Danili

Just say "hey you might be understood better if you say it like this". You probably shouldn't do what my dad does to me, which is laugh loudly, ask me to repeat what I just said in front of family or guests, mock me and encourage everyone to mock me for 5 minutes, laugh again and then correct me like he's teaching a 5 year old. Lawl.

You might want to use YouTube's "Popular on YouTube - [your target language's country]" channels. Like this is the one for Spain. It lists the trending videos in that country, usually it's vloggers, funny videos, etc. Fun stuff! It's like browsing YT but in your target language. It helps me find new channels quickly as opposed to searching online and asking people which can take long. Just use the search bar and it'll show you the channel for your target language's country which you can subscribe to.

I lived my first few years in Bulgaria, where I think it's still taught, not sure though. All adults there know how to use it, and my parents seem surprised we weren't taught cursive in England. When I was in school in London, I think we might have had a few handwriting lessons, but they were more along the lines of this: I don't remember actual cursive writing lessons, because when I went to do my SAT and it prompted me to sign something in "cursive" I was like damn...and I tried my best but it looked horrible haha. Later I read forums online and nearly everyone was saying they didn't learn cursive in school. So I can assume English-speaking countries don't, or rarely, teach cursive. Or if they do obviously they don't do it well since no one can use it now.

I love cheesy, over the top telenovelas. Have you heard of La Reina del Sur? It's quite good. One thing though, try to get the full episodes. Spanish shows tend to cut bits out to make "compact" versions, can be hard to find the full uncut episodes online. I watched a telenovela recently when I didn't know they did that, and got confused when things happened too fast, or things were left unexplained or seemed unconnected.

Duolingo actually helped me when I was at a lower level in Spanish, a quite low level actually. It just introduced me to new words and ways of expressing things that we weren't learning in school. However, now I'm at a B1/B2 level and Duo does nothing for me. I'm above the level they teach. Still it's a good way to get started with a language. If you make notes and complete the tree, all while supplementing with other things like Memrise and books, you'll do well. SpanishDict I still use, but for their conjugation tool and explanations of grammar + quizzes. It's not like Duolingo though is it? It's like a reference website. They own Fluencia, but that's separate and paid.

I actually like rap in Spanish, I feel like the language is better suited for rap than English is because it's a bit "harsher". But generally I like the same music in Spanish as I do in English. I am also quite embarrassed to admit that I like to sometimes listen to Chalga, a type of folk music from Bulgaria. I'm Bulgarian so I understand it but everyone in my country HATES is and makes fun of it. It's very embarrassing haha. But I like it probably because it reminds me of back home, and gives me them summer feels (when it's always played on the beaches).

Yeah, it's supposed to be one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn. I have a friend who's learning it and it looks very peculiar, interesting though. Popular language to learn despite the Netherlands being tiny! You might find Clozemaster a good way of learning (like a fill in the gap thing), they have Dutch. I think there's another thread here on them.

Okay so the solution was quite easy. All I had to do to get a copy/paste-able table was type it up in word, copy that and paste it straight in the blog post (not even in the HTML section). I still had to mess around with the code to get it to center though. Got it in the end!

Problem. Blogger doesn't let me add CSS in the posts, it's just HTML, doesn't work even if I add <style> tags and put the CSS there.

I'd say stick to one language, learning more than one will get you confused. You started with Japanese, do you want to move on to Chinese because it's boring you or you're burnt out? That's what happens to me, I stick with one language then I get distracted by another. I think it's great to be ambitious and have so many language goals, but stick with one, learn it well, and then move on to the next all while polishing and keeping up the previous one.

What I do is get old books from charity shops or order cheap, and when I come across something I don't know I highlight that word. Sometimes I keep reading without checking it in the dictionary if I can tell what the meaning is through connotation, and then I come back to it when I finish the chapter. If I really need that word, I check it, create a flashcard, put it in Anki or something. I feel as though books help me more with my grammar though. Haha, yes people need to be careful of that!

Hey, Dutch is pretty high up their planned languages. They use donations to pay for it all, here's their indiegogo page with all the updates and the future languages list. I personally love Babadum, I discovered it a few months ago and fell in love with the graphics. Even though I'm at a high stage of my Spanish learning, I still use it because there is some vocab I don't know, and I love that they have so many different languages I can delve into.

You don't need to live in that country to learn the language, but as immersion is incredibly important it is ideal, as Blaveloper said. If you can't then that isn't a problem. For your immersion read books, watch movies, listen to radio/music, and talk to natives either in real life or through Skype or something. Try to recreate that ideal situation as best as possible. Have you heard of Joseph Caspar Mezzofanti (1774-1849)? He learned to speak more than 38 languages fluently, but never left his home country of Italy yet apparently managed to learn to speak the languages without an accent and amazed native speakers of those languages.

Hey that was pretty quick! I'll use a HTML table with my next article. I was thinking about the whole copy/paste thing a few days ago and how some people may be annoyed at it being a message. Thanks

When you meaten up your blog you can tell me and I'll put it in the Japanese article (when I write it!). Also yes blogger allows HTML tables but I haven't become good enough at them yet to make them look good. I'm actually learning HTML now so in a few weeks I'll change them all for nice copy/paste-able ones