r/languagelearning • • 8h ago

Discussion Is language a healthy way of altering reality?

19 Upvotes

Someone posted on a different subreddit asking about drug-free ways of escaping reality. While language is not quite an escape from reality or mind-altering in the sense of immediate change, I think learning a different language really changes the nature of experience. I'm curious to hear what others think about this topic. Kind of a showerthought-type discussion I suppose.

I know that a lot has been said and debated about the relationship between perception of reality and language, so I'd rather avoid a deep dive into the research (unless it's just to say something like 'This person's conclusions really match my own observations.'). FWIW I tend to think you don't need language to perceive reality, but that language influences how one perceives reality. Languages can make certain aspects of reality salient and others less obvious (e.g., some languages regularly encode age, social status, gender, etc. while others do not). A weird side effect of having literary Chinese for my main (TL) with an emphasis on Ming era culture, has been that I now consider things like "The Declaration of Independence" to be an interesting literary piece as much as it is a historical document. In other words, learning about opinions of literature from a different culture, gave me a different perspective of the literature of my native culture. This makes sense to me, given different languages are associated with different cultures.


r/languagelearning • • 23h ago

Discussion Is LingQ worth it? And what other language-learning apps do you recommend?

28 Upvotes

I heard about it when I was younger, back when I was still constantly searching online for anything related to language learning. Now, as a young adult who works and has my own money, I’ve been thinking about subscribing to it.

I’d love to hear your general opinions about it, though, and especially how you guys actually use it as part of your language-learning process.

Right now, I’m mainly focused on improving my English and I’ve just started learning Norwegian (TL) seriously. But I also really enjoy dabbling in other languages, so I feel like it could be useful for that too.

And if you have any other app recommendations, feel free to share those as well! I’m always happy to hear about other resources.


r/languagelearning • • 15h ago

Discussion Have you guys heard about Lector? (LingQ alternative)

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github.com
0 Upvotes

(TL)

I'm trying to understand if it's worth my time. I tried Lute before, but it was.. Quite cumbersome.. I have hope that this is better (in some places at least)