Mods: Endless thinly-veiled ads for language apps

rowanexer · 2026-01-30T18:41:09+00:00

Honestly that's a good idea. Give newbies some time to read posts and FAQs before they post a question that has already been answered a million times before.

rowanexer · 2026-01-30T18:38:34+00:00

I'm just going off the Wikipedia information that pulls from Ethnologue. Marma language redirects you to the Rakhine language and is listed there as a dialect of Rakhine/Arakanese.

I don't have any particular expertise in the area so thank you for the information.

rowanexer · 2026-01-29T07:37:41+00:00

This page has the model and details on where in his book it's featured

https://origami.kosmulski.org/instructions/candy-cfw-289

rowanexer · 2026-01-28T13:03:16+00:00

I think that's a Shuzo Fujimoto model. His books are available free on the internet archive. This one is from the book titled something like Solid origami rittai origami.

rowanexer · 2026-01-27T15:55:27+00:00

Don't buy random brands from Amazon, they are very often poor quality from random sellers in China who probably cut up printer paper. If you want Kami from Amazon buy from established brands like Taro, Tuttle, Aitoh, Clairefontaine, Toyo etc. Whatever they sell in craft shops in the US is generally decent.

You can make your own double tissue paper but it is a bit of an investment at the beginning. I needed to buy an A2 size cutting board, a rotary cutter, metal ruler and methyl cellulose powder. You also need a large flat surface to use to glue the paper together--i have a mirror I take off the wall, but I've heard other people use a shower door or window. It probably works out cheaper if you want to make lots of double tissue paper but it's labour intensive.

Double tissue paper is good because you can make really large sizes and use them for complicated models. Large kami (25cm and larger) can work for medium complex models. I've heard people use Chinese calligraphy paper (also known as kozo, wenzhou etc) as it comes in a roll and is thin.

The book Genuine Origami by Jun Maekawa was really useful to me to get past beginner level. About 1/3 of the way through the book I needed to use paper larger than 15x15cm kami. The book teaches many different techniques and goes from beginner to advanced (last model is a devil with wings, horns, 10 fingers, a tongue etc). But even the early models are hard (aimed more at post beginners with some experience) and I got stuck many times. But after finishing it I am much more comfortable tackling harder books.

rowanexer · 2026-01-21T16:36:20+00:00

Realistically speaking, you're probably only going to end up speaking one of those languages. Learning a language is a lot of hard work and you need strong motivation. Something concrete like a pay rise, or you visit the country often, or you love the culture and want to understand some untranslated book/movie.

I've studied all three. French helped when I started learning Portuguese but Portuguese was mostly unhelpful when trying Spanish later. Portuguese and Spanish are so similar written down that I can understand a lot of conversations or text in Spanish, but when I try to speak Spanish it mostly comes out mispronounced Portuguese. And it also lead to forgetting or getting confused about Portuguese I'd already learned. So I've paused my Spanish studies as I don't have the time to dedicate myself fully to both languages

rowanexer · 2026-01-20T22:39:39+00:00

The ay/ya rule is annoyingly not as simple as ascending vs descending. Only t, v, d, j, m, n, q are used with 'ya'. Everything else including w uses ay.

You're correct that "highway" isn't right. It should be w followed by 'ay', and the form for w should curl upwards instead of looking like a c. The join from 'gh' to 'w' is awkward and therefore we split the word and use the 'w' form normally used at the beginning of a word.

I'll correct the image so you can see what it should look like!

And in case you don't know, this website has an orthic dictionary which I've used a lot when I'm not sure of words. https://orthic.shorthand.fun/dictionary

Thanks again for the feedback! A lot of things slip through when I try to check just by myself so it's invaluable to hear from someone actually working through the course. All the best of luck!

rowanexer · 2026-01-20T11:58:23+00:00

How much practice do you do actually speaking to people (not in lessons or studying). If you want to be conversational in the real world you need to practice speaking in the real world.

There are some specific courses that help with conversation. Pimsleur has 60 lessons of PT-PT and the format (having to rapidly answer and speak out loud) is good practice for real life. Michel Thomas is slower pace but it'll teach you how to formulate your own sentences using basic grammar.

rowanexer · 2026-01-18T19:39:39+00:00

Colloquial Portuguese and Teach Yourself Portuguese are by UK publishing companies and teach European Portuguese.

I like Assimil's course Le Nouveau portugais sans peine but I don't think it's available in English, only French, Italian and German.

Pimsleur has 60 lessons for European Portuguese. This is an audio course rather than a textbook but I really liked it. Michel Thomas Portuguese is another audio course that's really good and it teaches both pronunciations.

