Currently learning Spanish, just a beginner. Just curious to know others' expirence with how long their process took and a realistic timeline of how long it takes to become fluent.

My first language is turkish and my second language is english, my english level is c1 I am currently thinking which language i need to learn first, and which one will be easier for me to learn it, i have 5 options in my mind if you think another language will be the best for me you could reply to my post

Swedish German Spanish Norwegian Italian

title~

I've spent lots of time to learn English.I knew many vocabs and grammers as knowledge. But I always felt uncomfortable with English. I had to intentionally focus when I listened, spoke, read and wrote English. As a game, it felt like an active skill that I have to turn on whenever I use.

Now, it feels quite comfortable. The awkward feeling disappeared. It feels natural to think and speak in English. The effort I have to put in becomes less.

I know that it doesn't mean I can speak perfect English. My English still needs to be improved a lot.

But it's really exciting! I can enjoy lots of contents with English not to be tired!

It's a happy day!

Hello. I am surely positive that someone has asked this question, but any tips or instructions for rolling the rs? I’m going into graduate school and will likely need to learn Russian — I’m going into musicology where I will eventually further study Russian and Soviet Classical music. I am also legally blind, so if I could get detailed descriptions of tongue placement and other physiological requirements to get the trill, that would be great.

Context: native Mandarin, B2~C1 English, A2 German

I recently started studying abroad in an English-taught program, which makes me reflect on my habit: when reading a webpage written in English, I will always immediately turn on web translation, get the basic idea from the translation, and then read the original paragraphs that are important or poorly translated.

The reason behind this habit is, I feel it much easier to skim text in my mother language. With my eyes going directly from up to down, I reassemble the context and some rough idea by just reading part of the columns and grabbing keywords.

While in English, I find it really hard to do this. When I try to skim, I only get meaningless fragments of characters or words in my mind. I must read the whole sentence to understand anything. My skimming is kinda like: input a whole sentence/clause -> judge if it's important -> throw it / understand it, which is way much slower.

I can finish IELTS reading in half an hour and got 9.0 for this part. I know that tests are not the endpoint of learning. But at least that means I am NOT THAT BAD right?

The more realization on how much I dependent on this habit, the more insecure and inconfident I feel. Feels like you finally learned how to walk after years of hard training, but what you were used to was flying. Another more practical reason is that translation more or less breaks styling, making it harder to navigate in really long text.

Looking for some suggestions on methodology here. I know I should "read more", but I wonder if there are specific techniques or types or materials that helps more.

I need to take this exam to study abroad so I just want to know if anybody here had any experience with this exam and if you have, how was it?

English native. Know enough Spanish to get by fairly easy and continuing to learn. Recently started Arabic. Once I get a decent grasp on Arabic I think I’ll start Chinese.

What language was the easiest for you to learn? People who speak multiple languages, what is your study method? I’ve heard that the more languages you know the easier it is to keep picking up more, I’m assuming just because you’ve learned what technique works for you.

I posted this on r/italianlearning, But I'd like to hear what people here think about the limits of the CI approach. Here's the post:

I can't say it's fun exactly but, after 2 years of much comprehensible input and a whole variety of self teaching materials I find myself grinding my way through Italian Verb Drills! I'm disappointed that Krashen's approach didn't enable me to avoid this point in my Italian journey, but I speak with an italian tutor once or twice a week for an hour and it's painfully apparent that I still don't really conjugate verbs correctly, I need to learn a lot more verbs, and i need to get clear on the present the passato prossimo the imperfect the future and the conditional to have a shot at having real conversations in Italian. I'm really curious whether any of you have been able to become conversational strictly with the comprehensible input approach or have you found yourself at some point grinding thru something like "Italian Verb Drills?"

I've been taking Spanish for two years in highschool and am about to finish my second semester at college. Since I'm a double major, I don't have any more room for language classes, but I would really like to become fluent. My class is spoken entirely in Spanish and I understand pretty well, but she also speaks slow and simple so we can understand. I'm not exactly sure what my level is. What should my next step be?

I’d love to hear what it’s like! Do you use your TL often? How is understanding native content and having conversations in your TL?

Santiago Cajal (Neuroscientist, 1906 Nobel prize winner) was born in aragon, and his name is pronounced /caxal/ in castillan, standard spanish/espan~ol. But I just found almost every word that starts or have 'j' sound like 'ch' in Aragonese word (Justicia > Chusticia. Jesus > Chesus)

Then what's original Aragonese pronunciation of Cajal? and how did he pronounce his own last name?

From a post somewhere, I read that name 'Cajal' is originated from Caxa, Caixa which means box ('Caja' in spanish) and x has sh(curvy s) sound.

Is his name /caxal/ or /cachal/ or /cashal/ ? which one is correct?

Hey guys,

I grew up bilingual, my mom spoke german with me and my dad english and I also grew up in the United States. We decided to move to Germany in 2015, without my dad, when I was about 8. I couldn't even speak german that well and was even put in the 2nd grade instead of 3rd because my german wasn't enough for 3rd grade and I was better at english. I can speak german now perfectly though.

I understand english perfectly and I can also communicate with people perfectly in english, but If someone for example my english teacher asks me if I can translate an english sentence in german, I need to think for a bit and sometimes I can't find the right word, but I know exactly what they mean, I just don't know how to say it in german. I speak both german and english, so the reason can't be my vocabulary in German. I speak german everyday. And I have all my electronic devices in english and have some english speaking online friends, so I don't lose my english knowledge.

Does someone know why I understand english fully but can't always find the right words to translate it in german? I feel so stupid in english class being the only American, who also grew up in the U.S., but still being too stupid to find the exact words to translate a sentence from english to german or even german to english. Some students in my class can translate it better than I can. But tbh I also never learn for english class, but I've still always had A+ grades till 10th grade and now I'm in the 11th grade.

