Μαθαίνω ελληνικά. - I am learning Greek.

I am at the point of being able to read Greek, introduce myself, ask and respond to “how are you” and how to say “I am still learning Greek can we speak English”. haha

  • Thymos@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 days ago

    I started learning Swedish yesterday. My native language is Dutch. I started by reading a pronunciation guide, but (and this is so childish) I had to put the book away for laughing so hard after reading the Swedish word for meatballs: köttbullar.

    Profanity

    In Dutch, the word “kut” means “cunt”. It isn’t as profane as the English word and is also often used for the well-known genitals. The guide explained that Swedish “ö” is pronounced like Dutch short “u”. After this I opened my Swedish story book and the first picture had the word köttbullar in it. I then heard myself very carefully enunciate what in Dutch sounds like “cunt balls”. Couldn’t stop laughing.

    Today I will make a second attempt. I hope I can keep it contained to a short chuckle.

    • Arkouda@lemmy.caOP
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      2 days ago

      Thank you for sharing this absolutely hilarious story. Gave me a hearty laugh in the morning. haha

      Good luck getting passed it! I know I wouldn’t be strong enough. haha

  • peaches@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    I’m learning French, when I remember to. I did not put too much effort into it until now, because I understand a lot from articles, conversations, youtube videos. It is similar to Spanish, which I learnt up to native level I guess, also mostly speaking without a foreign accent. But back to French, I find it very hard to write it, so many accents and ‘s and letters that are not read. I have what they call a “musical ear”, so I do distinguish a lot of sound variations and tones, but the writing in French is brutal.

    Another language I will forever learn and not be able to get to it as with my Spanish or English is German. I mess up the articles all the time, I am sure, but I just keep going. I am perfectly comfortable reading German literature or having a conversation, but it bothers me that after so much time being exposed to it, I still make poor choices of articles.

    I started at some point learning Portuguese, but I found it frustrating that it was so similar to Spanish, all the words would come in Spanish in my mind.

    If I could, I would love to also know Greek, Danish, Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic and many others probably.

  • CptInsane0@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Currently taking Japanese classes for fun. I’m about two years in and can have very basic conversations.

    Took three years of German 20+ years ago and have German friends (and read German lemmy) so can practice sometimes.

    I’m terrible at all of them and not that great at English either. I tend to “vomit language” moreso than speak well.

  • lorty@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    I’ve been trying to learn russian but it’s been hard. I mostly know how to read Cyrillic and a few words and phrases. Everything else has been pretty difficult to make it stick in my head.

  • enbiousenvy@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 days ago

    jag lära svenska för många år sedan. but never been any more motivated so my skill is very limited.

    I learned to read cyrilic last year because I had to read some papers about central asian history written in russian, but I didn’t learn russian.

    while at that, I found out that hangeul is a very simple writing system and it is, I figured it out immediately but I still had to look up the tables to write. russian cyrilic is still more intuitive to write. But I also didn’t learn korean.

    تعلمت اللغة العربية 10 سنوات. But then I never use arabic anymore. It’s pretty cool somtimes to be able to read arabic writing and calligraphy. I used to won several arabic calligraphy contest.

    and then I also can understand 2 local languages when people around talk, but I can’t speak it well.

    Basically I never get motivated enough to be good at anything even in everything not just language :/

  • StickyDango@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I’m learning Irish. My schedule is crazy busy, but I do a lot of driving for work so I listen to Irish speaking lessons. I also do this only while I’m on the road because my Irish boyfriend has no idea I’m doing this so I can speak Irish on our wedding day.

    I can say things like where I’ve been yesterday, where I am today, where I’ll be tomorrow, what are you doing, what were you doing, it was great craic, I don’t know, I’d like a pint of Guinness, please.

    I’ll probably get made fun of for speaking the Ulster dialect (his family is all Dublin), but my favourite instructor that I’ve found is from Belfast and at least I’ll be able to speak it. ☘️

  • cally [he/they]@pawb.social
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    3 days ago

    Nederlands (Dutch), my native language is Portuguese and I also speak English.

    “Hallo, ik ben Cally en ik spreek een beetje Nederlands.” probably translates to “Hello, I am Cally and I speak a bit of Dutch.”

    I kinda suck at learning languages so I’m still at what I assume is A1 level, I think my pronunciation is ok, though. Idk how to speed up language learning but I have set my phone to Dutch and that kinda helps. For example, “Instellingen” means “Settings”

  • Schwim Dandy@lemmy.zip
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    4 days ago

    2,337 days in on learning German. My goal is to understand all of the band Rammstein’s library of work without needing a translator.

