How to study languages without studying
Whether you're just starting out and have had bad experiences with textbook learning in the past or are getting burnt out from prepping for the next proficiency test, it's never a bad idea to put the textbooks away for a time and just enjoy your target language. If you're new to the world of immersion, here are a few ways to get you started.
Follow along with the lyrics of a song. Spotify's not-so-new-anymore lyrics feature is great for this, especially since it has timed lyrics, but it doesn't have every song.
Expert mode: Write out the lyrics and underline/highlight/make note of all the words and grammar structures you don't know. Learn these unknowns until you can understand the whole song!
Extra challenge: Translate a song from your target language. I usually tend to stay away from translations in my study, but for those of you who aspire to be translators (or already are!), the poetic nature of song lyrics can be a fun challenge.
Watch a show or movie. Netflix has now introduced a feature where you can sort by language! If there's nothing made in your language that you're interested in, it also gives the option to sort by shows and movies that have the audio or subtitles available. Internet Archive also tends to have lots of foreign films that I'm looking for.
Easy mode: Watch with English or your native language subtitles. When doing this, try to still listen to what's being said and pick up on words and phrases that you know, or match new words with their translation in the subtitles. Note: reading one language and listening to another is a skill in and of itself! Don't be discouraged if you can't do both at the same time yet, you're brain is still making the connections in intonation and cadence of the language.
Hard mode: Watch with captions in your target language. This helps you connect listening and reading, especially in languages where the spelling isn't exactly phonetic, or it uses a different alphabet than what you're used to.
Expert mode: No captions or subtitles! But who knows, maybe you're better at listening comprehension than I am. Make sure you're getting comprehensible input here; some shows and movies are much harder than others. But above all else, watch what keeps your interest. A movie where you can catch half the dialogue but is super engaging is better for you than an "easy" movie that you're going to spend your time ignoring.
Polyglot mode?: Watch something in your target language with subtitles in a different target language. This adds just one too many layers of obfuscation for me, but if you're into the challenge, more power to you.
Watch YouTube. You can change your language preference on YouTube, and with that, the Explore section will give you recommendations in your target language. Going into the trending tab with your target language can give you a good idea about what people are interested in in the countries where your target language is spoken.
Read something. It can be a book, it can be a comic. There are plenty of webcomics out there in a number of languages! There's also probably an English language listicle with recommendations of easier to understand webcomics for learners, too.
If you're just getting started in immersion, you can choose whether you focus on intensive reading or extensive reading (this actually goes for all kinds of immersion, but is easiest to control with reading since it happens at your own pace). Intensive reading is reading with the goal of understanding everything 100%. If you don't understand a word, or a grammar point, or the reading of a character, look it up. Extensive reading is reading just to get the gist of things. Look up words and grammar points only if they stop you from understanding the general meaning of the sentence or section. And of course, the more you immerse, the less you'll have to look things up, but remember that difficulty varies between materials, even within books of the same age range, genre, and medium.
A small digression: If you decide that you never want to open a textbook on your language learning journey, more power to you! It can be done and I know people who have gotten to proficient levels of their target language without textbooks. If you want this to be you, extensive immersion is your best friend. You also might want to get comfortable with the flashcard program anki, because, if this is your goal, all those unknown grammar points and words will probably end up there. But at the end of the day, language learning is an intensely personal journey, and what works for others won't necessarily work for you. Finding what works for you is just part of learning a language.
Play a game. Lots of games are region locked (hint: Pokemon Sun/Moon isn't! If you start a new game, you can choose which language you want to play it in), but there are plenty of free online games still lurking in the corners of the internet. With a bit of googling, you can probably find something in your target language. Just the other day, I went out to find one of those hidden item games in Japanese and ended up finding an entire site dedicated to user made browser games.
If you're learning Japanese or Korean, picrew might be fun to look through as well. I noticed that plenty of picrews have basic anatomy vocabulary. I'm not super familiar with picrew myself, but the ones I've seen tend to be in Korean and Japanese
And lastly, don't fully give up on textbooks before trying them out. Don't be discouraged if textbooks truly aren't your thing, but studying a language on your own time can feel much different than studying for school. Don't put too much pressure on yourself and just have fun with your language. Additionally, if you'd rather learn in a video format, many languages have full courses uploaded to YouTube for you to try. Finding these can be difficult for some languages though, so don't hesitate to reach out to other learners and see what they recommend!
