Aspiring Polyglots Here? Woot woot!

Sometimes the need for perfection can be a handicap. My wife tried watching Dark on Netflix but found she had to stop every time she didn’t understand something and that meant she wasn’t really enjoying it. I just watch it and accept that there will be the odd word I don’t know. But then I do that in English (which is my native language). Just reread Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley and there was vocabulary I didn’t know.

Although I would like to master all the languages I dabble in I am happy I have some level of proficiency in a few rather than being a very good in just one. It is great nowadays with Netflix being able to watch stuff in German, Spanish, French, Hindi and Japanese in original language audio and subtitles.

I do wish my Japanese was better. I feel that with the time I’ve invested I should be much more proficient.
Not sure whether my brain is just not wired for Japanese or simply that I’ve got old and learning has become more difficult.

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I aspire to become a polyglot one day. I learnt English fairly quickly and I got to the point where I can’t get much better until I have the money to travel and finish cementing my knowledge in a English speaking enviroment.
Now it’s Japanese. I’ll focus on it until I’m satisfied and move on to the next language, which I suspect will be Mandarin Chinese.
I just love learning.

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I am a Russian native, so I guess the hardest language is done… :laughing: :

My English definitely has some room to grow, but I would consider myself Advanced in terms of overall comprehension, but I didn’t have any output practice for almost two years (guess my writing gives it away instantly).

My main second language in Uni was Spanish, but now I completely lost it all, no learning or practice for five years, my level would be “Where is the library?”. I used to have a German class as well, but I was overwhelmed with other stuff at the time and didn’t studied properly, so I don’t even count as my language at the moment.

Currently I have JLTP N4, skipping N3 ang going straight to N2 in December. After that I hope to land a hospitality job in Japan, and after settling there - I gonna get back to my Spanish, since my Japanese and English should be improving automatically and I would have some time to spare.

I am not sure what to do after I have myself some descent level of Spanish, but I am definitely not stopping! :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: :
I considered to go for Chinese, but my Japanese teachers really don’t recommend, since it mixes badly with Japanese. Korean should be fine though, since it seems to have common grammar points with Japanese. Or might as well go for some other European language, who knows. :man_shrugging:

Generally - it is always easier to learn languages from the same groups - French would not trouble you much if you already know English and Spanish, same goes for Russian/Ukrainian/Polish etc. And you always have to find some way to practice it! Or it is long gone before you know it (RIP my Spanish :cry:) )
Good luck everyone! Back to my reviews! :grimacing:

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This may sound presumptuous, but have you tried downloading a French (or Spanish) news app? That’s how I improved beyond the basics of advanced French. I’m currently pursuing higher education in France. I used to do things like watching the French version of MythBusters on YouTube and listening to Radio France Internationale’s programmes on health and medicine, in which they would interview scientists from around the French speaking world. (If this lends credence to my suggestions, I do have a DALF C2 in French from the Ciep…)

I haven’t had much time to invest in language learning recently (my university course is far too intense, and my time management is horrible), but here are the languages I’ve studied seriously so far, in descending order of fluency:
Fluent – English, Chinese, French (honestly, given how little I use Chinese now, and the fact that I can probably read French literature more easily than Chinese literature, my French might be better even though I started learning Chinese 12-13 years earlier)
Semi-fluent – Japanese
Decent grammatical foundations, lack of vocabulary due to lack of practice – German
Able to read some news with the help of French and Latin knowledge – Spanish

Languages I might consider in the future (provided I fix the issues I have with those above): Arabic, Russian, Latin

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Guess we have something in common! Ever since I achieved fairly substantial success with French and Chinese, I haven’t been able to start any other language without dreaming of reaching a very high level in it. My personal standard for ‘mastery’ is being able to read technical texts and handle literature or formal documents, and being able to produce similar material myself, at the very least by imitating certain writers. Even then, of course, there’s always more to learn, but that’s more or less where I would be willing to stop or start another language.

@Munetta What is your native language? It sounds like you are an audio learner based on your syntax.

@Jonapedia. No, that is not presumptuous at all. Downloading some French news like maybe some kind of equivalent French “NPR” sounds like a really good idea. I hate watching frivolous films or tv dramas just to get the exposure to French or Spanish. That’s an excellent solution! I used to go on those language exchange apps because I wanted to talk about films, documentaries, climate change and politics, but I could barely get past the introductions!!! If you are only talking for fifteen to twenty minutes anyway by the time you get past the petty chitchat, times up! At least this way I can imagine asking questions of the people on the screen or them asking me my opinion on the topics. Then I could really dig in. My husband spent a lot of time hosting get togethers and talking politics with his Mexican friends when we were in Mexico. I really enjoyed it and miss It. Maybe there’s some online zoom meetups for something like that now. I don’t know.

What is a good bipartisan French News Station? Something not corporate run but funded by the people? I love PBS too so are their French stations that are similar? CNN wrecked havok on my phone when I had that app. Everything is “BREAKING” Even with thr notifications off it was non-stop! They get all their funding from ads so it affects how news is presented. PBS doesnt do that. I control how much I want to see.

Thanks again for posting.

