoDeer usually.  

I am here to talk Japanese!  :D And I can answer some types of questions.

I'm not starting until late April.  ;D

Also I'm just doing a 3 month beginners course for starters, see how much I like it and how much I'm struggling with it.
It's not horribly difficult.  

- Use an app to memorize the Hiragana and Katakana.  You can comfortably learn each in about an hour, and that'll make a massive difference.  I had a classmate who was still struggling with those after a semester.  Really just spend an hour getting those, and you'll be on a great start.

- Aside from that, the most difficult thing is to just keep yourself on track with remembering what you're supposed to.  Just spend 20 minutes a day writing characters, and words.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Mar 19, 2019, 12:26 AM
Duolingo is expanding their Japanese.  

A lot of people complain that Duolingo isn't as good for Japanese.  They recommend LingoDeer usually.  

I am here to talk Japanese!  :D And I can answer some types of questions.
It's not horribly difficult.  

- Use an app to memorize the Hiragana and Katakana.  You can comfortably learn each in about an hour, and that'll make a massive difference.  I had a classmate who was still struggling with those after a semester.  Really just spend an hour getting those, and you'll be on a great start.

- Aside from that, the most difficult thing is to just keep yourself on track with remembering what you're supposed to.  Just spend 20 minutes a day writing characters, and words.  
It works out since by the time I reach the end of the current course, they should have the expanded version right around the corner.

It's also kinda funny but Japanese has a lot of similarities with my conlang from VizionEck Adventure. So far at least that is helping me learn.


It's also making me want to revisit my conlang and learn it better. At the very least I should finish up my text editor for the language.




1 hour each? Oops lol I'm not there yet.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Mar 19, 2019, 12:36 AM
It works out since by the time I reach the end of the current course, they should have the expanded version right around the corner.
It's also kinda funny but Japanese has a lot of similarities with my conlang from VizionEck Adventure. So far at least that is helping me learn.
It's also making me want to revisit my conlang and learn it better.
At the very least I should finish up my text editor for the language.
I figured it would! 

Quote
1 hour each? Oops lol I'm not there yet.
Well, less is doable.  :D

Just an estimate on how long it takes to memorize this and recognize them without having to think about it:
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a1/70/39/a17039e1ea0c5764320610e44f5f5856.jpg)

わたしはにほんごをべんきょうします。
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Mar 19, 2019, 12:45 AM

わたしはにほんごをべんきょうします。
I needed google translate for this.  ::)


Duolingo is weird since for the longest time it feels like you are just learning how to play the app instead of actually learning. I'm really looking forward to when I can have NHK on and start picking up on some things.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Mar 19, 2019, 12:49 AM
In about 8 weeks, I'm going all in on Japanese again.  

A lot to relearn and learn...  

.
マイク = maiku = Mike
This makes it more fun than Spanish for me.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Mar 19, 2019, 12:54 AM
In about 8 weeks, I'm going all in on Japanese again.  

A lot to relearn and learn...  
マイク = maiku = Mike
This makes it more fun than Spanish for me.  
Is spanish the only other language you've learned?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Mar 19, 2019, 12:58 AM
Is spanish the only other language you've learned?
Languages I "know"  :P
English>>>>>>Japanese>Chinese>>>Spanish

I've forgotten almost all of my Spanish, actually.  
I know very little Japanese/Chinese, but I know enough that I could get around.  


I just remember being irritated with my spanish classes, that required us to pick random Spanish names.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Mar 19, 2019, 01:06 AM
Languages I "know"  :P
English>>>>>>Japanese>Chinese>>>Spanish

I've forgotten almost all of my Spanish, actually.  
I know very little Japanese/Chinese, but I know enough that I could get around.  


I just remember being irritated with my spanish classes, that required us to pick random Spanish names.  
Haha my Spanish classes did that too. I was Miguel for all my classes except one year the teacher forced me to use a different name.


English>>>>>>Spanish>>Dutch>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Japanese
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Mar 19, 2019, 01:25 AM
A couple of things that Duolingo might not teach:

The 'u' sound, a lot of times gets dropped, if it's between certain consonants or at the end of an utterance.  Sasuke gets pronounced like Sah-skay (which might not be helpful)  If it's a u between s, t, or k (there might be some other cases I'm forgetting), it doesn't usually get pronounced.  

