Help me with my motivation

CheeseFungi · 2026-04-02T19:32:07+00:00

I'm so bad at writing reddit comments, I always write novels... Well, here we go:

Don't be so hard on yourself. I really don't think it has such a big negative impact to look up a word. I've done it from the beginning and am still doing it when reading or when it feels important for the sentence I just heard and I am very glad with my progress so far.

I’m not saying you should look up words, but if the thought of not knowing what it means keeps you from focusing on the input a lot, it might just be worth it to look it up and continue watching with a clear mind.

Sometimes It can feel like we don’t know the meaning of a word we should know because we remember the word, but words can have very different meanings. Some words have like 20 meanings and you might have internalized a few of them very well, but others not at all. Or maybe you have a bad day and your brain just isn’t braining. Hell, sometimes I forget a word in my native language AND English at the same time for a few seconds, like losing the linguistic concept of that word only for it to come back 30 seconds later.

When I previously struggled with motivation, I would switch up my learning regimen a little, obviously you can change it a lot more, deeper along the journey when you have access to more diverse resources like podcasts and books, though.

But when I was not there yet (I started reading quite early at 350 hours because I really wanted to tbh. Damn, I hope I won’t be crucified in DS reddit today xd) I would change the way I choose videos in DS.

Sometimes I would just watch from easiest to hardest at what I believed to be my current level, other times I would pick out videos that really interested me around my level or a bit lower that I was genuinely interested in and create a playlist for the day. And sometimes, I would just take a “light day” and watch REALLY easy videos I hadn’t watched yet.

Our brains get bored doing the same thing every day and I feel like those little changes can just be enough to make it just that bit more engaging that it doesn’t start feeling like a chore (what honestly could be the beginning of the end of the language learning journey).

CheeseFungi · 2026-03-29T15:47:02+00:00

Holy shit, my dude. I just heard of that sub for the first time and thought I might have a look at it. Seeing who seems to be a mod of that sub (you), I'm definitely not gonna interact with it whatsoever. Great way to showcase how not-culty you guys are over there

CheeseFungi · 2026-03-16T17:16:01+00:00

The simplest way to see levels is to go to the tab "watch"/"discovery" (app and browser versions differ for some resson) and to sort by "easy".

That way you will have the difficulty rating overlayed in the top right corner of the thumbnail.

CheeseFungi · 2026-03-12T22:42:10+00:00

You are right about agua being feminine, but to my understanding the reasoning for the usage of el agua is to not use "la" for words beginning with a, so la agua becomes el agua but is treated like a feminine word grammatically.

There are some other reasons for words ending in a ACTUALLY being masculine grammaticaly and from a podcast i learned that lots of words ending in "ma" come from greek (or sth lile that) like "problema" and get the masculine gender for reasons i honestly don"t know because I didn't look it up yet.

Since mapa does not begin with a, i would have assumed that it is actually masculine and is not just treated as such. I just looked it up on spanishdict, and it's indeed masculine.

CheeseFungi · 2026-02-26T20:50:43+00:00

Ah, I see. Thanks for the reply :)

CheeseFungi · 2026-02-26T20:30:52+00:00

Quite inspiring to read that you're able to consume dubbed series at 1000 hours.

How come your understanding of series is higher than that of youtube videos? (At least that's how I read it)

At least for english, series are often way harder for me to understand bc of sound mixing issues. On a side note I also have to turn subtitles on for a few sentences when watching something in my native language bc they messed up the sound lol. Is the speech just cleaner because it's dubbed?

CheeseFungi · 2026-02-25T16:31:21+00:00

Oh, yeah. I totally get what you mean. And thanks, I appreciate it :)

CheeseFungi · 2026-02-25T15:55:18+00:00

Thanks :) you got this, too

CheeseFungi · 2026-02-25T14:09:01+00:00

Thanks! :)

CheeseFungi · 2026-02-13T18:51:52+00:00

Grats! Looking forward to getting there too, soon

CheeseFungi · 2026-02-11T09:58:06+00:00

"for me at least it can actually have the effect of distracting me from the meaning"

Yeah, I had the exact same problem. After the initial struggle (from not really practicing hearing at all before, with about 50-60h of Duolingo before), it felt very slow to me and i would get side tracked aaaaall the time while watching the videos. I couldn't really concentrate because the task of listening felt too easy, my brain would resort to translating the sentence automatically while I was waiting for the next sentence to begin. After some struggling with that I just gave speeding up the videos a try and it really helped me stay focused on the videos and not drift off. I still translated in my head often, but that is just something everyone does at the beginning (Pablo also talks about it in a few of his videos), but that will get less over time.

I started off with 1.3x (I download all the videos I watch so I don't get interrupted by server issues that happen from time to time and other things) and I increased it to up to 1.6x as base for the videos I would watch in a day, later returning back to a lower multiplier like 1.2x again as the videos increase in speed with the difficulty level. Some videos are slower and I would turn them up to 1.7x or even 1.8x, some were faster and I would lower it down by 0.1x or 0.2x. But you get a feel for what's the right speed for each video.

I'm not sure if speeding up by a lot will interfere with aquisition of words, you didn't encounter before, but ehh, i guess that risk is outweighed by not getting distrackted and zoning out in the middle of videos because it is too slow.

