宇崎ちゃん

I know elephants have perfect memory, but humans? Not so much. However, I did hear of a person who only took a look at Manhatten only once and made a perfectly detailed painting of it based on what he saw back then. Another person with perfect memory can be found in this video: https://youtu.be/dM3_s0rKBVc?t=47s (no need to skip to a certain part, the link will take you to that guy for you.)

Most boring part: it takes time to get used to it. Most beautiful part: once you get used to it, the feel of achievement is more than rewarding.

Yes, but only if you do it the right way. I have explained how I do it here.

If you want apps or games that aren't focussed on language learning, I recommend you to play some RPG games. RPG games have a lot of excellent real-world dialogues, I'm actually playing Pokémon Omega Ruby in Japanese and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire in Spanish (yes, I'm still attempting to conquer Spanish) now. Both games have the same story (mostly, OR is more about drying up the world, whereas AS is more about draining the world) and in both cases I try to do my best to read through all the dialogues and once I get bored, I just save the game and quit it. Each time I see phrases I can't figure out its meaning, I just note those sentences down and do some research after my game session. If I still don't get it, I ask either my language teacher (Japanese) or a native speaking friend (Spanish).

I have just released a new version: 0.10. In this version you can set a time limit per letter and an amount of letters per session. I gave up on implementing Kanji, it's too different from any alphabets already available and there are much better resources out there any way. And I have added the Hangul alphabet too. Download: http://drive.cw-games.org/srv/public.php?service=files&t=809b978f4acdf0a6c0551dcc6173067d

Thanks, now I understand why people keep using those interchangeably. Just one thing to add: the "u" version is more formal than the "je" version. Although I prefer to say "bedankt" normally, because "dankjewel"/"dankuwel"/"dank je wel"/"dank u wel" sounds like you bloody depend on it IMO.

I'm a native Polish speaker, but I can't really write Polish and my spoken Polish is limited to impolite speech only. This is because I exclusively used/use Polish my entire life to my family and I never wrote anything to them. But I'm soon going to start a little language exchange with my mother, I need to teach her to speak English and she'll teach me to write Polish in return.

Moved it to general discussion. I've never been mocked about it because unlike most language learners, I care about using the right accent for the right language.

Quite surprising to see how little (3.5%) of all languages are used by Europeans, while it's such a language-happy continent. But on the other hand it's not as surprising, seeing how Norwegian and Swedish are slowly dying. Even in the Netherlands we keep slowly replacing Dutch words by English ones, but at least those Belgians are here to keep the language alive.

@rainhero Kanji can be very tough, but I honestly found hiragana and katakana the easiest part. However, you may want to avoid the ancient trick of writing them down thousands of times, because that's not going to work (I tried it that way a year before I officially started studying/learning Japanese at all).

A lot more languages than you might think actually. Japanese has thousands of English loan words, Korean is adding many new English words to their own vocabulary every single day, even in Dutch we have adopted a lot of English words into our language. In Dutch an example would be "deze school is echt fucking cool" (this school is really fucking cool). In Japanese you can even have entire sentences in 'Engrish' by 'kana-ifying' English words, like "アイ　ライク　ディズ　フォーラム　ベリー　マッチ" (Ai raiku dizu fooramu berii macchi) (I like this forum very much). I can't think of anything in Korean, I don't speak that one.

I recommend you start with hiragana and katakana: http://drive.cw-games.org/srv/public.php?service=files&t=809b978f4acdf0a6c0551dcc6173067d The next step would be WaniKani (http://www.wanikani.com), which teaches you kanji and a good amount of vocabulary at the same time. While working through WaniKani, I recommend you to learn Japanese grammar through whatever @Miya recommends, get listening exercises on FluentU (http://www.fluentu.com) and speaking exercises through Italki (http://www.italki.com). Make sure you get some manga's or follow some Japanese bloggers for reading exercises and you should have everything covered pretty much.

No, pronunciation remains the same. Movies and TV shows: depends on your preferences.