Although that's somewhat regional.  So it won't hurt understanding, if you don't drop those.  


A couple of characters get pronounced differently when they are used as particles.  

は、へ
ha,  he are pronounced as wa, e when they are particles. When they are part of a word, they are pronounced as usual.  The exception are:

konnichiwa, konbanwa are written with a "ha".  The reason is because the literal meanings of these words are "this day is...", "this afternoon is".  But now they are used to say hello.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Mar 22, 2019, 05:43 PM
Japanese is going good. I'm getting a hang of how very basic sayings work.

日本
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Mar 22, 2019, 05:49 PM
Japanese is going good. I'm getting a hang of how very basic sayings work.

日本
いいですね。
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 02, 2019, 12:56 AM
ツイストパズルシミュレータが日本に行きますか。
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Apr 02, 2019, 05:45 AM
ツイストパズルシミュレータが日本に行きますか。
Haha!

All I could make out was "Japan" and that it was a question, but progress!

はい
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 13, 2019, 09:37 PM
Haha!

All I could make out was "Japan" and that it was a question, but progress!

はい
どうですか。
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Apr 14, 2019, 02:13 AM
どうですか。
Good. I need to learn a lot more vocab, but I can read duolingo examples pretty well. I'm learning time right now lol.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on May 09, 2019, 06:19 PM
Good. I need to learn a lot more vocab, but I can read duolingo examples pretty well. I'm learning time right now lol.
How's it going?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on May 09, 2019, 07:38 PM
How's it going?
Taking a break  ::)
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Jul 31, 2019, 03:22 PM
I've resumed learning japanese.

Ohaio
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 01, 2019, 02:19 AM
I've resumed learning japanese.

Ohaio
*ohayoo

Konbanha
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 03, 2019, 03:01 PM
So I'm not actively working on my Japanese rpg, but I'm still trying to think about it. 

I still really love the idea, but there are a lot of challenges.  Like there's a lot of words that are really hard to try to incorporate. To the point where I sometimes feel like a chatbot would almost be easier and more helpful.

Only slightly discouraged, but still working on it in the back of my head. 


------

Also trying to get back into learning Japanese.  I just have to force myself to sit down and get back into it.  It's hard though.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Oct 23, 2019, 02:41 PM
So something that probably won't come up with Duolingo, since you probably aren't learning how to write is that Japanese, Chinese have stroke orders.  

So for every character, there's a single order that they should be written.  
(https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/hg8CyVdMZWdUIc5C6KaEXQqXGCI=/256x256/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/li-56a5df6f5f9b58b7d0ded497.gif)

Some would say English has this too, but it's not as demanding. Someone writing the letter a in a funny way, will still be understood.
This stroke order serves a few purposes.  

1.)  Character recognition.   Sometimes with especially stylized writings, you'll have a character that will end up looking like another.  But determining which stroke comes before which one can help with figuring out which character was written.

2.)  Character look up.  There are a couple of ways that characters can be organized in a dictionary, and one of them is by using the number of strokes.  
When you get more competent with writing Japanese/Chinese, you can usually tell how many strokes are used in a character.  

So you can look up what characters use 7 strokes, and hopefully you'll find whatever character you are trying to identify.  

3.)  Nice handwriting.  Having a system and having a flow to how you write can help make your characters legible.


Fun fact, Japanese and Chinese have slightly different rules for character writing, so sometimes characters will be written differently in one language compared to the other.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jan 10, 2020, 04:05 AM
私は日本語でスカイリムを遊んでいます。もっと分かります。でも、まだとても難し。
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Jan 10, 2020, 07:04 AM
私は日本語でスカイリムを遊んでいます。もっと分かります。でも、まだとても難し。
Are you playing Skyrim in Japanese?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jan 10, 2020, 07:22 AM
Are you playing Skyrim in Japanese?
Yep!
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jan 12, 2020, 10:23 PM
It feels kind of weird sometimes how difficult it is to learn a language.  

Like language textbooks are like half the size of other texts  and they're mostly for giving people practice.  

