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I'd like to learn another language and not tell my family, so that one day I can stand up at dinner and start ranting in another language right out of the blue (lemmy.ca)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/crazyideas@lemmy.world
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[–] 31 points 3 weeks ago (16 children)

I've used Duolingo for about seven years to learn German and wouldn't really recommend it for achieving "rantability", I'm just at the point where I'm able to understand 80% or so of Rammstein lyrics. That's a fairly abysmal ROI for 7 years of study.

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  • [–] 18 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    Yeah Duolingo is shit. I’m not an English speaker regularly, I was in Britain and the first time people spoke to me I freezed 🤣.

    The best thing to do is to get a good base and go for it, hoping your interlocutor will not laugh at you (which in my experience: they don’t. They correct you and serve you a pint)

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    Yeah, it's rough for my fellow anxious people who tend to dwell on their mistakes too much, but it's really something you just have to toss yourself into at some point. I'm sure there will be someone who had the absolute opposite experience to me, but there's never really going to be a point where you've studied enough that you can suddenly understand everything people say in your target language, and find you can confidently express yourself as well as you do in your native language. You get to a point where you're good enough to follow along most of the time and it starts to get weird being the only person who still needs to have your responses translated, and you just jump in and go for it. You will make mistakes, probably even some incredibly stupid ones. But the thing is, unless you're making your first attempt at immersion double as your audition for an episode of Locked up Abroad, your mistakes are almost never going to have any real consequences. Like, don't try and make your first foray into immersion buying a property without consulting with a lawyer who can explain what you're agreeing to, but for talking with staff at restaurants and stuff, or shooting the shit with your coworkers, 99% of the time, you will remember your mistakes long after everyone else has totally forgotten them, if they hadn't immediately done so.

    Having had to do it a couple times now, I have seen both how low the stakes really are, as well as how much it will hold back your progress if you can't conquer that initial fear of making a fool of yourself.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 child)

    Stuff like Duolingo is good for building a foundation of vocabulary, but if you want to get ranting you have to immerse yourself. Movies, podcasts, audiobooks (reading along with the physical book so you can practice both reading and hearing at the same time is also great), whatever else you can think of where people are speaking fluently. You won't be able to understand at first, but used in conjunction with those apps that teach you individual words, your brain will eventually start to catch up. Sometimes I even read aloud to myself to practice speaking. But vocab apps alone will never have you reaching fluency.

    Watching kids shows in a foreign language is also very effective. They're often literally designed around conveying messages to people with a tenuous grasp of the language :)

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Duolingo is (probably was since they hopped on the AI bandwagon) good for reinforcing languages you already have a decent grasp on. If you have. I experience with the language it'll probably get you far enough to order food off a menu and similar situations.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    Your 80% is higher than me (15% maybe) listening to music in my target language (Italian). Granted you have more time, but it's not like I started last month. I'm currently on a little over 2000 day streak...

    My plan was to complete the Duolingo course and move on to something else, but then they roughly doubled the size of my course recently.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    So, is it "du hast mich", or "du hasst mich"?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Was it worth it to understand Rammstein?

    (Aside from the stated ROI, I'm not a Rammstein listener so I wouldn't know too much in detail)

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    I think they intentionally write the lyrics to be at a childlike level of complexity. Maybe they do this for the multilingual fan base but whatever the reason, I think I could understand their lyrics long before I could order something I actually wanted at a restaurant or discuss the pros and cons of living next to a train station.

    I'm still using the app daily, I think it just rubs and obsessive compulsive itch of mine. I long ago realized I wasn't going to truly learn a language with the app.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    Ja, kann sein dass Rammstein das für die internationalen Fans so macht. Ich dachte eher immer dass es einfach ihr Stil ist. Aber wie gesagt, ich kenne sie nur wenig.

    Ich kann gerne die vor und Nachteile am Leben in der Nähe einer (S) Bahn Station erläutern. 😁 Zur Wiesn Zeit ist es kein Spaß da zuviele Besucher über die Gleise gehen und die Bahn das sehr lautstark kommentiert. Auch nachts um 3 Uhr.

    Ja, ich kenne auch Leute die noch an Duolingo hängen, obwohl kaum noch nutzen vorhanden ist.

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