I want to learn a Celtic language

I've seen the word gern(e) before in Duolingo, so I knew it could be used as a word for "like" (though it isn't actually translating to that when I put it into translate).

I just meant that it'll be easier to pronounce words when I learn what the alphabet spunds like, obviously it won't have letters for every sound (like in English each letter has a pronunciation, but that doesn't account for how some words are pronounced with those letters). But I will focus on how the words are pronounced more so than individual letters.

Well isn't that confusing, especially since we don't do that in English, it'll be interesting when I come across it and have to translate a sentence like that. Now it may not be as confusing since you explained it here.

I think I've been making some pretty important... recognitions... Well, I've recognized some things. Based on studying Polish for a little less than a year.

Well, of course it must be stressed that I had a serious advantage in it being pretty closely related to my native Russian.

That aside, so I've been using flashcards, and found several very ineffective approaches. Like I've mentioned, foreign word on one side, translation on the other - doesn't work (for me). My brain seems to stick to the information that it already knows - the words of the translation - and creates barely any long-lasting associations for the foreign word... Then I tried to also leave the other side blank. That wasn't great...

Anyway, I think I know what's going on. Our brain needs associations to remember things, and I think the best way to remember a word is in a vivid context. So I've been writing more or less vivid example sentences on the other side of my flashcards... The problem with this is, that it only works at later stages of studying, because you need to know the other words in the example sentences for it to be memorable, instead of just a mess of unfamiliar symbol combinations.

This makes me think that flashcards might not be particularly useful when you're a beginner. And like I've said before, it's best to just read a lot and expose yourself to the language, and you're going to come across the most important words often enough to remember them naturally.

The problem with this, for me, is, well, Welsh. Specifically, I go to Amazon, there's either books for beginners at 10 bucks for 50 pages (which might not necessarily be a rip-off at this point... but they're also really boring, from what I've been able to tell). Or, inexplicably, books for $60-80. I don't know what they're about, I didn't even try to look inside. (Not to mention that even if there were reasonable offers, I might still not have the funds.)

So it's pretty hard for me to learn by reading a lot... Well, I've found a few free stories for learners. And there's also the Welsh Wikipedia. But compare that to my experience with Polish - reading the Witcher stories, full of action and humor (and often more negative things). I felt really motivated to come back to it every day. Whereas, with Welsh, well, there's just my obsessive learning instinct... And it's not inexhaustible.

The only thing I could possibly look forward to with Welsh is its folklore in the form of a medieval poem, I believe, called "Mabinogion". But, it's in an old version of Welsh, and I've already read an English translation of it, which wasn't actually particularly exciting... And I mention it only because I find the idea of medieval poetry and folklore charming and alluring (although the actual execution often leaves a lot to be desired).

Right now I'm not going to make flashcards as I don't know enough words to actually make them, especially useful words. Since I'm still a beginner, I need to learn more words before I can even think of making flashcards. I did make flashcards when I took Spanish in school, but can't remember if they helped or not. They ended up getting ruined after I spilled water on them.

Right now I'm on how to pronounce words and letters, it'll take getting some use to the different sounds of letters in the German alphabet, and different pronunciations of say vowels (what I worked on today). And it's going to take time actually saying words out loud and pronouncing them correctly and how to do things placement and mouth movements to pronounce the word(s) correctly. I actually had a dream I was trying to say "nicht" and it wasn't coming out right no matter how much I tried. Right now in my head I can pronounce it, but it may be different saying it out loud. I'm also afraid of saying words out loud because of being embarrassed when I make a mistake.

Also I got lucky being able to find a couple cheap books on learning German on Amazon, mine I think cost about $15 or around that area atleast.

Music to my ears, and a real pleasure to meet a fellow connoisseur of placement and mouth movement!

Although I really am fascinated by the way the voice apparatus functions in different languages and accent, for whatever reason. I think maybe it's because it's kind of the holy grail of language learning - to attain the native accent... Even though I probably would never use it.

I've got a kind of weird division in my mind - I feel that German is close to American English, while French - to British English... Well, to be fair, I should also mention the varieties of German and French, but those would be the one that are normally taught. Oh, yeah, and there's, of course, no one American or British English...

Anyway, why I make this comparison is that it seems that... on the average... German and American speakers make relatively little effort in comparison to the other group. Of course, that's also relative... I mean, okay, it basically all comes down to how wide you flap your lips when you make vowels. That's a weird idea that I have.

A curious factoid I learned today is that in Luxembourg people generally speak the Luxembourgish language (related to German). But they write their laws in French, and print their media in German! On top of that, children start speaking Luxembourgish at home, then are taught in German in the elementary school, and transition to French in the secondary... At least that's how I understood the Wikipedia article, don't quote me on that.

I was going through the lesson on how to pronounce ä, ö, and ü, and on a couple of them (ä [long]), and ü they gave an example word (in English) and ask you to say them with either lips spread apart, or with pursed lips. So it's a learning curve, it'll take awhile for me to learn how to do the different mouth and lip movements to say German words. I don't think I'll pick up an accent though, I can't mimic accents to save my life, I tried with a British accent and it didn't work.

That seems a little confusing, so they basically learn 3 languages? I think the most confusing would be speaking one language in elementary school, and then switching languages in secondary school. Very interesting stuff to say the least.