Any age is fine, as long as you honestly want to learn a given language. Because why do I keep failing at Spanish, while I always manage to make huge progress in Japanese easily? That's because I feel passionate about the Japanese language, culture, food, etc., while to Spanish not so much. And I put Japanese into practise every single day, while I don't bother using Spanish outside my 'core study time'. While I know you should use a language all day long every single day to really become fluent in it, the main languages I must use online every day are English and Japanese (Dutch and Polish for offline use). And I've noticed this fact while being in Germany last week; my German skills got notably worse.

That reminds me to those 2:

Professional tutors normally have time for the most time of the day actually, it's their job for a reason. And besides, Duolingo and Memrise should be used as extra aids and not as main tools, if you want take your language learning seriously.

In my country, primary schools generally put children into 2 categories: "the language kid" and "the mathematics kid". Bad idea in my opinion, this could possibly motivate a 'language kid' to become better at mathematics, but it could also prevent them from doing so. Same with the 'mathematics kid'. Of course you may be more interested in language than in maths (or vice versa), but I think you should let the kids decide for themselves. In the end, 'language kids' and 'mathematics kids' don't exist, it's just a matter of their passion to either of the 2 subjects, and both can still get better in the other subject, making these categories entirely meaningless.

But unlike 愛する, you can't make a verb out of 大好き (I think).

Newcomers in language learning always think that Duolingo is the ultimate language learning solution. However, they still have to learn it's just a companion aid, not an entire learning environment. It's either that, or he simply wanted to show off his website which he seems have just set up.

Sorry, my IPA knowledge is nearly non-existant, so I can't help you with that.

Not bad, here's the correct version: Hoi, Je kunt proberen om in de standaard Nederlandse uitspraak les te geven (schrijf zoals je het in de alfabetische notaties (?) uitspreekt), met geluidsopnames. Mijn voorkeur gaat uit naar het lezen van de Nederlandse taal voordat ik het leer. And one more tip: "standaard Nederlands" is more commonly referred to as "Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands" (or "ABN" for short), although that's the purest form of Dutch (so without any dialects or regional slang words).

I think it applies most to the south-European countries, the UK and Germany. Here in the Netherlands people mostly browse English language websites as far as I know. Just look at Wikipedia for example, the average Dutch article contains very little information on most subjects (unless it's relevant to the Netherlands or Belgium). Comparing those articles to their English equivalents, there's a whole lot more information on the same subjects. Or in terms of Ecommerce, there's a whole lot more choice in English than there are in Dutch. And Dutch shops normally limit their shipping to the Benelux, while English shops usually ship worldwide. Or with news websites, Dutch sites are either pure propaganda (usually the big boys), the hard truth (usually the small bloggers), or somewhere in-between. English news sites can vary a lot when it comes to their trustworthiness (RT is among my favourites).

I was practising Japanese on Skype for an hour and as soon as the 50 minute mark passed, my little sister came in complaining she can't find any food. My teacher saw her on camera, laughed his arse off (even though he didn't understand a single thing what she said) and my little sister quickly faded out of the living room. It wasn't as much of a WTF moment for me as it was for my teacher. Another moment is more related to me directly: I've been at a local Chinese restaurant, staring at a painting filled with Chinese characters. A restaurant worker saw this and came to me. I told him "such a bad handwriting, the moon (月), dog (犬) and that good/like (好) characters are way too wide", and he stared at me like "how the bloody fuck could he possibly guess them".

There is no 1 answer we can give, there really is no too easy or too hard language to learn. All languages can be learnt, as long as you love the given language and culture. You already said you don't want to learn any Romance or Asian language, so that's what you shouldn't be recommended to learn. My advise is to find a language AND culture you really like, that's the language you will find easiest to learn. It's important to be honest about that, you can't force yourself to like something you don't like.

Very well done on this one, but: 1. "Dankjewel" may have no spaces. 2. "Ik ben wel trots" (I am yes/probably proud) should be "Ik ben heel trots" (I am very proud). 3. "Nederlands" should be with a capital N, all names in Dutch start with a capital letter, just like in English. 4. The last sentence should be either "Ik ben zo blij dat ik het examen heb behaald" or "Ik ben zo blij, omdat ik geslaagd ben voor mijn examen".