And yet they take twice as long to learn.

It makes sense but it's weird to think about sometimes
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jan 26, 2020, 05:01 AM
A lot of the time, I think about how much I don't know.  Like I felt like I would never go to Japan just because there's so much I wouldn't know how to say.  

Now that I've met someone I can talk to, it feels different.  I'm thinking about all the stuff I can say and it feels like a lot now.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 02, 2020, 08:28 PM
YouTube's auto captions seem to work pretty good for English.

But Japanese songs, it often has no clue.  Two songs I've been listening to have been misidentified as Spanish and Italian.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 23, 2020, 01:03 AM
I've resumed learning japanese.

Ohaio
Still learning?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Apr 23, 2020, 01:22 AM
Still learning?
Nopa.

Work has been way too technically draining so for now I can't also be dealing with language learning. Once I get out of the engine development side of things I hope to resume.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 23, 2020, 01:50 AM
Nopa.

Work has been way too technically draining so for now I can't also be dealing with language learning. Once I get out of the engine development side of things I hope to resume.
I'm worried if I'll be able to balance the two, once my project is done.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jun 16, 2020, 03:58 AM
The way that I've been studying Japanese has been ridiculously inefficient.
Both in time and paper.  

Anki and Memrise are paper free and are supposed to be incredibly time efficient.  But I have a lot of trouble sticking with either.  Like I would keep up with it for a month, and then I had a bad day and didn't go back to it for a few months and at that point I really felt like I was starting over.  

Writing my notes on paper though, it feels like I'm actually making progress and I've been able to keep it up for several months.

But it's a huge amount of paper and it takes a couple days before I am noticeably getting better at word recall.  



So I am trying something different.  Making paper flashcards.  

Took this list of 7200 words with two translations each that someone wrote up, added a few extra things.  Spent a few hours working on excel tricks to automate part of this.  

And mostly automated those 7200 vocab words into 2300 cards, where each card is organized by character.  So each card has between 0 and 7 words.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Jan 06, 2021, 12:50 AM
Duolingo sucks.

I'm getting back in to Japanese. Duolingo added hearts that function as mobile microtrash timers. Make mistakes and you either need to wait or buy hearts.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 23, 2021, 06:57 PM
I'm currently in the process of setting up a discord server for general language learning.

I don't know what to do with it exactly, just had a fun "by the seat of my pants" moment.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Apr 30, 2021, 05:40 AM
I'm currently in the process of setting up a discord server for general language learning.

I don't know what to do with it exactly, just had a fun "by the seat of my pants" moment.
Anything ready to go?


I think I'm finally done fudging around and making major changes to my conlang grammar. Now I need to become as fluent as possible.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Apr 30, 2021, 01:51 PM
Anything ready to go?
It's set up, and has channels and everything.  Invitation Link (https://discord.gg/4DerVp2J)

It feels kind of dumb though.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Sep 04, 2021, 03:51 AM
It's very hard returning to my language after a prolonged absence. It really goes to show just how helpful good documentation is.

Over the next few weeks I'll be trying to write all the in game text that is in my language. Hopefully I can become somewhat decent or else it's going to be a massive pain. The unique grammar can make translation pretty challenging but I at least know I can enter a flow state for certain concepts.

Long term I really want to be fluent. It'd help me feel like I really really created my own language, and I'm interested in seeing how it "feels." What is thinking like in a language that lacks a spoken form? Are some of my grammatical structures too alien for the subconscious to understand?




Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 04, 2021, 08:57 PM
Sometimes I think it'd be fun to make a story in japanese.

But I feel like Itd be a lot of work for few results.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Sep 04, 2021, 10:15 PM
Sometimes I think it'd be fun to make a story in japanese.

But I feel like Itd be a lot of work for few results.
Do you ever play games in Japanese?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 05, 2021, 12:15 AM
Do you ever play games in Japanese?
I've tried playing Skyrim.
But it's still incredibly difficult.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: kitler53 on Sep 05, 2021, 02:45 AM
so I googled hapax for some reason.