Well, you sort of will, though, paradoxically. I mean, the way you pronounce "ich" and "-ig" is an accent - likely to be called "the standard German" - and it'll be heavily overshadowed by your foreign, English accent, but still... Okay, I've had an inclination to look into this topic a little more, and apparently when you're a student, picking up any pronunciation other than the one repsented by the official German dictionary Duden, would be considered wrong by many native speakers (pedants, as far as I'm concerned)... So maybe you won't be learning an "accent" after all.

I mean I could pick up a slight accent, who knows. When I count in Spanish (I can only count to 10), I seem to pick up a very, very slight accent (though not necessarily a Mexican or Spanish accent, just an accent).

It's kind of funny that I see some words in German I know and see the same words in English, and when I see the word in English I'll translate it to German, like say the word clear, I'll translate it to klar, it's actually weird that I'm able to do that now with the words I can recall in both languages, but it's most notable with counting (only up to 100 though).

Okay, that's confusing. Presumably there's a pure, un-accented version of Spanish (which is neither from Mexico nor from Spain), but it doesn't come to mind...

Of course, it's different in German (and French) where a particular version has been imposed as the standard pronunciation (and spelling) throughout the countries... Even though, from my understanding, outside of certain areas and professions people at least at home speak with a regional accent (if not in a dialect), and switch to a more standard pronunciation when in a more official setting.

That's weird, though. I mean, I kind of live in a monolingual culture (which heavily relies on English borrowings but mostly doesn't use the language beyond that)... Well, apart from immigrants, to be fair... But a situation where there's one accent that I use in some situations and another - in different situations, that's a very... foreign idea. I suppose the same for you?

I kind of feel like maybe I've reached my language limit, in the terms of the number of foreign languages. Okay, vocabulary, with all the mutual borrowings and cognates, gets confusing and more and more mixed up. But the worst thing is the pronunciation: I thought I was making it easy for myself by picking all languages using the Latin alphabet. Except, they all use it slightly differently. Especially the "w" messes with my head, because it's a very similar sound across the spectrum, except that in some languages it's the English "w", in others - "v" (being able to turn into "f" - or not). And in Spanish and French it doesn't occur in native words, so it's pretty much random how they're going to interpret it.

And then the word stress... I can still kind of keep it together for Spanish and French, because I studied them first and the longest (aside from English), and their stress rules seem very regular... But the rest... Oh, yeah, in German words with the same spelling which have a different meaning also often have the stress on a different syllable, and I'm simply not touching that so far.

Maybe I'll get used to it with more practice. Or maybe - even though I've read many times that human memory is functionally unlimited - I've reached the limit of mine, at least for foreign languages.

On a brighter note, I saw a video in Welsh, and was able to understand two whole sentences from the subtitles without a dictionary. Progress!

Yeah, it's kind of weird, and also I don't change accents when talking in different situations, I just have a standard American accent, there are different accents in the U.S., southern accent (which you hear country singers use), and east coast accent, everyone else has a fairly standard accent (though it may slightly vary from state to state).

That's great you're making progress with Welsh!

I read yesterday (in a German newspaper, incidentally) that Netflix produces its recent shows in 26 languages... It has to mean dubbing, right? Subtitles wouldn't make a headline.

It's a pretty sure bet that one of those is German, but I'm wondering what the chance of Welsh is. Pretty slim, probably, since Netflix is also apparently available in 190 countries, many with their own language... Although a lot of them would also be either English- or Spanish-dominant, I suppose. Or Arabic... And German, of course. At least 5 countries that I can name.

That's interesting, it probably does mean dubbing, but I do wonder if it also means subtitles aswell. Subtitles will be what I'll be looking for in shows (well English subtitles for foreign shows in different languages that is).

Today my lesson was learning consonants, not too hard except for a few, it'll be easier to pronounce in words than it will be individually (unless I have to for some reason spell my name to someone that speaks German, though my first name has 3 vowels and only 2 consonants, or for that matter any words I have to spell).

I meant, is it dubbing as well as subtitles. Of course there are subtitles. After all they are much easier to do... Well, I'm not going to say 100% there are, since I haven't checked myself, but it's a very safe assumption.

I'm not following you, quite frankly. I mean, the alphabet contains the sounds that the language does... and it kind of consists of little meaningless words. Why would consonants be easier in real words? ...Or maybe I should rephrase that - What is hard about standalone consonants?

I'm really kind of getting optimistic about my German progress. I feel like when I listen to podcasts I barely miss any words. Although I can't put a percent number on that... Hopefully tens if not hundreds of hours of listened material (not all in the form of podcasts), plus flashcards are paying off...

I mean, yeah, that's nice, but I'll never be truly fluent in it if I'm not using it. Which for me means "in writing". I really don't care about speaking.

For now it doesn't depress me too much, because I'm studying a thick grammar book with eventually hundreds of exercises. So that'll be practice, if I stick with it. But sooner or later I'll have to face this struggle again...

Well, I'm sure I've already mentioned a channel I follow for a little gaming and some just general German entertainment - Rocket Beans TV. And you can say "Youtube channel" or... well, I don't know what they are. They use the German word "Sender" which is kind of like a TV station (I don't know if it's different from a TV channel).

Anyway, what I find amazing about it - well, apart from the fact that they have done a number of shows in real movie theaters - is that they've just played a pen and paper game in a real church, because it fits the setting of the game... I haven't watched it yet, but I feel like I have to, as a point of virtual tourism. And also general education, because that channel where one half of videos seems to be kind of dumb let's plays, is exploring the 30-year war, with that pen and paper game...

Okay, thanks for the clarification.