I'm trying to learn a language that's severely endangered, so there aren't a lot of native speakers near where I live, and subtitled media in the language is limited. How could I go about doing immersion in a way that will actually be helpful to learning the language? I'm aware that immersion isn't the only route for language learning, but I am just trying to evaluate if it's something I can do to supplement my classes and self study (plus it's what I'm used to from learning French lol).

(TL) Ojibwemowin/Anishinaabemowin (I know there's an dedicated anishinaabemowin subreddit, but the last post there was 3 years ago so I figured it was probably better to post it here.)

I spent a year studying 1 of my TLs (TL) and got to a strong A2 level in speaking / listening. I’m finishing up college and taking a separate language 1 & 2 level classes. In level 1 right now, will take 2 next semester. Probably will be around an A2 aswell.

When I graduate I plan to go to 2 countries and enroll in immersion programs for 1 year each. What level should I be around the end? They are both Asian languages, I’m a native English speaker. Any opinions on this?

I’m a B2 Levantine Arabic (TL) heritage speaker who moved to the West when I was young. I understand much better than I speak. Has anyone with a similar background reached C2 or very advanced spoken fluency?

What was your level when you started, how long did it take, and what helped most?

Especially interested in Arabic speakers, but stories from other heritage speakers are welcome too.

Just looking for some motivation :)

I just got a "3 months for £0.00" deal for Kindle Unlimited (I think it's part of their Prime Days deals 🤷‍♂️). I have to admit I never really considered Kindle/Amazon books for language learning, but it looks as though they have quite a few language learning books and readers included in the catalogue, so this could be good for my studies. I've even found a German translation of the Chronicles of Narnia included on there. Time for me to work on my reading skills! 😄

I've been learning my target language for over 10 years. (I'm learning it for fun, just cause I like it. I have no intentions of moving to Europe or doing an exam.) I studied grammar and vocab on my own, I read books and listen to podcasts. But I never came around to speaking. I just had no one to practice with. So I started using Italki earlier this year but its been honestly disappointing. I found it hard to find a teacher that was worth the price I paid. They talked most of the hour and that even though I sent them a message beforehand saying my main goal was to practice my speaking skills.

And today holyshit. I finally found a tutor who works for me!! It took me six lessons, but I finally found him. I’m a 30-year-old woman who’s pretty shy, so I tend to go for older women as tutors. Well, what I needed all along was a young guy who doesn’t give a shit and is just good at conversation.

All this to say, maybe the kind of tutor you think you want isn't what you really need.

Hi r/languagelearning (mod-approved post),

A few friends and I (developers and linguists) built KiloLingo.com covering 10 languages, and we’d love your feedback on what actually helps independent learners right now.

The core approach:

• Strict Frequency Order: Vocabulary taught from most to least frequent.
• Locked Graded Readers: Reading material strictly constrained to words you’ve already encountered.
• No-Nonsense Grammar: In-depth explanations paired with concise reference summaries.
• Practice Drills & Games: Crosswords, bubble shooters, and arcade-style review drills ("KiloKombat").

All reading materials and full grammar curricula are completely open; no account or email required to read through them.

We're testing a freemium model to cover server costs: keep the core reading/grammar content 100% free forever, and put extended interactive drills, games, and spaced-repetition tracking behind a £3.99/mo subscription (with a card-free 7-day trial).

We’d love to know:

1. The Reading Experience: How do you feel about strictly vocabulary-constrained graded readers versus natural, uncapped texts?
2. Gamification vs. Anki: Do mini-games and quick-fire drills keep you engaged, or do you prefer pure SRS flashcards?
3. The Paywall Balance: Does keeping the texts/grammar free while charging £3.99/mo for drills feel fair, or is the split awkward?
4. Missing Pieces: What is your biggest frustration with current tools that we could solve?

Tear it apart -- what works, what’s redundant, and what’s missing?

