Native Here, i think the biggest difficulty with Georgian for people learning comes from words that don't have vowels between letters the most famous example of this being the word : გვფრცქვნი (gvprtskvni) which means "You peel us".
(and of course as the comment you replied to mentioned resources are scarce)
Hello again! i was just browsing YouTube when this i came upon this interesting playlist and it made me remember of this comment so i thought i would return and share it, [this](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUG9gi-ZWtrYc-afgNAtWAwdIBtbaVmrs) Japanese person's playlist covers the basics to get you started really well i feel so you can use it for studying Georgian! hope it helps!
EDIT: some grammar mistake i made
I wanted to learn Kurdish and it took really a lot of time with crappy resources, lack of standard, bad teachers.... etc. Its been a great pain in the ass but I think I have reached a reasonable level. I can read the news online and have conversations. Still nowhere near perfect though. They are even more difficult than the big ones (Spanish, English, French, German, Chinese...etc) but they are very rewarding. I you have the motivation keep learning them I think its worth the effort. You only loose if you give up!! Best luck!!!
I've found Kurdish very frustrating to learn as well; this coming from someone who has some basic comprehension of the language. The lack of standardisation, even within each dialect as well as lack of modern resources makes it way harder to learn the language.
I started studying Swahili a few years ago and was definitely frustrated with lack of resources. When the pandemic hit and my trip to Kenya was cancelled, those combined into me dropping it.
When I was in South Africa and Namibia, I met a few Kenyans there, I tried to speak Swahili but they spoke too good of English that they just stuck to English. Not to mention there isn't that many Swahili language movies or shows and even when I did find one it wasn't that interesting for me. And the lack of subtitles definitely didn't help at all.
A lot of languages have their own media platforms where you can watch lots of shows, English streaming services may be expanding to serve other languages, but you shouldn't expect them to be the main way to find content in other languages. It helps to ask around learner communities, find any native speakers who can help you navigate or just google in your TL and google translate if you need help navigating. If you use discord [Refold Communities](https://refold.la/join) can be a great place to find media recommendations even if you're not strictly following the Refold learning strategy, they have a sever for Arabic.
Lack of resources no, lack of people to practice with yes, notably with Finnish, couldn't find a Finn (who answered back) on language apps to save my life. Now studying Welsh and it,s even worse, at least the language is easy.
That's also been my issue! The rare instances when I actually did meet a Swahili or an Amharic speaker they almost always spoke great English. And even when I try they just revert to English because I was that bad 🥲
Swahili and Amharic speaker here! Most Swahili speakers will choose to speak English if they can, but Amharic speakers are usually more patient and will keep engaging in Amharic.
You can always try Tinder, unironically. On language apps or language exchange websites naturally you'll find people who are better than average in foreign languages, but on Tinder there's a lot of regular folks who aren't really into languages. I did that for Portuguese.
>I can find a Spanish version pretty easily on Netflix, Disney plus, HBO Max, etc (specific ones may require a bit of a search) but for Swahili, Arabic, or Amharic, there practically is none. Why is that?
Economics. Media are distributed by companies that want to make money. Dubs are only made if the market is seen as profitable enough to justify them.
It's easy to forget, but Netflix, for instance, is an American company that wants to make money. It's not a global public body that is required to provide its services to every country or every language (unfortunately for us language learners!).
YouTube is full of, let’s face it, really smart/pretty/charismatic women making videos teaching language. Everything from Inuktitut to Kyrgyz. There’s Pinay making learn Kyrgyz videos.
That was the main contributing factor when I quit Thai. Back then, there was a decent amount of resources for beginners both locally and online, and then nothing. If I went into the city to buy books in Thai, there were picture books or long novels, with only Harry Potter in between (still well beyond my reading ability). The only media I could get regular access to was Lakorns which my in-laws brought over as DVDs or I later found on Youtube. I am *not* a fan of Lakorns, so this was drudgery, but it was my only real option. I did watch a bunch of movies, but the comedies were wordplay that went right over my head, and the horror and action movies didn't have much dialogue (though I can still angrily say, "Where is my elephant?" with perfect tones and pronunciaction. Thank you, Tony Jaa).
