this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2025
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Language Learning

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How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 1 week ago by Lazycog@sopuli.xyz to c/languagelearning@sopuli.xyz
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[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thanks! :) Yes, definitely not dropping it :)

Pimsleur is actually a rather "old" program, originally devised just as a kind of audiobook, but now they also do have an app. It's 30min/day and basically only teaches you to speak. They do not make any claims about getting you to a point where you are fluent, can read, write, reason about grammar, or anything the like; but they do, very very quickly, get you to actually talk and to understand other people talking.

I initially started learning with them, 20 days before a vacation to a notoriously non-English-speaking country, and it was actually great to, at that early point, already be able to get across what you needed to say and to understand what was being communicated to you in 95% of situations, AND not be hampered by the usual shyness to speak in a foreign language, because I was already so used to actually speaking out loud in it.

I've since added a more traditional grammar/vocab curriculum, but continued Pimsleur precisely because I'd be lacking speaking exercise otherwise. So, yeah, no, I'll probably continue on with it.

What I actually dislike about it is

  1. they do not teach you any systematic grammar (which is OK!), but then also think that therefore, you cannot pick up on patterns. The consequence of this is that ~90 lessons in, if a new verb is introduced as vocabulary, then I can be certain that the vocab section for that lesson will contain that verb, that verb as a question, that verb in the past tense, and that verb negated, even if those forms are 100% regular. Which would not be a problem, EXCEPT they put a stupid 10-vocab-cards-per-lesson limit upon themselves, so now whenever a new, actually difficult form or concept is introduced, it is never in the vocab and I have no way of revisiting things I did not understand. (The same, btw, is true for numbers. Literally every number from 1 to 100, and basically every multiple of 100 up to 10.000 is in the vocab at some point, despite it being crystal clear how to form numbers once you have seen 1-20, 100, and 200. Yesterday - again, 90 lessons in!! - my vocab included the word for "twelve".)
  2. their "spaced repetition" is a joke, because a) its "spaces" are way, way too big and b) obviously do not adapt to your skill/gaps.

So, yeah: really nice to get talking quickly and to help with pronunciation and getting used to speaking; really bad for everything else.

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thanks for writing all that out, that's really interesting! Those issues sound frustrating but that's incredible what you learned in 20 days! Maybe I'll give it a spin for one of the languages I'm curious about before a vacation too.

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Thanks for reading my rant lol :D

Yeah, it's really nice to get up and running with a language you know nothing about yet. It's probably not really helpful though if you already know it a small to moderate amount.

While I'm paying for their subscription, I do need to point out that, should you be inclined to sail the high seas, bounty is easily found; after all, it's really just some audiobooks.

[–] emb@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Another alternative, older CD versions often show up in local libraries.

Which reminds me, I should try it out. Thanks for the detailed impressions!

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 2 points 5 days ago

True! There's even some of the first lessons for some languages on youtube, in their old, CD form.

Do note though, they updated some courses in the past couple of years to be more "modern" in the language used and taught.

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 days ago

Was a well written rant :)

And yeah I bumped into that issue with so many different lang learning services.. Hence the reason I decided to just stick to courses for my target language.. But it's tough to work full time and take evening courses :/

And much appreciated for the tip matey ;) now where's me sailing hat.. I like paying gold for good supplies, but have to know if the stuff fits me belly first!