I want to learn a Celtic language

I think I just have a fascination with murder mystery because my Grandma who I live with watches a lot of murder mystery and crime shows, so it interests me. Could I write a murder mystery, no, I'm not very creative when it comes to writing. Non-fiction writing I can do, fiction I can't.

I like your idea of how every character but one speaks English while the other speaks only German, it'd make for an interesting game.

Just a random thought/post, lately for the past year or so I've been having dreams where I see a foreign language usually Spanish or German, or what look like them (the 2 languages that I've studied or am currently studying), in my dream I can understand the languages (who knows if the words are even real words), but when I wake up I go back to not understanding either language. But last night I had a dream where I was reading either Chinese or Japanese but with English alphabet letters, it was weird. I don't know if you can relate to this or not but it's interesting to see other languages in my dreams even if I don't know whether or not I'm even seeing real words.

Not really. To be honest, the last few dreams I had (quite a long time ago, actually) were so upsetting that I'd rather not remember any dreams at all, whether featuring a language, or not... Although I could swear I read somewhere that during sleep the verbal part of our brain turns off, or something like that, making it impossible for you to see real written language... Oh, yeah... Or rather, I might be completely making this up, but I think that's one of the signs for people who can have lucid dreams... Yeah, this page goes more into detail: https://www.quora.com/Why-cant-you-r...-a-lucid-dream

On the topic of Facebook, well, I'm not a member (although I am on the local competitor)... But can't you, maybe, add German as a language that you speak, and it would get that it doesn't have to translate it for you? Or would that be too suspicious? I mean, for people who visit your page.

If all else fails, and, well, if you're prepared to go this far, I'm sure you could set your whole Facebook to German... although I guess that would mean that your English friends' posts would get translated to German... Yeah, the first idea first, then this maybe as an extra. I don't know if I've mentioned it in this thread, but I've got my social networks, and Google, in Polish (so in addition it looks first for results in Polish, no matter if I actually searched in English, but at least Polish Wikipedia almost never disappoints).

Okay, if nothing else, I'm using flashcards for Welsh. And I can't recommend them more... Not Anki, though, (by which most everyone seems to swear)... That one drove me crazy and away from flashcards. I use Mnemosyne personally, although I think I shouldn't impose my choice, since I don't want mine imposed... I guess the least I can do is show that there is choice.

Well, I got burnt out with Anki and stopped using flashcards entirely. But I've relearned their value, in the course of having to look up some basic words every few months when writing in my diary (basically grocery items, that I buy every few months).

The dream thing was.just more of a random post/thought, that is for the website link. And with Facebook, you can change the language, but everything would be in German, and I wouldn't know the language well enough to set it back to English, plus it would translate everything to German from other language, not just English. No one would know though whether or not I changed the language unless I told.them. A random language you can set your Facebook page too is Pirate, apparent it turns everything into a the way a pirate would talk, I tried it, it's English but how pirate would speak. It was interesting.

At my Russian Facebook knockoff I can put which languages I speak. Although I guess it's more in the category of random trivia about me, not anything useful (I don't think that site can translate things).

I would have thought Facebook would be more sophisticated. I mean, Google (a comparable size coroporation, if nothing else) is very accomodating in this sense... I mean, there's no option to turn off translation?

I haven't tried flashcards yet, I know for Spanish, this was before smartphones really became popular, 2008-2010 is when I took Spanish, we had to make our own flashcards, they helped, but they got destroyed after I spilled water on them. I should make some with some basic German words, like the words for "the" (though there are a lot), "you" etc. I can't really fit anymore apps on my phone because I'm running out of storage, had to delete songs just to get more storage. Then I can get more notebooks to write down different words and their translations, I still have to get more books though, and possibly a second different dictionary just in case there are words in that one that aren't in the one I have. I just wish they sold large print dictionaries because I am blind and even with my reading glasses (which are really powerful), I still can't really see the small print. At least there is Google translate for translations of words that may not be in a dictionary, plus the websites you linked me to.

With Facebook, things will automatically translate, you can't turn it off, some things don't automatically translate so I just click on the translation. It also no longer tells you what language it is being translated from, it just says "rate this translation", Facebook has a habit of fixing what isn't broken, I'm glad that there is a translation feature, but wish I could always see the original before translating the post.

You young people these days and your smartphones. I just had an opportunity to look at Facebook on desktop (a friend's account) and there everything is in order. I suppose things are different on smartphones.

Yeah, flashcards are also... oh, yeah, not a desktop but a laptop, to be precise. I use flashcards on my laptop. Deleted the smartphone app. It doesn't work for me when I look at the question and then just flip to the translation word. If I forget a word I have to look at the context, and I prefer to google it anew for new examples. Otherwise it eventually becomes a meaningless and useless sequence of letters. This need makes the smartphone app very cumbersome.

I don't know if there's a unifying cause with all this, that you have to get physical books and dictionaries. I mean, with an online dictionary (like Glosbe) the number of words is much bigger than anything in print, endless examples, and you can set the font size (or zoom, I guess) to anything you want... Oh, and it's free!

