Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Best language resource(s) to use?  (Read 34704 times)
  • Colonel Rebel
  • [*][*][*][*][*]
Best language resource(s) to use?
Firstly,  :cheers: to all!

I need to learn conversational German before September arrives. I am all too well aware of Rosetta Stone, but I am unable to justify spending $300-400 on it's equipment. Anyone know of any decent language resources that might be available, or indeed, that anyone on here can vouch for personally? Free would be nice, but I am willing to go up to about $35 or so, if need be.

I have downloaded Duolingo and Mindsumo on my IPad, but don't know much about them, other than they are free. I'll be trying them shortly.

Thanks to all, and hope you all have an excellent year!

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #25 –
FWIW, I’ve still yet to have time to thoroughly study either French or German as I’d intended. Work is having me do a lot of hours. Has been for 3 years now.

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #26 –
Comme on dit en français, c'est la vie. :)

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #27 –
Duolingo is quite OK. It got that needed interactivity fine. It is not sufficient, mind you, but a reasonably fine way to do that necessary practice.

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #28 –
Quite OK seems a bit of an overstatement even if it's praise adjacent at most. I went through their French thing a bit a few years back and a lot of the pronunciations were just plain wrong. But the general principle is useful for some of the basics at least.

The pronunciations being computer-generated and wrong may not be the biggest issue if you could just turn off the sound, but there are literally speaking exercises where you should repeat the sample…

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #29 –
Computer-generated pronunciations? Eww.. I can recommend Speakly. I updated (or kind of upheld rather) my French there when they had a free campaign for a while. No computer-generated nonsense. No real-life interaction either, but if you just want some conversation phrases in writing read out to you so you can repeat, it's fine.

The best conversation exercise is still live interaction. This cannot be changed. Find a real-life friend among native speakers, if you are really serious. (I am not that serious.)

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #30 –
I don't consider computer-speak to be a major issue (though sometimes it is grating). To get proper pronunciation you need more focused work anyway.

The biggest problem is the one language-fits-all approach. Each language is different, and you need to learn the specifics of that language, from a teacher who not only knows the language, but how learners learn it.

But most of language learning is chore, and DuoLingo does that chore well. Use specialised resources to get the rest.

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #32 –
An Estonian dude tried to learn Japanese. Not too bad, I'd say. Literacy in Japanese and Chinese are lifetime projects even for the natives.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVAcg1FuyOY[/video]

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #33 –
Here's the "direct line" conference that Putin tends to do every once in a while, about once a year. Enjoy the beautiful Russian language, observe the oratorical eloquence, lend an ear to the mellow voice, the tender tones, the coruscating consonants of the head of state, who is going to give it to you straight, clarify the conundrums, dazzle us with logic...[1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xat0JUvLJ-M
1 Yup, it's a Monty Python reference.↵

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #35 –
I didn't watch much of the posted video... But I'd have to agree: Lots of people (on the Left) want NewSpeak-like control over even the vocabulary people are "allowed" to use.
Ask them why and listen to their word-salad response! :)
BTW: How can I take the guy seriously, when he didn't clearly state his preferred pronouns?!
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #37 –
Which foreign words to a language is used, for what purposes, is a fascinating topic, as is their transcription. Greeks seem fine with keeping Western foreign words in Latin alphabet. Chinese tends to translate into Chinese characters, which can make it quite the guessing game, which name or word was originally meant.

Japanese is importing more either by keeping it into romanji, or put it in katakana, which is another return to rebus-like guessing games. ナイフ is na+i+fu, in other words "knife". ネクタイ is ne+ku+ta+i, or tie ("necktie"). テレビ, te+re+bi, is television ("re" is closer to "le" than rolling Rs, and Japanese doesn't have the v sound). "Mozart" is モーツァルト (Moo+tsu+a+ru+to) in Japanese, and 莫扎特, Mò+zhā+tè, in Standard Chinese.

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #38 –
If you'll recall, Noam Chomsky's original work was phonetics... Do you know of any currently popular academician proposing a version of Universal Grammar?

(I'll understand if you'd prefer to limit discussion to orthography...or its cognates, picto-graphs :) )
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #39 –
Quote from: OakdaleFTL – on
If you'll recall, Noam Chomsky's original work was phonetics... Do you know of any currently popular academician proposing a version of Universal Grammar?
Should I forgive you for writing in meaningless half-sentences and for that you know nothing?

