I just print off self-formatted Borges stories. I read it once in Spanish, missing most of the meaning, then go over it with a pen and a dictionary marking any word I don't immediately recognize, then I read it again, and THEN I type up a rough English translation for good measure. It helps that his stories are usually fairly short.
/ntg/ - No Translations General
Noah Hernandez
Jayden White
>German
Good luck, user. You might want to read Twain's essay on learning German before you commit to that one.
Kanji actually seems like the most fun part of Japanese. I find the characters a lot of fun to write, but I can't imagine what it would be like to have to memorize all of them.
That doesn't sound very fun. I'm reading Borges, too, but looking up the words as I read them (otherwise I would understand pretty much none of it).
Samuel Rodriguez
>As for Japanese, I've been studying it for almost three years. I still got a long way to go, but the grammar is the easiest part. Remembering kanji and vocabulary, though. That is fucking hell.
Japanese is hell, I estimate about 90% of the words I look up are to make sure I get the reading or rendaku right even if the meaning is completely obvious and I'm already familiar with the kanji.
Justin Morris
Oh, don't get me wrong, kanji are fun as fuck, and I love to learn them and look up their history while also seeing how they stand for images of the world a la Ezra Pound.
Memorization is hard because of the sheer number of them, not necessarily because they are difficult in themselves, though there are some so similar to each othee that you are prone to mistake them if you dontread carefully.
But just like any other language, practice is key to master kanji.
There are also a lot of resources on libgen and internet to help with Japanese. There's even a thread on /a/ entirely devoted to learning the language.
Jose Edwards
Force yourself not to look them up.
Personally, I much prefer when there is no furigana, simply because it's distracting when you are trying to read fluently. The downside is that if there's no furigana then looking up the words becomes much more difficult or at least tedious.
Kayden Powell
Look for a high quality online dictionary, such as this one for Polish:
Supplement with Wiktionary and Google Translate when needed, or get a Kindle that has a dictionary built in like the other user. It will be a slog no matter what if you're not fluent, but on the bright side, reading books in another language is by far the quickest way to growing your vocabulary. I like to write down every word that I don't know on a flash card. It makes the reading slower, but the learning more effective.
Robert Roberts
LATIN AND GERMAN, DEFINITELY. JAPANESE MAYBE. WHEELOCK. WHEELOCK. WHEELOCK. WHEELOCK. WHEELOCK. 5 GERMAN READERS, MORE. JAP APPS TOO.
Isaiah Ortiz
This meme has gone too far. I got a good chuckle though.
Brody Reed
literally where did this "german is a hard" meme come from?
the grammar is complicated when you learn it but thats quick and finite. the hardest part of learning a language is 1. vocab, 2. irregularities
the vocab of german is no a lot less than english (not counting compound words), and much clearer. after a while you start (consciously or not) seeing patterns in the irregularities and strong verb vowel changes and get it automatically.
in terms of difficulty
english>french>german>italian
Bentley Green
>in terms of difficulty
It all depends on your mother tongue. If you are a native Spanish speaker, Italian is the easiest, followed by French, then English and then German. English seems and is easy to learn nowadays because its being the lingua franca.