    • NotSteve_@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      I just gave up Duolingo at 1770 days for French which hurt to do. I was mostly just maintaining a streak at this point and with the news of them using AI to replace their employees (even if they retracted it), I decided to quit.

      I’ve switched to Babbel now which has been really good so far

      • Blisterexe@lemmy.zip
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        3 days ago

        As a native french speaker, I can say with confidence that the duolingo french course sucks and that you’re better off using something else.

        I’d also recommend speaking to native speakers and watching shows in french, that’s great for learning.

        • NotSteve_@lemmy.ca
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          2 days ago

          Yeah… I wasn’t actually learning a whole lot. I live right across the river from Quebec though so I’m hoping to move over there to immerse myself in French a lot more.

          I’ve always been bitter because my whole Dad’s side of the family is Francophone but never bothered to speak the language with me :(

        • t_berium@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Sehr schön, weiter so! (Deren Texte sind oft nur auf den ersten Blick oberflächlich, tatsächlich aber mehrdeutig)

  • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I’ve been learning Japanese for a long time now. The funny thing is that I started at the wrong end by learning kanji first and then moving onto grammar and vocabulary in that order. Avoid what I did unless you want to be proficient at reading it without understanding it!

    Although not all is lost, because I’m getting used to reading news and Wikipedia articles without much aid or effort anymore, and spoken Japanese is slowly getting easier. Understanding it is still proving to be a bitch from time to time but that’s on me!

    Btw, does anyone know of great websites to read Japanese? I browse Gigazine.net quite a bit and many news outlets, but I’d like to mix it up and move away from politics and news in general. I’m still a bit shy about online forums, but maybe I should do that next.

    • Luna@ani.social
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      1 day ago

      For reading practice, I like using satori reader, the full service is paid but it has really nice grammar breakdowns and i like being able to click on words to see their definition/readings

    • Valencia@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      I know you said transition away from news sites but Easynhk.com is always a staple

      Twitter is honestly great since there’s so much variety, not to mention there’s a lot of artists who’ll post full chapters of manga. You just have to curate who you follow to avoid musk stuff.

      I’d also say just watch some YouTube videos. It’s a good way to practice listening and most YouTubers will personally subtitle their videos as well so you can follow along while reading. A particular favorite way for me is to watch videos of Japanese people travelling/living in America/English speaking places. It’s fun seeing their experiences with everyday stuff for us; a channel I watch a lot is called Kira Kira USA. They post videos frequently, use a lot of day to day Japanese, and get to see viewpoints from the various family members.

      Good luck!

      • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Thank you for that! Kira Kira USA sounds a lot like what I’m looking for. I really liked Miku’s Real Japanese Pocast so this is right up my alley. Hehe

  • v01dworks@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I’ve been learning Russian for a few years, I’ve also started learning Serbian and Ukrainian a little bit.

    I can speak Russian pretty decently, it’s my girlfriend’s first language so I’ve had a lot of regular practice with it, I don’t consider myself fluent at this point but I can hold conversations with native speakers without too much of an issue

    With Ukrainian I can understand quite a bit but I haven’t had much practice speaking it with other people at all yet. I have the basic phrases memorized, things like привіт, будь ласка, доброго ранку, добрий вечір, дякую, як справи, etc. but I don’t think I could hold a conversation speaking only in Ukrainian. I’ve been studying it kind of off and on for a year or so, and I listen to some Ukrainian music fairly often

    Serbian I’ve been struggling to learn, I’ve been working on it for about 5 months. I think learning Russian first made it weirdly harder since the sentences are structured fairly differently. When it’s written, I can understand quite a bit, but if someone walked up to me and just started speaking Serbian I’d be completely lost

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I’m learning English. I think I can manage. I’m reading more and faster than most native speakers.

    Meine Muttersprache ist Deutsch.

  • zaphodb2002@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    こんにちは!日本語を勉強しています!

    I’m 90 days into learning Japanese. Most of that has been learning kana and I’m now working on kanji and grammar. It’s very different from English but I really like the way information is conveyed. I’m struggling with grammar stuff right now pretty bad, particularly conjugation, but it’ll click eventually. Also the lack of spaces is definitely something to get used to.

      • zaphodb2002@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        I started with Duolingo and while it has all the regular duo problems, I think it actually does a good job with the kana stuff. You can turn off the Romaji too, forcing yourself to read. It doesn’t teach grammar, though, so I bought Genki Vol 1, working my way through that, and wotaku.wiki has a lot of good resources.