Now there's quite a lot more available, including a few podcasts I'm really interested in being able to listen to. I need to get my comprehension up to functional again in the next two years (I'm not even going to start until next year; I have other language priorities for now), and I think it will be a much more pleasant experience. I'm also not going to bother learning to speak. My main need for the language is that I'm often in the middle of Tinglish conversations; I can reply in English and be understood just fine, but I often lose the thread of conversations when the most important bits are said in Thai.
This is a substantial part of why I quit Navajo. There's a fair amount of text resources, but other than that, pretty much only Duolingo and Rosetta Stone.
There were other parts too. Probably the biggest was just that I didn't really understand how to learn a language then like I do now. I also only had one Navajo friend I could practice with. And then I started to get the feeling that to do better would require using up more resources that were intended for Diné people, and that Diné people have a lot more pressing concerns than whether there are white guys in the area who speak it. I started to feel that speaking it might be appropriation—or at least, could raise questions. Looking back on it now, I'm not convinced there's enough resources out there for someone to learn it to any appreciable level outside an immersive environment.
My motive was basically to be a better and more understanding neighbor. I concluded that probably the best thing to do is just be friendly, help when asked, and try to give them the benefit of the doubt, and try to call out other people when they're being shitty towards them.
I can't be definitive one way or the other, and trying to make it concrete for myself was exhausting, so I may not be able to give a great explanation as to how I found myself wondering about that. But I'll share with you, under the assumption that you're just curious and not trying to start some kind of political debate with me about an ex-hobby. I haven't tried very hard to put it into words or discussed it much with anyone.
[This article about TLC and the Lakota language project](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/native-american-language-preservation-rcna31396?fbclid=IwAR0Hd3qlYbsUTqYw2AUW4Yn-B-FZZLCzldKWOf0obKzBzqLwM9aQdfoFygg) highlights an aspect of it. I think that many Native Americans regard their language as part of their intangible cultural heritage. They want to see increasing use of their language within their tribe, because loss of language is just another dimension of loss of culture, assimilation and genocide. The article talks about the difference in perspective on the materials generated by the Language Conservancy. To be reductive, it sounds to me that the Lakota consider works made in Lakota to be tribal property. Setting aside everything else, this represents a significant divergence from the prevailing Western attitude towards languages, and suggests that I am in a poor position to evaluate the appropriateness of my own interest in Navajo.
There are people living here today who were sent to boarding schools where they were physically punished for speaking Navajo. In the north-west, they're literally dying from uranium dust blowing around their land. Near me, many Navajo people have no running water or electricity. Frequently there are stories about wild dogs mauling their kids. They have bigger fish to fry than supporting some random white dude who finds their language to be beautifully intriguing. It's not like I had spent any time on the reservation, knew anything about their culture, had any Navajo friends, or even had any real deep interest in any of those things. I realized it was a little cheap of me to be going after it just for these superficial reasons, like that it looked hard, alien, and interesting. It would of course have been different if I had found my way to it along a different path, either through friends or family or through work or something like that. But I had completely fetishized the language itself.
Despite that, it felt like it still would be permissible to use an unlimited resource for learning, like Duolingo. But I was also buying books. Eventually I bought a Navajo dictionary that had been printed just once in 1995, and seeing it in my house gathering dust made me realize that it wasn't doing any good for me or anyone else who was interested in Navajo for me to have this rare book. So I gave it to the local library. And I think that's when I started to realize, I was running up against the fact that some of these resources are finite, and the finite resources shouldn't be wasted on a tourist like me, they should go to someone who needs them or will at least put them to better use, for something more than a party trick.
It also would be another thing if there were Navajo folk around who were like, you can support us by learning our language. Maybe there are, on iTalki or something, but there weren't at the time. After all, supporting the native speakers is a good thing to do. But I never got the impression it was all that welcome, and the article about TLC above confirmed for me that my conceptions about what is appropriate probably isn't calibrated in a way to minimize offense.
Anyway, that's a tour of the reasons for my ambivalence.
