Yeah, Gutenberg/Runeberg is amazing for stuff like that. For Swedish, unfortunately, due to more than a few spelling reforms since the early 20th century, older literature does have a few quirks (plural forms of verbs, spelling, etc.), so I think that newer literature would be more useful in your specific case. I’ll get a library card for you if you want lol
And I can understand that “I understand but can’t translate for shit” feeling, it’s an interesting feeling for sure. Cheers!
thanks a lot for the recommendation. I actually got my Lunyu from there for the sake of the exam… which isn’t that interesting tbh but have to read.
it’s okay if it uses older expressions or spellings, since I’ve already read something like The Bible in english, norsk, esperanto. I like it when I know the difference among the different translations. and I have to say the chinese version is the most awkward lmao the way it shows is just, weird, neither ancient nor modern, just simply all over the place for my taste
also got many books from Library Genesis, most are textbooks of languages since I said I have a list of what languages I wanna learn step by step. this is one of my biggest hobbies alongside lossless music collecting. I know they might be not useful for real job or a “bit waste of time” like some ppl said, but I kept the custom and I don’t regret it. learning languages widened my eyesight of view, just like art. begging for translations of something is like action of a real spiritual beggar for me.
Hmm, let’s see. I’m fluent in Swedish and English, and I’d like to think my German is pretty decent too (I’m learning it in school). I know a bit of japanese (just finished Genki vol. 1), and I’m currently trying to learn Tagalog (VERY basic). My dad is Italian, so I picked up a few words and phrases from him, but I could never hold a conversation. I have also made an attempt at learning Esperanto but I dropped it pretty quickly cuz my commitment was ZERO.
@platy@dev0_t Guys, sorry if what I said offended you in any way. Standardization in teaching/learning means enabling the speaker to recognize and produce more “neutral” phonological features and lexical items, and I use quotes when I say neutral because there’s no such a thing linguistically speaking - standardization has to do with social, cultural, and mostly economical reasons. Actually, in my teaching practice (English), I encourage my students to keep their accent if they want to and not shape their pronunciation after a certain model. I do not believe in there being a “superior” form of language. Sorry if it seemed so.
You know, I was reading this article just yesterday about how much bullying foreign kids and kids that have foreign parents suffer at Japanese schools. As an educator it upsets me a lot. These kids may learn a lot of content, but they lack life skills which are becoming increasingly more important in the 21st century.
I understand that there is this money-factor involved in teaching (by the way, are all schools in China public/free? Genuine question here, but I operate under the impression that yes, the State provides free education for all), but we can’t assume learning is a product just like any other. There are many factors involved in learning, and we are dealing with human beings for goodness’ sake, not robots.
Do you think this difficulty lies in prosody?
I hear you I’ve gotta work AND study and it’s hard to find the time to learn other things. But eh, about the plateau, if you find the time and motivation to keep studying, it is possible to get past it. It can feel a bit awkward in the beginning (forcing youself to use certain phrases and to word your sentences differently when you can communicate easily another way), but eventually you feel your skills have improved.
In 2013 I spent a month in Denmark and visited Sweden for one day through Helsingborg. It was amazing and honestly if I wasn’t planning on learning French and Japanese I would definitely give it a try to the Scandinavian languages! The only word I will never forget is Kartofler because of an internal joke at the time lol
oppositely, except schools for the disabled which I dunno, from the kindergartens to the universities, all regular schools and educational institutions aren’t free, even public ones. and as for the reason I say it’s unreasonable, I’ve seen too many institutions want you to “cheat”. like, they tell you to teach slowly or inefficiently in order to slow down the progress of the lessons that they could get more money. well, not fun at all, my conscience simply doesn’t allow me to do this, so I lost my part-time jobs again and again, now I just wanna quit, that’s why I take the exam to get another job which probably won’t give me guilty. Chinese commercial educational careers are like selling products, like a “flea market” and you never know whether it’s a load of bullshxt or a real deal.
I don’t think so. I think the difficulty lies in dialect crossover phenomena, possibility and flexibility of the words, plus similarity among words naturally. the more you know words and grammar and how they work, the more confused you’ll be. it’s just hard to tell the difference between this and that word and there’s only one different character many times, even you check the explanations, you still don’t understand clearly which lead to the thought as it’s just based on “linguistic feeling” and you still don’t get it, like a whirlpool lol.
kartoffel = potato. the jokes on Danish pronunciation is swallowing a whole potato while speaking lol. I don’t really think so, /r/ doesn’t sound weird for me, and I have no problem pronounce that. but silent “g” letter is somewhat confusing. like silent “d” letter in Norwegian, but it’s more regular and reasonable.
That’s funny because that’s the same thing said for people when learning British English, just speak with a potato in your mouth lol (although that accent only applies to certain regions)
seems like everyone likes potatoes in the mouth haha, why not make potatoes into candies instead lmao (but we do have dried sweet potatoes taste like candies, a popular food in northeastern and central China.)
I´m from Spain and can speak Spanish and Basque as native languages, then studied English (I guess like any European) and Chinese (I´m living in China since 13 years ago). A couple of times Ive tried to start with Japanese but either the work gets busy or I get lazy and end up giving up/“leaving it for later”.
This is so interesting to me because I heard that Chinese college courses are comparatively easy for foreigners to get into, but it’s hard to pass a course (unless you’re fluent in Mandarin at least, even if it’s supposed to be a course in English). It’s interesting because China supposedly has some of the best universities in the world, and it seems like there’s so much ~knowledge~ but it’s not easy to attain it at all because of the way the educational system works?
Not to be completely off topic here, lol. I really want to go back to studying Japanese and Korean this year, sigh. Sometimes I remember my Japanese is almost at the point where I can drop the textbook and try to enjoy things with a dictionary in hand and feel like going back but lol what’s free time.
maybe that’s true for “famous universities” like Tsinghwa University or Beijing University, etc, but definitely not the case for most ones. many courses even us Chinese natives have a hard time understanding and often get bad grades in the final exam every term. and yeah, the language is whatever for “them”, cuz many ppl think “we’re proud of using native language, English is bullshxt” influenced by extreme nationalism (of course NOT ME). heck, even the university entry exam was revolutionized with lowering the total points for the English subject last year. (previously it was 150 but now it’s 120.) so I suppose “they” care less and less about English and foreign language in general because of the boring “national pride” lol and I have to say the multilingual population is decaying.
also, good luck to your language learning. Japanese is never easy. the more vocabulary you know, the better you’ll be good at this mysteric language. I don’t have experience of Korean learning but I wonder what kind of Korean you learn. northern one or southern one? cuz they’re a little bit different. I guess most of the ppl learn the southern one.
I actually got my Lunyu from there for the sake of the exam… which isn’t that interesting tbh but have to read.
the way it shows is just, weird, neither ancient nor modern, just simply all over the place for my taste 
I’ve gotta work AND study and it’s hard to find the time to learn other things. But eh, about the plateau, if you find the time and motivation to keep studying, it is possible to get past it. It can feel a bit awkward in the beginning (forcing youself to use certain phrases and to word your sentences differently when you can communicate easily another way), but eventually you feel your skills have improved.