Please delete this if I’m in the wrong sub to ask this!
I’m looking to learn a new language without relying on data harvesting apps. Is there a privacy friendly platform I can use, or a FOSS app (android)?
Most privacy-friendly way would probably be using a textbook.
Thank you. Feel a bit stupid for not thinking of this. Don’t suppose you have a recommendation for a book on learning Spanish?
Go to your local college or university bookstore, see what they’re using, then go and find it cheaper somewhere else.
My partner is quite a fan of the Ollie Richards story learning books. I think they have a couple of those for Spanish.
Not really, my only period of interaction with the language started and ended in high school. I’m sure you’ll find tonnes of recommendations in language-learning communities on the internet though.
Anki is an offline-first flashcard program that I use along with other methods.
I will look into this, thanks for taking the time to make a recommendation :)
Anki + Yomitan is the goat. Download some dictionaries of your target language, load them into Yomitan, and now you can search words on any website with selectable text and instantly make a flashcard out of the word. Watching a video in browser? Use asbplayer to load subtitles onto the video/movie and select the text from that too. Wanna watch not in browser? Use mpvacious with mpv.
Find yourself a card format you like and some cute addons (I use Ankimon [Pokemon]) for Anki so you don’t fall into that “it looks so dull!” trap because the SRS system it uses is no joke. I have years old vocab on there that I still remember, and medical students aren’t joking when they say it saved them.
I just love this app so much.
Date a native speaker of that language for a while.
Actually not bad advice if they are into you badly speaking their language to them at first 😂
A real course with a real human teacher.
Wouldn’t this require sharing information with the school that organizes the course and any vendors that support them? Schools, payment processors and student information systems eventually sell or leak data.
📖+✏️🗒️+👂+👄
Yeah honestly, there’s no replacement for textbooks, paper and pencil when it comes to learning a new language
I mean, to each their own, but when I was learning Japanese, I did just that: I immersed myself into the language with as many senses (?) as possible. Reading, writing, listening, imitating (called “shadowing”), literally talking to myself, plastering my walls with glossary and example sentences, forcing myself to read them out loud every time I would pass by one of the words or sentences hanging from my walls. Right until I realized that I had hit a barrier that could only be overcome by moving - at least temporarily - to Japan, which I did, but that’s another story.
You can try Language Transfer
It’s completely free. Free (and ad free) iOS or android app, free audio file downloads. There’s also a course on music theory.
You can also try to find some kids shows in the language you’re interested in. I’m sure sesame street has been dubbed into many languages by now.
A book with CDs to listen to.
fmhy.net should have resources
If you want to learn Japanese, I can highly recommend KanaDojo.
I have a suggestion that is not FOSS, but it is privately held so the pressure to be profitable each quarter is not at all the same as publicly held companies.
Check out the privacy policies of LingQ and Rosetta Stone. Idk if they’re good, but I know they’re the most efficient language-learning apps right now. They require the least amount of minutes using them to achieve the highest scores in standardized language tests.
They require the least amount of minutes using them to achieve the highest scores in standardized language tests.
What’s the source of this info?
Thanks! If I’m reading that second link correctly, they rank “Babbel” with a higher score than LingQ and Rosetta Stone?
Yeah, the green number shows the improvement, and Babbel users improved more. What the green number doesn’t tell you is how much time it took to get there. If you look at that, Babbel is more inefficient than LingQ and Rosetta Stone.
Interesting, thanks!
Anki
Buy a book and learn with a compiler that was built before the spy craze.
Try to decide what your threat model is. A language learning app (except harvesting traditional device id and such) doesn’t reveal very important info to anyone.
The only know which language you learn and your approximate level. Sure that’s better if there’s a more private way of doing it, but the core principle of learning a language doesn’t reveal very much.
Anki with deck cards already made, for vocabulary. Youtube video to train sentences (type : easy + name of the language)
