KISWAHILI NOTES FOR FORM ONE – ALL TOPICS

…..

HISTORY OF KISWAHILI LANGUAGE

Swahili language, also called kiSwahili, or Kiswahili,
Bantu language spoken either as a mother tongue or as a fluent second
language on the east coast of Africa in an area extending from Lamu Island, Kenya, in the north to the southern border
of Tanzania in the south. (The Bantu
languages form a subgroup of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo
language family.)

People who speak Swahili as their sole mother tongue are usually
referred to as Waswahili, but this name refers to their language only and does
not denote any particular ethnic or tribal unit. Swahili is widely used as
a lingua franca in: (1) Tanzania, where it is the language of
administration and primary education; (2) Kenya, where it is, after English,
the main language for these purposes; (3) Congo (Kinshasa), where a form of
Swahili is one of the four languages of administration, the main language for
this purpose being French; and (4) Uganda, where the main language is
again English.

Swahili has been greatly influenced by Arabic; there are an
enormous number of Arabic loanwords in the language, including the word swahili, from
Arabic sawāḥilī (a plural adjectival form of an Arabic word
meaning “of the coast”). The language dates from the contacts of Arabian
traders with the inhabitants of the east coast of Africa over many centuries.
Under Arab influence, Swahili originated as a lingua franca used by several
closely related Bantu-speaking tribal groups. In the early 19th century, the
spread of Swahili inland received a great impetus from its being the
language of the Arab ivory and slave caravans, which penetrated as far north as
Uganda and as far west as Congo. 

Swahili was later adopted by European
colonialists, especially the Germans, who used it extensively as the language
of administration in Tanganyika, thus laying the foundation for its
adoption as a national language of independent Tanzania. In Kenya and Uganda,
other local languages also received official encouragement during the colonial
period, but the tendency in these countries is now to emphasize the use of
Swahili. The oldest preserved Swahili literature, which dates from the
early 18th century, is written in the Arabic script, though the language is now
written in the Roman alphabet.

There are about 15 main Swahili dialects, as well as
several pidgin forms in use. The three most important dialects
are kiUnguja (or Kiunguja), spoken on Zanzibar and in the mainland
areas of Tanzania; kiMvita (or Kimvita), spoken in Mombasa and
other areas of Kenya; and kiAmu (or Kiamu), spoken on the island of Lamu
and adjoining parts of the coast. Standard Swahili is based on the
kiUnguja dialect.

Swahili is characteristically Bantu in its grammar, and it
has a large vocabulary of word roots traceable to a common Bantu stock. Swahili
nouns are divided into classes on the basis of their singular and plural
prefixes; prefixes are also used to bring verbs, adjectives, and demonstrative
and possessive forms into agreement with the subject of a sentence. Thus, in a
sentence with wa-tu, “people” (singular m-tu, “person”),
all the words begin with the w-/wa- prefix; e.g.,
wa-tu w-etu wa-le wa-kubwa wa-mekuja: “those big people of ours
have come.” Verb stems may be extended by means of varying suffixes, each one
with its particular nuance of meaning; e.g., funga (“shut”), fungwa (“be
shut”), fungika (“become shut”), fungia (“shut
for”), fungisha (“cause to shut”), and so on.

KISWAHILI DURING COLONIAL PERIOD

Various colonial powers that ruled on the coast of East Africa
played a role in the growth and spread of Swahili. With the arrival of the
Arabs in East Africa, they used Swahili as a language of trade as well as for
teaching Islam to the local Bantu peoples. This resulted in Swahili first
being written in the Arabic alphabet. 

The later contact with the Portuguese resulted in the increase of
vocabulary of the Swahili language. The language was formalised in an
institutional level when the Germans took over after the Berlin
conference. After seeing there was already a widespread language, the Germans
formalised it as the official language to be used in schools. Thus schools in
Swahili are called Shule (from German Schule) in government, trade and the
court system. With the Germans controlling the major Swahili-speaking region in
East Africa, they changed the alphabet system from Arabic to Latin. 