Got your materials ready? Great! Now go forth and immerse!
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Big fckn redesigns here. Well mostly Charlie but Vaggie somewhat too 🥰🥰
Blue fits Charlie soooo much and I cease to see that many redesigns with this color. I still want red to be used in most of their designs because well. They are in hell, but not too present so to make way for other unique colors. Charlie has several physical traits from her parents but also she has some details in her clothes that match with them. When I uhh, introduce their designs you'll see lmao. I also tried to make her have a more roundish design, I jst LOVE those typ of designs omg. I just want the characters with not too many sharp corners pls Viv bro... 😔 oh yeah she's mixed cuz her mom's are darker in their redesigns. Alot of their genetics went down to Charlie so she doesn't look like an exact copy of Lucifer, I kind of hate that trend with hh and hb characters, like did the moxxies dad give birth to him bro 😭 also I kept her bow because it looks so cute and silly on her it just fits, I wish they made it bigger in her show design because it would fit her silliness so much. She has a cape with stars because morningSTAR smh why didnt they do something fun with that, missed potential but whatevs yknow I still love og designs no matter what anyone sayss. Did you know I love Charlie, I could ramble for days. I think I love Charlie guys. Maybe jst a hunch idk... also... s-snake fangs.. jeepers anddd..... snake tongue.... shiver me timberz
The wife ever. I had animation in mind more when I designed her, not like in a "How easy or hard would this be to animate" way. But I like to imagine when she's shocked her hair kind of fluffs out plus her actual fluff, when she's mad her bow turns into kind of horns and then her jacket expands like wings. Gave her a more hotel like outfit, she likes to work for fun (ew). Her socks are socks but she has some fluff under them she just tries to cover it up because she hates herself 🤪 (she doesn't hate her bigger body she actually feels much more comfortable chubby than when she was skinny with Adam. She was burdened with the weight of Adam's image of women... In this sorta rewrite she gained weight when she goes to the hotel because she's more happy. I'm dying I love chub Vaggie so much guys please) headcanon: she kind of likes fashion, it's like a fun hobby of hers to stitch together clothing and go out and buy clothes she'll never wear. She taught Charlie how to stitch and she SUCKS so you can jst see it on Charlie's pants.
Second outfits! Charlie's hotel uniform for. Well. Hotel stuff. She usually only wears it when new people come to the hotel, which.... isn't often, if at all. She still likes to keep it just in case. Also she goes really cartoonish when it happens, she does the looney tunes run and changes into her clothes in like 2 seconds. Can you see my vision? 😭😭
Vaggie's is in her armor. She has several pairs of armor lying around in the hotel in completely hidden spots. It's kind of surprising uhh. Yeah she wears it alot more than Charlie wears her alt uniform but still rare to find her in it. I don't get the whole thing with the exterminators and them not being able to fight according to Carmilla. Which is kinda stupid, I'm not gonna lie. So, instead of that, Vaggie has just let her guard down and has gotten much more comfortable in her surroundings so she feels like she doesn't need to fight anymore, she's just gotten rusty 's what I'm sayin. I have no idea how to draw armor. You can tell...
Extra below cut vvvv
BABY CHARLIE!!! With the heads of my redesigns for Luci, Eve, and Lillith. Haha you still cant see them. Uhh, ill definitely finish the thing one day. Its not even that big of a project thing, i think i jst keep going to other drawings so im like not focusing on one thing lmao. Lucifer has heterochromia because he was cursed to forever be reminded of his betrayal. I only explained that because Charlie has it too, it's kind of a curse on the entire blood line where at least one eye is red. This is like. Slightly older Charlie than the baby Charlie in show? I jst wanted to put her in overalls cuz omg that's jst so cute ughhh 😭😭
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Both my parents actually suffer from HORRID emotional dysregulation and are prone to snapping and going into rages. My sister is the same way tbh. I am now realizing this is why they are constantly baffled by the question of whether or not I am mad at them.
I don't have external meltdowns.
I could. I don't let it happen.
I keep my rage on the inside and stay pretty quiet about it. It's just as strong as theirs [physically shaking nose bleed from high blood pressure kind of bad], but like as a kid I saw how terrifying it was to be around [dad breaking dishes, mom putting our lawn chairs into walls] and I just internalized that I wasn't going to wear that anger on the outside.
