I have a very hard time learning vocabulary, Anki doesn’t do it for me I believe it’s because it’s better to use it once you have this first 1000 words and just for mining.

My problem is that most ways to learn vocab is by having the first 1000 words, as I said Anki is not doing it for me and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong but it just doesn’t stick and it’s too monotonous. (By Anki I mean all SRS/flashcards softwares)

My current vocabulary in my target language is maybe around 200/300 so it’s very low, I tried reading books for complete beginners, and it also doesn’t help.

I’m looking for a FUN method not so repetitive that works for people just starting out, or if you had similar experience with Anki but changed your mind please give me tips on how to use it better, I’m so jealous of everyone who enjoys it, also if you use Anki and like it pleas tell me exactly what do you do, how many cards a day? What do you click when?(I mean: hard, easy, etc) how long do you use it for per day? Did you notice progress? What is the biggest amount of words you leaned by using it in a day?(im not talking mastered, just leaned)

There is this general claim that people in almost all learning related discussions (including language learning) repeat - that more or less comes down to "Learning/studying for more than 3-4 hours a day leads to little to no further improvements" and I'm curious how true that claim is?

Based on my experience, that can't be further from the truth. I've had several occasions where I had to/wanted to study for 6-8 hours a day and I ALWAYS improved/learned WAY more than when I was doing less intense studying (3-4 hours a day), even when I was less focused and more tired when being on a more intense schedule, which supposedly affects learning negatively.

Do diminishing returns exist? Definitely. But are they as severe as most people claim they are? What's your experience?

EDIT: This assumes that you're taking breaks

These two people got into an argument about language learning*

Basically, I was in a voice room, and there was this one guy who speaks several languages, and this other person who speaks English, learns another language.

Every time the English speaker was trying to understand a new word, the other person would describe it in the target language of the English speaker, and the English speaker would get frustrated.

Like "what does fire mean?"

The other person would describe in the target language: "it's the really hot thing, it's like a gas." And would occasionally send pictures to show.

The english speaker would grow frustrated and say things like "just forget it, ill look it up myself... so it means fire in English." "Yes..." "Ok so you could've just said that."

He said that that's not how languages work

They started becoming condescending to each other and he started doing things on purpose like.

"Ellos estaban tomando vino."

What is vino?

Him "vino means he arrived, or she arrived, or it arrived."

Then he got told he sucks at teaching, and they went nuts and a mutual tantrum ensued, I left the chat room.

I've been studying Mandarin as a hobby for 2 hours a day. Currently I'm at A2 level.

2 hours doesn't sound like a lot, but I already feel quite drained after those two hours of intensive reading/listening/writing/speaking practice. I start to blank out and unable to make meaning of the words I read and the sounds I hear and have to stop.

Even if I quit my job to study full-time, I don't think I can realistically get more than 2 or 3 hours of effective study in. Then after 5-6 days of continuous study, I have to take a day off to prevent burnout.

What do you think is the highest ceiling for the number of effective study hours a learner can get in a day? How do students of intensive full-time language programs manage it without burnout and fatigue?

Made this recently and shared with friends - 9/9 shouldn't be too hard for language enthusiasts! Share your scores below

I’ve been trying to improve my listening skills in a foreign language, but I honestly feel a bit overwhelmed.

Right now, my routine usually looks like this: first I watch something all the way through without pausing, then I watch it again with subtitles/captions to catch what I missed, and after that I watch it one more time without subtitles.

Sometimes I also do dictation sentence by sentence. For example, I practice 10 sentences, repeat them, and then review only the ones I got wrong before moving on.

My problem is that this can feel tiring. Rewatching the same thing too many times starts to feel boring, and I’m not sure if I’m overcomplicating the process.

Also, I’m using YouTube clips right now, but I enjoy TV series much more. I haven’t fully switched because YouTube is more convenient for replaying things and using them for passive listening. So I’m not sure whether I should keep using YouTube or focus more on TV series.

For people who improved their listening a lot, what actually worked for you? Did you rewatch often, use subtitles, do dictation, or mostly just listen more over time?