After the first World war, Britain took over German East Africa,
where they found Swahili rooted in most areas, not just the coastal regions.
The British decided to formalise it as the language to be used across the East
African region (although in British East Africa [Kenya and Uganda]
most areas used English and various Nilotic and other Bantu languages while Swahili
was mostly restricted to the coast). In June 1928, an inter-territorial
conference attended by representatives
of Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, and Zanzibar took place
in Mombasa. The Zanzibar dialect was chosen as standard Swahili for those
areas, and the standard orthography for Swahili was adopted.

HOW TO LEARN A LANGUAGE FAST – PART
1

 The
first step in any successful language learning journey is setting clear and
achievable goals. Identifying your motivation for learning a new language is
crucial before setting any goals. Are you learning a language for travel, work,
or personal growth? Understanding your why will keep you motivated throughout
the process.

Once
you have your motivation, assess your current language skills. This will help
you determine your starting point and set realistic goals. For instance, if
you’re a beginner, your first goal might be to hold a basic conversation in the
target language. Specific goals give you a clear target to work towards, such
as aiming to understand a news article or converse fluently with a native
speaker.

Here
are ways or tips to learn a new language faster:

1. Learn one language at a time

As a polyglot who has taught himself to speak eight languages,
Richards always gets this question: “How can I learn more than one language at
the same time?” His advice? “Don’t do it. Let’s face it: learning one language
by itself is hard enough, right? And there’s a direct correlation between focus
and the amount you learn,” Richards explains. Adding a second language just
divides your time and attention. But focusing your attention on one
language means you’ll spend more time in that language, so you’ll learn it much
faster. That being said, if you really want to learn two languages at the same
time and you’re not as focused on speed, Richards says to go for it as long as
you understand that it will slow you down.

2. Conversation, Conversation, Conversation

If there’s a “secret” or “hack” to learning a foreign language,
it’s this: hours and hours of awkward and strenuous conversation with people
better than you in that language. (1) An hour of conversation (with
corrections and a dictionary for reference) is as good as five hours in a
classroom and 10 hours with a language course by yourself. There are a few
reasons for this. The first is motivation. (2) I don’t care how cool
your study guide is, you’re going to be far more invested and motivated to
communicate with a live person in front of you than a book or audio
program on your computer.

