Μαθαίνω ελληνικά. - I am learning Greek.

I am at the point of being able to read Greek, introduce myself, ask and respond to “how are you” and how to say “I am still learning Greek can we speak English”. haha

  • peaches@sh.itjust.works
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    8 hours ago

    I’m learning French, when I remember to. I did not put too much effort into it until now, because I understand a lot from articles, conversations, youtube videos. It is similar to Spanish, which I learnt up to native level I guess, also mostly speaking without a foreign accent. But back to French, I find it very hard to write it, so many accents and ‘s and letters that are not read. I have what they call a “musical ear”, so I do distinguish a lot of sound variations and tones, but the writing in French is brutal.

    Another language I will forever learn and not be able to get to it as with my Spanish or English is German. I mess up the articles all the time, I am sure, but I just keep going. I am perfectly comfortable reading German literature or having a conversation, but it bothers me that after so much time being exposed to it, I still make poor choices of articles.

    I started at some point learning Portuguese, but I found it frustrating that it was so similar to Spanish, all the words would come in Spanish in my mind.

    If I could, I would love to also know Greek, Danish, Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic and many others probably.

  • CptInsane0@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    Currently taking Japanese classes for fun. I’m about two years in and can have very basic conversations.

    Took three years of German 20+ years ago and have German friends (and read German lemmy) so can practice sometimes.

    I’m terrible at all of them and not that great at English either. I tend to “vomit language” moreso than speak well.

  • lorty@lemmy.ml
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    13 hours ago

    I’ve been trying to learn russian but it’s been hard. I mostly know how to read Cyrillic and a few words and phrases. Everything else has been pretty difficult to make it stick in my head.

  • Thymos@discuss.tchncs.de
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    17 hours ago

    I started learning Swedish yesterday. My native language is Dutch. I started by reading a pronunciation guide, but (and this is so childish) I had to put the book away for laughing so hard after reading the Swedish word for meatballs: köttbullar.

    Profanity

    In Dutch, the word “kut” means “cunt”. It isn’t as profane as the English word and is also often used for the well-known genitals. The guide explained that Swedish “ö” is pronounced like Dutch short “u”. After this I opened my Swedish story book and the first picture had the word köttbullar in it. I then heard myself very carefully enunciate what in Dutch sounds like “cunt balls”. Couldn’t stop laughing.

    Today I will make a second attempt. I hope I can keep it contained to a short chuckle.

    • Arkouda@lemmy.caOP
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      11 hours ago

      Thank you for sharing this absolutely hilarious story. Gave me a hearty laugh in the morning. haha

      Good luck getting passed it! I know I wouldn’t be strong enough. haha

  • enbiousenvy@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    17 hours ago

    jag lära svenska för många år sedan. but never been any more motivated so my skill is very limited.

    I learned to read cyrilic last year because I had to read some papers about central asian history written in russian, but I didn’t learn russian.

    while at that, I found out that hangeul is a very simple writing system and it is, I figured it out immediately but I still had to look up the tables to write. russian cyrilic is still more intuitive to write. But I also didn’t learn korean.

    تعلمت اللغة العربية 10 سنوات. But then I never use arabic anymore. It’s pretty cool somtimes to be able to read arabic writing and calligraphy. I used to won several arabic calligraphy contest.

    and then I also can understand 2 local languages when people around talk, but I can’t speak it well.

    Basically I never get motivated enough to be good at anything even in everything not just language :/

  • StickyDango@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    I’m learning Irish. My schedule is crazy busy, but I do a lot of driving for work so I listen to Irish speaking lessons. I also do this only while I’m on the road because my Irish boyfriend has no idea I’m doing this so I can speak Irish on our wedding day.

    I can say things like where I’ve been yesterday, where I am today, where I’ll be tomorrow, what are you doing, what were you doing, it was great craic, I don’t know, I’d like a pint of Guinness, please.

    I’ll probably get made fun of for speaking the Ulster dialect (his family is all Dublin), but my favourite instructor that I’ve found is from Belfast and at least I’ll be able to speak it. ☘️

  • v01dworks@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I’ve been learning Russian for a few years, I’ve also started learning Serbian and Ukrainian a little bit.

    I can speak Russian pretty decently, it’s my girlfriend’s first language so I’ve had a lot of regular practice with it, I don’t consider myself fluent at this point but I can hold conversations with native speakers without too much of an issue

    With Ukrainian I can understand quite a bit but I haven’t had much practice speaking it with other people at all yet. I have the basic phrases memorized, things like привіт, будь ласка, доброго ранку, добрий вечір, дякую, як справи, etc. but I don’t think I could hold a conversation speaking only in Ukrainian. I’ve been studying it kind of off and on for a year or so, and I listen to some Ukrainian music fairly often

    Serbian I’ve been struggling to learn, I’ve been working on it for about 5 months. I think learning Russian first made it weirdly harder since the sentences are structured fairly differently. When it’s written, I can understand quite a bit, but if someone walked up to me and just started speaking Serbian I’d be completely lost

  • cally [he/they]@pawb.social
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    1 day ago

    Nederlands (Dutch), my native language is Portuguese and I also speak English.

    “Hallo, ik ben Cally en ik spreek een beetje Nederlands.” probably translates to “Hello, I am Cally and I speak a bit of Dutch.”

    I kinda suck at learning languages so I’m still at what I assume is A1 level, I think my pronunciation is ok, though. Idk how to speed up language learning but I have set my phone to Dutch and that kinda helps. For example, “Instellingen” means “Settings”

  • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I’ve been learning Japanese for a long time now. The funny thing is that I started at the wrong end by learning kanji first and then moving onto grammar and vocabulary in that order. Avoid what I did unless you want to be proficient at reading it without understanding it!

    Although not all is lost, because I’m getting used to reading news and Wikipedia articles without much aid or effort anymore, and spoken Japanese is slowly getting easier. Understanding it is still proving to be a bitch from time to time but that’s on me!

    Btw, does anyone know of great websites to read Japanese? I browse Gigazine.net quite a bit and many news outlets, but I’d like to mix it up and move away from politics and news in general. I’m still a bit shy about online forums, but maybe I should do that next.

    • Luna@ani.social
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      5 hours ago

      For reading practice, I like using satori reader, the full service is paid but it has really nice grammar breakdowns and i like being able to click on words to see their definition/readings

    • Valencia@sh.itjust.works
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      12 hours ago

      I know you said transition away from news sites but Easynhk.com is always a staple

      Twitter is honestly great since there’s so much variety, not to mention there’s a lot of artists who’ll post full chapters of manga. You just have to curate who you follow to avoid musk stuff.

      I’d also say just watch some YouTube videos. It’s a good way to practice listening and most YouTubers will personally subtitle their videos as well so you can follow along while reading. A particular favorite way for me is to watch videos of Japanese people travelling/living in America/English speaking places. It’s fun seeing their experiences with everyday stuff for us; a channel I watch a lot is called Kira Kira USA. They post videos frequently, use a lot of day to day Japanese, and get to see viewpoints from the various family members.

      Good luck!

      • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Thank you for that! Kira Kira USA sounds a lot like what I’m looking for. I really liked Miku’s Real Japanese Pocast so this is right up my alley. Hehe

  • percent@infosec.pub
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    2 days ago

    I’ve been learning Portuguese (Brazilian) off and on for a while. I’m mostly okay-ish at reading it, but it’s nearly impossible for me to understand it when spoken.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I’m learning English. I think I can manage. I’m reading more and faster than most native speakers.

    Meine Muttersprache ist Deutsch.