Poll time! (okay bsky doesn't have polls yet but humour me)
What do you think the hardest part of learning a language is?
a) pronunciation
b) learning all the words
c) understanding people
d) grammar
e) sticking with it
f) feeling awkward trying to talk with people
g) something else (reply!)
Follow-up poll!
What do you think the EASIEST aspect of learning a language beyond childhood is?
a) you have another language to ask meta questions in
b) you already understand the concept of literacy
c) you know how body parts work
d) you pick how you spend your time
e) other (pls reply!)
Third poll!
What's something you've done that's been the most EFFECTIVE in terms of getting you across a language learning challenge you've experienced?
(no abc options here because I have less of a sense of what's going to be popular, please reply!)
Alright I am inspired by the creativity in these responses, what's something highly personal or eccentric you've done to help learn a language?
And how did it go?
So far we have learning through sailor moon fanfiction and putting that you're learning in your tinder bio and I want MORE
Ok, so I started learning Swedish because I wanted to be able to read the Instagram posts that First Aid Kit wrote in Swedish, but along the way I got a silly Duolingo sentence ("Sagan handlar om två igelkottar och en tvål" = "The fairytale is about 2 hedgehogs and bar of soap"), and I decided...
...that, given that such a fairytale didn't actually exist, I *needed* to write one. In Swedish. I swear I learnt more from trying to write a funny fairytale story (including a pun!) than any other thing I did while learning Swedish!
I did once decide to practise my Icelandic by translating the Icelandic lyrics of Les Misérables into English, but that's only odd in the sense that the Icelandic libretto is based on an English libretto that is itself based on a French one...
And, speaking of French, I recently discovered that French-language ASMR videos make surprisingly good listening practice (new vocab, and the whispering is an interesting challenge, but nice and slow). Worked better than my hopeless attempt to play French Scrabble, anyway!
Omg, I spent a bunch of time in HS French class translating Les Mis lyrics from English into French, and *bless* my teacher for the kindness with which she encouraged me while also letting me know that the libretto was in French to begin with... 😂
There is SO MUCH Swedish language pop music; it's great for getting used to how the words feel in your mouth
I also once took a language class to show up the leader of the study abroad program I was on. He said a student who had taken that class failed, so I took it and got the 2nd highest grade 💅
learning japanese sometimes feels like a nightmare slog through an impenetrable forest but being able to find super niche online stuff (astronomy and transit) and thinking about how I'd relay it to an english speaker has helped a lot.(and forcing myself to watch anime with japanese subtitles)
I went to a university in my second language to do a major in my third language and a minor in my fourth language.
It went poorly for that last one. Do not recommend.
Pro tip for using YouTube videos for language learning:
TED or TEDX Talks in your target language often have transcripts written by a human being, not to mention good grammar, pronunciation
When you click "More" under Description for the Transcript, you even see the author and reviewer names.
I translated a funny story about how my then-3 year old named a favorite dish "chocolate ham" and later translated Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First" to see if was still funny in Spanish. (It is)
When I studied Swahili, we translated "The Little Prince" to Swahili for one semester. That was fun. I learned most though by beeing forced to make a book presentation in Swahili and answering all the questions and by listening to other presentations and having to ask one question.
I didn't get a job editing translated manga on purpose to help with my Japanese, but it does force me to make use of it on a regular basis, which is good!
I started teaching myself Japanese in high school by going at some Sailor Moon manga with a dictionary and a reference grammar—and I did teach myself enough grammar that I didn’t learn anything new in three years of university classes. (I needed the vocab and speaking practice though!)
While learning Russian -- taking notes for my non-Russian classes in Russian as much as I could, even if that meant scattered vocab or just a really crude mix.
This has, hilariously, DESTROYED my ability to handwrite in English to this day. I will revert to mixing in Cyrillic.
oh, ALSO, I found a super nerdy math textbook about some kind of math/linguistics overlap (aka catnip) in Russian and bought that and just slogged my way through it
I see I am not the first person mention memorizing Swedish pop music... I also started reading The Lord of the Rings in Russian (but never got around to finishing it).
Pretty tame by eccentricity standards.
Collecting versions of The Little Prince. It’s not going TOO terribly well because the languages I need are difficult to find, but it’s fun.
It started because I first read the book in my English/Spanish bilingual primary school, and then a third time in high school French class.
I really liked a book trilogy by a Dutch author, but the sequel hadn’t been translated yet. So I thought, I just finished the Duolingo French course, I wouldn’t mind doing more Duolingo, why not learn Dutch so I can read this one book…
(I’m German so learning Dutch came fairly easy to me. And I did read the book eventually, and years later it all paid off when I did an exchange semester in Amsterdam!)
Not me personally but I've had some comments on work I do for some SciComm YouTube creators saying that watching their videos on Bilibili with the Chinese and English subtitles helps them learn English...
They learn both Science/Math and English from the videos, why not.
Otherwise… many years earlier (84-85 probably) I had started getting interested in English (I was learning German first, in France) by trying to translate the Beatles’ lyrics, which was a little bewildering :)
But both helped, I’m sure!
Probably not that eccentric but when I started to think reading fiction in English would help increase fluency I was was worried about my tendency to fret about not understanding & stopping to open the dictionary every new word (1994) so I chose to read It (S King) bc I’d read it in French already
I have read my favorite Agatha Christie books so many times that reading them in Italian was fairly easy and increased my vocabulary. Ditto Simpsons episodes dubbed, and whatever movie was on tv if I knew it pretty well. The Graduate ran a lot and it has an extra something in Italian lol
I did not do it purposefully for language-learning purposes—just surviving in Kazakhstan during covid—but damn if online shopping didn’t help my Russian.
Relaxing and allowing myself to just listen to a podcast or a movie or whatever without trying to do a simultaneous translation of it in my brain. I get more out of it.
Also watching movies in the original language with original-language subtitles. It really helps to see and hear simultaneously.
external motivation.
There once was a fan fic writer who wrote one phenomenal sailor moon
fic in german but all her other fics were in english but I really wanted to read more from them and so I sat down with a dictionary and read her stuff. didn't need the dictionary by the third story
I went online *insert the old modem sound here*, searched for fics, opened them, copied them to word and then disconnected, everything as fast as posible since we were on a time based plan back then where you had to pay for every minute of internet time ^^"
(now I feel old)
