I dropped Spanish which was the only language offered during my high school years. I regret it, and now I’m embarrassed to start learning as a uni-aged guy. I want to learn Mandarin because then I would know English and Mandarin which would cover like 50% of the populations speaking abilities.
Basically I just feel like a dumb American and being a Marxist I need to know another language.
If necessity is not a concern then you should only learn a language if you want to, not because you feel like you have to. Learning a language is an incredibly long and arduous process so the will and the desire to learn it has to be there.
Do Duolingo, the Spanish course is the most complete one and there’s also a room in the Matrix space for Spanish. You can ask me if you have any doubts, too. Mandarin is good, although it will be a little bit harder as your first second language, but you can do it if you put enough time into it.
I’ll check it out. I’ve heard that Duolingo is a supplementary learning tool as opposed to primary, is that true? Are there any better resources? I know I’ve pirated Pimsleur courses in the past.
Mandarin does look hard as fuckkkk.
check out the pinned threads on /c/learnspanish@lemmygrad.ml
Any category 5 language is hard if youre starting from a english speaking background (chinese (mandarin and canto), arabic, japanese, korean)
With cat2 languages. You can learn them on the side. Cat5 languages require active studying and maintaining to effectively learn them.
Of the cat5 languages, Koreans probably the easiest due to having a very modernized alphabet (to get you from not being able to read to be able to read(not necessarily understand) is the easiest due to having a significantly shorter alphabet(hangul)
Everything is supplementary, there isn’t the one tool that will teach you, but it doesn’t matter, Duolingo makes it easier to start and you will learn stuff, the things it doesnt teach you, you can ask them elsewhere, immerse yourself in the language and so on.
LanguageTransfer is a really cool podcast so that also helps, i havent used many other platforms for indoeuropean languages.
Well, nothing stops you from learning it now that you’re uncomfortable with not knowing a secondary language. A different language is extremely useful when reading books from another country. It’s a whole new universe you can discover if you’re able to read and comprehend a secondary language.
In that respect, you should definitely plan before you begin learning a language. Think about why you’re learning the language, and if the language is useful for a particular goal. You can be learning because you enjoy the challenge, etc. But it’s a long-term commitment, you’ll be learning that language for the rest of your life if you want to keep it.
Memorizing all the characters I find is the hard part, the grammar is much simpler than English or German, that’s for sure