So my mother genuinely cannot tell if I am just being quiet or if I am silently hearing the dial-up noises of pure rage. This has lead her to both making strong and confident statements like "You are a pacifist who would never hurt a fly U.U" but also acting like I am secretly dangerous maybe... It's because she has never seen me snap.
She knows what her temper is like [throwing chairs through walls], she knows what my father's temper is like [pick up child and toss out door], and she can tell I am being tested, but she doesn't know what happens when I snap or where that breaking point is.
Her -perhaps unhinged- solution to this, my whole life, has been to do things that should obviously enrage me or shut me down completely, like ignoring important boundaries, repeatedly, punishing me for expressing emotions or needs at all, etc... And then to constantly ask me if I am angry with her when I get too quiet [right after near directly telling me to shut up].
It has occurred to me now, they have never once seen me lose my temper, so they literally just can't tell if I am angry at them. My sister is easy, my mother fights and screams with my sister constantly, my mother understands this. My mother doesn't have any grasp of feelings or boundaries that are not screamed at her [apparently, and I fear my sister is the same way]. Her and my sister are close despite constant fucking fighting because they understand each other.
They are trying to get me to engage the same way and it is not working. I realize now that this has been hard for them.
I was so successfully taught to suppress my emotions, by being punished for any outburst, that rage quiet looks the same as any other kind of quiet from the outside. To them anyway.
I did tell her. For the record. I used my words. I did tell her very calmly that my response to rage, in order to avoid doing the things that terrified me as a child, was to simply leave [the autistic urge to GTFO]. When a situation or person causes too much of the dial-up rage noise, I simply extract myself from that situation, up to and including never speaking to a person again. I explained this calmly. I explained it calmly 100 times and I explained that I explain myself calmly as my rage response 1-5 [also pretty much every other negative emotion tbh], and I told her that what came next was me simply opting out and fucking off. I told her this. I couldn't understand why she never took me seriously, or why she never fucking understood.
I couldn't understand what made her like this.
But it's the same problem I have with everyone else multiplied by a factor of 10.
If I am explaining myself calmly, they can't understand that it's actually serious or that I am actually upset. ESPECIALLY because they read me as "female" and women "aren't that rational" so if I am not screaming and crying about something, which I never do, people assume I can't be upset and it isn't serious.
And then after having my boundaries ignored too many times despite having calmly explained how and why it's a problem [shaking inside or not]... I leave. I leave and everyone gets upset like this is unexpected behaviour, even though I told them 50 times that is how I would respond if they kept doing *the thing.*
And for neurotypical people especially, they are expecting there to be a disconnect between what someone says they need or feel and what their actually boundaries and feelings are, and they expect the latter to be demonstrated with emotions. Telling them bluntly you do not function that way somehow never helps?
My mother isn't just looking for normal yelling or a few tears to know I am serious, whether or not I do those either [I don't], she's looking for an explosion to know there's a problem at all.
Fucked if I know how she proceeds through life this way in general or if this is just her expectation of her own kids???
And I couldn't get why my mother couldn't read my emotions and didn't seem to think I have any. It's because she's testing for the rage limit to see where my 'actual' limit is instead of taking my word for it. Never the fuck mind that she could simply *not* test at my boundaries instead of letting me have them. Separate issue.
I couldn't figure out what made her *like this*
She's expecting me to throw a giant meltdown violent tantrum at people when I have 'actually' had enough. Maybe she got away with those being like 5'4" in another time, but I am the size of the average man, I do not get to have giant screaming rages, whether or not people perceive me consciously as a woman, and least of all because a lot of people -at least unconsciously- read me as 'masculine' or at least always "they guy" of the situation compared to all other women and some men [bigger stronger and more rational, more able to just absorb the damage and let it go so the less rational screaming/crying one doesn't have to be dealt with]. Even if it was in me to be willing to terrify people [usually never], there are such limited instances where it wouldn't just blow back on me. Potentially very dangerously.
I am going to be the quiet calm one. You are going to have to let me use my words, bitch.
So she kept ignoring my boundaries until I had to cut her out of my life, and she probably doesn't understand and probably thinks it feels sudden -after 36 long years of bullshit- abrupt and unfair.
But I told her hundreds of times.
I probably should have just screamed at her.
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