What are your favourite language learning communities?

Methods and Learning
#1

Until recently italki has been my favourite language learning community because it had the full package: affordable language classes, the possibility to find language exchange partners, a forum where all kinds of topics could be discussed, the possibility to get answers to one’s questions and the possibilty to post texts in target languages and get them corrected. Unfortunately, italki has introduced a new app this month and shut down the desktop version without prior warning. It is unclear when the desktop version will be opened again and how it will change. That’s why I’m currently looking for alternatives, especially for discussions and notebook entries.

Notebook entries:
Lang 8: I still have an old account but I’m not so sure how active the community is there. Actually, so far I have only corrected German notebook entries but never posted anything else. In the free version, one can only practice 2 languages, there’s no language limit with a premium account.

Langcorrect: With a free account one can practice 2 languages, with a premium account 10.

Hellotalk: With a free account one can practice only one language, with a premium account 3. The desktop version only offers chat, not posting texts, so it’s practically useless to me. I tried to use it. First had French as target language but then changed to Japanese and at first kept also posting in French until a Japanese user complained to me that I shouldn’t post in French when my target language is Japanese and that seeing my posts annoyed her.

Are using either of this websites or do you know other communities where one could posts texts and get them corrected? I don’t like the language limitations. On italki I made posts in over 20 languages. I’d like to be able to at least regularly post in 10 languages without constantly having to change the settings of my account.

Discussion forum:
Of course, it’s great that we have this new community here but where else could one find a thriving community that discusses language, culture and all kinds of other things?

A language learner’s forum: Does anyone here use it? How active is it?

I’m considering writing in Quora and/or Reddit. I like about Quora that they have several different language versions and almost every topic can be discussed.

Do you know about other interesting communities? Many longterm italki users like myself who can’t or don’t want to use the app are currently looking for other places to discuss various topics and post notebook entries.

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#2

I’m relatively new to them outside of iTalki, too. Mainly because I dove into my study and have to be careful about the amount of time I spend on language learning vs actually learning my target language (and not complain about why I’m not advancing hahaha).

Women in Language looks to be pretty neat, and I’m attending that this weekend.
There’s also a Language Lovers AU community that I’ve just joined too.
Other than that, I use NaTakallam (supporting displaced people), YouTube, native friends and a tutor. Forever thankful for friends who’s English is better than my Persian. Ha!

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#3

Do you have favorite Persian tutors on italki?

#4

…راستش, از کم زمانی اینو استفاده نکرده ام و متاسفانه، فکر نمیکنم که معلم من یتالکی رو استفاده میکنه دیکه
.الان، ناتاکالامو استفاده میکنم NaTakallam

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#5

Wow! I hadn’t used Italki for a few months but these changes are quite shocking!

I’ve been using Lang-8 for years and it is still quite alive when it comes to corrections (for Korean and Japanese at least).

A language learners’ forum is very active and motivating but I wouldn’t recommend it to get corrections. I don’t think it’s quite well-made for this.

Apart from this, I think the extremely new Journaly, made by Robin MacPherson seems like it’ll be a great new tool for all language learners. He’s been working on it for a few years but opened not even a month ago. (I actually thought it was still in beta until I checked now). If you check Robin’s Youtube channel, he explains it all.

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#6

Hi @Miriam, fully agree. I am happy to see I’m not the only one… Very disappointed in the changes italki made, it’s been my favourite resource for years. With the new app introduction, the main USP (notebook function) is gone. Still use it for lessons, but the community is falling apart…

Unfortunately, for lang8 they don’t allow new accounts to be created.

I hope to find a new alternative to italki notebook function soon.

@Mathias, I will check out this journaly. Thanks for the hint. :slight_smile:

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#7

Reddit’s r/learnjapanese is a good resource, but there’s not much communication going on in actual Japanese there. All the French (native/learner) communities are pretty active though!

Lang-8 has been that way for a long time already - I think the owners just don’t want to update it anymore, and would rather concentrate on HiNative instead :unamused:

#8

I’ve discovered italki in 2015 or 2016, spent some time there when I started to learn Arabic, but when I found a course at a local community college I stopped using italki. Only came back to it now during the pandemic. I do still enjoy the lessons there, but the new community forum is a bit of a disappointment. Will have a look at all your suggestions, maybe there’s something I will like :slight_smile:

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#9

I paid for HelloTalk and I am disappointed, so I directly cancelled my subscription and I will have it only for 1 year without renewal. At the end it’s more people asking me to help them with Czech (which is still fine for me) than me having possibility to practice Japanese and Spanish.

Sometimes I use app Yask which is somehow nice in my opinion. It’s really a community and you can post phrases, you should also help others (by correcting their requests) and at some point you can also try to record your pronunciation of some phrases. So it seems better for me than HelloTalk.

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#10

Hello Miriam,
I just ran across this comment and wanted to let you know about a community recently launched that meets the description you posted for discussion forums. Come check it out: https://next-word.mn.co/share/EvxNPLl8JSVkc0zm?utm_source=manual

#11

I can let people in this forum know that we are bringing back desktop functionality for the italki Community. This includes Notebooks and pretty much everything that is available in our app. Our product team is furiously working on the web version at this very moment. I don’t want to overpromise when it’s going to be delivered but it is a priority product feature for our new Community (which is now completely on the app right now).

I get to influence our product team for Community for new features and I’m trying to bring more events like the Polyglot Conference (which has a much more dedicated audience) to the italki Community (which is more mass-market) and spread the word. The attitude and sheer love of language learning is something that really sets apart Polyglot Communities from other language learning communities.
We wanted to really contribute to this conference with African Language and Minority Language workshop videos and teaching sessions and the teachers that donated their time and effort were so impressed that there are language enthusiasts out there that are genuninely interested in their languages and cultures.

@GloryK - our Swahili teacher - just sent me an email saying that this was one of the “best events of her life”

End of the day, language communities are great because they connect people rather than separate people into echo-chambers. I think if more people learned a foregin language and learned more about a different culture, we’d have a much better world and much greater understanding.

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#12

Thank you so much Jim.
This means a lot to me :slight_smile: and Yes it is true , “This was one of Best Events of my Life” .
I am grateful !!

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#13

Hi Jim!

I can say that I loved taking all the iTalki workshops, and I took quite a few: Igbo, Zulu, Swahili, Burmese, Vietnamese, Welsh, and some of the iTalki conversation sessions as well with @teddynee. Very dedicated, accessible and enthusiastic teachers! A big thank you to all of you! @Nkiru @Stha @GloryK @Aye-Italkiteacher @Ni_Chi @DafyddM

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#14

Discord! Join My Polyglot Discord Server!

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