……

Learning a Language by Yourself

1. Don’t let yourself be isolated! Language is a communicative behavior, and you must communicate with others. Travel if/when you can. Find a local language group that meets somewhere near you (lots of universities have these for the most common and even some rare languages— there’s almost always one for Spanish, and they usually have casual meetings at coffee shops and similar locations, mostly learners and a few native speakers). Learn the language with a friend or family member. If you’re taking a class, spend time with a friend in the class and practice using only the language. You don’t need a native speaker, not even a fluent speaker, to practice and learn. Sometimes it’s almost more effective to practice with someone else who is also learning because you’re going through the same thing. But even if none of that works for you, you’re on Quora right now so you have the internet. Find a website, or just someone to chat with directly, and talk to them. You speak English, and that is incredibly valuable online. I’ve had people from all over the world (Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Morocco) almost begging me to chat with them online so that they could practice their English. Do a trade. There are some websites designed to help you find partners. The one warning I have for you is that you should use normal precautions to avoid any scammers who might want to take advantage of people in this situation. I haven’t personally sought out too many conversation partners myself, but I’ve had a few, and I’ve never had any problems, except honestly that I didn’t have time to keep talking to them as much as they wanted so I sometimes had to ignore them, or even block them. They are literally hoping right now for you to contact them. Just like you are hoping to find someone to talk to. There are also similar in person programs organized by some community centers and many universities where you can exchange with a foreign student (often a very interesting graduate student) who just wants a casual way to practice English and would love to help you learn their language because they might not be expecting anyone would care about it. I’ve done that a few times and it was great. There are hundreds of millions of Spanish speakers and maybe just as many people like you who are studying the language. Find some. I’ve heard stories about people even learning Spanish by getting a job working in the kitchen of a restaurant (if you live in the United States, anyway). Volunteering is also an excellent option if you have any immigrant communities near you. Teach them English (or volunteer in any other way) and practice your Spanish while you’re there. There is no substitute for practicing a language, but you can practice in many ways.
2. Record yourself and keep recording it until you can produce a paragraph/presentation/speech/whatever perfectly. This helps mostly with pronunciation, but it’s a good model and experience to have for your future language use. See more here: My accent is described as “very heavy”, what should I do to improve it?
3. You can read (and you should), and also listen to music and watch movies or TV. This only helps for comprehension, but it can build vocabulary and grammar to be used later for speaking and writing. For something just a little more interactive, you can try switching your Quora, Facebook or email accounts to Spanish. Not very hard to navigate but it helps you think about the language and become comfortable. For something harder, try switching the language of your phone or computer! (Just in case you get completely lost, make sure you make some notes about what/where to click to get it back to English.)
4. Imagine having a conversation with someone or explaining yourself to someone. Now! You’ve just stepped off the plane to visit a country where the language is spoken, and the customs officer asks you “What is the purpose of your visit?” How do you respond? If you are comfortable spending time by yourself, you probably also are comfortable introspecting about situations like that. Run through various conversations in your head, look up vocabulary. And of course you can write. Write a diary every day. Write a novel if you want. Write a blog.
5. Take a class. If you’re a student, take one at your school or university. There are Spanish classes almost everywhere, luckily. You can enroll in one at a community college as a member of the community (even if you’re under 18 in many cases). For a cheaper option, some high schools have community courses at night. Maybe 10 weeks, meeting once per week at 7pm. I did this for Spanish (and later French, and Arabic) at a high school while I was an undergrad. I did it because I needed to practice Spanish again after I hadn’t used it for a while. These classes can be pretty low level but they’re engaging and some have a goal of teaching you how to have a basic conversation before traveling, maybe perfect for you if you would want to do that in the future but can’t now. And finally, if you can’t do any of that, there are classes online, as well as, of course, lots of language learning websites (some better than others). And self-guided textbooks or study programs too (like audio tapes) if that works for you.

…………….

Strategies for Learning a Language

1. Practice speaking and listening

Since speaking and listening are critical communication components, you should practice these skills regularly as you learn your new language. Look for opportunities to listen to someone speak your target language so you can train your ear to hear the sounds of the words and the rhythm of the sentences. Mimic what you hear to reinforce the sounds. Ideally, you can practice through conversations with others, but you can also use the following ideas:

• Watch a TV show without subtitles: Consider rewatching some of your favorite episodes, so you’re already familiar with the storyline. This lets you focus on listening to the words and training your ear to hear the language.

• Use a language learning app: Language learning apps often include speaking and listening activities. Some apps rate your speaking and compare your pronunciation with native speakers, so you can see your progress.

• Find an international pen pal: Instead of writing to each other, use video messaging apps to communicate. You practice speaking when creating a message and listening when you listen to what your pen pal recorded for you.

• Listen to music in another language: Sing along with the songs you like. This is a form of conversational shadowing because it allows you to practice the rhythm of the language and learn how to separate sounds so you can hear individual words.

• Create imaginary conversations: Think about a situation you might encounter and practice what you would say using the language you’re learning. For example, you could practice ordering food in a restaurant.

2. Embrace mistakes (and learn from them).

Mistakes are learning opportunities, which are a normal part of the process when learning a language. You may choose the wrong word, switch vowel sounds, or use the present tense form of a verb when talking about something that happened last week. When you make a mistake, pay attention to the feedback you get. For example, the person you’re talking to may correct your grammar or vocabulary choice.