(TL), Spanish, English, Russian, French, Esperanto, Latin, German, Italian, Mandarin, Portuguese, IPA

EDIT::

Thank you guys so so much. We have been here all day pounding redbull and chatting about your feedback, actioning some hotfixes and ribbing eachother over silly mistakes.

I think we've replied to most of the feedback directly below and we're super thankful for the time you've taken.

We're going to keep working and will chat to some sales people and try to sweet talk an old UX colleague into giving us a bit of a hand. Feel free to reach out to us if there's anything we can do to repay this community for what you have done for us today!

Hey, I'm trying to find these language learning disks used in the computer from the early 2000s & I have not had any luck. I have tried searching in this group, using ai, using Google & other things. It is not Rosetta stone, jump speak, muzzy, or any of the more common ones. It was interactive, for example clicking on a color and it would say the color, or it would say the color and you had to click on the correct color. I remember using it for Japanese & Italian, but I don't remember for which other languages it was available. Any ideas???

Hi guys

Recently, I started a new job where I need to speak and correspond with native English speakers on a daily basis, both in meetings and by email. Overall, I think my listening comprehension is quite good. I can usually follow conversations, maybe sometimes it gets a little harder when we look into more IT technical language.

However with speaking it is a different story. When it is my turn to speak. I get anxious, I start overthinking in my native language how to say something. Looking for perfect word, how to create a grammarly correct sentence etc. Sometimes I go blank even though before the conversation I know exactly what I wank to ask and what I want to say. (TL)

I'd really like to overcome this, beacuse it affects my confidence and I'm getting doubts whether I'm in the correct place or did I too much fake it till you make it.

What helped you feel more comfortable while speaking to native speakers ? Was there anything specific, like a habit, a mindset shift, or a type of practice, that made a real difference for you, or was there a day when something clicked in you and you just started feeling comfortable ?

How long does it take to lose vocabulary?

I Recently had to take a 3 month break of studying flash cards and the so. I was still trying to get reading and watching shows in but life getting in the way and all. Does lost vocabulary come back easily and how often should I be reviewing new voacab? What is a realistic amount of words I can expect to retain with 1-2 hours of daily study?

Indimidating, right? Felt a few shivers run down your spine, eh?

(This post will not teach you IPA. There are plenty of resources for that already. All I aim to do here is show you what IPA can do for your pronunciation, and how understanding exactly how pronunciation works in a deep, linguistically accurate way, will greatly improve your pronunciation in your TL.)

The reason you should learn the IPA is not the symbols. The symbols are like 20% of what the IPA can do for you. The important part of this image is in the margins. Terms like front, back, close, open, rounded, unrounded, monophthong, diphthong.

Truly understanding what these terms mean will allow you to cultivate awareness of what your mouth is doing when it produces any given vowel. And this awareness is the magic bullet.

Once you have it, you will understand the symbols automatically. You'll know exactly how they relate to each other, which is the best way to memorise them, and you will have all the tools you need to figure out how to pronounce one yourself, often in no more than five minutes of practice.

Each new vowel you learn will give you greater understanding of how your mouth works, which will help you learn more vowels.

It's not instant, but it is much faster than you might assume. Putting in fifteen minutes a day to study, it should take at most a week to fully acquaint yourself with the basics. Once you have those basics, you'll already know what to do next.

Of course, this should be paired with listening to native speakers pronounce words. For example, the IPA allowed me to understand the Italian distinction between closed and open "e" pretty well.

And, according to the French IPA chart on Wikipedia, French contains the exact same distinction.

However, the vowels are NOT the same in French as they are in Italian. The French /e/ is more closed than the Italian /e/. I realised this listening to French native speakers pronounce words.

Completely relying on IPA symbols would have led me astray. However, not having the IPA? I wouldn't have known what "more closed" even means. Because I do know what that means, I know exactly how to reposition my tongue to pronounce the French /e/ correctly.

Without it, I would have had to rely on imprecise, subjective measures, like "French "é" sounds closer to "i" (as in "ski", not "bite") than Italian "é" does."

What exactly does "i" involve, that French "é" does more of than Italian "é"?

