Let us put Motivation aside and get honest, how many languages have you learnt through lingq?

Open Forum
21

I was asked to talk about my experience here.

I have used LingQ to make significant progress in many languages: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Swedish and now Chinese.

The only language for which LingQ (almost) was my only resource was, however, German. Sure, I did use other resources to improve my German, but only a few pages from the advanced Assimil course as well as authentic content for native speakers (newspapers, novels, etc.) after using LingQ for 2 years.

This is important because for the past 4 years, German has been the language I have been using for everyday life - for work, doctorā€™s visits and trade school. This means that after using LingQ for 2 years to learn German, I came here, lived with a family for one year (never attended any courses here), used German every day for all sorts of things (and only German), and went on to do an apprenticeship. I take classes in economics, accounting, logistics, and even business English, French and Spanish - all in German. All of my pleasure reading and 99% of my social life is in German (the rest is in Italian or Spanish). I make deals with suppliers, solve logistical issues and have business meetings in German. Many of these things, I have never even done in English.

For other languages, I did use other methods - mostly shadowing with Assimil. The LingQ German library is simply wonderful and it was easy to learn German here. I also learned some languages before using LingQ, so it was too late to experiment.

Moving to Germany, the country I now call home, has been life-changing for me. The decision to create a LingQ account and start learning German was the best decision of my life.

I still use it to get good reading practice in French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and now Mandarin.

There is nothing to say about how I did it - I just listened and read with LingQ for 2 years, spoke about 25 times via Skype with Reinhard and Vera, sent in writing a few times and then moved to Germany. I was ready from day 1 and have never had a single problem here (although I now express myself with fewer mistakes and more subtlety, of course). In fact, when I came here, I tried to take a course to improve. I immediately placed into the C1 course and I found it too slow. I stopped after the first lesson (or maybe the second).

22

For me my main language which I am learning mostly through lingq is Italian.Though I used also duolingo in the past and am using memrise to learn vocabulary. But I really appreciate and could develop my knowledge of Italian thanks to reading and listening here on lingq. As for other languages most of them I learnt already before discovering lingq but I enjoy listening and reading in them here on this wonderful site too.

23

I found LingQ because I wanted to improve my German. At that moment I spoke English fluently, struggled with German and played with Esperanto from time to time.

Instead of improving German, I started withā€¦ Polish because I had to go to Pland. It was my 3rd trip to this country but I even did not know the the rules how to read such ā€œcrazyā€ things like przepraszam. It took me 2 weeks to learn the whole book and be able to survive with Polish only. Donā€™t be surprized, Polish is very similar to Belarusian and a bit to Russian which both are my native languages.

To support my success I started to read and listen to the lessons on LingQ. It was not always easy but interesting to see the progress. But it was not a really foreign language for me. I wanted to test the LingQ method on a really foreign language.

We decided to visit Rome, so I had 2 month. Books, additional audios and videos at the early beginning and LingQ helped me to survive in Rome. I was impressed despite necessity to use English some times. Later in 6 month I could hold short conversation via Skype. It took me 2 years to be comfortable with Italian.

Before my trips to Sweden, Czech Republic and Spain I was trying to grasp these languages in 2-3 months, it was also possible at a ā€œturist levelā€. I was even surprized I could use my French in Switzerland.

I beleive it would be impossible without LingQ, at least for me.

I cannot confirm I understand everything in my foreign languages, I still struggle with movies and songs. But I may rely on my English, German, Polish and Italian. Italian is a pure confirmation of the LingQ method: from scratch to fluency.

24

How are you enjoying Korean? Finding enjoyable content and culture? I am interested because the language itself looks fun and different, I enjoy it but Iā€™m just not sure if It will be worth it all the time as I probably wonā€™t go to Korea often.I keep worrying that it would be more useful to learn Mandarin.

25

@usablefiber Iā€™m liking Korean a lot. Suitable content has been somewhat harder to find, compared to other languages, but Iā€™m able to track down more and more material as I go along. Iā€™m drawn to it because of my fascination with the culture and history, I tend not to think of it in terms of ā€œusefulnessā€ in the sense of traveling. For me a language is useful when it allows me to communicate with a culture that Iā€™m interested in. However, I do live in Los Angles where we have a large Korean community so I actually get to use it ā€“ whenever I get my courage up to speak it. Itā€™s been getting easier to do that so itā€™s becoming more fun.

26

I found here very interesting stories. Thanks for sharing!

27

I donā€™t understood what do you mean with ā€œLet us put Motivation aside and get honestā€ but anywayā€¦

Iā€™ve been using LingQ since 2010, my first language was english and after a year I was reading, speaking and understanding a lot. That time I could just forget it cause in the end I achieved my goal. However I was deeper in love and tried to find out a new challenge.I started German, Italian, Spanish and right now Iā€™m learning French.
Actually I can comunicate in those languages but spoke french is the biggest challenge I ever had before in terms of language learning.

28

To be honest: NONE. But I learned English, French, Spanish & Russian via classroom teachers. And traditional Chinese via self study and many textbooks. LingQ = zero.

29

Actually, that puts you in a pretty unique group. The statistic I read was that among those who speak a second language fluently, only 4% credit academic studies as their primary source for getting there. Iā€™ve never met anyone yet who has done that, but I know theyā€™re out there.

30

Mr.Harangi, can we have a talk through Skype or one to one chat? I am pretty need it as you know the both languages I must get in this year, German and French. If you give me this chance, I will never forget it for you!
Thank you.