4. Take advantage of language learning resources 

You can find many online tools, resources, and tips for learning a new language, including apps, dictionaries, online courses and lessons, forums, and groups you can join to practice speaking. Explore the following options:

…………..

Learn any Language

While just hitting play on a foreign film isn’t likely to supercharge your language skills, there are ways to make the most of foreign-language TV shows and movies. Netflix is full of content in other languages but, irritatingly, seems determined to make it almost impossible to find. Some tips on finding and making the most of programming in other languages can be found here. I often recommend reality TV in the target language – the heightened emotions and formulaic structures make it easier to grasp what’s going on. I can confirm that not being able to speak Swedish only marginally dented my enjoyment of the Swedish version of the show Come Dine With Me. Keeping the subtitles in the target language will help you break the barrage of sounds down into recognisable words and phrases, too. The crucial thing is to find content that’s compelling to you – something you want to read or listen to, and that’s at a level where you’re being stretched but still just about able to figure out its meaning. There are cultural benefits to this, too: without language learning I’d never have become obsessed with the Dutch TV show Hier Zijn de Van Rossems (‘Here Are the Van Rossems’), where three elderly siblings visit different cities and bitch about the architecture, or a programme called 71 Grader Nord: Norges Tøffeste Kjendis (‘71 Degrees North: Norway’s Toughest Celebrity’), which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

As you progress in your language learning, motivation becomes a crucial issue. Intermediate learners often speak of a plateau – the frustrating stage after the quick wins of the early stages of language learning, when gains can become more marginal, less immediately rewarding and harder to perceive. It’s a long road to fluency, and reviewing your progress and your methods periodically will help with focus and motivation. This is where targeted and achievable goals pay off: you’re more likely to have a sense of progress in the language if you’re hitting and renewing your goals relatively often. While independent learners can find the experience of plateauing particularly tough, it’s worth bearing in mind that, by this stage, you’ll have honed the skill of analysing your own abilities and identifying gaps in your knowledge, meaning that you can work out precisely what you need to do next – a real skill in itself. And if that’s still proving difficult, you can always hop on a Zoom call with a teacher and ask them to assess your performance with an eye to what you need to work on. When we follow a pre-existing curriculum, it can be hard to ditch the standard order of things and do this kind of targeted work, but with the resources I’ve described here, and the help of a teacher or tutor, an independent learner can make efficient progress on exactly the areas that need improvement.

As you improve, you’ll also want to think of ways to embed your new language into your life. Everyone has their own preferred techniques: I talk to myself. A lot. Whenever I’m learning a language – or trying to slot back into using one I know – I’ll talk myself through whatever I’m doing in that language, like I’m doing the voiceover for the movie of my life. It keeps the machinery greased but also lets me know what I’m not able to express, where my vocabulary is lacking or what I need to focus on learning next. And it works, even if it can get you some funny looks – if the man who stared at me muttering to myself in the mirror of an Italian airport bathroom is reading this, mi dispiace. Another technique which combines practice and motivation is keeping a diary or notebook in your new language – noting down the events of the day means that you’ll practise different verb tenses, for instance, as well as having a record of your progress over time. If you’re on the more extraverted side, you might enjoy recording videos of yourself speaking the target language (such as this one, by a learner of Levantine Arabic), which can be great for accountability or as a means of getting helpful comments and tips from other speakers.

There’s no natural endpoint to language learning: if you’re doing it right, you’ll be doing it for the rest of your life. And it won’t always be a question of grammar drills and vocabulary lists – you’ll be able to replace the hard grind of study with literature and ideas in your new language, as well as the joys of travel, conversation and multilingual friendships. With the right goals and motivation, the slog of learning a language can soon give way to living it.

Learn more

If you’ve tried to learn a language in recent years, there’s a good chance you’ve come across Duolingo – a gamified app in which a judgmental green owl guilt-trips you into language study. The internet’s polyglots love nothing more than a bust-up over Duolingo’s effectiveness, and there are certainly legitimate criticisms of the app. But I think its effectiveness is often underestimated and that, instead of lamenting the fact that Duolingo (like all language-learning methods) is imperfect, it’s worth learning how to use it strategically.

