We're a small project called seespeak. A native speaker's phrase loops and its pitch is drawn as a ribbon; you press once, speak along, and your own voice draws over it in another colour on the same clock. Where the ribbons part you see which sound was off, and whether you came early or late.

The link opens on 买 mǎi (buy), which dips and rises; 卖 mài (sell) just falls. Both are said by Levi Highway (CC0, Lingua Libre). Every voice on the page is a real native speaker, credited where it plays: no synthetic voices. There are more Mandarin tone pairs, and English and Russian sentences.

The number on screen is computed only from the two sounds (the pitch lined up by time warping), and shown beside what two natives reach on the same sentence, since even two natives never match fully. It runs in a phone browser with no signup; your recording goes to our server for the sound check and is not kept.

We'd like to hear where it misleads you, or which pairs you'd want next.

[Maggie Sensei] How to combine particles: ～ + も ( = mo) （でも/にも/へも/とも/からも/までも）

#languagelearning #japaneselanguage

If the link doesn't work (it's a bit weird), copy and paste in your browser:
https://maggiesensei.com/2025/02/07/how-to-combine-particles-～-も-mo-（でも-にも-へも-とも-からも-まで/

When you learn a language, at what point would you say you've made it, that you "know" the language? Is it when you're at a C Level, is it when you can interact with people in it? Is it when you can talk about philosophical concepts in it? Do you have different goals for different languages?

I know 3 languages. In order of fluency: English, Cebuano/Bisaya, and Tagalog. So I am multilingual.

I am learning Classical Latin, and everytime I feel exhausted I would read through some posts in language learning communities.

I read one post about how it actually takes years of consistent study to be able to be considered "fluent", not to mention the expectation of being college-level in a language in the span of 3 years or less being common is absurd, when native speakers are immersed day and night for probably 18 years to reach that point.

I saw then a controversial comment, that being no one is truly fluent at 3 languages or more. That made me wonder.

I can spell in Tagalog and I have an instinctive sense for proper agglutination, and I can understand anything on TV (which is in Tagalog), but when I write essays for school subjects in Tagalog I am often at a loss for the precise or deeper words I specifically want so I would use a thesaurus or google translate and find the equivalent of a word I know in english. I can write without them but it takes me a while to find the specific words. And I can't speak in it at a fast pace.

I can talk to others in Bisaya, but I probably suck at spelling in it because we don't have a subject for it at school, though it is the primary language of where I live. Not to mention I have never actually encountered any complex compositions in it of any sort until I was in university, where we had a yearly Art & Literary school journal. However, I usually don't see anyone else care about spelling in this language on texts or in facebook.

For English I was tested and got a score of C2. I read old literature, classic literature, novels, journals, fanfiction, poetry, and I can understand multiple registers and english dialects.

I would say I'm fluent in English and Bisaya, but my Bisaya is far behind from my English. As for Tagalog, I wouldn't say I'm at a native level but I could use it and write in it. As for my current Target Language, I hope to be able to write about my life and thoughts in Latin on my journal as well as I could in English.

I thought I might share a small phonetic game/challenge with you. All 3 individuals in the attached clips were born and raised in the same non-Anglophone country and speak the same native language. Can you tell, based on the peculiarities of their English pronunciation, what language it is?

1. https://vimeo.com/1205985914
2. https://vimeo.com/1206296678
3. https://vimeo.com/1206827782

Language learning musing messing with features from the fediverse

Rambling post, but for #languagelearning, something I like is to check social media posts in the given language. But in the #fediverse posts are unknown until federated, and #RSSfeeds are hard to come by since algorithimic platforms seem to prefer to get users stuck, perhaps even addicted, to their own UI and UX, and thus either / both not having means to follow externally, or pushing stuff that's more likely to engage instead of nicher stuff like learning.

But leveraging mastodon.social's size to follow its RSS feeds for hashtags, I'm slowly seeing more and more posts in different languages appearing, including for the ones I'm learning. Also these posts often come with more hashtags, some that I may be interested in to, and also likely to be a language-specific hashtag.

Added to a redirect script since my instance's software's searches have a hardcoded pattern (domain + /search?search[q]= + what's to be searched), I can even get these posts locally. Mastodon, Piefed and Lemmy have hardcoded searched patterns too, though I mostly use Mastodon of these latter 3 so can't comment much on the others.

And some times in this routine (I think that's the word?), I even find someone or some group I get interested in following. Even Spanish's starting to become more common to find, and I always had trouble finding places in that language. "<.<

And with bridging and RSS-tracking tools, even posts from external platforms can be brought to my feed.

Also, I'd even imagine that doing so helps setting the place in case others interested in language learning but not as crazy patient join in.

It's being a fun ride. =D

What're your reasons for learning your target language(s)?

Most of us here are probably already knee deep in studies and immersion and discovering things. But what made you make that first step in your journey? Also, when it gets tough, is there any major motivator for you to help you continue? Did you ever get a major language high that made you feel in tune with your goals?

Personal anecdote was I didn't start really committing to language learning at all until my niece was feeling suicidal. She was very much into everything Japanese. Language, anime, culture, etc. I started my Japanese because I wanted to make sure she wouldn't feel as ostracised (she had other issues at the time I won't get into). There's not really a huge pull for me for Japanese other than that. She's in a much better position now, but I've been on the grind long enough I don't want to stop. Japanese is fun and interesting in it's own right and the insights you get into other cultures via language also gives you more insight to other cultures than the target language as well as your own. (My minor kanji recognition for instance sometimes helps me guess what a small Chinese text might indicate, for instance).

