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I think Krashen’s “Natural Approach” is the best way to learn. It focuses on consuming comprehensible input (CI) - listening/reading in the foreign language, and making sure you understand around 80%+. The idea would be to start with very easy stories/sentences, and slowly build that up as your vocabulary grows.
Pimsleur & FSI are good resources. Also, try to watch movies/shows that you already have seen in the target language instead (e.g. Friends, The Office, Simpsons). That way, you already have the context, and it will be easier to comprehend.
You need around 100-200hrs of CI to have a basic understanding of the language (maybe you can’t speak, but you can understand basic interactions in the language). At around 400-600hrs, you’ll be intermediate, and after around 800-1000hrs of CI, you’ll be fluent.
If the test is standardized, then I’m assuming test prep already exists for it. Your goal should be to pass the test, not to learn Hindi, because one month is wayyyyy too short to learn a language. You might be able to pick up the alphabet, and some common phrases within a month.
Once you’ve passed the test, you can focus on learning Hindi. If you study 4-6hrs a day, then I reckon you could be intermediate in about 6-12mos.
I’m guessing it’s a spin-off of the original GeoCities back in early 2000s which was also mainly for free site hosting.
This seems like where you can browse/search: https://neocities.org/browse
I’ve learned (I guess still learning) a new language as an adult for the last 2 years. I tried just about every method to learn (classes, courses, books, god knows how many apps/services). To get to the point of being able to accelerate your learning with foreign movies & TV shows, you need to have consumed around 200-400hrs of the language in a comprehensible format first. This is how I would do it if I had to again:
- Forget about grammar for now. Grammar is boring and it will make you second-guess when trying to form sentences. Better to just practice and have someone correct you as needed. You’ll learn grammar naturally to an extent (i.e. it will just SOUND right), and you can supplement it later on when you have a better grasp of the language.
- Use beginner audio lessons that focus on simple phrases and/or short stories (e.g. Pimsleur or US foreign service language tapes). This is to help train your ear to understand how words are pronounced. This should get you about 40-50hrs of practice.
- Find some French youtubers that use the comprehensible input (Krashen) method to complement the audio course - some recommendations in this reddit thread
- Once you have around 50-100hrs in, now is the time to find some easy content to consume. My recommendations would be: 1) movies/tv shows you already watched in english but dubbed in french (so you already know the context. You might need to leave off french subtitles if they don’t match audio), 2) podcasts or audiobooks where only one person speaks at a time, 3) french kids shows
- After 100hrs, I would continue to consume content as detailed above but you might be able to throw in some easy french-made movies/shows at this point - your goal is to understand about 80%. If you find you can’t understand enough, put it on the backburner to revisit later. You might also be able to read an easy french book now too. You could just reread a book you’ve already read in English but translated in French now (again, so you have context; I read Harry Potter for instance)
Learning a new language at an older age was pretty eye-opening. It’s definitely harder than I expected but it’s so rewarding to be able to connect with a different group of people at a much deeper level, as you also start to understand their culture a lot more, and it gives you access to new movies, shows, theatre, books, music etc. etc.
Good luck on your journey and let me know if you have any Qs!
Most likely it’s perception. If you’re not part of a cult, then likely the only time you hear about a cult is when something bad happens, so we associate cults with bad. In contrast, culture is often talked about in both good & bad terms (e.g. positive & negative work cultures), but generally you will hear more about the good sides of culture, especially in regards to travel.
I had Stadia too and played a lot of Destiny 2. I must say that I was highly impressed by the low latency. I literally couldn’t notice that I wasn’t playing locally, unless my internet went down.
Only when I took Stadia with me to a random airbnb did I start noticing any type of latency, and then we just played Mortal Kombat or other fighting games where you can just mash the buttons.
Logseq is my preferred personal knowledge “second brain” tool, but Obsidian might be better in this use-case, as it follows a folder approach.
Both use markdown files under the hood, and op can use something like syncthing or freefilesync to backup the markdown files to other places.