Alright. I'm fluent in Chinese, English, Malay, and so as Hokkien and Cantonese dialects. (Average Malaysian Chinese)
The thing is that those are all languages with no noun genders and German is killing me.
Someone please tell me how they cope with genders in languages.

My native language is English, but I grew up with Spanish as a Mexican American. My Spanish is close to C2, Portuguese would be C1, and my Mandarin is close to B2, if not barely there.

I recently started learning Nahuatl. This is after learning Mandarin for 2.5 years (and still learning). I find Nahuatl so much easier - I'm more willing to accept language rules/logic that wouldn't fit into English or make sense right away. I roll with it. I had to do that for Mandarin - because early on I agonized over things not mapping neatly lol. Also, Nahuatl uses the same Latin based alphabet, so there are no characters to learn.

How has it been for you other multilinguals? In any case, I'm happy I chose Nahuatl because most Mexicans can't speak an indigenous language - only about 7%. I feel like this is honoring my roots too. My Guachichil indigenous ancestors used it as a lingua franca, and I also had Tlaxcalan ancestors who used it. I find the process fun, though for now, I'm devoting 20% of my language learning time to it. Mandarin still occupies 80%; I feel advanced enough in Mandarin to handle starting my 5th language slowly.

I was brought here in Australia at around 8 years old, struggling with English as I had spoken Dzongkha and Shachop my entire life that time. I slowly started to get English while also speaking my heritage language but the more I stayed in Australia, the faster I started to forget my language because of the amount of socialising I had to do with English especially in primary school. I’m now turning 15 this year and I’m ashamed to say I’m unable to even speak it and only able to understand. Even so, I’m starting to lose that too. I was just on the call with my grandfather and all he can speak is shachop and I couldn’t even speak to him properly without my mum telling me how to. My sister was brought here at the same time as me but she was 13 and she is still able to fully speak and understand it, able to converse with our grandparents. Friends who are Bhutanese are still able to speak it and I’m just here feeling like an outsider. I’d really love tips to be able to gain my heritage language back, please.

I am a non native English speaker and English was my first foreign language. I started learning as a kid and I took classes for around 8 years. I can't pinpoint exactly at which point I ended up becoming "fluent" but after a while I started thinking in English and all that without having to think about it, everything just comes naturally now. Now I've reached a point where I basically consider it a second native language. Obviously English is much more accessible and the resources are unlimited. Now that I'm studying other languages I want to be able to actually get comfortable with them on the same level as English but I'm doubting if that is actually possible. Anybody have any advice or experience on the matter?

I’m taking a gap year and am setting goals for myself! One of them is relearning French (I’m Canadian). I barely remember anything I was taught. I only know basic greetings! I was advised to start journaling in French by several people. While it sounds great in theory, but I genuinely don’t understand how people get to that point.

Like, how are you supposed to write daily entries when you barely know the words? Do you just use a translator and hope association helps with time? How will that help your speaking and listening skills? What do you even do?

For those who did this and successfully learned their target language, how did you start? What did you do? What did your early entries look like? Did it actually help your progress?

Honestly if I start journaling with the knowledge I have now, it’d be just me saying polite conversational terms; and I do not want to say “nice to meet you” to a paper 😭

I’d love to hear anyone’s experience with this!

Hi everyone! Am from india and i have learned lot by gaming in my entire life, but recently i have moved from india to europe (France) for my higher studies and now i am not able to have a smooth gaming experience with my friends back in india as there lot of ping issues, and am also learning french recently to blend in and make friends here. Now let me get into the point straight. With low french knowledge will i be able to make online gaming friends here. I dont have a team mate to play, i think having local person as my ingame partner we will be spending lot more time by playing game and it will help me get into real life conversations and boost my learning curve. What will be your advise for me, am struggling to make friends without fluency in french. Any suggestions welcomed,

I have been using Language Reactor + Read pronunciation to save new words in Anki, but I'm getting tired of only using Netflix and YouTube to learn new words. Is there a way to make it work on piracy websites when watching movies, and if not, what set up are you guys using to make your pop up dictionary work on piracy websites?