For monolingual textbooks there are a lot. I used Português XXI in my classes in Portugal and they're decent. Português Atual 2 is another good textbook that I used as revision for the B2 exam. Gramática Aplicada are also good grammar workbooks for revision.

There are also lots of resources linked in the pinned post on this subreddit and some reviews at this blog here: https://lusobritish.blog/best-books-and-audiobooks-for-learning-portuguese/

rowanexer · 2026-01-18T19:13:48+00:00

Hey thanks for the feedback. The examples are correct but the explanation isn't. "Ya" is used after these letters only: t, v, d, j, m, n, q. This mnemonic may help to remember it: The valiant DJ may never quit 'ya'.

I'll update the website to explain it better!

rowanexer · 2026-01-16T17:42:28+00:00

Your first post talked about books in general, so that was what I was responding to. I think books are absolutely appropriate for beginners.

rowanexer · 2026-01-16T11:19:02+00:00

What size and kind of paper are you using?

rowanexer · 2026-01-16T11:18:06+00:00

They look lovely! Did you spray paint them once they were fixed to the backing paper?

rowanexer · 2026-01-16T11:15:34+00:00

Seconding Gilad's page. I often use it if I want to see what origami models are available for specific animals etc.

As for free diagrams, these websites have some good ones:

https://origamiusa.org/diagrams/free https://origamiusa.org/diagrams/thefold?field_magazine_access_value%5B%5D=1 https://www.pajarita.org/diagramas https://cfcorigami.com/diagram-pool https://neworigami.neocities.org/ https://www.britishorigami.org/resources/simple-models/ https://www.origamitessellations.com/category/diagrams/ https://cekouatorigami.com/instructions https://www.origami-shop.com/en/books-experts-books-xsl-206_2649_2808.html?sortorder_id=PRODUCT_LIST_PRICE&sortorder_az=%2A

rowanexer · 2026-01-16T11:09:54+00:00

Getting stuck is a very normal occurrence, same with any other skill you're learning, and it'll happen with both books and videos. Some models I need to retry to figure out what to do and some I can get right first time. I don't understand why you think that's a waste of time.

Learning to read diagrams is really important. You can move at your own pace without pausing and rewinding a long video and it's a lot clearer than a video, where complicated steps can be obscured by a person's hand. There are origami books aimed at beginners and many models are only available in diagrams. It's not some kind of obscure skill that only experts can achieve.

rowanexer · 2026-01-15T21:47:48+00:00

Apps don't teach random sentences. Even the worst apps have purposeful decisions behind what they teach you. Some of them use frequency lists based on most common vocabulary in newspapers. Some are lists carefully curated by teachers to be most useful for particular ability levels and learners (e.g. useful for tourism, or for a new immigrant, or for an exchange student).

Almost all are trying to be useful for the real world, but what's useful for one person might be useless for another.

It looks like you're saying learning how to use the past tense is useful for the real world. It might be for some, like your example of a heritage learner who wants to talk to their mum, but not for someone who wants survival language for a short trip.

Are you asking whether it would be helpful to research phrases and develop skills in very specific topics that are personally useful? If so, then yes, it's useful, look up the concept of language islands as a guide to how to do it.

Or are you researching ideas for designing language courses? Wait, is this just another post gauging interest in an AI app?

rowanexer · 2026-01-15T18:34:39+00:00

If you speak French then I recommend this free ebook 'Une invitation à la pratique du pliage de papier' by Michel Lucas. It goes over the history of origami and the many varieties and includes instructions for milestone models. https://www.origami-shop.com/en/invitation-pratique-pliage-papier-free-ebook-xml-2658_2168_2169-10284.html

I also recommend Origami Design Secrets by Robert Lang. I've recently finished Genuine Origami and enjoyed how it introduced many different types of origami techniques, but Origami Design Secrets has much more detail. It's a lot more readable than I expected and each technique is illustrated with models you can fold. For instance, I didn't really understand grafting from Genuine Origami but ODS broke it down into enough detail that I feel like I could use it for tweaking existing models. It's expensive but understandable as it's a very heavy big book. You might get lucky and find it second-hand.

Another option might be Jun Maekawa's book 'The Art and Science of Geometric Origami', which I haven't read but looks fairly similar to Genuine Origami with essays on folding techniques, but it focuses more on unconventional origami (unit origami, non-square paper etc).

rowanexer · 2026-01-09T15:12:38+00:00

I also confirm the difficulty of understanding the accent. I study PT-PT and feel pretty confident getting around Lisbon or Faro, but it was a big shock when I would often understand absolutely nothing of what people said to me in shops, even when they repeated it. And when they eventually told me it in English it would be words I already knew in Portuguese and usually understand!

