宇崎ちゃん

When I just came in, I was quite easy-going when it came to language learning and it worked fine to me. But now I have learnt to work much harder to come somewhere quicker and that worked much better to me. Another good thing is that I met lots of people with different goals, different ways of learning, different types of fluency, etc. and I learnt to accept their ways of learning, their goals, their definition of fluency, etc. I have been on many different forums in the past, but this one seems to be the only one that has lots of people AND nice people at the same time. Many other forums tend to either have lots of arseholes, or a very few nice ones. My only critique would be that Linguaholic himself is too easy on everybody sometimes, so I often had to come in and do some Moderator tasks instead. I understand there isn't much to moderate here, but if there is then it often remains unmoderated.

Even though Polish and Russian are both Slavic languages, I think it would have been a better idea to use an English book for Dutch, since both are Germanic languages. Or if you're fluent in German, that would have been an even better option. I say this because my mum uses lots of Polish sentences that are difficult to translate to Dutch. Dutch also has lots of sentences that are difficult to translate to Polish. So sometimes when we are watching TV and she asks me what something means, I just can't make a proper translation, even though both languages are my native languages. Same thing with the other way around, but instead of the questioner being my mum, it's my little sister.

After much consideration, I think I finally got my language learning path decided for 2016: Mandarin, Russian, Spanish and French. I'll take 12 weeks for each language. But note that these 12 weeks are meant to initialise learning, so they're not meant to be "become fluent in X within 12 weeks". In fact, I'll just continue using the 4 languages I'll start + 5 languages I already speak after those 12 weeks. Language learning isn't all about just starting to learn a language, it's meant to maintain them too. Writing this reminds me that I would need to practise my German more often, I haven't used it for a month already. @_@

Let me add that if you listen, you shouldn't listen passively. You should listen actively (note how they speak and mimic them as early as possible). I say this because too many people still have their misconception about learning a language through listening, so they get as many movies from ThePirateBay as possible and just watch. But if that would be a way to learn languages (including pronunciation!), I bet way more people worldwide would have been hyper polyglots.

I didn't know you could use it as a slang word though. Much like I recently found out that "っす" is a slang of "です".

It's funny to see how you post in 4 different languages + 1 variation each time. I only hope it wouldn't be overkill for you. I have no experience with neither of the 2 languages, but if you are really looking for a job in the Middle East, why not learn both languages? Don't worry about knowing perfect French or Arabic, not even a native speaker speaks their own language perfectly any way. Unless you want to become a lawyer, politician or university teacher, reaching B2 level would be enough for daily business.

Last time I wanted to try HelloTalk, I wasn't able to register my account because they didn't accept any gTLDs in email addresses. I reported this bug and months later, it looks like they still didn't solve this bug, while they promised to solve it 'in a few days' back then. Speaking of lying! By the way, this made me laugh when I posted this review on Google Play:

If communication with the whole world is your biggest reason, then why Latin and Cantonese? Latin is used by linguists only right now and Cantonese is only used in the south of China + Hong Kong and maybe Macau.

Personally I don't like writing on a dead tree, we live in the technological era and I think it's best to apply the latest technology as soon as possible. This is probably because I'm literally a life long IT guy and a true lover of high tech. Therefore, I choose for typing. But sometimes I just use my Surface Pro 3 tablet and do handwriting on my tablet screen. Best of both worlds!

I honestly don't think Chinese would be as difficult as you say it is. Like, what is easier to remember the word for that tool to remove the cap of a bottle? "Decapper" (French way) or "open bottle tool" (Chinese way)? On the other hand: "United States" in Chinese is "美国" (lit. "nice kingdom"), which makes much fewer sense.

You don't need to translate from Polish or Dutch, just paste it there and click the audio icon. Once again, "aishiteru" doesn't exist. Use "aishiteiru" (with an extra "i" before "ru") instead. Edit: scrap that, the second part was bullshit.

It's hard for me to re-produce Italian sounds while not knowing any Italian. A simple way around that would be to go to Google Translate, paste the Dutch and Polish ones in the text field and click the following icon: I just tried both and I can say they are both accurate. As for the "aishiteru" vs "ai shimasu" part: "ai" = love (noun). "suru" = "to do" (dictionary form). "shimasu" = "to do" (polite form). "shite" = "do (it)" (te-form, commonly used as a command). "shiteiru" = "doing" (continuously). "shiteimasu" = "doing" (continuously, polite). I don't think there is a "shiteru" form though. So in other words, the difference between "ai suru"/"ai shimasu" and "aishiteiru"/"ai shiteimasu" would be that the latter one is more like "I'm loving you" while the primer one would be more like "I love you".