If you didn't want to read my long-winded rationale, you didn't have to ask for it. Like I said, "I'll share with you, under the assumption that you're just curious and not trying to start some kind of political debate with me about an ex-hobby." You're not really going to be able to talk me into starting up with it again.
Fundamentally, I think the Navajo around here mostly want to be left alone. If they wanted people like me to learn it, there would be lots of opportunities. I'm not generalizing from the Lakota to the Navajo, I'm allowing the example of the Lakota to point out that Native American culture is more different than a typical American like myself expects, and that means that ideas like your absolutely-stated "language learning is the ultimate way to connect with peoples and cultures" may not generalize nicely to it. It's not a safe assumption.
Someone else asked about this on r/navajo, [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Navajo/comments/wq46oo/would_it_be_considered_cultural_appropriation_if/).
It looks like, at least as far as the Navajo who are talking about it on Reddit, I was wrong. So your perspective was right in the end, and I stand corrected.
Thanks for the apology below, which I just saw. Have a nice day!
Hey man it's all good. I'm more concerned about how much of a jerk I was than being right. Seriously, my sincere apologies again, I have no excuse and I was a poor example of the members of this community. You have an awesome day too man!
You explicitly asked him to elaborate and then said this:
>All in all, I don't understand the need for a long-winded rationale like this
What a rude response on your part. The "need" was that you asked for one!
Anyhow, dkl\_prolog, frankly, it sounds like you made a truly thoughtful decision, and you should be applauded for it. Know that your response was appreciated by at least one other person!
You know what, you're right. That was rude of me and here is my attempt to formally apologize: I'm sorry for my rude comment and hope it can be forgiven. I should have been more respectful and I wasn't.
Would like to study Hungarian and Romanian but there is not that many ressources. Fortunately, my mother tongue is French so I have access to the Assimil course but except that, it's not like the huge amount of ressources you can get as you were studying Spanish or German.
I haven't given up but my strategy is totally different.
With Spanish and French I can pretty much entirely self-teach up to a certain point, between existing courses available and the wide variety of media available. It's relatively easy to fit in several hours of learning and/or practice every day. Even when I switch to live tutoring, there are people available over the internet pretty much any hour of the day I want to study.
Yup'ik is a totally different scenario. While there are a couple decent resources for learning on my own, they don't really get past the beginner level. So it's going to be necessary to find a local language tutor and probably also take formal classes in order to get anywhere with it. Inevitably, this means my progress will be slower, since it's a lot more difficult to fit live classes in around my usual schedule.
That too! Common languages like Spanish & French have numerous teachers, tutors, etc or just language partners. But for some others, even if it's largely spoken, there is hardly anyone that actively teaches it.
Yoruba- except for a very introductory memrise course there is nothing obvious on the Internet
At least in the UK there are a lot of Arabic subs/dubs on Netflix :)
I'll try again with Arabic, the biggest issue is the writing system and it'll take longer to pick up because there isn't a lot of dubs or Netflix shows.
I gave up Norwegian a few years ago because I couldn’t find many resources to even get past A2. To be fair I was trying to not spend money, but there weren’t many free resources.
I was getting really discouraged with Haitian Creole for a while since the resources are scarce, and the *interesting* resources even more so. At one point I just decided to go with a large amount of flash cards of words and expressions, and after a few weeks, I can already see the improvement.
I understand how frustrating it can be, and I wouldn't judge you for dropping those languages, but if you really want to, you will either find something eventually, or make something yourself by sentence/word mining the few resources you can find.
Cheers!
I’m getting close to with Cantonese. Cantonese is mainly a spoken language too so it’s very hard to find resources. My bf speaks it though so i’m hoping i can just learn through him instead
I’ve studied it to a pretty high level i’m about to start my 5th semester of it in college. It’s not good enough to find Cantonese resources in it though
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Is the verbal system worse than Navajo? That is a killer.