First, the downsides. Duolingo’s courses aren’t created equal; it provides a huge amount of material for learners of Spanish or French, while some languages are known to have particularly strong courses – Norwegian and Hebrew are two examples. Other languages are less well-served: the Arabic course is growing, but for a major global language the materials are disproportionately poor, at least for now. On Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2018, Duolingo added courses in two endangered Indigenous languages, Navajo and Hawaiian, though these have faced criticism for the limited range of material they offer. New courses are in beta, including Hungarian. One popular Duolingo course will teach you Klingon.

Duolingo’s reputation isn’t helped by seeming to hide some of its more useful features from the casual user. People often complain about the lack of explicit grammar teaching on the app – it can seem as if you’re expected to work out complicated grammar rules yourself. The forums can be a useful source of explanations and helpful suggestions from fellow learners, native speakers and, of course, designers – if there’s a task or a question that you don’t understand, check out the comments on it for some deeper insights. And, while the blog section might not be the most popular part of the Duolingo website, posts such as this one use data from the app to offer suggestions for optimising your learning.

The key to using Duolingo effectively is an awareness of what it can and can’t do. It’s not an all-in-one language solution: it helps build vocabulary and drill grammar skills, but it’s only minimally useful in teaching you to actually speak in your target language. You’ll learn to construct sentences, but you won’t encounter much authentic spoken language or read longer texts. But, as I’ve argued above, there are great resources for these things, too, and used alongside Duolingo you’ll find them mutually reinforcing. In my experience, using Duolingo regularly can help to lay the foundations on which you can build a strong knowledge of your target language, while it’s also a great resource when you’re learning a language but find yourself without much spare time for a while – a Duolingo session a day can help you keep your hand in and maintain your language level while your attention is (mostly) elsewhere.

Links and books

The Open University offers a free course on how to learn a language, which will lead you through the concepts and skills underpinning successful language learning.

Stephen Krashen’s ‘input hypothesis’ is a concept dear to the hearts of many contemporary polyglots. Krashen laid out the case for this model of how language acquisition works in articles and books such as Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition (1982), available – like much of Krashen’s other work – free on his website.

Lexilogos is an essential website with links to courses, dictionaries and resources in more than 100 languages.

Italki can help you find professional teachers and experienced conversation partners in a wide variety of languages. It’s generally significantly more affordable than traditional face-to-face lessons, and you can also use it to seek out conversation-exchange partners.

Language Transfer is a labour of love run by Mihalis Eleftheriou. It offers all-audio courses to varying levels in Greek, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, French, Swahili, Arabic and English for Spanish speakers – and they’re entirely free, though users can donate to the project in a variety of ways.

There are good and bad polyglot podcasts out there, but two worth listening to are Olly Richards’s I Will Teach You a Language, and Lindsay Williams and Kerstin Cable’s The Fluent Show. The hosts of both podcasts are interested in methods and feature language learners’ reflections on what’s worked for them in learning a variety of languages for different reasons.

Benny Lewis, an Irish polyglot, rose to prominence with the Fluent in 3 Months blog. His claims and methods have often been debated, but his advocacy of ‘[speaking] from day one’ (as laid out in this TEDx talk) continues to inspire many language learners.

……..

I have learned 4 languages and I teach French and Spanish at a high school.

Here is my advice. Learning by yourself works great. It is not second fiddle.

Learning a language by yourself can be more effective that taking a class if you do it right. Classes are usually not well taught, and you are often listening to poor quality language from your fellow students. On your own, you have access to quality content by native speakers.

I suggest 2 main things. 1. Watch videos on YouTube daily in your target language with target language subtitles. And 2. do multiple online language exchanges. If you do both of those things at least 5 days per week, you will make tremendous progress. You can re-watch the same videos multiple times to increase comprehension if you want. Watching videos gives you some context for the language, so it helps comprehension. And you can get multiple language exchange partners, just doing each one once a week. You can also add some reading to this program of videos and language exchanges.