Sounds more like a topic that should be created mid-February though. Polish: Kocham cię. Dutch: Ik hou/houd van je/jou.* English: I love you. Japanese: 愛します。 (Ai shimasu.) German: Ich liebe dich. American: i luv u (it's a joke, silly!) Notes regarding the asterisk (*): "hou" for spoken Dutch and "houd" for written Dutch. "je" and "jou" have the same meaning, so it's used interchangeably. "u" is the polite version of "je" and "jou" and it's most likely the one you will learn while learning Dutch, but using "u" in "I love you" makes it sound either like you don't know the person you love, or it'll sound like you love the person in question for business reasons.

There should be someone who would disagree with this, so let that someone be me. Unlike us adults, children have much more things to learn than just languages. We adults learn our core business either in universities or at work, but children need to learn languages, maths, history, biology, geography, etc. at the same time, many of which will be irrelevant for their future, but let's put this fact aside. Add 2 more languages to the mix, and everything gets much harder to learn! Other than the multi-tasking part, there are more problems to care about: Children still need to develop their way of logical thinking. Children at an early age don't know how to use technology beyond playing games. Children learn languages based on exposure, so good luck teaching them Russian through a Spanish-speaking teacher in Argentina! The only reason why children would possibly have a greater advantage over adults in this case would be experience. While adults are more likely to grab a textbook and quiz-based apps, children are more likely to learn languages by purely using the language verbally at first, and then learn the writing side of the language at school. Unless the child in question is a 3 year old Einstein without any handicaps, I wouldn't see him or her pick up a book, app or game to learn whatever language they want to learn.

Let's say they are 'decent'. Here in the Netherlands, all non-Dutch non-children movies and series get subtitled by default. English to Dutch subtitles are quite accurate (even though the don't subtitle swear words sometimes), but Polish to Dutch gets incorrectly translated for the most of the time. Maybe that's because almost every Dutch person can speak English, but Polish people generally can't speak Dutch and vice versa, so perhaps they can easily apply some propaganda to it? Who knows?

I haven't checked the Spanish version no. That being put to the side, where have you been?

I know most Kanji and Hanzi are the same, but I'l trying to find a list of characters that differ between the 2. Or rather, lists. I'm looking for lists that compares all the Kanji that differ from simplified Hanzi, Kanji that differ from traditional Hanzi, simplified Hanzi that differ from traditional Hanzi, and Hanzi that don't have a Kanji equivalent. I found these lists on Wikipedia, but I'm concerned about its completeness.

I have never lived in a foreign country, but I have been to many countries for a holiday. Except for Belgium, Poland and the UK, I haven't been able to speak the language of the other countries. But if I would visit Germany again, I would be able to. Each time I visited a southern European country, I noticed how important it is to speak the language of that country, although people in Greece usually can speak English really well (which is fortunate, because I wasn't planning to learn Greek any way).

I would as well want to see a Windows Phone or Windows 10 release of this. I have an Android phone and a Windows 10 phone, but I have only 1 SIM card I can use at the same time.

It's true that Japanese is a SOV-language. However, certain grammar can break this rule and if can easily become SOVV, SOVSV, SOVOV, SOOV, OSOV, OSV, etc., while you will most certainly end with a verb. But you can't count on it too much, look at this: のむ = to drink. のみたい = want to drink (verb + object). のんでください = please drink (verb + object). のむはずです = should drink (verb + object + verb). のんだらどうですか =　what if (they) drink? (verb + object + verb).

Don't you mean hell?

I currently speak 5 languages actually, but I have plans to add some more in the future. 1. Polish (native). 2. Dutch (native). 3. English (even though Dutch is the official language in the Netherlands, it's difficult to live here without knowing English). 4. Japanese (very important for both my game development and game journalist careers). 5. German (I learnt it became it's almost like Dutch in so many ways, and I visit the Gamescom every year. Germany is a place where you can't even buy a 'bratwurst' if you can't speak German).

Only if you would know the pain of not being able to find any forums that are strictly Japanese. And if there are, they're either completely dead or 2ch. Guess that would explain the Koreans' shyness.

The biggest comfort zone most people have is to delay speaking until 'they're ready' (which you never will be). Each time I find something easy, I try to turn the level up a bit. And bit by bit, I work myself to fluency by doing this. And if I don't, I just let it happen naturally (like with English, I wrote and spoke it at every possible moment and learning English became natural to me).

"Y r u leavin ur begs?" Seriously, I bloody hate it when people write like that.