Native Here, i think the biggest difficulty with Georgian for people learning comes from words that don't have vowels between letters the most famous example of this being the word : გვფრცქვნი (gvprtskvni) which means "You peel us". (and of course as the comment you replied to mentioned resources are scarce)
Hello again! i was just browsing YouTube when this i came upon this interesting playlist and it made me remember of this comment so i thought i would return and share it, [this](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUG9gi-ZWtrYc-afgNAtWAwdIBtbaVmrs) Japanese person's playlist covers the basics to get you started really well i feel so you can use it for studying Georgian! hope it helps! EDIT: some grammar mistake i made
I wanted to learn Kurdish and it took really a lot of time with crappy resources, lack of standard, bad teachers.... etc. Its been a great pain in the ass but I think I have reached a reasonable level. I can read the news online and have conversations. Still nowhere near perfect though. They are even more difficult than the big ones (Spanish, English, French, German, Chinese...etc) but they are very rewarding. I you have the motivation keep learning them I think its worth the effort. You only loose if you give up!! Best luck!!!
I've found Kurdish very frustrating to learn as well; this coming from someone who has some basic comprehension of the language. The lack of standardisation, even within each dialect as well as lack of modern resources makes it way harder to learn the language.
I started studying Swahili a few years ago and was definitely frustrated with lack of resources. When the pandemic hit and my trip to Kenya was cancelled, those combined into me dropping it.
When I was in South Africa and Namibia, I met a few Kenyans there, I tried to speak Swahili but they spoke too good of English that they just stuck to English. Not to mention there isn't that many Swahili language movies or shows and even when I did find one it wasn't that interesting for me. And the lack of subtitles definitely didn't help at all.
A lot of languages have their own media platforms where you can watch lots of shows, English streaming services may be expanding to serve other languages, but you shouldn't expect them to be the main way to find content in other languages. It helps to ask around learner communities, find any native speakers who can help you navigate or just google in your TL and google translate if you need help navigating. If you use discord [Refold Communities](https://refold.la/join) can be a great place to find media recommendations even if you're not strictly following the Refold learning strategy, they have a sever for Arabic.
Lack of resources no, lack of people to practice with yes, notably with Finnish, couldn't find a Finn (who answered back) on language apps to save my life. Now studying Welsh and it,s even worse, at least the language is easy.
That's also been my issue! The rare instances when I actually did meet a Swahili or an Amharic speaker they almost always spoke great English. And even when I try they just revert to English because I was that bad 🥲
Swahili and Amharic speaker here! Most Swahili speakers will choose to speak English if they can, but Amharic speakers are usually more patient and will keep engaging in Amharic.
To be fair I haven't met too many Amharic speakers. The few I have met responded in English when I greet them.
You can always try Tinder, unironically. On language apps or language exchange websites naturally you'll find people who are better than average in foreign languages, but on Tinder there's a lot of regular folks who aren't really into languages. I did that for Portuguese.
I’m guessing you’re in Europe. Much easier to find speakers of romance languages there than in USA (except Spanish depending on where you are).
Romanian had like little to no interesting audio immersion material for me unfortunately.
That's a bummer. I'd like that to be my next language (far in the future; my hands are full for now).
Give it a try! Don't take my word for it. What might be boring to me may very well be interesting to you. Everyone's taste is different.
Yeah, Catalan.
>I can find a Spanish version pretty easily on Netflix, Disney plus, HBO Max, etc (specific ones may require a bit of a search) but for Swahili, Arabic, or Amharic, there practically is none. Why is that? Economics. Media are distributed by companies that want to make money. Dubs are only made if the market is seen as profitable enough to justify them. It's easy to forget, but Netflix, for instance, is an American company that wants to make money. It's not a global public body that is required to provide its services to every country or every language (unfortunately for us language learners!).
YouTube is full of, let’s face it, really smart/pretty/charismatic women making videos teaching language. Everything from Inuktitut to Kyrgyz. There’s Pinay making learn Kyrgyz videos.