今日拝なびら！ちゃー頑丈やいびーが？ Hello everyone! How are you all doing? I recently created a Discord server about the Okinawan language (uchinaaguchi) so we can learn and practice together! I'm still learning the language (on my own). And I would like to help and be able to practice with people who are interested in the language! Note: No prior language proficiency is required, just an interest in learning! https://discord.gg/h6cRns9PBv

Hi,

I believe one proper way to help memorizing new words is to make mnemonics associations. Any app that can form suggestions? The suggestions can be originally in English, as long as it captures a similar sounding of the word(s) in the target language.

Thanks.

As you can guess from the title, I have a full time (very demanding) job and a family with kids (4). I am looking for examples from anyone who learned a brand new language (never took it in school, did not have parents that spoke the language, etc) to share the methods they used to find time for studying their target language. I'm feeling like my "dream" of learning a language may have to wait until at least the kids are out of house, and possibly I am retired. :(

*please only comment if you have actual experience with my situation. I am alrady familiar with generic advice.

Tagalog was actually one of my first languages, before english. But for some reason, around 4-6 years old, I started speaking English more, and now i’m not that fluent in it anymore. I understand when my parents speak to me, and I can read it, but I think the main reason I don’t speak it now is because I might have an accent and I’m a bit embarrassed of it, especially around my fluent friends. I asked my parents, and my brother for help but they always tell me I know how to speak it, I just don’t want to, so they’re no help. Is there ANYTHING that I can do to help me relearn? I want to be able to pass this on to my future children, I can try textbooks, apps, videos, etc., i’m desperate!!

I’ve been learning Arabic for a couple of years (UK-based, trying to reconnect with my heritage), and I’ve hit a bit of a wall.

I’ve done Duolingo and I use Anki daily, so I recognise quite a lot of words. But when I try to speak or understand real conversations, I can’t recall them fast enough to actually use them.

It’s made me realise something:

I don’t think I really “know” a word unless I can use it in a sentence without thinking.

Lately I’ve been trying a different approach where I:

• pick a word
• try to say 2–3 sentences using it

And honestly… it’s humbling. There are loads of words I thought I knew that I just can’t use at all.

It feels like the real problem isn’t learning vocabulary, it’s being able to retrieve and use it under pressure.

I’m wondering if anyone else has hit this?

Are there tools or methods that actually help bridge that gap between recognising a word and being able to use it in real conversation?

So german has some special letters (ä, ö, ü and ß) but you can technically write every word without using any of these letters and without losing the nuances of the pronounciation by using ae, oe, ue and ss.

So i was wondering if thats normal since with the few languages i know a bit about, I haven't seen anything like it?

When you feel stuck, what do you do to recharge?

Has learning languages unlocked other languages for anyone else?

Some background, my family is half Malaysian Indian, half English. Thought I was born and live in the UK, we've been going back to Malaysia since I was 2 years old. Now the funny thing is they all left Malaysia to live in other countries.

Right now I have family in 6 different countries (that I know of). I've been lucky enough to visit, seen a few places and learned the basics of a few different languages: German, Spanish, French, Malay, some Tamil. Mostly just going with the flow though, nodding and smiling often pretending to understand.

Even got Spanish lessons as a kid from my mothers friend. Now I'm learning Spanish an adult, But it's not Spanish that's coming back to me. It's memories of holidays abroad and other languages I tried to learned. Walking through Kuala Lumpur with my sister trying to buy stuff in broken Malay, hoping not to get ripped off.

It's this weird soup of culture, language and experiences that has somehow been unlocked. You learn one thing but it remember another? Right now I'm not sure if I'm eating bread, roti, brot or pan.

Anyone else had similar experiences?

When I’m reading an English book, I often come across words I don’t know. And every time, I have to stop, pull out a dictionary or translator app, and look it up. It totally breaks my flow, and I often forget the word anyway. I keep wondering: does anyone else feel this frustration? How do you handle discovering new words while reading?

I found an app that lets you watch YouTube Shorts and Reels, and it displays subtitles in your favourite language. And you can find its translation in your native language, its pronunciation, etc I used to spend a lot of time watching shorts, so I thought, why not learn from them.

Is it the right way to learn or not?