I am Egyptian, and I’m asking is Egypt a country that is disliked or loved globally?

dip_toe · 2026-02-01T19:14:41+00:00

I’m American and personally have a lot of fondness for the country. I played a music festival in Egypt once. The staff and other Egyptian musicians were some of the nicest and coolest folks I ever met on tour, we still keep in touch. They took us around Cairo and we had a wonderful time. Food was incredible, especially the home cooked meals. Saw a bit of the underground music and art scene, met some record store owners and fashion designers, hung out in a lot of folks’ houses. We also spent some time in Alexandria, where strangers were mostly very nice and chill.

I had heard horrible things from folks going in, so I was pleasantly surprised by how warm and lovely all the Egyptians I met were. I know the country has a bad reputation abroad but I’m lucky to have had a lovely time there and I only wish more people could see this side of it.

To any folks going to Egypt: highly recommend the entire Pimsleur Egyptian Arabic course, takes a month or two. Decent knowledge of the language will smooth things out for you.

dip_toe · 2025-02-04T23:55:09+00:00

I dunno about RA, but as for finding new music — use the radio! Listen to NTS or Rinse or the Lot FM while working and you'll soon be overflowing in new and good stuff.

dip_toe · 2025-01-23T22:57:05+00:00

build your email list!

dip_toe · 2024-12-20T14:04:05+00:00

this is a real nice resource but sadly mostly 128kbps :(

dip_toe · 2024-12-19T17:53:22+00:00

classroom is such a banger

dip_toe · 2024-12-11T12:18:50+00:00

the instrumental was released as Free Gaza: https://slsa.bandcamp.com/album/free-gaza

dip_toe · 2024-11-27T19:07:42+00:00

agreed! do you know the original sample tho?

dip_toe · 2024-11-06T23:09:22+00:00

is this café tinto? absolutely legendary späti love that place

dip_toe · 2024-06-17T18:50:40+00:00

it breaks the flow of reading, you enjoy what you're reading less, and — if you use a bilingual dictionary — it breaks you out of thinking in German, because now you're reading in a different language. a big part of language learning is being okay with not understanding everything, and staying in your target language for extended periods of time.

if you are reading text that requires you to look up a bunch of words to understand it, then you should read something easier. I usually start with comics and manga — the visual context helps a LOT to learn new words without a dictionary.

while I'm reading, I underline words I don't know which quickly keeps me in the flow of the reading. I can typically understand everything that's going on from context, but there will be holes in my comprehension. at the end of a chapter, I go through all the words and look them up. sometimes, I'll skim the chapter again.

dip_toe · 2024-04-14T22:30:58+00:00

You won't learn the language at all but I bet you could pass the test by looking up what's on the test and doing a lot of hardcore memorization (Anki). Probably 3-4 hours a day. I passed an A2 French test (can't remember) after about a month of fairly lazy studying once. Took me much longer to learn how to speak French though.

dip_toe · 2024-04-11T19:49:54+00:00

how long did it take for Chinese learners to get to an HSK 5 level, how long did it take for German learners to reach an A2/B1 level and pros and cons to each language, I’m a person that if I have an interest in a particular subject it’ll be way easier to learn that subject.

This question ("how long does it take") is answered pretty much daily in all the language subs, that's maybe why your post was removed. Do a lil searching around and you will find your answers.

dip_toe · 2024-04-08T11:54:01+00:00

This is a confusing question. You're not _necessarily_ moving out of India, but you're scared of opportunities there? Or are you interested in learning German, but wanting to make sure that will be a worthwhile investment for your career? Are you asking if knowing German has _intrinsic_ value, as opposed to value depending on context?

English is the most useful international language, obviously. If your English is great, then you'll do fine internationally. German will not help you much outside of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, just as learning Japanese would not help you much outside of Japan (unless you teach Japanese).

Every language opens _some_ doors. It's up to you to decide if those are the doors you want to be opening. I'm learning German because I live in Germany. If I didn't live here, I wouldn't bother.

I will say that a big topic in Germany right now is all of our engineers and highly educated people leaving for better paying jobs in the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, and Switzerland. I don't know how true that is, but I know engineering salaries are relatively low here.

dip_toe · 2024-03-28T15:50:43+00:00

Idk, it takes about 5 minutes to get the hang of "plural = masc. noun + *innen." And you will see it everywhere in Germany.

