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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[–] arxaseus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

After the hiccup I ended up getting back on the horse somewhat. Pumping a whole hour into Japanese, Spanish and Irish, which was more than what I was doing before. 30 mins of that is immersion/listening practise though so it's less intense than the more direct study is like. I can't understand anything in Irish besides a few words, but I'm hoping the early immersion is helping train my ear more for the different sounding words/dialects.

Using TG4 for my Irish immersion, and sadly it's not available outside Ireland like I thought it'd be. Good resource though, for sure.

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 days ago

Really happy to hear that you've been able jump back on. And don't downplay the immersion exercises! I am often said to pronounce words pretty well in German and honestly I think it's due to me listening to it so much even when I didn't understand much of it :)

[–] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Going OK. Slow and steady I suppose. I could focus more on it but I get so drained from work and home that I just do a few things and check the box. This last week I have actually been going beyond the minimum so that's a win!

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago

Slow and steady is really good, wayy better than not doing anything at all!

I can relate. If its tough right now try to atleast keep the habit by doing tiny lessons or looking up words atleast a bit every week. Don't let it fade away completely :)

And hell yeah that's a win! More of that when you are able to!

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Meh... Lacking motivation this week. Also starting to feel like Pimsleur is a bit pointless.

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

That's totally okay, just don't fully give up on it! Never heard of Pimsleur before, is it just boring or do you feel like it's too basic for your skill level?

[–] 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 5 days 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 5 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 4 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 4 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 5 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!

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Mostly focusing on Norwegian, trying to talk to people and such. Otherwise mostly slow.

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's good! Exactly the same here except I'm working on German.

[–] azimir@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ich auch!

We moved to Germany a few weeks ago (well... moved to Berlin). Immersion here is sorta immersion.

I read some new children's books. Spent time translating government documents (the never ending array of government documents). Learned a few new words in conversation and got a bit better at people's names.

Deutsch jeden tag!

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

Ahh Super!

I also have the priviledge of living in a german-speaking capital city, so I can immerse but fallback whenever I feel uncomfortable (Vienna) :)

I tried the childrens books for a bit, but ultimately decided to take courses and buy course books to go through. Self learning takes quite a lot of discipline and I suck at that...

But yeah I can relate with the documents lol!

Ja! Wir können es schaffen!!

[–] droning_in_my_ears@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm still reading. Still speaking to my homestay host while eating lunch or playing cards etc. I noticed a lot of improvement the first week of the stay but after 1 month now I think I'm plateauing. Maybe I should take an intensive course or something :/

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago

Highly recommend it! I felt like my progress halted after awhile of living in a country that speaks my target language too. Intensive course really helped with that.