Second to that, my Spanish is because my girlfriend comes from a Spanish speaking country, and I think it's important trying to be able to integrate somewhat with your SO's respective tongue/culture.

Irish for me is the same but self targeted. I've lived all my life in Ireland, but never really took up the language. I do aim to change that, but the other languages, Japanese and Spanish are more paramount for me knowing sooner.

So what about you? What made you jump into all this? Language learning seems like such a monumental goal. I figure to fully commit to it you have to be quite dedicated to it, so I'm sure you all have very good reasons for jumping in. I'd love to hear from everyone.

Sorry for late thread this week! Had a weird Sunday, so it slipped my mind.

So yeah, have you done any language learning this week, and how did it go?

Invidious link: https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=-MtMSH3aIic

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/72372817

This is a new community set up to help connect people who are learning a language with those who are attempting to learn/improve at that language!

Currently it is just me and not much is set up but I would love if anyone is available to help moderate the community or has any artwork we could use for the icon and banner.

Links:

• https://lemmy.zip/c/languageexchange@lemmy.zip
• !languageexchange@lemmy.zip

It's a community for learning the Norwegian language: !learnnorwegian@thelemmy.club

Would it fit the "Other active Lemmy language communities" section of the sidebar?

Suggestions on blogs and channels for studying English?

Asking for someone else, but would you guys have any recommendations? The guy speaks Portuguese, Norwegian, and a bit of Swedish and Italian.

Thanks in advance!

#languagelearning

How do you improve your listening skills to get to listening to native content with ease, assuming vocabulary and grammar are not the issue?

Here's what I've found does not work:

• Slow/easy language podcasts. Yes, it's important to get started with stuff like that, but it's extremely boring and limited, and it does not get me over the listening hump. The listening hump is all the phonetic and semantic and grammatical changes made to language when it is spoken at speed. By definition, I am NOT exposed to that in slow language podcasts and so listening to an infinite amount of slow podcasts will not teach me.

• Re-listening to work I know. I've found working from transcribed shows that I can understand them all, but it's from a freaky ability to recall the dialogue, not from a newfound ability to DECODE the dialogue. The flip side of that is if there is something I don't understand the first time through, it doesn´t become more intelligible on multiple passthroughs. So I read the transcript and then it becomes yet another thing I remember.

So I'm wondering if there's an entirely different approach. Like, maybe if I tried reading aloud more often, I'd naturally fall into these elisions and ways of speaking, and having produced them naturally myself, I would hear them better? Because right now, my language production is zero. In fact, my language consumption is entirely passive.

Tell me what you did to get over the hump.

Specifically not looking for noun memorization tools, but more immersive adventure games where you can take your time understanding what's said.

Games I've found useful so far:

• https://store.steampowered.com/app/963000/Frog_Detective_1_The_Haunted_Island/
• https://store.steampowered.com/app/1337010/Alba_A_Wildlife_Adventure/
• https://store.steampowered.com/app/413150/Stardew_Valley/
• https://store.steampowered.com/app/2637990/Duck_Detective_The_Secret_Salami/

Open to any suggestions you've found useful!

A few weeks ago, I asked y'all where you got your subtitles. Someone recommended Bazarr, but I became intrigued by the idea of automated transcription. Subtitles are often summaries of the dialogue, and often use different vocabulary and construction, so I thought if I could get an automated transcription of any show, that would be the bee's knees.

So my new pipeline:

Show --> automatic transcription into SRT file --> manual correction & touch up --> compressed audio file of dialogue only

Automated transcription is... OK. There's plenty of stuff that it misses, so it's important to be listening the first time through for hallucinations and mistakes; otherwise you waste your time looking up irrelevant grammar and sabotage yourself listening for things that aren´t there. I don´t know if I'd recommend it to someone just starting out, but if you're phonetically aware to at least realize that the text does not match what you're hearing, I think automated transcription is ok.

And once you have a transcription keyed to the actual spoken dialogue, you can create a dialogue-only audio file, which means that instead of listening to a 100 minute movie for 20 minutes of dialogue, you can listen to 20 minutes of dialogue 5 times.

Anyone do similar? Tips? Tricks?

Details: faster-whisper with VOD enabled.

Any tips for finding subtitles TV shows and movies? There´s databases out there, but they don't seem to have what I'm looking for.

Transcription is obviously better than subtitles. AI is a possibility to transcribe; I've experimented with local models and had poor results. Professional AI services are good, but I am extremely broke.

For various reasons, I prefer to d/l my stuff and watch it on jellyfin. I know if I were streaming my life would be easier in some ways.

Current target is Lastman (2016) in French.

I use Anki and the MOST consistent reason a word lands in the leech pile is not because I can't remember what it means, but because I consistently think it means something different than what it means.

So for, instance, I keep thinking French costaud means, "rib or side", probably because I associate it with *costal" from anatomy class or costilla from Spanish.

What I do in this instance is make a Match Pairs card with:

• costaud matching "strong, burly"
  and
• côte matching "rib."

This way I practice differentiating them and simultaneously learn the correct word for rib.

But I do worry that I'm unintentionally strengthening the connection by having them always together like this.

What do you guy do for these situations?

Edit: You may notice that a properly formatted card would include le/la to indicate the gender of the noun, which costaud, as an adjective, would not have but I am inconsistent and also don't like depending on little tricks that only work in index cards, so for the matching card I do not write "la côte" because that way I could guess the card based on part of speech instead of definition.