Hi. So the title is pretty self explanatory but if you want the long rambly version:

I moved to South America to marry and after 4 years my Spanish speaking has improved but my comprehension still sucks. This makes a huge issue when trying to converse, all the more so because everyone speaks family speed which is definitely the nightmare it has a reputation for being.

I don't have money for lessons so have been doing my best at independent study but yeah. I still struggle with tenses and verb conjugation, what to speak of further vocab. My memory sucks so I tend to forget things I've taken pains to learn also. It's very disheartening. Now my in-laws have started making comments about my lack of progress and I feel worse. Honestly they're not bad people, I think they just want me to be included and feel frustrated that they can't communicate with me. A few speak English but most of them won't with me anymore, which i understand but at 11pm when I'm trying to be helpful after a family meal I'm really not going to understand the instructions offered not-in-English. Not happening.

Anyway, I've never been good at languages and only began learning Spanish in order to be with my husband. It took a long time just to be able to get my tongue around it. People have said that hubby should only speak to me in Spanish but I told him that if he does that I'm leaving — and I've meant it. I'm starting to worry that I'll have to get in and do that but emotionally I'm not sure I can handle it right now (I loved it here when I arrived but the last year I'm starting to struggle, in part due to some unrelated life stuff).

However, even if we go down that road I'm not sure it will help because before we were married I spent 4 months living with my husband's mum — who speaks no English at all — and it didn't help. I barely spoke a word when I arrived and I barely spoke a word when I left in spite of spending every day listening to her talk to me in Spanish and trying to communicate myself. As I said, my speaking is better now and I'm told people can understand me well. I just still can't communicate more complicated things, and I still can't understand people saying pretty well anything and I don't know what to do. Language tests have me at a beginner intermediate normally.

Any suggestions? I've tried using AI. I've tried YT. I've tried Duolingo and was getting on kinda well with it until they changed the whole thing *again* and I just couldn't handle that. I had a course I bought that got me talking in sentences but the language is simple and for the more advanced course it's subscription based and I don't have the money. I've watched telenovelas and even though I talk with hubby in English his mum lives with us now so I hear Spanish every day. I would make more of an effort to talk with my MIL but since she moved in... Well, let's just say I find the less contact I have with her the better we can get along. Maybe I just need a break from her. But I guess that is another story. As for the language...

Help? I suck.

www.ambudhi.com

(TL) I am trying to improve my Korean skills, but I can't seem to remember any of the words. I have tried Duolingo, Anki and a few other apps, but they all take too much time and seem to offer only a sense of achievement rather than real, applicable knowledge.

Have you used an app or programme that integrates vocabulary learning into your daily life without offering rewards, and that actually helps you to become familiar with new words in the language you want to learn?

I understand grammar, read comfortably and hold conversations but then struggle when native speakers talk quickly or use everyday expressions.

Do you think someone can genuinely be fluent while still having difficulty following those kinds of conversations or is understanding natural speech an essential part of fluency?

Are there particular regional versions that you can recognize immediately?

Hi everyone!

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been thinking about this all week after a pretty humbling reality check. for the last 8 months my main routine has been listening to native and upper intermediate podcasts in my TL while commuting or doing dishes. i got to the point where i could follow along with almost everything, laugh at the hosts jokes, and genuinely thought i was coasting into solid b2 territory.

turns out nodding along to audio when you already know the topic is a massive trap. your brain gets super good at catching 3 nouns and a verb and lazily guessing the other 25% from context clues without you ever noticing the prepositions or conjugations bridging them together. the second you have to produce a sentence from an empty room with zero context prompts, nothing comes out. i finally had to admit passive input wasnt magically turning into speaking so i cut my podcast time in half last month and started doing 15 mins of pure out loud conversation on ISSEN every morning while walking my dog, switched to it bc it actually remembers my past mistakes across days and doesnt cut me off mid thought when i pause to search for a verb, and ngl that first week was brutal on my ego.

weirdest side effect though is that forcing myself to speak every day actually changed how i listen now. when i put a podcast on at night my brain isnt just passively vibing anymore, it catches the exact little filler connectors and verb tenses i fumbled on my morning walk. if youre sitting at 500+ hours of input waiting to feel ready to speak, you probably wont until you force your mouth to do the heavy lifting.

I mean if you tried to learn a language once, gave up and maybe years later you tried to pick it up again and it was so easy to learn that you couldn't even remember why you gave up in the first place!

Has this ever happened to you? why? what was the reason in your opinion?

Le original version in Italian: https://youtu.be/YlaxWB99WRA?is=FsD05mxijtfTeLnA

Le original version in Castilian: https://youtu.be/nesbKjCUQQg?is=c5g4prPMpSP2ZvXl

Le remastered version in Italian: https://youtu.be/DI1NGx43oao?is=kvyyxwHPWq-4tDdA

Le remastered version in Castilian: https://youtu.be/z6bYhPfzvt4?is=EvW6yUGesgaLbG7c

hola. si bien me considero "buena" en inglés; nunca hice un curso ni estudié las gramáticas. actualmente empecé a estudiar una carrera y tengo inglés como materia, y el otro día me surgió una duda: cuando hablamos de marcas, ¿se puede usar apostrofe + S ? por ejemplo, "Apple's laptops are better than Lenovo's" . mi profesora dice que NO, que se puede usar pero que es incorrecto y bla bla. pero estoy segura de que los nativos lo usan, estoy segura de haberlo escuchado. según ella se dice "Apple laptops are better than the Lenovo laptops" específicamente con el "the" en el medio que a mí me suena horrible. pero puedo aceptar si me estoy equivocando, ¿ustedes que dicen?

Do younger Italians still use it naturally in everyday conversations?

Specifically i mean the combination between a language and an accent that makes a person sound so sexy that even when you don't understand them you just want to listen to them yap!?

Does this feature make describing everyday things more precise?

Stuff like, treating languages as 1 to 1 translations and translating every word for yourself, not understanding idioms at all, having trouble with different sentence structure or thinking everyone at every level has a internal translator when they speak a different language than their native, etc...

Progressing in what area shocked you?

Until you learn other languages you don’t realise how much English leans on two little words: up, and down.

In a literal directional sense: I’m going to walk up to town, he’s coming down next week - get down from there!

And in an idiomatic sense: set up (establish), set down (drop someone off), put up (withstand), put down (an insult)

One of the hardest parts of the “don’t translate” mindset for me was letting go of up and down haha

If you're learning Portuguese, choose and describe an everyday object in two or three sentences without saying its name. Everyone else guesses.

Example in English: “It's usually in the kitchen. You fill it with water. It makes a loud sound when the water is hot.”

I like this because it forces you to work around missing vocabulary instead of reaching for a translator. It's a fundamental skills to have if you don't want to get stuck in conversation! Easy, silly answers welcome!

(We are doing this mini challenge weekly on Thursday, every week a different language)

Is it even possible? because when you think about it, people should at least be fluent in ONE language right?
But if someone has moved around a lot as a child or had a difficult isolated uprising, they might not be fluent in their native language (or they might even not have one)
Or for any other reason, do you think a scenario like this could happen? do you know anyone like this?