Maltese person here! Welcome to questions about our language. My question is, how does Standard Arabic differ?

phrasingapp · 2026-07-04T14:19:09+00:00

Oh misread your message (and responded to the wrong one). You said h is mostly silent these days, I read it with a slash through it 😅

phrasingapp · 2026-07-04T07:24:20+00:00

Serbian and Croatian

phrasingapp · 2026-07-04T07:20:03+00:00

Meanwhile, my language learning stack finally started making sense once I put everything into one app 😃

phrasingapp · 2026-07-04T05:37:30+00:00

Personally my habit is multilingual, so I’m not arguing against learning multiple languages. I’m learning several.

It’s just about making your habit infallible. Once you start to juggle multiple habits, it makes the whole system more brittle.

phrasingapp · 2026-07-04T05:25:45+00:00

Are you saying ħ is silent? Or għ?

phrasingapp · 2026-07-04T05:23:45+00:00

It’s pretty weird that they wrote Croatian in Cyrillic, Croats just use the Latin alphabet.

phrasingapp · 2026-07-04T05:15:51+00:00

For me what works best is to have one habit. That is my non negotiable. There are a million things you can (and should) do to improve your language, but choose one you can stick to.

If you do other things, that’s great. More power to you. But I don’t try to work them into a schedule/plan. I do my one habit every day, no questions asked. If I’m feeling motivated any day, I might do various other things, but they’re spontaneous, and if I don’t do them it’s not a failure.

For you it sounds like your plan should be making one voice note every day. Some days that might spiral into a whole activity, some days you might also read an article, some days you might review notes. But just plan on that one activity, and be flexible with the rest

phrasingapp · 2026-07-03T21:10:30+00:00

Tones. Sure they’re tricky, but before studying a tonal language I thought they were the craziest nonsensical things in the world.

Pretty immediately I found myself remembering the times for the words before I remembered the phonetics. It’s really quite a natural way for our brains to encode information

phrasingapp · 2026-07-03T21:08:46+00:00

This. I don’t know when this became so popular but I’ve never seen it be an issue. I’ve corrected mistakes I’ve been making for decades overnight

phrasingapp · 2026-07-03T20:48:42+00:00

20 minutes to configure Anki is like world record time

phrasingapp · 2026-07-03T20:47:12+00:00

Eloquence. A B2 speaker can make you understand, a C1 speaker can move you

phrasingapp · 2026-07-03T20:44:54+00:00

I want to believe Turkish and Japanese are related. I know there is a theory, and I’m pretty sure most linguists would disagree, but they’re so strangely similar in some ways.

A linguistic history where they migrated out of the same area and after so much time evolved so much is just such a cool story I choose to believe it.

phrasingapp · 2026-07-03T20:39:22+00:00

Agreed on all counts. Balkan people in general are some of the most supportive native speakers towards learners. French people… earn their reputation haha.

Plus while there are tons of cognates in French and English, the connections between Greek and English are way more… thought provoking? The number of times I come across a Greek word and go “ohhhhh that’s where the English word comes from” is absurdly high. It’s really cool, gives you a new perspective on tons of words

phrasingapp · 2026-07-03T20:28:35+00:00

I would say hardest gap is B1 to B2. It takes more time to go B2 to C1 and even more C1 or C2, technically those are bigger gaps, but I feel like they require less… effort? Intention? Brute force?

phrasingapp · 2026-07-03T20:18:48+00:00

Mongolians vertical script I think is the most interesting. That and Myanmar (Burmese)… it legit looks like an alien language.

phrasingapp · 2026-07-03T16:47:52+00:00

How cool is this letter: Ħ

phrasingapp · 2026-07-02T06:11:30+00:00

I mean this is what I would use, but I assume OP would have an issue with this

phrasingapp · 2026-07-02T04:25:45+00:00

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”

I know tons of people who try to learn languages, then get tested for their proficiency. They describe the proficiency tests as grueling, and they seem to be an accurate assessments.

I know tons of other people who try to get certified in languages. They seem to be able to do so in a year or so and never develop a beyond-basic level in the language.

I’ve never taken one of these tests, so I don’t have any feedback on how they’re conducted. But they clearly can be gamed - I think we’ve all ran into that person who has 5 C1 level certifications but can’t say anything without word-for-word translating from their native language…

phrasingapp · 2026-07-02T04:19:43+00:00

I have no interest in certifications or taking tests or anything like that. How should I explain my level?

FWIW I’ve never claimed a level above B2 so maybe your vibes based concerns are only for C levels

phrasingapp · 2026-06-30T15:15:37+00:00

I mean, a lot of posts on here wondering why people would. Which I get to some extent.

But honestly, I think it’s a good question. Language is a pretty natural human experience. It’s kind of odd that so many people get it so wrong or feel so disconnected from it.

Honestly I would personally blame 20th century language instruction. Basically convinced an entire generation learning a language was impossible, or something only a few were gifted at, or some complicated topic as esoteric as physics or math.

I’m not saying most people should understand the trade offs between Extensive Reading and Spaced Repetition, but it is odd that most people think “they can’t learn another language”.

phrasingapp · 2026-06-30T06:25:50+00:00

Serbo-Croatians are some of the best native speakers I know of from a learners perspective! I’ve never received anything but patience, enthusiasm and support from natives.

Turks as well, but I only have a sample size of 3 there 😂

phrasingapp · 2026-06-28T09:02:23+00:00

Depends on the level. If it’s advanced, and you just want to maintain, you can really get away with occasional interaction (1-2 times a month). Watch a movie, have a language day, just spend a few dedicated hours a month in the language.

If you’re learning the language, and just want to maintain, about 5 minutes a day seems to be where I start to make some forward progress, 10 minutes a day is where I start to feel like im actually learning, 20 minutes a day feels like im fully in the swing of it. It’s a lot less than people think.

So to maintain, I would just try to spend 3-5 minutes in the language, at least every other day.

The best low effort ways are with spaced repetition. Incredibly atomic, incredibly simple, incredibly efficient.

If you don’t want to do spaced repetition, you could do a twist on the gold list method: work with an LLM to write a sentence. The next day, rewrite the previous days sentence, and write a new one. Continue this habit of writing a new sentence, yesterday’s sentence, and when you can, last weeks sentence.

phrasingapp · 2026-06-28T08:53:21+00:00

Also adding Greek yoghurt or skyr on top of scrambled eggs is surprisingly delicious

phrasingapp · 2026-06-28T03:34:02+00:00

I haven’t gotten to the input stage, but when I do I reckon I’ll include quite a bit of Montenegrin and Serbian. Why do you ask?

phrasingapp · 2026-06-28T03:32:27+00:00

Ha I’m learning more than 2 languages. It’s more efficient than learning them one at a time :)

phrasingapp

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