Just found some games on itch.io for learning Cantonese. I couldn't find anything on steam, so I'm pretty excited. Mandarin is so much more common, but Canto is relevant and important to me, so this is a great find! I'm excited to try it out because I've been looking for a long time.
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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I'm not an expert but I've also heard that there is a lot in Mandarin but Cantonese is more rare, that's a pretty cool find and actually a really useful tip! I've never actually checked out itch.io, is it more indie game focused?
Just checked out !chinese@lemmy.world since it mentions Cantonese being also part of the community but sadly doesn't look very active right now.
- Complete Une Romance à la Librairie by Kit Embers last week.
- Started Le Grand Cahier by Agota Kristof, So far quite readable, will see how it goes, looks promising so far.
Congratz on finishing the book! You seem to have quite the pace on reading, I really admire that.
I can imagine a romance book like that gives quite a lot of vocabulary related to emotions. Do you pick your books (additionally to the graded attribute, I recall) based on possible vocabulary to learn?
That book was only 62 pages so it was fast and I was already half way through before I started it back up again last week. Her books are all romance and will give vocab in that regard. But I am just reading them for the reading practice. I am not even sure if I can remember all the vocab I've been lazy to export out the highlighted words to Anki. Graded books are usually easy to read, can go through them quickly and give me an idea of my reading level.
For graded book I pick based on the level, but every books are also picked based on recommendation on forums, reviews on amazon . I would read the samples provided on amazon, If the sample is readable I may buy it. I also see if audio is available.
In term of vocab to learn I do think that it might be good to avoid fantasy/sci-fiction type book because the vocab used there might not useful in day to day life, but end of the day do what motivates you to practice everyday.
Le Grand Cahier (190 pages) feels easier to read than L'étranger. It is also a trilogy so should keep me busy for a while. I think I bought it awhile back when someone recommended it on some forum, mentioning that the author use of french language is simple, because she is not native french. I avoided starting it earlier because of lack of audio, stuck with graded readers but now decided to read this after trying a few other native books.
So basically I am trying to move out of graded reader and into native content so that is why I tried Le petit prince (readable but difficult, philosophical), HarryPotter(difficult), L'étranger (readable but a little challenging) and now Le Grand Cahier seems to be a good fit. Hopefully I will stick with it and complete it.
Adding a list of native books that I plan to read eventually, in roughly the order below.. for now.
- Le Grand Cahier by Agota Kristof (maybe the other 2 in the series if it was good)
- Le Petit Nicolas series of books by René Goscinny
- L'étranger by Albert Camus
- Le Magicien d'Oz by Lyman Frank Baum
- Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- Harry Potter à L'école des Sorciers by J.K. Rowling
Below are games I am playing usually mostly on weekends if I have time.
I agree that sci-fi/fantasy is not the best for learning - even in my native language they use words in fantasy literature that you will most likely never need and it might be just confusing a learner.
Super interesting, thanks for sharing! If you feel comfortable, could you share a forum where you see these tips? The original creator of this community put a couple of forums into our sidebar but I have never heard of them and was wondering if one of these is the one you use?
I remember long time ago I tried to play games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance it was difficult but eventually realized it might not be a good idea, some of the vocab there I will probably never use. And they might be speaking in a more medieval manner. So I switch to more current day type of game like that broken sword series with as little fantasy as possible.
For forum, no particular site to recommend, I mostly just search on google. Which leads to sites like Quora, reddit or Language learner forum listed on the right or blogposts, Youtube and etc. Example on Quora https://www.quora.com/What-French-book-is-a-good-and-simple-read-if-French-is-your-second-language Forgot to mention another criteria I look for is that the book must be available digitally.
I also tried with Diablo to do this, but I had the same problem.
Ah thanks! Okay so the language learner's forum seems useful. I have to take a look at the unilang forum to see if it is active enough to advertise here.
Slowly working my way back to Anki. But mainly just practicing listening ability here and there. Front loaded a lot of my learning so slower but consistent pace now. Current goal is how can I make it so I can keep actively learning for the next 5-10 years.
It was mentioned in last week's thread that listening can be considered the hardest part of language learning, so really cool you've gotten into that lately.
And that's a nice goal - will keep the brain healthy with exercise for all those years :)
Thanks! And for real, healthy diet and movement are a must for language learning!
