All these people start with some variation of “the way you were taught languages in school is bad and doesn’t work”

Which is true. However, if that hasn’t occurred to someone yet and this sounds like a new concept to them then they’re more likely to listen wide-eyed to this person opening this new world of possibilities to them and get coerced into buying an e-book.

I know this because I was that person when I first started in this hobby.

When I was sixteen I got scammed into spending part of my tiny allowance on Benny Lewis’ Fluent in 3 Months book which is full of bad information. I don’t trust like that anymore. Everybody in this space is trying to sell you something.

If you’re new to the language learning space here’s what you’ve gotta know.

• It’s a myth that adults can’t learn languages as well as children.
• Any method you use for study is probably fine. Even not studying is fine if you can find videos or tutors that’ll help you understand. Just get some foundations into your head.
• The most important thing at any level is to listen to and read the language a lot. Even if you don’t understand all of it. Get input.
• The second most important thing is to do what’s fun for you and what gets you to keep going. The correct method is the one that keeps you learning.
• Focus on what’s right for your goals. People will tell you that this or that is more important and you shouldn’t waste your time on “useless” things but they’re not you. If your only goal is to watch fantasy anime in Japanese then looking up the word for dragon will probably be useful for you and you might never need to practice speaking. If you’re unexpectedly moving to Japan next week, looking up how to order at a restaurant is probably more relevant to your life.
• It’s hard. It’s also incredibly worthwhile. Just try to have fun. Being tired is normal. Taking a long time is normal. You still have the same mechanism in your brain now that let you learn your first language as a baby. You’ll be okay.

Personally I hate grammar and find that studying it in depth hasn’t helped me much at all. For me just generally being a bit familiar with the basics is enough.

However, if doing grammar drills is what keeps you learning and you love doing it, then that’s the right path for you. As I said above, the correct method is the one that keeps you learning.

And something else I forgot to mention in my list. A lot of those videos where people are claiming to be fluent in 10+ languages are either fake or greatly exaggerated. A lot of so-called hyper polyglots just count languages they’ve barely dabbled in and rely on teleprompters and extremely basic stuff you’d learn from a tourist phrasebook to trick people who don’t speak the language into thinking they’re good at it so they can sell you something.

There’s very few people in this world that’ve learned that many languages to a comfortable level and the ones that have will generally be honest with you about how rusty or bad some of their languages are and be honest with you about how much time it actually takes.

More ways to celebrate Madoka Timeline Reset Day:

• Plaster your walls with hundreds of articles about Walpurgisnacht
• Research fun DIY recipes for building your own explosives
• Stare longingly at your doomed yuri crush while holding a dead animal
• Rent out the most avant-garde, postmodern apartment in your city and hang a giant pendulum from the ceiling
• Rewrite the laws of space and time that dictate our understanding of the universe
• Get lasik eye surgery

[id: a calendar emphasizing the 16th of the month and tags saying “celebrate by switching up your hairstyle or stealing from the military” /end id]

this post is still good even without the glitch that’s how good this post is

for those who forgot about the hellhole that was the 2015 tumblr glitch:

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I'm really not apologetic with this hard stance, either. I'm very firm on this, too. My art has already been used, twice now by people who did not ask my permission, so they could "enhance it" with Gen AI. I really see nothing good coming from generative AI except poor excuses for laziness and glorified search engines that don't work.

This is an important time to make the distinction between generative and analytical AI. Analytical AI is what AI is supposed to be for. It’s all the boring stuff like analyzing data for patterns. For example, you probably heard about that AI that was designed to tell apart bear claws from croissants for a bakery that is now being used to detect cancer cells with greater accuracy than human doctors. That’s an analytical AI, while everything mentioned in the post above is generative AI. (Which sucks!)