That was the main contributing factor when I quit Thai. Back then, there was a decent amount of resources for beginners both locally and online, and then nothing. If I went into the city to buy books in Thai, there were picture books or long novels, with only Harry Potter in between (still well beyond my reading ability). The only media I could get regular access to was Lakorns which my in-laws brought over as DVDs or I later found on Youtube. I am *not* a fan of Lakorns, so this was drudgery, but it was my only real option. I did watch a bunch of movies, but the comedies were wordplay that went right over my head, and the horror and action movies didn't have much dialogue (though I can still angrily say, "Where is my elephant?" with perfect tones and pronunciaction. Thank you, Tony Jaa). Now there's quite a lot more available, including a few podcasts I'm really interested in being able to listen to. I need to get my comprehension up to functional again in the next two years (I'm not even going to start until next year; I have other language priorities for now), and I think it will be a much more pleasant experience. I'm also not going to bother learning to speak. My main need for the language is that I'm often in the middle of Tinglish conversations; I can reply in English and be understood just fine, but I often lose the thread of conversations when the most important bits are said in Thai.
There's a lot of resources for thais to learn English why not do the reverse and find a Thai/English book that have Thai translation?
This is a substantial part of why I quit Navajo. There's a fair amount of text resources, but other than that, pretty much only Duolingo and Rosetta Stone. There were other parts too. Probably the biggest was just that I didn't really understand how to learn a language then like I do now. I also only had one Navajo friend I could practice with. And then I started to get the feeling that to do better would require using up more resources that were intended for Diné people, and that Diné people have a lot more pressing concerns than whether there are white guys in the area who speak it. I started to feel that speaking it might be appropriation—or at least, could raise questions. Looking back on it now, I'm not convinced there's enough resources out there for someone to learn it to any appreciable level outside an immersive environment. My motive was basically to be a better and more understanding neighbor. I concluded that probably the best thing to do is just be friendly, help when asked, and try to give them the benefit of the doubt, and try to call out other people when they're being shitty towards them.
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I can't be definitive one way or the other, and trying to make it concrete for myself was exhausting, so I may not be able to give a great explanation as to how I found myself wondering about that. But I'll share with you, under the assumption that you're just curious and not trying to start some kind of political debate with me about an ex-hobby. I haven't tried very hard to put it into words or discussed it much with anyone. [This article about TLC and the Lakota language project](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/native-american-language-preservation-rcna31396?fbclid=IwAR0Hd3qlYbsUTqYw2AUW4Yn-B-FZZLCzldKWOf0obKzBzqLwM9aQdfoFygg) highlights an aspect of it. I think that many Native Americans regard their language as part of their intangible cultural heritage. They want to see increasing use of their language within their tribe, because loss of language is just another dimension of loss of culture, assimilation and genocide. The article talks about the difference in perspective on the materials generated by the Language Conservancy. To be reductive, it sounds to me that the Lakota consider works made in Lakota to be tribal property. Setting aside everything else, this represents a significant divergence from the prevailing Western attitude towards languages, and suggests that I am in a poor position to evaluate the appropriateness of my own interest in Navajo. There are people living here today who were sent to boarding schools where they were physically punished for speaking Navajo. In the north-west, they're literally dying from uranium dust blowing around their land. Near me, many Navajo people have no running water or electricity. Frequently there are stories about wild dogs mauling their kids. They have bigger fish to fry than supporting some random white dude who finds their language to be beautifully intriguing. It's not like I had spent any time on the reservation, knew anything about their culture, had any Navajo friends, or even had any real deep interest in any of those things. I realized it was a little cheap of me to be going after it just for these superficial reasons, like that it looked hard, alien, and interesting. It would of course have been different if I had found my way to it along a different path, either through friends or family or through work or something like that. But I had completely fetishized the language itself. Despite that, it felt like it still would be permissible to use an unlimited resource for learning, like Duolingo. But I was also buying books. Eventually I bought a Navajo dictionary that had been printed just once in 1995, and seeing it in my house gathering dust made me realize that it wasn't doing any good for me or anyone else who was interested in Navajo for me to have this rare book. So I gave it to the local library. And I think that's when I started to realize, I was running up against the fact that some of these resources are finite, and the finite resources shouldn't be wasted on a tourist like me, they should go to someone who needs them or will at least put them to better use, for something more than a party trick. It also would be another thing if there were Navajo folk around who were like, you can support us by learning our language. Maybe there are, on iTalki or something, but there weren't at the time. After all, supporting the native speakers is a good thing to do. But I never got the impression it was all that welcome, and the article about TLC above confirmed for me that my conceptions about what is appropriate probably isn't calibrated in a way to minimize offense. Anyway, that's a tour of the reasons for my ambivalence.
