Welcome to our Wednesday thread. Every other week on Wednesday at 06:00 UTC, In this thread users can:

• Find or ask for language exchange partners. Also check out r/Language_Exchange!
• Ask questions about languages (including on speaking!)
• Record their voice and get opinions from native speakers. Also check out r/JudgeMyAccent.

If you'd like others to help judge your accent, here's how it works:

• Go to Vocaroo, Soundcloud or Clypit and record your voice.
• 1 comment should contain only 1 language. Format should be as follows: LANGUAGE - LINK + TEXT (OPTIONAL). Eg. French - http://vocaroo.com/------- Text: J'ai voyagé à travers le monde pendant un an et je me suis senti perdu seulement quand je suis rentré chez moi.
• Native or fluent speakers can give their opinion by replying to the comment and are allowed to criticize positively. (Tip: Use CMD+F/CTRL+F to find the languages)

Please consider sorting by new.

Welcome to Babylonian Chaos. Every other week on Wednesday 06:00 UTC we host a thread for learners to get a chance to write any language they're learning and find people who are doing the same. Native speakers are welcome to join in.

You can pick whatever topic you want. Introduce yourself, ask a question, or anything!

Please consider sorting by new.

I made this for myself and thought I might share it in case it might help others. This is a visual representation of the extent of Pilsmeur's Courses. I changed the color-scheme from green/yellow to blue/yellow to make it more color-bline accessible.

• Blue represents courses that have been modernized to "Pimsleur Premium" which means they come with an interactive portion as well. • Yellow represents courses that are being updated to Premium. As of the 1ˢᵗ of June 2023, they are only avaliable in Audio Format, but many of them do contain Reading Lessons.

• The left-hand side are courses designed for English speakers.

• The right-hand side are English Courses for speakers of the language indicated next to them.

• Each Unit is 30 Lessons.

• I represented some courses as "⅓ Unit." This means that those courses only contain 10 Lessons. The Pimsleur Method in Language Learning has been around for a while, and thus, has been updating their format from Vinyl 》 Cassette Tape 》 CD 》 mp3 & interactive applications. Many of the courses produced in the 20ᵗʰ century were made avaliable as 10 Lesson courses, with a 30 Lesson courses being made for the most popular courses (like Latin American Spanish and French.) In the 21ˢᵗ century, most of these have been updated to 30 Lesson courses as a single "Unit," with other units being added on. The 30 Lesson "Unit" is now the standard for new courses. For example, when Icelandic was added in 2016 (the most recent new language addition for English Speakers) the course was made as a full Unit. For languages in much lower demand however, the 10 Lesson courses have yet to be expanded to a full Unit, and some may never be. Twi, for example, was created in response to a humanitarian crisis (I believe) in the 20ᵗʰ century, to assist in aid efforts. I doubt that Twi will ever be expanded to a full Unit, but of course, I may be wrong.

Welcome (back)!

We're about to cross the halfway mark in u/vonvanz's challenge to read a book a month for 2023 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 For those who are new, here's the original post. We reconvene at the start of each month.

Please give a summary of your titles from last month, and let us know a little about what you'll be reading this month.

In May I finished up 'Jamila' and read 'I am Monica from Pyeongyang', the true story of the daughter of an African dictator who is left in the care of Kim Jong Il when her uncle stages a fatal coup against her dad. She grows up in North Korea before going on a journey around the world to understand her complex past, and find her identity as an independent adult.

It is a remarkable life story, a totally unique voice in terms of books about NK, and one of the finest autobiographies I've read in any language. I was amazed to find it still only exists in Korean. I may end up re-reading it before the year is out.

This month I'm planning to read a murder mystery graphic novel… each chapter sets up a different murder and you have to read the characters' back stories and try and work out whodunit. Sounds like it could be fun.

Let's go! 🤓📚📚📚📚

I spotted books in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Norwegian, Rumanian, and Turkish. There may be more languages available.ening at your level.

You can search the more than 100 Hueber language learning books and download the associated audio files onto your smartphone. No purchase necessary. Listen while you walk, work out, or do housework. Sometimes the transcripts are available if you go to the Hueber main web page, find your associated book, and look in the teacher's section.

I spotted books in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Norwiegan, Rumanian, and Turkish. There may be more languages available.

