Hi guys,
About a year ago I wrote an elaborate article about how to learn Hungarian, step by step, from the very beginning. I just refined it based on my tutoring experience and another year of running a website on which I and my non-Hungarian partner help others master the language.
Thought I'd share the article here, and highlight the most important steps:

1. Master the Hungarian Alphabet and Pronunciation

There’s no way to get around knowing the alphabet extraordinarily well when you learn Hungarian. Seriously, don’t even consider learning anything else before you have a firm grasp of the alphabet and the Hungarian pronunciation. Put in this effort at the very beginning and it’ll save you tons of time and sweat later on.
It's a lot easier to learn the right pronunciation than to un-learn the wrong pronunciation. No (written) vocab is of use if people don't understand what you want to say. So nail these accents, digraphs, and the trigraph.🔨😉
We have a guide to the alphabet here.
I also embedded 3 videos here in the article that explain the consonants, vowels, and spelling rules, respectively.

2. Understand Agglutination, the Nature of the Language

By this, I don't mean nail all the suffixes and prefixes but understand what agglutination is and how it works.
We can just as well call agglutination the essence of the language – it’s one of those distinguishing elements that make Hungarian so Hungarian. Agglutination is related to glue and is the process to stick all those prefixes and suffixes to the beginnings and endings of the words, and thereby express time, location, relationships, and everything else grammar is for.
That’s how the insanely long words come about – instead of in our house (3 words in English), Hungarians say házunkban (house-our-in) and use one word only.
Other famous agglutinating languages are Turkish, Korean, and Japanese.
In contrast, English is an analytical language. Instead of gluing directly to the words, it uses helper words (e.g. prepositions) to convey relationships.
German and Spanish, on the other hand, are fusional languages and are characterized by their systems of declensions (changing the form of the words) and verb conjugations.
Here's how agglutination works.

3. Understand the Hungarian Word Order

Again, understand how it works in principle and you'll get why Hungarians deem your sentences wrong or weird even though they're technically correct.
Another factor that distinguishes Hungarian from other, more common languages is its topic-prominent sentence structure. In Hungarian, word order isn’t defined by regular sentence constituents (subject, verb, object) but rather by the speaker’s communicative intentions – what the speaker wants to emphasize.
You’ll often hear Hungarian has a flexible word order, but it’s not true. It just follows other rules than most languages and word order is about the topic in question, not about the grammatical ingredients of the sentence.
I explain this here with a specific example sentence of "I'm going to the doctor" and how switching around the words creates different meanings of the sentence in Hungarian.

4. Learn the Numbers

Numbers are everywhere and the most rational among us will argue you can explain the entire world with them. While I’m not sure about that, dealing with numbers is something you won’t find your way around easily. I’m not gonna lie, it won’t be the most fun activity of your Hungarian-journey but to understand how counting works in Hungarian is overall an easy win.
Important: A no-brainer, but I want to emphasize you should learn every number and its (fast!) pronunciation. Hungarian cashiers hold the world record for their speed of pronouncing 5-digit numbers and it’s really frustrating to not understand what someone says, even though technically you know all words.
Here’s how to learn the Hungarian numbers:
This article explains how to learn the Hungarian numbers in 9 straightforward steps, including their pronunciation, ordinals, and how to talk about time and dates.
The app Foreign Numbers is your best friend when you learn to understand the spoken numbers. It’s basically a listening comprehension trainer for numbers where you can define the range of numbers you want to practice. It’s smart, helpful, and free.

5. Prepare and Start Learning the 500 Most Frequent Hungarian Words

While you don’t need to know all of them before you move on, this is the vocab list you should start with.
Around 300 words make out 65% of all written material in English and with 2,000 words you have 80% of all conversations and texts covered. When it comes to learning Hungarian (or any language, really!) the Pareto Principle, aka Law of the Vital Few applies. The 500 most frequent Hungarian words are the ones you’ll encounter frequently – in written texts, conversations, movies, songs, books, you name it – they’re everywhere. If you focus on these first it’ll help you stay on track and see what is and isn’t essential.
The list of the 500 most frequent Hungarian words comes as a bonus with the PDF-version of the article.