I mean, there was a need to save money in our conversation, right? Today I looked at a Welsh textbook for around $15, found its approach and exercises unbearably boring (plus you have to buy audio materials separately), and I think I'm going to stick with free websites.

Yeah, smartphone apps can be weird, I did find a German/English dictionary app which if you typed in a word in German or English it would give you the translation and a bunch of examples of uses for the word, well sentences using the word, I forgot what the app is called though, I'll have to look for it again. With books, I just like something tangible that I can read, plus I did find on Amazon books for grammar, verbs, pronouns (I think, I'll have to look again at that one), and a bunch of books with short stories that you can read in German (though it says for beginners I don't think it's for the absolute beginner, so I'll wait on that). But the books I can get either when I do have money or I can ask my Dad to buy some for me.

My problem will be memorizing everything, I can memorize a price of sheet music no problem sometimes within a day I'll have the music memorized, but words I have more difficulty retaining, I don't know exactly why that is, but that is how it is for me, bit I think the more I practice the better I'll get with memorizing the words and retaining them, it'll just be a little more difficult than sheet music.

I think it's lovely that you want to learn a Celtic language. A few years ago I was in Ireland, which I completely adored, and all of the signs are in English and in Celtic. Celtic languages are just beautiful.

Well, from my understanding, in music the brain travels down well-worn phrasal passages, so to say, and it's also a source of innate satisfaction for our brain, so it's no wonder... But with foreign languages, the remembering is the worst with completely strange words and rules... Which is why I put so much emphasis on finding familiar context (familiar in the sense that I should mostly know all the other words)... And of course, the sound, because the part of the brain that we've trained to recognize squiggles on the page has been doing it for a very short time, evolutionarily speaking, whereas the vocal language region is possibly 100,000s years old... I actually feel that hearing the sounds of a foreign language I'm studying is innately satisfying, kind of like with music.

Except they have alien grammar and phonetics... I kind of underestimated those. "Well, they're a branch of the Indo-European family," I thought, "they can't be that different." Except according to some sources they split off just after coming out of Iran, whenever that was... so, I mean, I'm looking for cognates and honestly, not finding any, apart from obvious borrowings from English. Oh, yeah, "cat" - "cath", I guess.

I'm on Amazon, browsing various books, and one unfortunate consequence of my increased familiarity with Welsh is that fantasy books sound increasingly false. I guess a lot of authors consider Welsh-like words for their fantasy names etc. But I know they don't pronounce them as they are "supposed" to be. And that kind of kills my immersion. I mean, when the very elves to whom the language of those names is supposed to be native, don't know how to pronounce it... Er, how does that work?

And also I'm adding another textbook for 30 to 40 $ to my wishlist... in the hopes that I suddenly get rich? I mean, unlikely... I guess maybe one day I'll be able to look at the sample and see that I don't need that anymore.

I think listening to the songs I listen too in German and then looking up the translations of the lyrics, or finding videos with German speaking and English subtitles, maybe that will help with learning words, and maybe it'll help my brain learn these words faster as I also practice reading words as well. I'm just thinking of ways of making myself memorize and retain things easier. I know the best way to learn a language is to speak it, but also I'd like to learn grammar rules and.how to make sentences and such.

I'm hoping the books I found for German learning have correct translations, especially when I get to the level.of being able to read beginner short stories (one book of 100 short stories has some English translations to help). I have about 5-8 books bookmarked on my web browser to buy when I can or ask my Dad to get when he has money.

Sucks that you're not finding what you want or need on Amazon though.

There's this great thing here in Russia, called "the Ilya Frank method"... It's sort of... well, the German (but it's for many different languages) text is separated into paragraphs, first you get the text with inline commentary (translations and explanations) in parentheses, then the same paragraph is repeated without the commentary. I got several books for my mother, well, mostly two collections of jokes...

I don't know, maybe the same thing is in your books, or maybe it exists in the English-speaking world. I just think it's a better idea than simple parallel texts.

Anyway, I'm actually pretty much certain that I'm not going to find what I need in Welsh. So far there's been two paths to language for me - via very specific genres of books (optimistic fantasy and historical fiction - make of that what you will), and very specific genres of Youtube videos (gaming - although I'm much less enthusiastic there than I used to be - and some others, like history popularization). Welsh language is in no state to provide any of those, really...

I started off with this knowledge, but it has turned out more demotivating that I expected...

A completely ancient (by modern standards) video about German which Youtube randomly suggested to me: Might be interesting (it was to me).

I don't think we have a similar method like the one you describe, at least I've never heard of it. It does seem like it might be a good method though. The one book I do have so far on learning German will describe things like telling you the translations of things, but it has more descriptions in English than teaching you things then translating them (I don't think what I said makes sense, but that's the only way I can describe it), one word wasn't even translated, just used as an example, I think it was "gesehen" or something like that, so I had to look up the translation. I haven't read the whole book yet, but I do wonder how much I'll learn from it.

Thanks for the link, I saved it to watch later.