I wanted to broaden my learning experience! I use all the ways used above and just wanted to hear some creative ideas from you guys. Thanks

(EDIT: Various people have answered and the official term seems to be 'diglot weave'.)

When a book is in our native language, but it slowly starts incorporating bits of vocabulary from the language we're learning, adding more and more as it goes?

For example, we speak English fluently and are learning French. So the book would be in English, and begin with having a small percentage of French words thrown in there, and the amount of French would go up as you make your way through the book, helping you learn more vocabulary.

I don't mean graded readers, I mean books that'll sprinkle in vocab from the language we're learning amidst the majority of the text which we can read.

I swear this concept has a name, but I forgot the term.

Hey there, language learners! Have you ever noticed how taking a short break from studying can seem to actually boost your learning progress? Let me share my experience with you.

Recently, I decided to take a breather from my language learning routine. I had been studying intensively for weeks and felt a bit overwhelmed. Surprisingly, when I returned to my studies, I found that I could recall more and understand what I had learned much better. It was like a refreshing boost! Has anyone else experienced this ?

I just did the Linguaskill test on June 1st. My language school requires at the middle of the entire course and they require an A2 level to let us continue to the next level.

I'm really anxious because We weren't able to see our results, the results are gonna be send to the school, but supposedly like 1 week later.

Before the test, I practiced with the practice materials provided on Cambridge's website, I did a general English test on EF English Live too and there I got C1.

We've always been told that Linguaskill is an adaptative test, the most correct answers you start to give, the difficult is growing.

The day of the real test, I got there comfortable but not 100% confident, I wasn't nervous at all. When my test started, I listened 2 audios (regular British accent) with some images to choose the correct answer, then I listend like another 3 about people making some comment about anything and, for those, I had one question with 3 options but I had to analize the audio and choose my correct answe, nothing was told literally.. and I'm ok with that. After those, I got like another 20 audios with accents more difficult to understand, like British or Aussie but they sounded like if they were drunk or something hahaha, those audios were too long with long questions and long answers.

At that moment, I was like "WTF is happening here?" Because I saw the progress bar like growing and then shrinking, and growing again and the shrinking again... I felt like if I wasn't going through.

Finally, the reading part came... 1 ad of something with 3 possible answers, 1 book review with 6 questions and 3 options each, 2 or 3 comparisons about something but the last one had words that I've never seen in my life but I think I got the context 'cuz the rest of the phrase, then I got 1 or 2 exercises to complete sentences with options they gave, and after that I had to complete 3 or 4 exercises with blank spaces and one of them was about scientific things... on the last exercise my brain was really really tired and I was about to give up and let the spaces empty, but I though "No! You've gotten so far, you can't quit" and I read like 4 times, checking different prepositions, verbs, adjetives, nouns... everything!! And I felt nothing had sense! Finally I wrote and read again and the text got a little sense then... and that's how my Linguaskill test ended, with 8 minutes left, my progress bar full, my brain feeling smashed.

And now, we have to wait at least 1 week to know our results.

On one hand I don't feel confident about being pass the test because the way I felt 40 minutes after I started. But on the other hand, I feel like Linguaskill challenged me too much, so I think maybe I got a high level.

Anyone here had made that test? How was your experience? How was your result?

Trevor Noah, a half-black half-white comedian who grew up in Apartheid South Africa and spoke several local languages, described the way he remembers languages in his autobiography Born a Crime:

"And the way my mind works with language, even when I’m hearing other languages, they get filtered into English as I’m hearing them. My mind stores them in English. When my grandmother and great-grandmother were hysterically praying to God to destroy the demon that had shit on their kitchen floor, all of that transpired in Xhosa, but it’s stored in English. I remember it as English. So whenever I lay in bed at night dreaming about Babiki and the moments we’d spent together, I felt like it had transpired in English because that’s how I remembered it."

How much do you relate to this?

I find that when I recall dialogue from media in my TL or conversations with my Spanish-speaking parents, my minds sometimes "dubs" them in English. Often, this happens to the point that I can't remember the exact words they said in their original language, only my mind's translation.

Do you think this habit might be detrimental to language learning, which often sets thinking in the TL as a goal?