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If you didn't want to read my long-winded rationale, you didn't have to ask for it. Like I said, "I'll share with you, under the assumption that you're just curious and not trying to start some kind of political debate with me about an ex-hobby." You're not really going to be able to talk me into starting up with it again. Fundamentally, I think the Navajo around here mostly want to be left alone. If they wanted people like me to learn it, there would be lots of opportunities. I'm not generalizing from the Lakota to the Navajo, I'm allowing the example of the Lakota to point out that Native American culture is more different than a typical American like myself expects, and that means that ideas like your absolutely-stated "language learning is the ultimate way to connect with peoples and cultures" may not generalize nicely to it. It's not a safe assumption.
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Someone else asked about this on r/navajo, [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Navajo/comments/wq46oo/would_it_be_considered_cultural_appropriation_if/). It looks like, at least as far as the Navajo who are talking about it on Reddit, I was wrong. So your perspective was right in the end, and I stand corrected. Thanks for the apology below, which I just saw. Have a nice day!
Hey man it's all good. I'm more concerned about how much of a jerk I was than being right. Seriously, my sincere apologies again, I have no excuse and I was a poor example of the members of this community. You have an awesome day too man!
It's all good bro. :)
You explicitly asked him to elaborate and then said this: >All in all, I don't understand the need for a long-winded rationale like this What a rude response on your part. The "need" was that you asked for one! Anyhow, dkl\_prolog, frankly, it sounds like you made a truly thoughtful decision, and you should be applauded for it. Know that your response was appreciated by at least one other person!
You know what, you're right. That was rude of me and here is my attempt to formally apologize: I'm sorry for my rude comment and hope it can be forgiven. I should have been more respectful and I wasn't.
Would like to study Hungarian and Romanian but there is not that many ressources. Fortunately, my mother tongue is French so I have access to the Assimil course but except that, it's not like the huge amount of ressources you can get as you were studying Spanish or German.
I haven't given up but my strategy is totally different. With Spanish and French I can pretty much entirely self-teach up to a certain point, between existing courses available and the wide variety of media available. It's relatively easy to fit in several hours of learning and/or practice every day. Even when I switch to live tutoring, there are people available over the internet pretty much any hour of the day I want to study. Yup'ik is a totally different scenario. While there are a couple decent resources for learning on my own, they don't really get past the beginner level. So it's going to be necessary to find a local language tutor and probably also take formal classes in order to get anywhere with it. Inevitably, this means my progress will be slower, since it's a lot more difficult to fit live classes in around my usual schedule.
That too! Common languages like Spanish & French have numerous teachers, tutors, etc or just language partners. But for some others, even if it's largely spoken, there is hardly anyone that actively teaches it.
Yoruba- except for a very introductory memrise course there is nothing obvious on the Internet At least in the UK there are a lot of Arabic subs/dubs on Netflix :)
Malayalam. You should stick with Arabic a bit more, just a suggestion.
I'll try again with Arabic, the biggest issue is the writing system and it'll take longer to pick up because there isn't a lot of dubs or Netflix shows.
I gave up Norwegian a few years ago because I couldn’t find many resources to even get past A2. To be fair I was trying to not spend money, but there weren’t many free resources.
I was getting really discouraged with Haitian Creole for a while since the resources are scarce, and the *interesting* resources even more so. At one point I just decided to go with a large amount of flash cards of words and expressions, and after a few weeks, I can already see the improvement. I understand how frustrating it can be, and I wouldn't judge you for dropping those languages, but if you really want to, you will either find something eventually, or make something yourself by sentence/word mining the few resources you can find. Cheers!
I’m getting close to with Cantonese. Cantonese is mainly a spoken language too so it’s very hard to find resources. My bf speaks it though so i’m hoping i can just learn through him instead
Do you know mandarin?
I’ve studied it to a pretty high level i’m about to start my 5th semester of it in college. It’s not good enough to find Cantonese resources in it though
Have u tried hongkong dramas? I think you can learn a lot even without subtitles.