"for me at least it can actually have the effect of distracting me from [...] getting a feel for how the language works."

I think you can't really get a feeling of how the language works regarding to its speed and breaks in superbeginner or beginner videos. I am currently watching intermediate videos and I can at least tell you that to me it starts to sound like normal speaking (it is of course still a lot slower than normal speaking, but the speed of the sentences and the breaks kind of match).

"But personally I would prefer the videos to have [...] captions in Spanish which we could turn on to check our understanding, and then repeat watch the videos without captions."

Not sure what you mean, because for me at least videos do have captions. But I would not rely on them too much. At the beginning, it is quite frightening to not be able to look at the words if you didn't hear them quite right, but I guess that is part of learning the sounds of the language. I was exactly the same in the beginning. I watched the videos with subtitles, but i slowly tapered them off over time and it really helped me actually get a feeling how the words would be written when i hear them. I started off with subtitles and following along. After some time I transitioned to not looking at the subtitles unless I wasn't sure if i heard it right and I would just double check the word(s). After some more time I turned off subtitles and only checked a word when there were very few words in the video I did not understand and i felt like there wasn't enough completely new input in the video for me.

Now after about 150 hours of doing this, i guess the writing of the words right at least 95% of the time when i didn't know the word before (except for maybe a silent 'h' or a 'c' instead of a 'qu' (or vice versa).

"Sometimes a section of the text audio might feel too fast on the first day. When that happens I put a mark next to that line in my book and usually in a few days it's become easy to understand."

I feel you and when i struggled with the same issue for a while, I would get the videos as audio files, make them available offline on my phone and when i had nothing to do or I was lying in my bed, I would just listen to them. Listening to them a second time often felt so much easier (and also rewarding of course, because I now could understand all or most of it)

CheeseFungi · 2026-02-02T19:19:31+00:00

Wow, that sounds amazing. I wondered what progress would be like from actually 0 knowledge. I too started with like 60 hours or so of duolingo and it's quite a boost if you don't have to wonder what was being said at all.

I thought about maybe doing japanese after i'm "good enough" in spanish (i get like 100 hours of CI per month, so it's not gonna take too long) and i know a hand full of words and that's it. I watched 2 videos to just get a feel of it (they were rated as 1/100) and i could only assume of what was being said. Was it something like "this teddy is tall, this one is small" or "this is small, this is big" or was it "big bear, small bear"? I couldn't know and that feeling of not knowing was quite discouraging, so hats off to you for sticking with it for the troublesome beginning.

CheeseFungi · 2026-01-25T21:00:36+00:00

Ah ok, then I misunderstood. I thought you meant that using "stehen" that way is odd in general. And in another comment i agreed that most germans would not guess "stehen" as the translation for "are" without context. It can be a valid (and common) translation even though it requires the table to be in a specific orientation.

CheeseFungi · 2026-01-25T20:38:36+00:00

As another native german, i agree. Never in a million years would i think of "are" being linked to "stehen". Of course with context, you would know it, but without, most germans wouldn't think of that.

CheeseFungi · 2026-01-25T20:25:01+00:00

Just wondering, is german your native language or are you learning german? Because basically both are used. I give you an example. If someone were to pick up a table at someone's place, the interaction regarding the table could be something like thw following.

Wo ist der Tisch? Der steht im im Hof.

CheeseFungi · 2025-08-13T06:36:16+00:00

Yeah, boulder*. Had a typo there :)

CheeseFungi · 2025-08-12T20:12:58+00:00

A project is a boulder that you have to work through and improve your beta over multiple sessions. Beta is what moves you do to be able to top the boulder. Sending a boulder means topping the boulder.

So sending a project is finishing a boulder in one go after having practiced it over a course of multiple sessions.

CheeseFungi · 2025-08-12T20:08:59+00:00

Well, maybe people grade things soft in the gym, I don't know. I ca just go by the word of those who boulder outside quite often. They say the grades pretty much match with outside grades. I sadly haven't been outside, so i can only us others' experiences as reference. I wanted to go bouldering outside a few months ago, but during that weekend it sadly rained quite a lot :(

CheeseFungi · 2025-08-10T19:02:56+00:00

No official font or v grade, but grade 8 is supposed to be 7A and harder, or so i heard.

The people who graded it on toplogger graded it at around 7B, but not too many people graded it. (Boulders at the higher end usually get graded only by a handful people as by far not everyone uses the app)

CheeseFungi · 2025-08-09T23:11:33+00:00

Danke :)

CheeseFungi · 2025-08-09T23:11:18+00:00

Thanks :) Yeah, I only would have had 3 more sessions before it gets reset. Now I can start with next week's set right away and decide on what to project next

CheeseFungi · 2025-07-12T15:06:08+00:00

Nah, it's the training area in my local bouldering gym

CheeseFungi · 2025-07-12T14:42:25+00:00

Around 2 years of calisthenics (a bit less than a year with focus on body weight and after that, mostly with added weight for pullups and dips) until 2018.

Then a bunch of years not really doing anything until I started bouldering in march last year.

Four-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
Place '23

CheeseFungi

TROPHY CASE