I've always found Duolingo too boring and it didn't help me at all.
I was able to learn 7 languages using different routes. I already knew Russian, I've learned English the usual school + moving to the country route, and I've learned Spanish, French, German, Italian and Latin by mostly reading books and watching online videos and movies.
Having bookstores nearby (especially the Strand) with a lot of interesting books in Spanish, French, German and Italian were key for me. I completely switch 100% of all book reading to the language I'm learning.
I would not be able to learn anything without a steady supply of interesting books.
For Spanish, most movies on netflix and disney will have subtitles and dubs.
For French, there's Arte Karambolage and the newer Disney films are available in french.
For German, there's also Arte Karambolage and newer Disney films and 'Dark' on netflix.
For Italian, there's a great youtube channel by Iliana Zodiaco with interesting book discussions and reviews. Again newer Disney plus films have Italian. And italian is just very easy in itself.
Latin is a lot tougher because there's not as many books in it, and they tend to be not as easy. I've only read Caesar's Gallic wars and Winnie the Pooh. And the grammar is hard. I recommend checking out Lingua Latina Per Se, and youtube channels on Latin Grammar (there's one really good one, 'latintutorial'). Still, this is by far my weakest language. I've started Cicero orations against Catiline, but it's tough going!
I didn't learn to speak in any of these because I don't have daily contact with native speakers, but once I do, it will be fairly easy.
At what point do you start reading a book in a new language? Do you already know say 500 words? Otherwise I'd imagine you have to look up almost every word on the page
Depends on the book. I usually used Alice in wonderland, through the looking glass, and wizard of Oz as my first books in these languages, (except latin), and though I don't know the exact starting word count, I think a couple of hundred + familiarity with the book is enough for me. Some other easy and interesting books to consider are Tom Sawyer and The Hobbit, and Peter Pan.
I only know English but am in the middle of studying Latin and I've found that the pain of having to look up works makes them stick in my mind pretty well. Once you can understand a decent number of words you can construct the meaning surprisingly quickly just based on context and the endings of words.
I really recommend interlinear editions for Latin. And also again want to mention Lingua Latina Per Se. If you are ever in NYC there's East Village bookstore that has a lot of interlinear editions in Latin at affordable price. Other than that, you can also get Winnie the pooh in latin on amazon and another edition in english and read them in parallel.
There's also wizard of oz in latin which is a lot longer than Winnie the pooh (and more interesting), but it's hard to find and expensive, alas.
For some languages, there are books written with restricted vocabularies (500 words, 1000 words, 1500 words, etc), called "graded readers."[1]
There are some really nice graded readers out there, with the entire vocabulary defined at the back of the book, and any word outside the restricted vocabulary defined in a footnote on the page. I've even seen editions that come with a matching audio book, so you that you can practice listening as well.
12 Chairs + Golden Calf by Ilf and Petroff; A dog's heart and Master and Margarita by Boulgakoff. I've heard Zosh'enko was also considered very funny at the time, but I'm not sure how well his stuff has aged..
Lol, a simple explanation is always far more likely than an intricately complex one: that censorship is subjective and was enacted by different people with varying tastes and preferences, guided by vague and contradictory directions from above that would shift depending on changes in political direction, membership of the Politburo, etc etc.
I have to disagree a bit, even when I was watching the movie on Soviet TV, when there was nothing else on for weeks or months, I was always bored to tears by 'White Sun of Desert'. To be fair, acting and characters are pretty good, but not very exciting otherwise..
It was just easier to do some kind of a propaganda film. No risk, no reshoots, no script rewrites, just stamp it out and make a little bit of money and a trip to Yugoslavia and a black sea vacation.
My theory is that the elites needed entertainment too. I am judging by the flood of previously unknown art during perestroika. Those books, movies, and the rest took years of work to develop. They didn’t just appear out of thin air after Gorbachev declared glasnost
One of my favorite films too! I saw it first on soviet TV, and found it amazing that all characters seems so human, naturalistic; and the world building is so organic. There are no flaws in this movie, everything just hangs together so well and effortlessly.
What's odd is that there are many instances of odd use of color in descriptions but there is no normal (to us) usage, and from what I've read the same applies to other ancient sources. Honey is green (in Homer), but there's no green trees, green leaves, grass, etc; there is no blue sky or blue sea. The linguistic analysis of when separate colors were introduce into languages also shows they were added at very different times. William Gladstone wasn't very careful in his phrasing when he wrote on the topic and so it from the start got a bit of a reputation of a crazed theory, but there is something odd about the whole thing. I think it's not resolved because serious researches familiar with ancient egyptian and sumerian languages don't find this interesting enough to research it? Perhaps there's too few of them and too many other, more important and unresolved questions?
The obvious question is, do white sharks of similar size flee from Orcas or ones of smaller size? Otherwise, there's nothing surprising here. There's examples of Elephants fleeing from large prides of Lions, Lions fleeing from large packs of hyenas, etc. Similarly a small solitary Orca will likely flee from a group or a single, much larger, white shark.
Why not show a simple map of the room you're in, at least? It's a fairly simple change, but would make the orientation in space and remembering of location and few previous locations much more intuitive.
I was able to learn 7 languages using different routes. I already knew Russian, I've learned English the usual school + moving to the country route, and I've learned Spanish, French, German, Italian and Latin by mostly reading books and watching online videos and movies.
Having bookstores nearby (especially the Strand) with a lot of interesting books in Spanish, French, German and Italian were key for me. I completely switch 100% of all book reading to the language I'm learning.
I would not be able to learn anything without a steady supply of interesting books.
For Spanish, most movies on netflix and disney will have subtitles and dubs.
For French, there's Arte Karambolage and the newer Disney films are available in french.
For German, there's also Arte Karambolage and newer Disney films and 'Dark' on netflix.
For Italian, there's a great youtube channel by Iliana Zodiaco with interesting book discussions and reviews. Again newer Disney plus films have Italian. And italian is just very easy in itself.
Latin is a lot tougher because there's not as many books in it, and they tend to be not as easy. I've only read Caesar's Gallic wars and Winnie the Pooh. And the grammar is hard. I recommend checking out Lingua Latina Per Se, and youtube channels on Latin Grammar (there's one really good one, 'latintutorial'). Still, this is by far my weakest language. I've started Cicero orations against Catiline, but it's tough going!
I didn't learn to speak in any of these because I don't have daily contact with native speakers, but once I do, it will be fairly easy.