🦉Language Geek

🇮🇩 Bahasa Indonesia

Native. I'm planning to take UKBI test (TOEFL-like, but for Bahasa Indonesia). Wondering how to deal with the embarassment if I scored low for a native.

🇮🇩 Basa Jawa

Native for ngoko lugu and ngoko alus (casual form). Not proficient on the polite forms (krama), I could understand to some extent but can't reply. I could read simple Hanacaraka but my reality got twisted when pasangan are involved.

🇬🇧 🇺🇸 English

Proficient (C2). My first contact with the English language wasn't on my own free will. I just obliged my school curriculum, and hey, it actually helps me a lot for manga. Why would I wait for another year volume release in Bahasa Indonesia when I can read it by chapter in English release? After I reached certain level of reading and writing comprehension, it's a whole new world and adventure.

🇨🇳 Mandarin Chinese (simplified)

Elementary proficiency. Spent six years learning it at school (1-2 hours per week), annoyed at myself for remaining dumb, still learning. Currently struggling with pronunciation and oh so many strokes. Gonna take the formal HSK test when I'm confident enough.. then Hanban just upgraded the difficulty level.

🇯🇵 Japanese

Elementary proficiency. Obviously, there are great mangas out there that has not been translated to English, so why not attempt to read it in their original language, right?

Hiragana ✔️

Katakana ✔️

Kanji 🤯

Particles 😭

🇵🇹 Portuguese

I know about 50 words and basic sentence structures. And oh, so this is how we use proper accent sign. Started learning it because bola é um amigo. Turns out my birthplace, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), Indonesia, have received significant and lasting impact from the Portuguese due to colonialism.

🇻🇦 Latin

There is no flag for Roman Empire so I use the Vatican flag... I know about 20 words. The personal pronouns are killing me. Learning it because saying "Valde esurio" sounds like magical spell. Also this news fascinated me so much, so cool.

🇷🇺 Russian

Just the Cyrillic alphabets by far. Now I know not to use it for aesthetic typography. Started learning it because one of my favorite manga character is set as a Russian, also I really like how the Russian elderly chess community is portrayed in Queen's Gambit.

1. Duolingo

I avoid juggling between many apps because it will spread thin my attention. I decided to focus on Duolingo since it offers all my target language (except Javanese). Finishing a course in Duolingo won't automatically make you fluent—it's not good to be dependent on one method/tools.

I'm here for vocabulary, basic grammar, alphabet, and questionable competitive spirit. Also Duolingo is big, I trust them to keep updating their features, for free. 2017-me won't expect them to have separate feature to learn katakana, hiragana, kanji, and now hanzi.

Let's be friends, we can exchange a digital high-five: Serena on Duolingo

2. Movie streaming services

Make use of subtitle and dub settings. I would re-watch some movies/series I'm familiar with subtitle/dubbing in my target language (if available). Animation movies would be a great start, e.g. I watched Kungfu Panda in Chinese dub.

3. DeepL and Google Translate

For quick translation. I like to compare results. Google Translate seems to get "smarter" rapidly, which shouldn't be surprising considering their scale of development and engineers involved, though DeepL's document translation is still superior by far.

4. Textbooks

You can find them online. Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg have decent collections to start from.

For languages that has different writing/characters from your native one, I recommend using textbooks meant for children. They're usually colorful, with pictures, with storytelling to help long-term memorization. For example, some (not all) Japanese kanji and Chinese hanzi were derived from picture. The character 山 means "mountain", because, well, it does look like mountain⛰️ right? Children books are fun.

5. Physical notebook

I do note-taking with pen and paper the old way.

6. Formal courses

I do need a teacher to help me confirm what I've learned and guide me closer to the gate of truth. Since most formal courses are expensive, I'm planning to enroll specifically when I'm ready for writing & speaking classes.

I enrolled for Mandarin Chinese with Jakarta Mandarin in 2022. Big thanks to my 老师 and 同学, will miss cracking jokes in-between lesson with you guys.

7. Flashcards (or something similar)

I'm using Ogden's Basic English as foundation to construct my worksheet of basic words in every target language.

8. Immersiveness

Basically trying to familiarize with the language, using it on daily basis albeit for a few minutes a day.  It's the reason why living in Germany will drastically improve your German, because we interact with the language every single day.

What I do:

• Changing my tablet setting language to the target language, in this case to Mandarin Chinese (I look like a digital illiterate every time I want to access something, but I'm getting used to commonly used words). I use my tablet every day.

• Reading comics in target language (Japanese, Chinese). This works when I first learned English, because I have the drive to understand what the stories about and I highly enjoy comics. I read comics every day.

• Music. Songs helps a lot since I can listen while skimming the lyrics. Vocabs gained. For Mandarin Chinese, Lyrically Crafted is awesome, poetic and helpful. Spotify and YouTube Music have lyrics auto-translate, I love it. Apple Music also can show lyric pronunciation.

• Write bullet journal in target language.

• Self-talking (or find other person to help you practice speaking so you don't look crazy). I find it helpful when I repeat what actors/YouTuber said, or I try to answer/react to them in the target language. Sometimes I also try to speak like practicing for a speech.

Tools are tools, for long-term learning it's pretty much trial and error to find what suits us best then focus on it, and ditching those that doesn't work for us.

What I don't find helpful for my learning process:

• Podcast. I'll get sleepy if I don't read the transcript while listening. I envy people who can listen to podcast while commuting.

• Audiobooks. Like podcast, audio-only doesn't work for me. Eventually I will lose focus and it became background noise.

• Intensive vocab drilling. Flashcards are useful when used casually, but not for one-night forced memorization like what we usually do before exam.

My first and foremost parameter to learn a new language is my limit on auditory and reading ability. How it sounds, can I differentiate the words by ear upon hearing it the first time (which is vowel and whatnot), can I tell which word is what upon reading (e.g. Arabic writings looks like they don't have space/gap for me, I can't tell which is what). 

Here are the languages that I deemed the difficulty is beyond what time and effort I had in me. I bid farewell to:

• Arabic. The writings are too delicate, I really can't tell any characters at all. You add a dot and it changes the meaning. Also it starts reading from right, I wanted to cry.

• Hebrew. Same reason with Arabic.

• French. Wonderfully elusive. By all means, no offense intended—it's like speaking in cursive.

• German. Many people said German language is similar to English, but I just can't pick up any words when German speakers are talking.

• Dutch. Same reason with German.