But for the first two or three months, you will need to modify the program because you won’t be able to understand the language yet. You will need to have more comprehensible input. Lots of it. You will need materials designed for beginning language learners at first.

For the first two or three months, read some bilingual stories. Watch videos in the target language, going back and forth between watching them with English subtitles and with target language subtitles. Use a language learning program such as Asimil or Pimsleur. Do some vocabulary such as Quizlet or Anki or Duolingo, preferably using whole sentences, rather than just single words. And watch language learning videos that are designed for language learners. Take online lessons from a native speaker on Preply or Italki or something similar. Use multiple effective methods. Do not just use Duolingo or a flash card program alone.

But as soon as you have done this beginner stage for a two or three months, and you know the basics of the language, switch to a diet of Youtube videos and language exchanges. Watch as many videos on Youtube as you can. Daily. Also, read if you can find interesting books or materials in your target language.

Do not spend much time using the dictionary or learning grammar unless it is of great interest to you. Be comfortable not understanding 100%. Find a topic of interest to you personally and find videos and books on that topic. You will be much more motivated learning about something you already like.

If you want, find a book you have already read in English and read it in the target language. You will struggle and have to do some translation at first, but if you find something you enjoy, read about that and you will be more motivated.

So, in summary, go two or three months with varied beginner materials, then switch to daily Youtube videos in your target language with target language subtitles, and get signed up for multiple language exchanges. Some of the language exchanges won’t work out, so you need to be doing several at once. Several days per week of language exchanges. You need to do both simultaneously, videos and language exchanges, although you could delay the language exchanges for a month or two and increase the amount of video input in the meantime.

You can waste a lot of time learning a language. This is one way not to waste your time. You will learn the language if you do this.

…….

Here is my three step program to learning a new language. It’s my own method and it works really well for me.

1. Put 20–30 flash cards on your phone of vocabulary words. Memorize them. Take them out and study them whenever you have a spare moment instead of checking Facebook.
2. Listen to an audio track which contains the words you just learned. Listen to that audio track on repeat until you understand 90% of the words in the audio track. If you’re an absolute beginner, find an audio clip about 10 seconds long. If you’ve been learning for a bit, upgrade to 30 second audio clips. I’ve found that doing a mindless activity like walking or crocheting while listening to an audio track allows me to focus on it completely instead of just sitting down and listening.
3. Put a different 20–30 flash cards on your phone of sentences including your vocabulary words. Memorize the translations. One sentence can translate to many sentences, like memorizing “I went to the restaurant to eat,” translates to “I went to the school to learn.” Memorizing this sentence and repeating it makes speaking that sentence pattern natural. Also, you know when you speak that sentence pattern it’s grammatically correct. When you learn enough sentence patterns, you speak more fluently and naturally. My theory is this is how toddlers learn to speak, they repeat sentences they’ve heard again and again and it cements in their brain. I think it works for adults too.
4. Repeat with new vocabulary words.

Listening to the audio tracks was essential for me to have fluent conversation. Before I began listening to audio tracks, native speakers spoke too fast for me to understand. It also cemented the meaning of the vocab words in for me. If I never practiced listening to them, I seemed to forget what I’d learned on the flash cards. Step three got me speaking even if I had no one to practice speaking with. It seems translating sentences in your head, and learning to do it quickly, is almost as good as speaking practice. Sometimes better.

……….

I’m not going to lie, I just started learning languages by myself, but I think I’m rocking it since I’m not the best in the discipline field.

I’ve been doing a little research to have the confidence to answer this question and for me, there is an unwritten (or unsaid?) step, and it’s to have a “why“. When you have a reason to do something you have enough motivation to start trying and if you’re not as disciplined as me, you will stop procrastinating and skipping days of study.