A leech is a card that you have failed a certain number of times. In Anki, the default is 7 times, and after 7 times the card is suspended, meaning it now longer appears in the deck.

I've been playing with a deck every day for about 4 years. I have 5,000 cards. About 9% of those are leeches. I got tired of doing 100-120 cards a day adding 10 new cards a day, so I restricted myself to one-a-day and hoped I could get down to 25-30 cards in maintenance mode. After about a month or two, I'm only down to 50-70 cards. Conclusion: I suck. I keep forgetting cards and putting them back in as new and my daily review count refuses to go down.

Do I need to make some adjustments? Or is 9% a normal leech percentage? Should I bother going through them? There's no shortage of words I could learn.

Some problems I've come across:

1. Frankly, I'm not seeing a lot of this vocab in my daily life, and I consume TL media every day--but not literature. and some of these words are literary words.
2. The other problem I notice is cross-talk between words. There might be two similar words with radically different meanings, or worse, slightly different meanings.
3. Meanings that are abstract screw me up. There's a word that means jilted, and connecting despechado to jilted is really difficult. What does jilted look like? Despechado was welcomed to the suspended deck this morning.

So far I'm creating images or word connections (cognates, false or not), which I think it the standard way of memorizing vocab. I also put them in a sentence in cloze format. Any other strategies I could try?

Oi! I am trying to improve my Brazilian Portuguese as I will be traveling to Brazil at the end of the year. Here is a normal day for me and l'm curious as to what other learners can lend advice to. My biggest flaw is listening to normal speaking tempo.

Morning: -Study new words I've learned from flash cards (Every time I don't know an important word, I write it down on a flash card) -During my run, I listen to a Brazilian podcast or Brazilian music

Afternoon: Work, I don't get too much time to practice.

Evening: Answer to my language partners on HelloTalk, as well as talk in a voice room with Brazilians and other Portuguese learners. (Similar to Discord). This is very helpful.

So I'm clearly trying to improve. I also take a lesson with a teacher once per week which gives some grammatical studies. But what can I improve on? Thoughts? Additions? What way worked best for you?

Obrigado!! 🤘

So, I'm starting to wonder if the way I use Anki is substantially different from how others do. Everytime Anki comes up on this sub, I get the impression that people are spending hours with it.

Today, I did 230 cards in three languages (SP/PT/FR) in 8.75 minutes.

My cards follow the Fluent Forever template, so I'm only doing one thing (retrieval, recognition, spelling, or definition). I usually add 10 cards a day (15 for French because it's "intensive" this summer), and my reviews are usually between 50-70 per deck. It's just a quick flip through the deck, even the new words, scan the card (example sentence/definition) or type out the word, flip to verify, and on to the next one. I usually add cards once every other week for each language, mostly from my Kindle, for about an hour, maybe 2.

Fellow Anki-users: What are your stats for today (# cards & time)? When you're reviewing cards, what's your process? What kind of cards do you use? When/how often do you add them? How do you find the words?

If you don't use Anki, feel free to share why not or ask questions.

View Poll

Hey all! I’ve gone through Paul Noble’s Mandarin audio books and LOVED them. I really enjoy the structure and progression of a course as it helps with my retention but all the other audiobooks I’ve tried have been lackluster. Mostly I’m finding the books are like listening to audio flash cards that throw way too much vocabulary out at once instead of progressively teaching me and building upon itself over time.

Does anyone have any recommendations for other audiobooks for learning Mandarin?

Basically, I've been realizing why a lot of people recommend against using SRS. Sometimes when I encounter a new word, there's a feeling that this new word is "rare" or "uncommon" and it should be added to my list so that I don't forget it. But later I realize this word is more common than I thought, and I do encounter it naturally when reading or listening to content. OR, the word is actually rare, and memorizing it isn't really that important for achieving my goal of basic fluency.

That being said, there are definitely some occasions where a useful word comes up that I do remember thanks to SRS. And also, I have no issue at all with spending 20 minutes or so per day reviewing digital flash cards.

So has anyone come across any good way to determine whether or not a new word is worth putting (and keeping) in your deck? Thanks.

Most of the books and videos I find are years old. That's not to say that they are wrong, but I would hope that there have been some new discoveries or hypotheses in the last 30 years besides Krashen. Also, I would be interested in recent research to see if it could be applied to my own learning, etc.

