itt: stories of yr attempts to master tongues via DUOLINGO

Surely a Flemish speaker the correct way to address French customers is with disdain.

I've got to the stage where my French vocab is pretty good but my grammar is sorely lacking. I'm working my way through this textbook although I wish it would stick in my head better.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51PYHL3xDbL._SX376_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Has anyone made any grammar breakthroughs recently?

A grammar breakthrough would be great - in my Spanish evening class we've learned three past tenses now (he hablado, hablé, hablaba) and have been collectively struggling for weeks to get to grips with the nuances of when each is to be used. Plenty of times it is obvious, but there are so many subtleties and I can't quite get the hang of it yet.

Surely a Flemish speaker the correct way to address French customers is with disdain.

Ah yeah breakthrough. I'm just studying what I learned in (and subsequently forgot after) high school. So no breakthrough.

I wonder if I finish duolingo, what I should do? Read Rimbaud? Or start memrise? Are there any apps that go further than duolingo? Je veux etre capable de seduire un Parisien. 😂

N’oublie pas Johnny Hallyday!

But I really came to post interesting expression I just came across that I don’t quite get:
een boterham met tevredenheid - du pain sec

Maybe something easier than Rimbaud, but I’m finding reading native material is really helping the Japanese. I joined a couple of reading groups on a Japanese learning forum. Find something that interests you and start to read. There are a bunch of browser extensions that allow you to look up words in browser which makes things faster although the built in Japanese-English dictionary on the kindle is terrible.

If I were doing French I’d be reading Asterix in French.

Oh good idea! Maybe they have Asterix on kindle

Et il y a aussi VanDamme.

Wat is een boterham met tevredenheid?!? Ik ga nu opzoeken.

Oh wow! Een boterham met tevredenheid is just a slice of bread. Nothing on it. So dry bread. Pain sec.

It seems to have a figurative meaning too, which I can’t quite parse:
Schaars inkomen, schaarse middelen waar men het maar mee moet doen

Oh I think I see

Daar gaan we weer!

Weer of geen weer.

Neem me niet kwalijk.

Oefening baart kunst.

I love the last saying. It's not used enough imo (in mijn opinie lol)

It's raining cats dogs: het regent pijpestelen.

Een bord pasta of een bord met pasta?

Wat is het addertje onder het gras?

Okay this is just weird:
Wil je dat Duo je stiefvader wordt?

Woehaha. Je mama dumpte je vader?

Sorry, ik liet me meeslepen.

Dat zal ik je niet aanrekenen, hoor.

Dat staat je fraai.

Jij mag er ook zijn, James.

Sorry, I thought that phrase was going to mean one thing, then I saw it meant another and used it anyway.

I mean it seems like it might saying something nice and complimentary but it’s actually used sarcastically, isn’t it? Foreign languages are so hard!

It could most definitely be used sarcastically, in an old-fashioned, slightly stilted way (although that’s not how I understood it here - knowing/assuming you’re a nice person and such lol)

Same as breastcrawl! I wouldn't use that phrase sarcastically, personally. But basically every compliment could be made to sound sarcastic.

Hoi JamesRedd,

Je stelde "Tomorrow we go to the restaurant to eat lamb" voor als een vertaling van "明天我们去饭馆吃羊肉。". We accepteren deze vertaling nu. :)

Bedankt voor de bijdrage, ga alsjeblieft zo door!

- Duolingo

^een noodkreet

We zullen het er maar bij laten.

Fraai is not a word used here (Flanders). Feels more Dutch.

Thanks. Just trying things out from the dictionary. What is the colloquial way just to say someone is “nice”? Another dictionary attempt gives
dat is erg aardig van u.

As in “being nice”? “aardig” would be the right word (in NL-Dutch), yeah.

Waar ben je in vredesnaam mee bezig?

Ik ben nu echt helemaal klaar met je, James!

Het spijt me erg, zonder woordenboek ben ik nergens.

Alles was in diepe rust.

Wait till you start learning teen talk. "Boeit niet" lol. Het is massa's cool.

(English to) Spanish course has just updated again. Looks like quite a large amount of new content (two new checkpoints and more), which I'm very happy about.

Mag ik jouw handtekening?

(English to) Spanish course has just updated again. Looks like quite a large amount of new content (two new checkpoints and more), which I'm very happy about.

I now have seven checkpoints in total, with the fourth and fifth being all new it seems as I have level zero across all topics in both of those despite having previously completed the tree. Loads of new stuff to tackle. ¡Que emocianante!

I only have five so maybe you do have a newer course.

Es decir... ¡Qué emocionante!

Disculpe mi ortografía horrible en español, estoy muy cansado hoy... como siempre.

There's a "New course update!" banner at the top of my tree highlighting the change too. I don't use the app much lately as my phone is rubbish, so this is on the web version.

Je suis en train d'etudier le francais. Maintenant c'est une recapitulation de tout ce que j'ai appris dans l'ecole secondaire.

Is er een traditioneel Nederlands restaurant in de buurt?