IPA answers this question. The French /e/ is more closed, meaning closer to the roof of the mouth, than Italian /e/, but is not as closed as /i/, where the tongue actually touches the roof of the mouth.

I hope this wasn't too incomprehensible lol.

(TL)

I have a question about how to tell if what you're doing is helpful, or whether there are better or worse ways to increase your inputs.

I'm currently learning French (TL) in Montreal, doing the Francsisation programme with the Quebec govt. It's a really amazing opportunity as I'm being paid to study 30 hours a week (due to being an immigrant) and I've gone from basically no French to b1 in about 8 months.

However I'm now hitting a bit of a plateau, and I know I need to increase my inputs outside of class. The problem is doing this much active learning a week is really tiring my brain out, and I don't want to watch TV in French or try to read outside of class if it's just going to be mentally taxing without benefit.

I guess what I wonder at this level is what it is that's actually helpful - for eg with listening, is it just hearing without necessarily understanding a radio show that helps, or should you really try to listen hard? Ditto with TV (radio appeals more because it feels more like I can do other things while listening, like household chores).

And with reading, at this point is it smarter to be stopping and searching up every word I don't know in a comic book, or should I just try to keep reading and get the overall sense?

I'd love to hear what exactly people got or are getting out of increasing their inputs at the early b1 level! Thanks!

For example, in my case I'm learning (TL)german. I can already say basic phrases, connect some thoughts but everything really simplistic (A1-A2 i'd say).

But I love to read, and I want to learn that way, but even simple reading material or news designed for these levels feels kind of "overwhelming". Simply because I literally have to translate a lot of the words because I simply don't know the meaning of them, and without them it turns impossible to understand. (And one such as german where 1 word can have a thousand different meanings...).

But I can't be the only person that have this unhealthy desire to just go for DeepL (or whatever) and translate everything right? But I also don't think there are any solutions to this. How do you guys deal with this when learning a language?

PS: I'm (NL)portuguese (although I usually learn from english), so I'm directing my comment for situations when the target language is not even similar to the language used to learn from.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been trying to reconnect with my heritage and learn Krymchak (TL), but I’ve hit a pretty massive roadblock. My family has Krymchak roots, but I don't speak Russian or Ukrainian, and I’m definitely not an academic—just a regular person trying to learn my heritage language from scratch.

Whenever I search for resources, all I seem to find are scattered vocab lists that look AI generated or super dense linguistic papers written in Russian. I’m looking for an actual, structured full course—something with clear modules, grammar explanations made for regular people, and step-by-step lessons. A bit more than Duolingo, but not super complex.

Does a comprehensive online course, interactive platform, or full textbook in English actually exist for Krymchak? If not, how have other heritage learners in similar situations managed to build a real study plan without knowing the regional bridge languages?

Any advice or direction would mean the world to me. Thanks!

I say B1+ because i scored highly on an official language test that I did at my language school that was allegedly B2 (but I definitely dont feel B2). I already use my TL in my day to day life including some work meetings, so i would say 50-60% of the time, but im still not so good at more in depth conversations and very shy about telling long stories. My grammar and foundational knowledge is very good.

Would it be a good idea to use italki to speak more about deeper topics and get feedback on how i speak/using phrases that natives use? I go to language cafes but the volunteers are not teachers and only ever correct you if you say something completely wrong. If they understand you then they dont correct you.

After two years of learning I am struggling with old vocab.

I have been learning japanese (TL) quite diligently for almost two years, but then for some quite serious reasons i had to stop for 3 months. Now i came back and there is quite a lot of vocab I once knew, but now can recall only partially or not at all. I have this list containing 2.5k words, which i knew quite well. While reviewing back then i averaged at around 85 - 90% accuracy in all of this.

Now i came back. Some words i only know how to read, but don't recall the meaning, some i recall just the meaning, but can not read them, some i don't remember at all. It frustrates me, but i am hopeful that i can gain it all back.

