Language Nerds

🇮🇩 Bahasa Indonesia

Native. I'm planning to take UKBI test (TOEFL-like, but for Bahasa Indonesia). Wondering how embarrassing it will be 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. My Hanacaraka is a disaster when pasangan are involved.

🇬🇧 🇺🇸 English

Advanced (C2). I want to take formal test like iBT/IELTS but is pretty pricey, gonna save up for it later.

🇨🇳 Mandarin Chinese (simplified)

Elementary proficiency. Still struggling with pronunciation and oh so many strokes. Not gonna take the formal HSK test before I'm confident enough - aaaand Hanban just upgraded the difficulty level.

🇯🇵 Japanese

Elementary proficiency.

Hiragana ✔️

Katakana ✔️

Kanji 🤯

Particles 😭

🇵🇹 🇧🇷 Portuguese

I know about 50 words and basic sentence structures. I haven't pay much attention to the accent sign. Não falo Português, ainda.

🇻🇦 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.

🇷🇺 Russian

Just the Cyrillic alphabets by far. I now know not to use it for aesthetic typography.

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, for example 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.

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 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

Classic note-taking with pen and paper works best for me, though I take less notes now.

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. The worksheet is a work-in-progress. I seldom use ForgetMeNot flashcard app.

8. Immersiveness

Basically trying to familiarize with the language, using it in 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 works for me:

• 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 BEST for me 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.

• Write bullet journal/diary 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 much 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.

I also waved my white flag to some languages.

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 (for example, in a slight read, Arabic writings looks like they don't have space/gap for me, I can't tell what 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. Also it starts reading from right, I wanted to cry.

• Hebrew. Same reason with Arabic.

• French. It confuses the frick out of me when the writing doesn't match what was spoken. By all means, no offense intended—it's like speaking in cursive 😭

• German. I just can't pick up any words when native Germans are speaking.

• Dutch. Same reason with German.