        I really like the Cure Dolly stuff for grammar (though she can be difficult to understand, use the youtube transcripts or if you prefer reading a book someone helpfully wrote it all up). Her approach is totally different from the Genki methods, but I find it easier to understand.

        I am also using Anki with the Kaishi 1.5k Kanji deck for kanji and vocabulary. This is honestly pretty painful, I’ve been doing it for like 10 days now and I feel like I’m doing badly every time, but I am improving. I could probably stand to study the radical stuff to understand more how the kanji is constructed but I haven’t found a good resource for that just yet.

        • 鴉河雛@PieFed@pf.korako.me
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          3 days ago

          日本人にほんじんです

          漢字かんじ助詞じょし敬語けいごあたりがつらいとよくきますが日本語にほんごはそこまで厳密げんみつしゃべらなくてもある程度ていどつうじちゃったりもします

          漢字かんじ理解りかいするのに部首ぶしゅからいくのはいいですね、部首ぶしゅつくりについてある一定いってい意味いみおぼえたらめなくても意味いみ理解りかいするのが簡単かんたんになります

          小学生しょうがくせいレベルで1026ある漢字かんじをとりあえずおぼえれば日常にちじょうこまらないレベルになるとおもいます

          頑張がんばってください

          • zaphodb2002@sh.itjust.works
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            2 days ago

            がんばいます!

            I appreciate the feedback, this Anki deck should hopefully get my vocabulary to that point. I am actually pretty good at getting the meaning usually and the readings are the tough part, so I’m doing okay I guess. It just feels like a lot, but that’s true of any language I suppose. I’ve learned a lot in the last few months. Thanks for the encouragement!

          • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            カッコいい! 皆と同じように僕も日本語を選びました。Lemmyで人気のある言語らしいですね。

            でも昔、僕の場合は最初に漢字で勉強し始めたので、予想に反して、読むことや理解することが難しくなってしまいました。昨年から、オンライン新聞とウィキの記事を読み始めたので、単語や文法がだんだん分かりやすくなってきました。一歩ずつ進んでいくんですね!

            ところで、日本語を読んで練習するためにおすすめのウェブサイトがありますか?

            I hope I didn’t make too many mistakes. Writing is still a challenge!

            • 鴉河雛@PieFed@pf.korako.me
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              3 days ago

              自分じぶん日本語にほんご学習がくしゅうについてはらないですが(日本人にほんじんだからたりまえだけど・・・)、
              子供向こどもむけの絵本えほんサイトとかは意外いがいといいかもしれません

              https://ehon.alphapolis.co.jp/

              あとはサイトしゅうみたいなのもあるっぽいですね

              https://nihongo-e-na.com/jpn/site/tag/読む/

              ルビが振ってある日本語のサイトを探すのもいいかもしれないですね、
              れたらなろうとかでほんむのもいかも??

              Switchのどうぶつのもり日本語にほんご設定せっていして勉強べんきょうしているひとたことがあります

              ちなみにかれている日本語にほんご完璧かんぺきでしたよ!

              • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                あっ、すみません、好きなサイトはどちらでも大丈夫です。

                きっとチェックします。ありがとうございました~!

          • PlexSheep@infosec.pub
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            3 days ago

            ありがとう。

            私は質問があります。なぜあなたがフルストップを使わないですか。ドイツ語にはたくさんフルストップがありますから。

            • 鴉河雛@PieFed@pf.korako.me
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              3 days ago

              I usually do use proper punctuation like the Japanese full stop “。”,

              but recently there’s been a trend—especially among younger people—where it’s sometimes avoided.

              Some even call it “maru-hara” (short for “full stop harassment”), suggesting that ending a sentence with “。” can come off as cold or aggressive.

              I guess that’s why I ended up not using it myself, especially in casual contexts like social media.

              • PlexSheep@infosec.pub
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                3 days ago

                あああーなるほど。冷たいあるいは最終的なものと思われるかもしれないです。けど、ドイツ語に慣れた私にとっては、文の終わりがわがところはどこしらないです。習うしました、ありがとう。

                This kind of sentence is difficult, so I used some translator help :/

  • percent@infosec.pub
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    3 days ago

    I’ve been learning Portuguese (Brazilian) off and on for a while. I’m mostly okay-ish at reading it, but it’s nearly impossible for me to understand it when spoken.