Wanda Kaishin

Hi Yulia, Welcome to linguaholic. You can promote your site/lessons in this sub-forum, but not in the general forum.

Hahaha - do you realize how many errors there are in your post? You need to learn to just let it go man. If you're not willing to do the work required to reach C1/C2 in a language, then just be happy with your level and don't get frustrated. Correcting native speakers because you think they are in error is a fruitless pursuit, and you are no doubt better off using that time and effort practicing your languages instead.

Your native language is listed as English. Is that a mistake, or are you really coming to this forum to try to improve your mother tongue? As for your question, it depends on the context, but I think it's normally used as an informal way of requesting someone to write something up so it can be evaluated, voted on, etc.

Glad to hear you're doing more than you wrote. But to clarify, I said "normal (not made for learners)" listening. It looked to me like all you're doing is listening to the news for 30 min on some days.

Just out of curiosity - why so little listening? Unless I've misunderstood, it looks like you only have 30 min/day, and not even every day, of normal (not made for learners) Japanese listening.

I'm retired, so no problems here. My schedule: 05:45 get up 06:00-0700 Meet with Chinese tutor on Skype for 1hr conversation 0700-0730 misc 0730-0800 15min L3/15min English language exchange 0800-0830 misc 0830-0900 Put the notes from my moring Chinese conversation into Anki, after researching it in a dictionary 0900-0930 Anki for Japanese, Chinese and Russian 0930-1000 Set the day's diet in cronometer 1000-1100 Cook and eat a large breakfast while playing a Chinese TV show 1100-1130 misc 1130-1200 Chinese grammar and writing practice 1200-1400 Exercise (cycling or strength training), shower and lunch 1400-1430 misc 1430-1500 Chinese reading and listening 1500-1515 Careful watching of a Chinese drama 1515-1600 L3 Reading and listening 1600-1630 Careful watching of an L3 drama 1630-1700 misc 1700-1800 Cook and eat large supper while playing a Chinese TV show 1800-2200 misc 2200 go to sleep

Have you ever had someone, upon learning your proficiency in one or more languages, tell you that you have a natural talent for it? If so, how does that make you feel? To me, it's an insult. They are basically saying that my proficiency just fell into my lap, when in fact I worked very hard for it. The implication is that if they had my gift, they would also easily acquire my same skill. But the truth of the matter is that they lack the dedication to learn a language, so they pretend to have some sort of genetic disadvantage. Nice try

Personally, I wouldn't waste my time suggesting reforms; they will never be adapted. The same is true for any language. Instead of pointing out problems and suggesting changes, we are better off just to resign ourselves to learning the existing system.

Haha - I'm a fan of anyone who's not a fan of Benny.

Only if I can't share the experience with others? I have to disagree with that. Imo, TV is the best single tool for improving listening at the intermediate level. So whether you're immersed, living with native speakers, or completely isolated in Antartica, I strongly recommend watching TV for hundreds if not thousands of hours in your L2.

I've been misunderstood, but (to my knowledge) not mocked. People will sometimes mock or imitate "the American accent" in their language, but that's more general and I actually find that humorous.

Yes, it's inevitable. The programs to "save" languages, while well meaning, will probably not have much effect.

The claim "you must love a language in order to learn it" is ridiculous, and obviously false, as I explained above. The claim "loving a language can make it easier to learn" I don't have a problem with. I don't know your English level; I assume it's pretty high, but if you can't tell the difference between these two types of statements, it's not worth arguing about. I agree that Benny seems to contradict himself. But what he says in the link you provided is that he doesn't like the learning process. However, he has written in great detail how one needs to have passion to learn a language. Evidently that's passion for succeeding and getting to the point where you can use the language, not passion for the learning process itself. To be clear, and avoid being called a Benny-lover, I disagree with him. I think all you need to succeed are motivation, time and resources. Benny says motivation isn't enough, and that you need passion instead. He goes onto define passion, and it's basically types of motivation that he considers acceptable. No one, not even Benny Lewis, can tell us what our motivations need to be. If you're annoyed with people who don't love the languages they are learning, keep in mind there's only one person in the world who can control that. Like Benny, I don't love the process or the languages themselves; I love what I can do with them. I don't see why that should annoy anyone. Some people love the learning process, but aren't too concerned about the results. Some people love the learning process, and love the results. None of these people annoy me. Can't we all just get along?

It might, or it might be the other way around. Survival, for example, is about as strong of a motivation that there is.

But who chooses languages to learn at random? While choosing a language, I've never said to myself "hmm, let's see...which language do I love the most?" There have been extenuating circumstances for all my language choices. I really get tired of people like Benny Lewis saying that if we don't love, or have passion for the language we are learning we will fail. If I have time, motivation and resources I will learn it. Stop telling me I have to love it, because that just isn't true. And let me remind people of some very basic logic the we all should have learned in school. If you make a statement, and it isn't true all the time, then it's false. Understand? False. Is the statement "dogs are black" true or false? Does the fact that some dogs are black make the statement true? No. The statement isn't true all of the time, so it's false. So it wouldn't surprise me if some people have to love a language in order to learn it. But the statement "you must love a language to learn it" is clearly false. The internet is just littered with these ridiculous claims.

It's by far the most common way for Japanese people to express "I love you", which is the topic of this thread. Is it a verb? I think it depends on how you define a verb, but this is completely irrelevant to the thread topic.

This isn't true. There are plenty lakorns with English subs on Viki. Sure, it's an unstable situation, and many shows are removed due to copyright issues (usually on the youtube end). But please don't go around saying viki can't sub lakorns. Personally, I don't use English subs very often - I prefer Thai subs or a Thai transcript. Here are some free Thai transcripts for one of my favorite lakorns: Transcripts for the Thai TV drama สูตรเสน่หา (Sood Sanae Ha/Love recipe)

No suggestions, but welcome to the forum!

I see we have similar motivation, as well as languages. Welcome to the forum!

大好き is about 10 times more common.

It's called pinyin, or hanyu pinyin, not Roman-Pinyin. I removed content of yours that's not relevant to this thread. If you want to make lengthy posts about IPA, then do it in an IPA thread.

I'm about at the same level. I really don't practice the language enough to improve. When I was studying hard, my first 2 years of Japanese, I started out with Heisig, and never did enough reading/writing to get on top of the jouyou. Heisig is a great beginning for someone who is really gung-ho and puts all those characters to use right away. For everyone else, it's probably more efficient just to learn them as they encounter them. As far as what makes you "fluent", it all depends on what you mean by "fluent". Please don't use that word without telling us what you really mean.

But this thread is about learning Mandarin. Mandarin has a simple phonetic script available which uses mostly english letters, called pinyin. So your suggestion isn't very useful in this case.

This is false. It might be near impossible for you, but not me. How are you affiliated to the site you posted?

So your entire method of learning a language is to use Duolingo? You might want to see the thread Should Language Apps be your primary tool for learning a language? FYI - most believe they shouldn't.