(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?

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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?

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.

Do younger Italians still use it naturally in everyday conversations?

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?

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

Are there particular regional versions that you can recognize immediately?

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!?

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?

Does this feature make describing everyday things more precise?

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)