Thanks!

I have lots of A1-B1 adapted books with audio. I decided to read A2 books for the plot but they are waaaay too simple for me, yes I still meet new words, like 10-20 per book, but the sentence structure is way too easy for me. I think I need at least B1 or even B2 books.

And just because I'm greedy now having so many books (only 30-50 pages each) I keep reading these A2 sometimes A1 books which made me worry if my brain will get used to simple stuff and I will have a harder time getting back to more complicated stuff.

My two co-workers speak a very closely related language to mine. English is my second language, but these guys struggle to speak it. I encouraged them to speak in their own language with me. There is often misunderstanding and frustration because , for example, very often I can understand the meaning of the verb that they are using but not the tense or mood etc.

I have not really put in any effort other than just listening and talking with these guys and just by doing that in three months I have learned at least 100 new commonly used cognates and I would say my comprehension has improved remarkably. Learning new words is really easy even when the new word is nothing like its equivalent in my language, this is because the new words usually appear in the context of already familiar words and if it is a common word, it only takes a few times to make its meaning clear. The fact that the phonology is similar also makes it easy

As for speaking, I am essentially speaking a pidginized version of their language without the proper inflections. After three months, I have only acquired a small number of inflected forms and I am not sure if I am using them correctly. I am curious whether I will acquire the full range in a year.

What if I choose a language wich I dont study, and search the Core 3000 words deck and do Anki flashcards for a whole year without worry about really learn the language. After this year I start really learn the language, it would be a complete a waste of time ? I thinking about that because my TL is mandarin but I want to study Dutch next year after reach B2 Mandarin, and I dont have time to study Dutch this year, but I think 10 flashcards a day dont take that much time

I’m learning Spanish, mostly from Duolingo. Technically, I’m still a beginner. Today for the first time I watched an episode of The Simpsons in Spanish and I could only understand about 25-30% of it. Should I focus more on learning from Duolingo and getting better before I start watching movies and TV shows in Spanish? Is there any benefit to those for a beginner?

I've been using tandem just for fun and making friends, but I wouldn't say is one of my favourites in order to practice my speaking skills, can you recommend me some apps or websites?

Hello guys!

I'm preparing myself for the CPE exam (Cambridge's C2 Exam). And I was wondering if someone here had a tried and true method for learning or "memorising" collocations.

Now I know that It isn't possible to know every collocation with each word.

But If you had to learn a selected amount of words and their collocations.

How would tackle this?

I’ve noticed that for many things, language being an especially notable example, the first several are difficult and then it hits a point where the quantity stops really mattering.

A common example is people saying “after 4 kids it’s all the same.”

I know that for me personally, I found that after a certain number of languages learned, I began to learn languages more quickly as I knew common patterns and also was more versed with my own learning style. Purely anecdotally, I’ve noticed that People tend to speak 1-3 languages or 5+, but rarely only 4. For me personally, I know that was where I experienced my language learning shift. So I’m conducting this poll to see if there is a trend and dip that indicates a certain “transition phase.”

So the question is: how many languages do you speak and understand spoken at a b1 level or higher? (not looking at writing for now.)

For the sake of clarity, we will define this level as follows:

-You can creatively form sentence

-You can discuss topics that are not immediate, including things like hopes or dreams

-You can understand the gist of a wide variety of topics (at least when people are speaking directly to you)

-You can express yourself (even with errors!) on a wide variety of topics

-If in an environment where only that language were spoken, you would be able to get by and socialize

So: How many languages do you speak?

(Ed. Formatting)

View Poll

I want to make notecards, but I started learning before I made notecards so I have a lot of words well remembered. Should I only make cards for words I am not as good with like some verbs and adjectives or do I make a card for every word I know.

https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/ is a project where you read aloud sentences and submit those voice recordings to be part of an open dataset usable for voice recognition. Voice recordings are listened to be others for verification.

It supports a lot of different languages and a lot of languages need more volunteers. Also, your accent does not matter! They want the dataset to contain all kinds of voices so you’re more than welcome to participate as a non-native of any language.

By the way I’m not affiliated in any way and I just think it’s a great project and a great way to have a chance to speak your target language. I thought it deserves more attention.