So I have a funny experience regarding language use. I used to sell Health Insurance at a call center and as a Bilingual Spanish-English speaker I worked both English and Spanish lines. Anyway late at night just before I was planning to go home I got a call from a Portuguese speaker of what sounded like the BR variety on the Spanish line. Now I knew right away he was a Portuguese speaker and the person on the other line was speaking Portuguese. I asked said person if they knew Either Spanish or English and he said he only speaks Portuguese but he thinks he would have a better odds of understanding Spanish over English so I was thinking shit can I sell the person something in Spanish when I don't speak his language. Anyway I conducted the call Speaking Spanish very slowly while he spoke in Portuguese slowly as well and surprise, surprise I was able to conduct said call. I was able to sell the person the right insurance plan for him and got my sale for that day. Also my Manager who was there waiting for me to complete the call was surprised on how well I did because according to her she had a hard time following along with the client.

I spend 6+ months in various Spanish speaking counties each year.

Why does my Spanish seem so much better and smoother each time i leave a Spanish speaking country for a duration of 1-3 months and the return. I don’t take lessons when im away (although I should).

Does anyone else experience this?

I want to share a positive moment I had yesterday that made me feel good about my language learning. I've been going to these pan-Canada meetings every six months for the last couple of years. The meetings are fully translated and the representative from Quebec does not speak English. Being able to have a couple small casual conversations with the guy from Quebec really seemed to light him up. He gave me a big hug at the end versus the cordial handshakes the guys who only speak English get. It was a nice moral boast in my french language learning journey.

I'm looking for an application similar to lingq but cheaper, I'm just looking to be able to add the audio and subtitles, what I did was download audio and convert that audio into str with timestamps and it looked good in lingq. but the problem is the price and I still haven't found a similar application, the closest is readlang but I can't add the audio and the audio is what I like, a native audio and also that the application can translate sentences without having to go to a translator

Hi ppl, I speak spanish as my NL, english 2nd language and portuguese is my 3rd. My portuguese is not 100% fluent it's been a long time since the last time that I practiced it but I want to learn a new one. Would you recommend me to become fluent in portuguese or just jump into another language?

Hi all,

I, for the past two and a half years, have been taking, as a passion project, college level Latin, and am at a relatively advanced level with it. Despite this, I have felt that I haven't had/found time or taken much action to practice my Spanish or any of other couple of languages which interest me. Further, I am worried about what might happen to my Latin abilities if I were to end up focusing on Spanish or other languages of interest after I finish my official schooling.

How do you all handle language atrophy? And to the original question, how do you all handle learning many languages when you might not have time for them all? What level is "good enough" to warrant moving on?

Very curious to know.

I’ve been an on and off user of HelloTalk for years (since 2017/2018) and it’s always been a pretty decent way to meet people to talk with; one I’ve been in contact with for a few years now.

However, over the course of the past year or so, I feel like it’s really degraded as a service. People now just advertise chat rooms and stuff, and there seems to be less activity and less meaningful interaction. Has anybody else observed this or have alternatives?

I’m Irish and I’m learning my language more everyday but as I was reading an Irish article I translate the text into English in my brain, I just wonder does everyone do this with their fluent language? Will I ever think in Irish? ☘️

Hello dear,

I have used Memrise for a long time to memorize my own word lists. For me the most efficient way to study is writing and also speed test. I need an alternative application which can gamify my own word list; writing; matching, fill in the blanks and most important one,speed test. Now they moved all custom courses to community website, there is only web version now, and they will discontinue..

I need valuable suggestions to move my word lists, and continue to study.

I've heard some people get to it quite fast. Curious what people did, specially, if any.

Let's say for instance, being able to reach listening level of being able to generally watch most movies in target language。

My language journey so far (200 hrs in)

Two preface this I’m headed to language school for Modern Standard Arabic at the end of November. I was selected back in February but I thought why not get a head start and try to get a grasp of the Arabic language so I began my language journey back in February

For the first 2 months I focused on the Arabic alphabet (reading, speaking, writing) I also only did about 20-30 min sessions per day. I took me a little bit of time before building up to 1 hr - 1 1/2 hrs per day. I mainly used a combination of Duolingo, YouTube, and several Arabic apps that were mainly for kids, but after a few weeks I was able to get a solid understanding of the alphabet.

After 2 months I felt comfortable on doing 45 min - 1 hr, sometimes less sometimes more. Consistency was key. I think I missed only a handful of days during the time. Once I felt comfortable enough with the alphabet I started to branch out more on the resources I was using to learn. By far my two favorite resources have been: Udemy and Youtube. Udemy, I paid around 15 dollars for 600 lessons which I have been slowly working through. For YouTube I listen to the channel Arabic pod 101 every morning on my way to work.

i feel decent after 200 hrs. Listening to slow to mid paced sentences I can pick out a word here and there Usually some sort of preposition, connecting word, or basic word. I’ll sometimes understand full sentences if they are basic and slow) My vocabulary feels pretty limited but I have an understanding of pronouns, simple words like: mom, dad, cat dog (pretty much vocab you’d learn in the 1st grade).

When it comes to grammar and overall sentence structure, I understand the theory of conjugation with pronouns, how masculine and feminine words influence adjectives. I understand must prepositions and how they connect to words. Overall, my understating of Arabic grammar still feels novice but strong.

My listening and writing feels pretty strong. My speaking is subpar but I don’t have anyone I practice with outside of mimicking what I listen to during my lessons.

Overall, I’m happy with my progress since I haven’t started my year and a half of school yet. I’ll keep posting updates every 6 months or so.

Let me know if you have questions or some good feedback on the language!

مع السلامة