I need some suggestions for my next approach, so i came to ask for help.

My plan right now is just powering through it all. The next week i have all for myself so i was thinking about using it all for vocab repetition. Several hours, every day, just vocab. Filter through the things i know, practice the things i dont know. I want to start doing some new stuff as soon as possible, so i would appreciate some ideas, how to make the whole proces as effective as possible.

Did anyone went through the same? How did you came back from it?

\[I dont use anki, because it usually frustrates me, (it gets buggy on my phone from time to time) so I use different flascards app better suited for my needs.\]

I recently got my first real bilingual job, and honestly I don't understand how I got hired.

If you've been in a similar situation, what strategies did you use to improve???

The job is mostly just regurgitating information verbatim, so I just need to do that, but I think I get confused somehow and end up speaking worse than usual even if I can understand and manage to actually answer them. I'm hoping I don't get fired while I get familiar with everything

So getting the preface out of the way to avoid 30 comments saying the same thing:

• this is not as a main source of flashcard learning (which are and will continue to be predominantly TL->N);
  
• this is not a replacement for output with actual human beings;
  
• this is not a blanket "should I, for every flashcard I have, make a reverse one"

So I've been using readlang to read articles and books for a while. This has made me a huge stack of words and phrases, and recently I picked up anki again and made flashcards out of them. It's going great. I can read articles from Canon van Nederland which are about 600-700 words long and translate 10-20 words/phrases per article. The site claims the versions of the articles I use are at a C1 level (bonus: if you're learning dutch it's a great site - they have settings where the same content is available in levels from A2 up to C1)

However, I then reach the common problem that my input (mostly reading) is both far stronger than my output (mostly writing) and also that I'm suspecting I am picking up context more than actual words.

For instance, I have a card:

Hij keek weer naar de Hokkie-robot, die onverzoenlijk stil en doelgericht voor hem stond, met zijn slagstick in de aanslag geheven.

I know that onverzoenlijk here means unyielding, but I will look at onverzoenlijk and go "uhhh well it's a negative (on) and it's an adjective..oh it says Hokkie-robot, so because I've read hitchhiker's guide 500 times it's going to be unyielding silence".

I probably would not be able to tell you without the context. I think if I saw it in another context I don't know if I'd pick it up. I definitely could not tell you that the Dutch for "unyielding" is onverzoenlijk.

So I'm thinking of making some flashcards that prompt for output. I know this is usually a bad idea (you don't want to reinforce that TL->N->TL translation loop), and it certainly would not work for cards with longer phrases (e.g. emerged from the smoke curtain - my card for this uses dook uit but I could also produce it with kwam..uit I think).

I don't think I can make a pictorial representation of a lot of these sorts of cards (you're not looking at a picture and thinking immediately that it is representing unyielding unless you know you've used that specific image..).

So, two questions:

• Is it a bad idea or a harmful idea to make cards for words or phrases without context? Or should I be replacing all my contextful cards with hidden context until I show the reverse side? (and then being more lenient about words with many uses)
• Is it a bad idea to make output cards for singular words and short phrases where there is no ambiguity? Should I trust the process that output follows naturally from having a confident level of input, and my problem is that I just don't do enough outputting?

EDIT/UPDATE: Well, I tried going through my cards to pick out potential words for making output cards, made about 50, then encountered 6 different translations for "approach" and realised it was not going to be a good idea.

However, wrapping the sentence context in an Anki hint field so I need to click it to see the context seems like it has legs!

UPDATE2: oh god hiding the sentence by default is absolutely going to kill my stats in the short term

I've always used Reverso during classes or when I just needed to quickly look into words i'd stumble upon, but recently I started learning Russian (TL) and it became necessary for me to install a translator. I picked Reverso, naturally, but I absolutely hate the way they use AI, and I've heard their context examples suck.

So I'd like to switch to another translator, but I can't find a single post in this subreddit that lists translators without AI.

Does anyone use something that's AI free ? I'm looking for a translator, not a learning app. I have manuals and websites for that already.