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There are some French people on these forums who are undoubtedly better informed than me, but I’m not really sure about ‘bipartisan’ news sources in France. Some people will say everything is biased. However, as far as news sources I know go:

Newspapers
Le Monde – fairly neutral, slightly left-leaning
Le Figaro – centre-right
Libération – right-wing

Radio stations
RFI (Radio France Internationale) – I’ve never detected a particular political bent, but I could be wrong

Television
France Info – neutral, I think. Possibly slightly pro-government?
TV5MONDE – neutral, maybe slightly left-leaning
TF1 – no idea which way they lean
France 24 – possibly slightly left-leaning, but generally neutral with a focus on international news

Take your pick. I think French news sources generally aren’t as polarised as US news sources. TV5MONDE and RFI both have programmes aimed at helping people learn French, so you may get slightly more helpful resources from them.

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@Jonapedia. So none is what you are saying?

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I’m not very familiar with how PBS works. I don’t want to say there are ‘none’, because I’m sure something similar exists, but I just haven’t heard of anything like news ‘by the people’ in France. Sorry to disappoint you. Maybe I just haven’t looked hard enough, because I’m quite satisfied with reading Le Monde and supplementing it with France 24. Hopefully someone else has an idea.

I’d just like to point out, however, that it seems the right-left divide collapsed in France at the last election: there were 11 candidates, and all of them received around 5% of the vote at least. Therefore, there might not be as much of a divide along party lines in France. Different news sources provide multiple perspectives. That’s all. However, in my experience with Le Monde, France 24 and RFI, none of their apps ‘spam’ me with notifications.

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It’s Spanish. Oh, there seems to be a misconstruction. I actually chalk up my level of English to reading. I read a LOT and never used any books other than one for prepping for one of those Cambridge exams.
I just believe there’s only so much you can learn until you’re surrounded by natives for a prolonged period of time. Wish I was a little bit more affluent.

@Jonapedia @Munetta… thank you! You have been so helpful! If you ever want to learn Korean I found the ultimate cheat sheet to get you started, although I highly recommend slowing the video down to .75 as the guy talks really fast for even me…pause the video from time to time and let it all sink in. I was able to learn in five minutes what I thought would take me the entire month!! LEARN TO READ KOREAN (IN 5 MINUTES) - YouTube

I think of Libération as more center-left, and while my barometer as an American is maybe useless :slight_smile: it is backed up for example here and here.

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Ah. My mistake then. I just took a look at Wikipedia and given the fact that it was founded after the May 1968 protests… yes, it would definitely make more sense for it to be left-wing. I stand corrected. I’m not sure why I had the impression it was a right-wing newspaper… perhaps it had to do with something I heard along with a front-page article I read years ago. I hardly touch Libération anyway, so I’m probably just not very aware. I prefer newspapers that seem fairly neutral to me.

Here’s a PDF meant for educators in the Rouen “Académie” (which is to say the administrative division for education in Rouen) listing the political stances of various newspapers:

It seems my preferred newspaper, Le Monde, is left-wing. I’m not surprised, though I was told it was ‘centre-left’. I personally just like the fact that it generally provides quite a lot of analysis, and that relatively few of its articles are paywalled. (I’m now a subscriber, but even when I read it for free, I rarely ran into articles that I couldn’t read because it was reserved for paying customers.) In any case, that PDF should be a good resource for anyone looking for an overview of the French press. I have to say, unfortunately, that I feel most of the newspapers that are listed as ‘centre’-oriented newspapers rarely provide in-depth analysis, Le Parisien (which seems to have quite a lot of paywalled articles) and France Soir (which I honestly don’t know much about) aside. 20 Minutes and Metro are literally the newspapers you used to be able to get for free in the metro, so they’re more about general-interest reporting that doesn’t delve very deep into its subject-matter.

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@theapedroza @Jonapedia Thank you so much! I really appreciate that you took the time to post all this helpful stuff! I did hope there would be more polyglots on here that utilize other apps for other languages that are as efficient as Wanikani. Honestly nothing compares for me. Wanikani is truly the most addictive and most productive app for language learning I have seen! (If only I could find something like this for my Russian grammar!! Arghhh. Or a way to learn Korean with Kpop…sigh… Dare to dream. I enjoy putting video games in French. That helped me think in French…)

Anyway my break is over. I think I learned as much as I can for now and I shall dive back into my review pile carrying all the lessons you guys taught me. Wish me luck! P.S. Feel free to DM me at Loren.swan.Morrison@gmail.com I am not ignoring you. I just won’t be on social media anymore until the next block is done. See you in 2022 :wink:

I don’t think myself of polyglot, but I do like languages.

Born in Finland, so Finnish native level.

Studied English since ~9 years old, and now living in Usa for 14 years, so fluent I guess.

Studied Swedish in school for some 8-9 years, so kinda spoke it good but haven’t used it in ~20 years so…

Studied Japanese (slowly) for long time. I can go around Japan without using English but not fluent for sure.

Studied German in school for 5 years, then lived in Switzerland so used to be fluent in German, although been long time so would need some refresher.

Studied Korean for couple courses, love the language and especially the writing. (fun thing, I can still read so when visiting Korea, I could order food from the local menus without knowing what I ordered. Several times got very “interesting” foods)

Studied Chinese for a course, too difficult. The tones killed me, and don’t get me started about writing.

Studied Spanish for a course, not fun enough.

Studied French for the 3 most useful phrases.

Poked on some other languages too. And was supposed to start ASL class tomorrow but it was full so I’m on the waiting list now :frowning:

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For anyone who might care, https://forvo.com/ is the website where you can download native pronunciation mp3s of words to use in your Anki deck.

https://lang-8.com/ is the journal-writing one where native speakers will correct what you’ve written, and you can correct other people’s. They aren’t open to new users though, unfortunately.

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