The following steps are the ones that helped me to get ready to start:

Organize.
Make sure how many days in the week you would like to study, whether it’s 30-60mins, 4-5 days per week. I know that the time can be something to get unmotivated, but keep in mind that learning a language is a slow process and it can take you months, even years, to reach your ideal level.

Once you have scheduled your time is necessary to break it into “Study for real” and “Hobby-Study” —I don’t know, it was a good idea for me to call it that way haha.

Study for real.
This is the part where I study vocabulary and grammar.

Vocabulary. If you’re starting from the bottom, you should start learning some basic words, the ones you would use daily, for example, personal pronouns, adjectives, verbs… —but if you’re learning languages with different characters from your mother tongue (in my case, I’m learning Korean, and my first language is Spanish), of course, it is important to learn first the writing and sounds of the alphabet.

The way I study vocab is through flashcards, and Quizlet is my favorite app for it. Here, you can use other people’s set of cards or create your own.

When creating your cards, you can put a word in the language you want (question), and then the translation of it (answer), or the app can do it for you. What I think works best for me is that instead of writing the word in my mother tongue (or the language I’m learning in), I put an image as the question and, on the other side, the word that symbolizes it in my target language.

What I like the most about Quizlet is that it has several ways to help you study, such as spelling, writing, tests, even playing. It can also read the pronunciation for you!

Grammar. Once you’ve learned some vocab you would like to know how to combine words and conjugate verbs to create a sentence, right?

There are a bunch of websites where you can consult about grammar, maybe writing “French grammar” on your browse searching bar will help? What I did was go to YouTube and search for vids of how people learn Korean by themselves, there I found the existence of Talk To Me In Korean and How To Study Korean. I like more the second one.

Hobby-Study.
Since my hobbies are reading, watching tv-series and movies, listening to music and talking on WhatsApp with my friends, this is the study through hobbies part, where I practice my listening and speaking.

Read. For sure, you will go through this phase when you get a good level of vocab and grammar, so it’s a good tool to practice all you’ve learned. Don’t forget to make the flashcards of the new words you read.

I think that reading comics and infantile books are a good first trying. A friend of mine has told me a bunch of times that Webtoons is highly recommended, there you can find lots of manga and comics.

Also, you can change the language settings on your phone, and start following people on social media who speak your target language (which is good to practice listening too).

Watching tv-series and movies, and listening to music. When watching a k-drama I realized I could identify some words, even phrases, I felt like a real genius and started wanting to learn Korean, as simple as that.

When listening to your target language you can add more common words to your vocabulary and become familiar with the sounds of letters in their different positions in a word. For example, if you ask a Korean native speaker to pronounce the ㅔ (e) and the ㅐ (ae) you will hear the same sound. I had such a hard time practicing with these letters, now I kinda get it.

I watch k-dramas on Netflix, but mainly on Rakuten Viki. Recently, I discovered that Viki has a Learn Mode, which puts Korean subtitles above the subtitles in your mother tongue (or the language you watch series in), and if you click on an unknown word there will appear the translation. It’s only available in a few k-dramas, but still is a good tool to keep learning.

Listening to music in your target language is also a good way of learning. It was with Hannah Montana, Big Time Rush and One Direction’s music that I got into English and translating their songs I learned a lot of new words, I also lost my fear to speak in the language.

Another good way of practicing is talking to a buddy. And if you don’t know anyone that speaks the language you’re learning you can always go to platforms for those purposes. There are apps as HiNative and Tandem that can help you to find people who speak the language you want and help you practicing while you help them practicing too.

There are some websites (also apps) that can help you learn, such as Duolingo, LingoDeer, and Babbel. I’ve tried with the first two.

For me, the good thing about Duolingo is that the more you practice, you get a higher streak and you can also compete with other people to be the first in a league. Also, when you reach a certain level, it’s activated a section of interactive stories.

But I prefer LingoDeer, I think it is more complete as the first tool to get in touch with a new language.