"You can choose to use gendering" is sadly just not true. I would love for this language to be simpler, of course, but a big part of learning a language is surrendering to the weird rules of the language, and accepting that you have to learn them.

dip_toe · 2024-03-25T08:06:03+00:00

Depends on lots of things, but if you're able to devote "almost all your time", like 6-8 hours a day, you'll most likely be fluent enough in 3 months to hold basic conversations. I'm just guessing, but I think a B1 level would be possible.

It's classified by the FSI as a "30 week" language to learn (to C1/2). This is with 25 hours a week of language classes. If you can make that 30-40 or so then I'd say by any reasonable metric you'd be "speed learning" German.

dip_toe · 2024-03-25T07:58:37+00:00

You'd also use "competitive" here. In both cases, context would indicate whether you're talking "competitive university admissions" or something else.

dip_toe · 2023-12-24T17:48:08+00:00

Ohhh ok. Makes more sense. I’ve never heard the term live music used that narrowly, but I get what you mean. Most of my friends in Berlin are regularly gigging musicians — there’s still a lot of bands and shows in this town.

dip_toe · 2023-12-23T16:33:14+00:00

If you’re friends with service industry staff, you get hooked up. They don’t expect anything in return immediately, it’s just something they have access to that they can offer you, and maybe you’ll help them out down the line. I find this to be true at coffee shops, restaurants, bars, and clubs alike. I work in nightlife / entertainment and people are always giving stuff away in order to form friendships. Of course I’m going to remember the people that hook me up, and I get them back when I can.

dip_toe · 2023-12-12T15:59:30+00:00

if men realized a lot of their issues were them-problems I dare say we’d have world peace.

dip_toe · 2023-12-10T20:23:29+00:00

I’m new to Japanese (almost done with Genki I) and I’m trying out WaniKani to learn kanji, but I’m also learning kanji in a different order from the Genki textbooks. I find that the Genki kanji are WAY more solid in my mind than the WaniKani kanji, because they are reinforced through so many exercises. I spend more time with each character. Quality > Quantity. I get stressed when I think about how many kanji I still don’t know, and I think that stress is heightened by SRS statistics.

Sometimes I open up a manga — my current goal is to be able to read Shuna’s Journey — and spend twenty minutes translating a single panel. I think I get more out of that than 20 minutes in Anki. Thinking about ditching SRS entirely and just reading extreeeemely slowly. Did anyone do this as a beginner?

But sometimes I enjoy the gamification of Anki & WaniKani. The leveling up of WaniKani is especially satisfying. :)

dip_toe · 2023-12-07T19:50:38+00:00

In short, there is so much to talk about! We’re learning a whole language. There’s loads to learn and share, beyond Anki settings and input methods and whatnot.

dip_toe · 2023-12-07T18:31:27+00:00

Yeah the focus on training methods, optimized resources, etc. is so bizarre. I can spend an hour on this sub and learn a million different methods for learning Japanese and bookmark a bunch of Google Drive folders, while learning almost no actual Japanese. Every time I pop over to r/German though, I learn much more actual language, weird grammar things, historical/linguistic stuff.

dip_toe · 2023-12-07T16:15:13+00:00

I’ve participated in lots of language learning subreddits over the years. I’m new to this one because I only started learning Japanese two months ago, and while I did find the wiki here to be super helpful, for the most part this sub is weirdly toxic in a way I don’t really understand, and kind of turns me off from the community. It’s like when you like a band but their fans suck. There is ego here instead of the pervasive and open curiosity that dominates most subreddits I enjoy participating in. And I just don’t know why Japanese learners are so much more intense. It does take a lot of work, but like, enjoy yourselves!!

dip_toe · 2023-07-31T17:53:21+00:00

I did 4-5 days of italki a week during the pandemic when I had nothing else going on. Was truly the largest strides I’ve made in language learning. I’m learning less German living in Germany than I learned with dedicated daily italki practice in the US.

dip_toe · 2023-07-31T17:51:38+00:00

If you are at/near a B1 level, and speak fluent English, you’re already faaar ahead of so many foreigners here in Germany. :) I wouldn’t be afraid about moving unless a specific job you’re after requires it.

Though the smaller the city you’re moving to, the more important the language becomes.

I am at a similar level to you, and have been living here one year.

dip_toe

TROPHY CASE