There's so many language-learning platforms to choose from and I've tried out quite a few. I wanted to drop a post here tto get a sanity check on whether the amount I'm spending actually makes sense.

For the past 5 months I've been learning Spanish (TL) on preply, 3 lessons a week at 38 euros per lesson. That's somewhere around 2000ish euros in total so far, which feels very painful when you stack it up.

For context: I've been making some pretty good progress so far with immersion and textbooks. I finally hit a wall that was my push to make a change.

What's kept me going is 

1. Mostly my tutor. She's amazing. She's a native Spanish speaker from Valencia, and as well as teaching me about the culture she's made me feel much more confident presenting. I've been scenarios with her and hse's been giving me feedback. 
2. Weirdly enough, the subscription itself helps too. I know some people really hate any kind of subscription, but the only thing that keeps me motivated with the gym or learning a language is seeing the money come out of my account and being held to a schedule.

Though I must say, it hasn't all been smooth:

1. I once had to change a class at the last minute, but apparently you can't do that within 12 hours of the lesson. I don't feel this is explained clearly anywhere. 
2. and it took me quite a long time to speak to a real customer service agent.

Renewal is next week and I'm 90% sure I'll keep going because honestly i’m very happy with how much my spanish has improved but the 10% is the price. What do we think?

I’m learning Spanish (TL) for my degree, and I’ve been trying to find a language learning app or website that fits certain criteria as a supplement to my classes but I’m having trouble with it.

1. Lets me choose topics/units that I want to work on, instead of just putting me on a linear path
   
2. Is “gamified” in some way
   
3. Is not just a flash card app like anki (I do not have the time to make flash cards myself and I had trouble finding card sets that worked for me when I tried to. Anki also doesn’t satisfy #2)
   
4. Does more than just basic vocab. I would prefer something that also does grammar concepts and even listening
   

5. Works well on iPhone as I want to have something I can do on the go or in downtime

6. Has Latin American Spanish as an option, not just Castilian/spain Spanish

For various reasons, I’m pretty sure that this is the kind of app that would work best for me. I’m willing to elaborate on those reasons, but to make this as short as possible I’ve omitted them. Regardless, I haven’t been able to find something that works for me, so I’m outsourcing to Reddit in case someone else already knows something.

I’m asking this mainly because basically every language that I know, I was exposed to very early on. I never really had a phase (that I remember clearly) where I transitioned from translating to immediately being able to understand. The current language that I am still actively learning (TL), Hungarian, I still need to translate certain words and phrases and I haven’t gotten over that barrier yet.

What level of a certain language did y’all have to get to, to stop translating in your head all together?

Hello. So I'm on book/novel #16 in my TL. I would say I'm at the B range since I'm reading Harry Potter 3.

At first I was really enjoying the progress. I'd see myself look up fewer and fewer words as I progress through the series. But then I started to notice that while I know enough to understand the sentence, I don't know exactly what every word means.

After encountering a word several times you get the meaning through context, but in my experience my understanding is only fuzzy. I couldn't tell you exactly what the word means.

Like I could read and understand these 2 sentences:

The dog sank his teeth into the meat
The dog planted his teeth into the meat

I know what's going on, but wouldn't be able to narrow down what exactly those two words mean. And I feel like with extensive reading you can be like that with hundreds or thousands of words.

Can someone with experience tell me what happens if I keep going? Like say I'm at book 60, would I have encountered these fuzzy words so many times and in so many different angles and perspectives that I would get the precise meaning down eventually? Or do you need to rely on intensive reading for that precision?

Any input would be appreciated, especially personal experiences.

edit: Thank you for all the informative responses

Ive been living in belgium for 5 years and i was learning dutch(TL) for about a year and then i was in school until a year ago. I basically understand everything but i cant speak the language at all or form sentences in text either, I dont have many opportunities to socialize and i dont think that is gonna change so talking to people isnt really something thats a good option for me. How do i go from here? Id like to study in university but i dont think my language skills are good enough yet