So I like to write things down longhand, and yesterday I saw a row of suitable exercises on the website I use to learn Welsh, so opened a new notebook and picked up a pen... I don't know what it is, but it kind of made me feel more connected to the language, in a way that typing doesn't. I really think that's going to have to be my go-to for learning, together with flashcards... Although it may be particular to me, because I suspect myself to be secretly dysgraphic, since I constantly mess up and have to really concentrate when I'm writing, which probably contributes to retention.

I don't know which would be easier for me, typing or writing in a notebook. My only issue with writing is having a hard time reading my own handwriting because of my vision. But for certain things I will probably have to write in a notebook since the only keyboard I have that I can write in German is my phone keyboard. Maybe I'll retain something easier if I'm physically writing it out rather than typing, kind of like with memorizing music, playing it helps to memorize it. I don't know just thinking here.

On the other hand, in writing it's up to you how legible you want to make it (and the capacity of the medium). Get a thick bright pen and write in big capital letters (all-caps, so to say)... Maybe I should, too. I've tried two types of pen, and they both have been a measurable counter-argument to the whole business. Or maybe it's the notebooks, who knows. I don't want to also have to buy expensive pens, I go through them pretty fast.

In other news, I began studying Dutch about a year ago, a few months before Polish, and still can barely understand any speech apart from educational videos (comparing to Polish, in which I often find myself feeling almost like a native speaker... or at least listener). To be honest, I kind of gave up, but suddenly Youtube suggested a video from a show which, if I'm not horribly deceived, is similar to John Oliver, but instead of encompassing the whole world, manages to derive most of its material from the tiny Netherlands. Maybe there is still hope.

Oh, I also wanted to say, that all things considered, any foreign language is by far not the hardest thing I've tried to learn in my life. I mean, I've had some trouble with game development lately, and was pretty hopeless yesterday. The lows in foreign languages are nothing compared to game development and programming.

I don't know if that motivates you. I was just struck with a realization, that at least from my perspective, if there's something that takes genius-level intelligence and memory, foreign languages are not it. They're almost entirely a skill that you master sooner or later through repetition.

I have some bright colorful pens, pink, blue (two shades of blue), and purple, I also have a black one (though I don't know if that one works or not). With my particular vision impairment seeing bright colors can throw me off a little with writing, though I can get a darker blue and red pens, I buy ones that are a little more expensive because the color quality is a little better than the cheap ones (for me at least), also I'm noticing with German at least on Duolingo is that some words the first letter is capitalized while other words they aren't, so writing in all caps may not be a good idea with German. I will just have to write slower to make it more clear to me.

I read an article last night about the 5 easiest languages for English speakers to learn, they are Swedish, Dutch, Norwegian, Spanish, and Portuguese. For Dutch it said like you mentioned like you said that it is like a go between English and German. Me I went straight for German, but that's because that is where my interest lies language wise, though I may check out Dutch to see if I can pick anything up and see how it is similar to English. Spanish being on the list didn't surprise me, it is a common language spoken here in the U.S. besides English. But Swedish and Norwegian surprised me as I thought those world be hard languages to learn, I don't know because I don't really have interest in those two languages (though I do have a great-great Grandmother who immigrated to the U.S. from Norway). I thought it was an interesting article.

I'm hoping learning a language gets easier as I go along, right now since I'm at the very beginning I feel like I'll never learn a language, but I know it takes practice, I just have to stay motivated.

Speaking of German capitalization, that video I share, I found it interesting that the guy said there were talks about reforming German spelling to be more in line with other European languages (that is, only capitalizing proper names and the first word of a sentence)... That was almost 10 years ago, and I haven't heard anything about that... Curious.

It is certainly somewhat irritating when you speak multiple languages (non-German languages, I probably should say). It's one thing to switch the vocabulary and another to remember a tiny spelling quirk... Although now that I think about it, English (and every language to varying extents) has things like that, what with capitalizing months and days of the week... And then don't get me started on punctuation (and decimals), which every language has its own rules about, apart from the period.

I can't speak for Norvegian and Swedish either, except that they are, of course, relatives of English. I would even go so far as to say "close relatives" after my acquaintance with Welsh, which is also considered a relative, but relatively to that, yeah... And I also looked at Norvegian and Swedish while trying to dissuade myself from Welsh. I'm subscribed to a professor of Old Norse on Youtube, and at least judging by his pronunciation, that was an absolutely mellifluous language, in my opinion. Unfortunately, Norvegian and Swedish, while being its descendants, haven't preserved the qualities that are important to me (mostly the "th" sound, to be honest).

You know, I've been looking at your signature... Would you be interested in me correcting the translation a bit, or do you want to wait until you can figure it out on your own?

Also, I've kind of had an interest in a text-only language-learning game thing emerge out of nowhere. Except my tool of choice in things like that is Java. I don't know if you have any knowledge or opinion about that, but, as a regular person, I suppose, what's your relationship with Java on PC? Like, do you have it installed? I'm just wondering if I should bother with that, or study up on Android development (which kind of runs on the same platform, so it shouldn't be terribly different).