(https://c.tenor.com/_GWrgI4QsDQAAAAC/clever-girl-jurassic-park.gif)
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Sep 05, 2021, 03:14 AM
I've tried playing Skyrim.
But it's still incredibly difficult.
Guess you shouldn't write a book about adventuring then haha.


so I googled hapax for some reason.

(https://c.tenor.com/_GWrgI4QsDQAAAAC/clever-girl-jurassic-park.gif)
Yeah it's not a made up word lol.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Oct 05, 2021, 05:46 AM
I'm sitting here watching Russia's coverage of a rocket launch. I def wanna learn Russian at some point.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Oct 25, 2021, 08:27 PM
I feel like I've lost my reason for wanting to learn Japanese.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Oct 25, 2021, 08:53 PM
I feel like I've lost my reason for wanting to learn Japanese.
How so?
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Oct 25, 2021, 09:01 PM
How so?
I just have been feeling like "what's the point?", lately.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Oct 25, 2021, 09:05 PM
I just have been feeling like "what's the point?", lately.  
Do you enjoy learning it though? Japanese specifically might not have a point but there are always plenty of reasons to be multilingual in general.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Oct 25, 2021, 09:17 PM
Do you enjoy learning it though?
In a complicated kind of way.

I like it, when I'm in the middle of it. I enjoy actually writing, reading, speaking or listening to Japanese.

But it's not something I look forward to.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Jun 29, 2022, 03:47 PM
Game over? New language law puts Quebec's video game industry at risk, insiders say | CBC News (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bill-96-quebec-video-game-industry-1.6498773)

Quebec is essentially forcing people to learn French. Doesn't seem like the best way to preserve their culture and language.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: kitler53 on Jun 29, 2022, 05:11 PM
just another example of how "nationalism" is a direct line to poverty.   
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Oct 09, 2022, 03:58 PM
Noun Town: VR Language Learning on Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1643100/Noun_Town_VR_Language_Learning/)
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 24, 2023, 05:52 PM
What would make an ideal language learning companion?

A few obvious things that come to mind:
- easily accessible
- fun/addicting
- useful lessons: vocabulary, grammar, understanding (listening/reading), production (talking/writing) ideally

Something that is easy to use, something that makes you want to use it, and something that is useful.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Aug 24, 2023, 06:17 PM
Random idea I just had is a chrome extension that partially translates things. First it'd just replace individual words here and there with your target language but as you get better it could replace a full sentence here and there within whatever you're reading.

Then periodically you could take tests where it pulls up previously translated words/sentences. Remove all the English context around them and verify you can translate them back into English.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Nov 09, 2023, 08:09 PM
It's a weird feeling for me listening to artists that don't have a wikipedia page in English.

And it's even weirder listening to an artist that basically doesn't exist in English almost anywhere on the internet.

I am pretty sure I've said this before, but it's kind of weird feeling. Like you've found a secret room online or something.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Nov 09, 2023, 08:38 PM
If you're talking about asian music, that's kinda impressive. There's such a large market for that in the west.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Nov 09, 2023, 09:03 PM
If you're talking about asian music, that's kinda impressive. There's such a large market for that in the west.


There's a Japanese wiki page, can't find an English wiki (https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms.OOJA)





This one is a weird thing.

As far as I can tell, the singer is mislabeled for this video. It sounds like it is actually 芝麻Mochi, who is a Chinese singer who might not even be a professional.  

A short of an English song:
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: the-pi-guy on Feb 11, 2024, 01:38 AM
Been getting back into Japanese very consistently. Been doing Anki flashcards almost every day, and doing Kanji studies almost every day this year so far.  
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Horizon on Feb 11, 2024, 11:40 AM
Honestly being able to speak English we're so lucky. I went to Singapore and Vietnam recently and everyone speaks english so well. Even road signs in vietnam are in english.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Feb 11, 2024, 03:55 PM
Honestly being able to speak English we're so lucky. I went to Singapore and Vietnam recently and everyone speaks english so well. Even road signs in vietnam are in english.
Yeah I'm glad English won over French as our lingua franca.

Sure makes it easier to travel.
Title: Re: Learning a language? Come share your progress here!
Post by: Legend on Feb 29, 2024, 12:21 AM


I'm sure non conlangers think most conlangs sound this crazy and pointless.  ::)