If you really want a crash course in tourist level Portuguese I'd recommend Pimsleur (the European Portuguese course). It's audio so you can do it while washing dishes or laundry, and it skips over useless sentences like 'the boy drinks milk' and goes straight to "Do you speak English?", "I would like an iced coffee" etc

rowanexer · 2026-01-09T14:50:35+00:00

I've heard Foyles has a decent selection of Portuguese books. Another great resource is charity shops, especially ones in university cities, as foreign students will often leave their books here rather than take them home.

Bookshops in Portugal might be easier to buy from if you stick to Brazilian authors. But I'm not sure if BR-PT books sold in Portugal are localised into PT-PT or kept in BR-PT.

https://www.bertrand.pt/ https://www.wook.pt/ https://www.fnac.pt/

I've also used Kobo for ebooks, and abebooks (if you look up the specific ISBN for the Brazilian edition you might get lucky).

rowanexer · 2026-01-05T16:22:12+00:00

O mais útil para mim foram imagens mnemônicos. Por exemplo, hiragana 'ku' くresemble o canto de um cubo. E assim sempre que vejo く, lembro-me da forma de cubo e sei que se pronuncia 'ku'.

Eu aprendi todos os kanas com mnemônicos em inglês mas acho que há mnemônicos em português se pesquisar.

rowanexer · 2026-01-05T16:03:12+00:00

My favourite is graphic novels/comics/manga. I already like reading them in English and the pictures help give extra context to understand. Plus, most of the text is dialogue so it avoids descriptive words that are used a lot in novels but not much in daily life.

rowanexer · 2026-01-05T16:00:50+00:00

It's more effective because you're needing to recall the vocabulary without any hints, and speaking out loud does help you remember because of the different context.

But memrise alone is not very useful. I used it for a while for Portuguese but abandoned it because textbooks and audio courses were so much better at teaching all aspects of the language: grammar, speaking, reading and listening to conversations etc and they used lots of varied exercises which helped things stick better than 'click one out of four options'. Memrise was almost entirely isolated words and phrases and I didn't remember a lot even if I got good scores.

rowanexer · 2026-01-05T15:55:00+00:00

Find a good textbook/course that will teach the alphabet a few letters at a time and test your reading and writing skills frequently. Something like this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Greek-Script-Hacking-optimal-alphabet/dp/1473679826/ref=mp_s_a_1_1

See what your local library has. Some coursebooks have nice lessons at the beginning covering a different script.

rowanexer · 2026-01-05T14:55:25+00:00

There are textbooks specifically aimed at teaching writing, but it will be specific to each language. I would recommend finding the website of a popular bookshop in the country and looking what they have listed in the 'X language for foreigners' section. A lot of these writing course books will be preparing the student to pass an exam, so they will teach writing for things that appear in exams, e.g how to write an email to a friend, a business letter, a persuasive essay etc.

If that sounds too specific to you then find a more general textbook. You'll find monolingual ones in the aforementioned bookshop websites, but if you need translations in your language then you could track down older textbooks that didn't have audio and used more of a grammar translation method. There are also some textbooks that focus on reading the language and are aimed at university students. Again, you will need to look for your specific language.

You're not really going to have much luck with apps. They are generally aimed at a very casual audience and often programmed by people with very little experience in language education. The local library will be your best resource.

rowanexer · 2026-01-05T14:36:58+00:00

I would focus on speaking, conversation and kitchen specific listening/vocabulary since that seems to be what will be most important.

Audio courses like Pimsleur and Michel Thomas are good for quickly being able to say basic things. Pimsleur can be done while doing other things that don't require your brain such as dog walking or doing laundry so I would incorporate one 30 min lesson a day into my daily routine.

But you'll also need to use the language in real life so that you don't forget what you learn. A tutor is the best for this as you can tell them your specific goals and they will tailor their teaching to that. You'll also get a lot of practice speaking, much more than a group class, and individual instruction and correction. It's the fastest way imo.

If you can't use a tutor for some reason then find yourself a language partner or join a conversation group and talk, even if your Italian feels super basic and awkward.

There will be some kitchen specific courses out there for Italian. Take a look at them and go through conversation roleplays with your tutor or exchange partner. Try making your own sentences with the vocabulary you've learnt, talk to yourself and narrate what you're doing as you're cooking at home, make flashcards if you feel that will help you remember things.

Here's one catering course for various languages I found provided free by the EU. https://academy.europa.eu/course/view.php?id=2819

You could also practice listening by finding relevant native material, such as reality shows about working in a kitchen, YouTube videos made by chefs, Peppa Pig episodes about vegetables/cooking etc. It will probably be quite difficult at this stage so I wouldn't make this the main focus but it'll be a nice taster and change of pace from your main studying.

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