I've mostly been using Readlang, not much proper learning with videos and stuff, which I should do more
Readlang
You've just introduced me to a new tool, thanks! And don't get discouraged - we all need breaks from more intense studying.
I've been slacking a lot on latin/ukrainian lol. Though i can read cyrillic way better than i did before, and can write it at an okay-ish speed. I find ukrainian grammar to be pretty hard, but hopefully i get the basics down.
As for latin i've sadly been too busy to read LLPSI, but hopefully this week i can cram some time for it.
Holy shit man, you've got quite a collection of writing systems you can use by now! I can count atleast three :)
Also hebrew lmao (kind of learning the greek alphabet, but only that. I'm not interested in the language. So 5, actually xd)
And here I am, once tried to practice how to write my name in Arabic letters to carve it into my carefully-whittled piece of wood only to realize afterwards I was missing a letter.. damn lol!
Here's "lazycog" in what should be the closest way to pronounce lol. It's written "Layzi Cogh (no guh sound in arabic, only ghaa')"
I don't know your real name so i can't do that lol, but here you go
hey that's cool, thanks man!! And yeah the difference in what kind of sounds are available are the real problem with this (my real name was not a problem, but I just forgot while carving..). But this still sounds accurate ;)
Have gotten a little more serious with Kanji this week. I've added about 100 into SRS since the start of the month. And I'm starting to cross-reference multiple sources, rather than blindly going through the one book.
Normally I take more of a hybrid kanji/grammar/immersion/Anki approach, but I was reminded recently that it's probably better to front-load the Kanji. So I've decided to put grammar lessons on the back burner for now.
I was worried that doing so many new ones a day would make me remember less, but so far I still pass about 80% of my reviews even on tough days. So things progress nicely enough. Now just to see if I can keep up the effort for any length of time.
Sorry may I ask what is SRS? But I agree that sometimes it's better to just dive head first into it rather than take a careful clear path of learning - to keep it interesting as well. Trying to learn perfect grammar has sometimes hindered my learning and I felt as if I was actually learning more when I'd make mistakes and try to correct them later.
Happy to hear you are progressing, keep it up!
Sorry. It drives me crazy when people use acronyms without expanding them, and here I am doing it!
SRS = spaced repetition system. Anki, etc. The concept is popular in language learning, but seems especially prevalent in Japanese. Every app or system of study for the language seems to like implementing it in some way.
No worries lol! Thanks for the explanation :) And it does seem like amongst japanese learners Anki is incredibly popular together with Anime/Manga.
I've done a bit of gaming in my target language before and that gave me a huge boost!
I am just coming back to it after a long break. Resuming kana and JPDB studies.
Sounds like a specific learning system you got there, has it been working out well for you?
Yeah, so far I've enjoyed JPDB. I switched from Anki, and while there is no offline capability, I prefer it to my experience with Anki in this case. As I'm still early, that doesn't mean much - the proof will be in how effectively I learn.
It felt good that many of the 6+ month forgotten cards came back to memory without big efforts.
That's quite rewarding: knowing that you retained from past learning! Keep it up! As you know already, it's all about persistance.
I admit - I only used duolingo this week and didn't study more than that. On monday I'll start a language course and hope to meet people who can motivate me to do more on my free-time as well.
Cool! Nothing wrong with taking a little break. How are you doing the course? Have you done courses in your language before?
Formal courses don't always have the best reputation among self learners, but I think they can be great motivation. I didn't take enough advantage of it back in school, wish I had.
Indeed, without breaks it just feels like work! And decided to attend in-person course - mostly because I also wanted to meet new people honestly. I fully understand that formal courses are not for everyone :) For me it's about gaining a bit of motivation after a while of not really having any and to meet new people.
I have taken formal courses before and I find structured and guided learning much easier. It's just bit annoying alongside a full time job... And I can relate, wish I also had used my time in school better lol.
Right, it very much depends on what you put into it. I took some lessons last year (something else, not in language, but nonetheless), and found that I didn't get much out of the actual sessions - but studied and practiced way harder throughout the week to prepare for the session. It was really beneficial. I wasn't being taught too too much, but adds so much motivation to improve self learning.
I can relate with the whole putting more effort into preparing for a class. And honestly uni studies would have not gone as well if I had just left it to the lectures and had not studied during free-time too. It's all up to you in the end.