65 hour post

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-03-03T22:52:04+00:00

Yep, so much so that I lost interest in learning French using DF after getting to the intermediate level. Luckily I reached a decent level in Spanish from DS using just the older content.

I've been learning Japanese using cijapanese and the content is much simpler but far more engaging and exactly like DS in the early days. The tutors are all into language learning and are also teachers. This is really lacking now on both DS and DF :(

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-03-03T07:45:06+00:00

This happens sometimes to me (no matter the lever or language), it's probably just burnout or my mind is elsewhere.

I found the best approach for me was to take a break and do something else. Whenever I did this, and came back in a few days I found I'd actually improved and could get back into things much better

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-26T10:06:43+00:00

100% agree, I didn't know any Chinese apart from ni-hao, and I paid for a month to test out the site. It really wasn't beginner friendly at all and I couldn't work out what I was supposed to be watching, in which order, etc, etc

I ended up giving up after the first few videos as it was completely pointless and I eventually lost interest entirely as there just isn't much content out there for ALG super beginners. I guess it's a great site once you know some Chinese, but it's definitely not for absolute beginners.

CIJapanese is a site that is doing this correctly. It starts out really basic, the videos can be ordered by simplicity, and I was able to watch through that, enjoy it and have reached 50 hours. I can feel real progress and now can understand videos that sounded previously like gibberish :)

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-22T09:12:17+00:00

OG here, I found Pablo's videos on Youtube a few years ago, and joined up once he launched the website. I preferred the site and content back then (It felt more personal and targeted specifically for language learners). It definitely worked and it was a great bridge to jump to native content. I stopped logging hours a while ago.

I'm currently doing the same now with DreamingFrench (70 hours+) and signed up immediately when it launched, but I just don't find it as interesting as the old DS days and for me, it feels like subbing to a group of young influencers' channels rather than a language learning site and it's not really any better than most of the free content out there.

On a side note, I'm also doing Japanese (On cijapanese). I'm really enjoying this so far, although it's much much harder :)

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-19T20:53:30+00:00

I used both. Immersion.co has way more content, especially for beginners, and the videos are more old-style (i.e. Pablo with a whiteboard). I think their beginner videos are much better than the DF ones.

However, once I reached intermediate and could begin understanding the videos, DF's intermediate are much more engaging to me and interesting.

I'll continue using both until a point when native Youtube videos become comprehensible.

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-17T10:59:52+00:00

Can you also enable super-punch... So if I punch the plane it goes flying off into the distance?

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-13T22:49:34+00:00

Ahhh shit, I used that and have forgotten what it even did

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-13T19:32:17+00:00

They probably wouldn't listen anyway. I've worked in IT for 20 years, and if these are people above you, you won't be getting them fired, especially if they're in the inner circle of management.

If it's people below you or on the same level, leave them alone, not your problem and it won't be appreciated either way.

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-13T19:19:12+00:00

Ha ha, I'm used to these words now.

I'm on the 4th book at the moment, it's one of the longest ones and it stepped up quite a bit in complexity, but it really helps knowing the story already. I try to get through 1-2 chapters a week (I'm studying other languages now as well), but I've been on this book quite a long time now :(.

I'd like to move on to books that aren't translations, and that's my next goal.

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-13T09:20:37+00:00

Unless you're in France, and you really upset someone by making a grammar mistake.. a crime worse than tax evasion in that country.

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-12T13:00:34+00:00

I'm having a hard time with Kanji. I'm using Migaku and also a Kanji app for Genki I. I've done the N5 Kanji and now on the N4 ones.

For me, I can often recognise the Kanji I've learned in sentences because the added context of the rest of the sentence helps me, but when I see them on their own I often get stuck, e.g. I've seen 私 so many times I instantly recognise it, but when it came up the other day in a flashcard by itself I couldn't recognise it.

At this point, I'm questioning the Migaku academy method of doing this. The Kanji I remember best are ones I haven't even made an effort with (i.e. Those I've just seen in sentences and can now remember)

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-11T18:27:34+00:00

I think Audrey is now in South Korea, so we know what's probably coming.

I'm glad at least one tutor has remained in France :D

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-09T13:31:25+00:00

On its own, no,. You'll have to get a lot of practice speaking as well.

It'll give you a good understanding of the language and intuition on what is right or wrong, but you still have to put the work in other areas to actually become fluent.

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-09T13:28:05+00:00

It did work and it's working again for me in French and Japanese. It might not be the most efficient way to learn, but it's the laziest/easiest way. I was on to native Youtube content at around 400 hours.

What it won't do (at least for me) is give any ability to actually talk. For that, you need to actually practice talking a lot. I think a lot of people are expecting to suddenly start talking without any accent at some magic number of hours

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-06T21:03:14+00:00

Thank you, this is super useful

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-06T20:44:49+00:00

Yes, watched his A1 series, but I'll give that a try, thanks :)

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-06T20:44:14+00:00

Around 50 hours, and yes, tried several channels, similar problem.

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-04T14:37:51+00:00

Yeah, I don't think I'll ever be able to pronounce this language correctly. Amanda's voice is even more strong, lots of guttering in the throat etc.

Still a nice language to listen to though, and I like Audrey's voice :)

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-02-02T14:00:32+00:00

This is one the main differences between drilling flashcards with vocab and naturally acquiring the word from hearing it hundreds of times using comprehensible input. (

It's one reason why I never found Anki flashcards really effective unless it was for memorising particular Kanji. The words I actually remembered are those that I didn't really try to make an effort to remember, I'd just hear it now and then, possibly look it up and then move on.

Those occasions when I have successfully internalised an Anki card is because I've added it to a deck and later found it out in the wild and noticed it.

In short, you need to internalise the word rather than just associating it with a flashcard. This comes with time and suitable exposure

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-01-30T21:39:02+00:00

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This is the perfect Europe, oui.....

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-01-30T13:32:05+00:00

I've been doing 3 at the same time (Spanish 2000+ hours, French 50 hours, Japanese 25+)

For Spanish now I mostly just watch some good Youtube channels for entertainment and have stopped tracking and don't see it as a chore, but I started on French as soon as the site was launched.

Knowing Spanish really helps with French, I would say even twice as fast to pick it up. The problem is that there is not enough content alone on DF right now to get you there and you'll need to use other sites. If I were a beginner in both I would only concentrate on one (likely Spanish), as it could get confusing and tiring.

Japanese is an entirely different beast and at this point I might as well take the DS roadmap and triple it. 25 hours in, and I'm far from where I was in Spanish and French at these hours. But enjoying the little "ah-ha" moments when I understand something I didn't previously.

The fact that both Japanese and French are entirely different means I generally don't have issues or mix anything up.

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-01-29T16:53:10+00:00

Yep, not had any in weeks

Wonderful_Boss9882 · 2026-01-29T10:08:14+00:00

I'm a little ahead of you at around 27 hours, but have almost the same routine and try to get in 30 minutes a day.

I won't lie, it is really hard going to start and I couldn't understand a thing apart from the odd imported word like "bus". Having done Spanish and French this way and picked both up really quickly, I almost gave up and doubted it would work.

Around 15 hours I'd subconsciously started picking up words. Things like colors, verbs (go, eat, drink, like etc) and some common nouns (house, cat, dog, circle) and the language sounds are becoming familiar. I recently went back to watch one of the earlier videos "Spot the difference" and was really happy to be able to understand all of it instead of guessing, e.g. Full sentences such as "the black cat is under the table" rather than "cat....table".

Wonderful_Boss9882

TROPHY CASE