Noam Chomsky's original work was not phonetics. His master's thesis was about morphophonemics of Hebrew. In "phonemics" the m makes it decisively *not* about phonetics, and even more decisively so when the term is "morphophonemics". So, what's your point when you say "if you'll recall"? Is it to be stupid so proudly and confidently that you convince everybody else be stupid too? It indeed seems to work very well in USA, as evidenced by Trump and his voters, so you likely assume it works universally or at least it's worth a try to export it the way USA exports (its moronic notion of) democracy.

Universal Grammar is not Chomsky's invention. It is a position on the ancient question of whether language is acquired or innate, which is fundamentally not a question about language, but about anthropology or biology. From linguistics' point of view it is a meta-position. Of course you knew all this, right? Not!

Chomsky's contribution to linguistics is elaborating on Generative Grammar, which is the mechanics from universals or deep structure to the surface representation of language. I'm currently reading a fairly modern grammar book of Turkish that deploys this method. It is clunky for a language like Turkish, but the writer has made it work where it matters.

Chomsky's examples of Generative Grammar were on English syntax. It works fine for English syntax. In languages like Finnish or Turkish it works to illustrate the mechanics of vowel harmony, but it does not help explain Finnish or Turkish syntax at all. Different languages are different and different aspects of language are different, who would have guessed...

Generative Grammar was both inspired by and contributed to the emerging computer science and programming. In computer science there apparently is something called "Chomsky hierarchy" which I did not know about until very recently, as my own forays into programming are recent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA6yBBcfu4k

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #40 –
Quote from: jax – on
Which foreign words to a language is used, for what purposes, is a fascinating topic, as is their transcription. Greeks seem fine with keeping Western foreign words in Latin alphabet. Chinese tends to translate into Chinese characters, which can make it quite the guessing game, which name or word was originally meant.
It's mostly a function of the nation's respect for their own writing system and legal pitfalls. Greeks are able to transcribe all personal names into their own alphabet just fine, producing spellings such as Τζεφ Μπέζος, so it should be no issue to write something like ντρονεϛ.

Then again, lest brand names go lost in translation, they are often retained, especially when the company behind the brand is dangerously litigious. For example George Lucas got into his head that Star Wars is not a movie title, but a trademark and copyrighted brand, so when non-English countries and nations with other writing systems show the movie, they must spell out Star Wars, or else.

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #41 –
That must've happened at some later date I suppose. In Germany it was released as Krieg der Sterne, in France as La Guerre des étoiles.

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #42 –
Well, I checked and the French movie posters I found say that you are right on the first trilogy, but I am right since Episode I.





The first trilogy was kept out of Soviet theatres, so I have no reference point how its distribution transpired. But since Episode I I remember title/translation issues being reported in Finnish and Estonian press. Since France was affected, I'd assume it was a worldwide thing having an effect also in e.g. Japan.

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #43 –
Trump is impressed with the English of Liberia's president (from a German article, for educational purposes)
Quote from: https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/donald-trump-liberias-staatspraesident-in-washington-so-schoenes-englisch-video-a-8b45a5d8-ec05-4aec-934f-30614f45cd45
Joseph Boakai, Liberias Präsident:
»Wir wollen mit den Vereinigten Staaten für Frieden und Sicherheit in der Region zusammenarbeiten, weil uns das am Herzen liegt, und
wir möchten Ihnen für diese Gelegenheit danken.«

Donald Trump, US-Präsident:
»Vielen Dank und so gutes Englisch. So schön. Wo haben Sie gelernt, so schön zu sprechen? Wo? Wo wurden Sie ausgebildet?«

Joseph Boakai, Liberias Präsident:
»Ja, Sir.«

Donald Trump, US-Präsident:
»In Liberia?«

Joseph Boakai, Liberias Präsident:
»Ja, Sir.«

Donald Trump, US-Präsident:
»Das ist sehr interessant. Das ist wunderschönes Englisch. Ich habe Leute an diesem Tisch, die nicht annähernd so gut sprechen können und von hier kommen. Vielen Dank.«
Of course, Liberia was always English-speaking. It was set up 200 years ago as an invasive colony by American free blacks, who enslaved the local Africans.

When Trump learns that Africa is one of the biggest countries and that most imports come from foreign countries, he will be as smart as W. Yup, in hindsight the W. era was still fairly sane times.

Re: Best language resource(s) to use?

Reply #44 –
Came across the GRSSK subreddit. Droll.