6. Have Your References Ready

After you learned the alphabet and numbers, make sure you have the following Hungarian-learning ingredients close and add them to your shopping cart if necessary:

• The alphabet – printed, with everything that helps you pronounce each sound (example words, little drawings, etc.). You can find our downloadable cheat sheet here where you can add your own comments.
• A good Hungarian Phrasebook such as Lonely Planet’s Hungarian Phrasebook – as your dictionary. It cuts through the noise and is way cheaper and a lot more practical than a proper dictionary which you really don’t need right now. Use the dictionary at the end.
• A good grammar book – one you like and find comprehensible. We’re not gonna lie, there aren’t many of them. Routledge’s Hungarian Grammar is a great choice.

Additionally, I listed plenty of (mostly) free online resources here worth bookmarking, and here's another, elaborate list of Hungarian resources for various topics (pronunciation, vocab, grammar, teachers & tutors, etc.).

7. Build Your First Script

To get a basic feeling for the language and your first boost of confidence it’s important you have a basic conversational script ready. This means nothing more than to learn to talk a tiny bit about yourself and ask some basic questions.
After initial greetings, first conversations usually turn towards where you live and what you do. Just think about how you would typically introduce yourself in your mother tongue and translate this into Hungarian.
Here’s my personal quick introduction as an example, along with a few questions you can ask your conversational counterpart and possible answers.

8. Immerse, immerse, and immerse more

Useful immersion still is in a combination of listening, reading, and speaking. Research shows when we communicate we spend 45% listening, 30% speaking, 16% reading, and 9% writing.
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How to immerse through listening
What you need for a useful listening experience is tons of native, natural material that comes with a transcript. A transcript is kind of the key to the kingdom – the way you’ll get through to everything you cannot grasp by pure listening. Native material paired with a transcript is like taking part in real-life conversations with a remote control which helps you to pause, rewind and repeat what’s been said – at a slower speed if necessary.
This cures the usual drawbacks of the disheartening listening practices most Hungarian learners do (like listen to the radio, watch a movie or listen to textbook conversations that don’t help in real life).
Along with a listening course (The Smart Hungarian Audio Course) you can find on our homepage we offer a free video + email course about the exact steps on how to create and work your way through your own listening material – it’s great if you’re not ready to spend money but have a little time on your hands.
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How to immerse through reading
Hungarian is one of those languages in which you cannot ignore the grammar totally, even at the beginning. Due to its agglutinative nature described above every word you learn is subject to frequent change within a sentence. Reading will help you understand how all those suffixes and prefixes work.
What to read, however, now that news pieces and children’s books are out of the way?
Our tip: Read something you’re genuinely interested in.
Material that engages and excites you is crucial for language-learning. If you don’t like what you read you’ll never stick to your reading habit.
Instead of complicated news pieces, read a Hungarian blog you’d also read in your own language. Here’s our comprehensive list. The next time you want to read up on something, try to Google it in Hungarian and see where it takes you.
It’s also essential to always listen to what you read. No new word or grammar rule will be of use if people don’t understand what you say, and vice versa.
Unfortunately, we didn’t come across the perfect Hungarian reading material yet – one which consists of the most important words comes with an audiobook and a translation…
… that’s why we created our own.😉
Our Smart Hungarian Short Stories is a course that teaches Hungarian through the magic of story. You can find a link to it on our webpage and in the article.
In it, 8 short stories of various genres become the course syllabus. The vocabulary and grammar you learn are based on the gripping content you read.

9. Learn Vocabulary - The Right Way

we recommend you start to learn vocabulary (apart from the 500 most frequent words mentioned above which you learn parallelly) only after you started (and based on) your immersion practice. This way, you’ll avoid learning irrelevant vocabulary you’ll never use and learn all vocabulary as applied in real life.
I saw many Hungarian-learners start out by learning various word lists (greetings, animals, or even home appliances) and become frustrated, as they couldn’t apply what they have learned in real-life conversations.
After you tackled a spoken conversation or an exciting story you’ll be left with plenty of new words and expressions. It’s tempting to start hammering them all into your brain, but there’s a more effective and sophisticated way to do this:
Learn vocabulary based on your personal needs and goals
No one else but you can make the decision of which words to actually learn. No app, vocabulary book, or even frequency list can tell you exactly what you need to achieve your Hungarian-learning goals.
While it’s tempting to be hyper-motivated and squeeze as many words into your brain as possible you’re much better off if you focus on what is important for YOU and your learning.
This is easier said than done. Often, we simply don't know which words are essential and which aren’t – as everything can seem both very important and unimportant at the same time.
Here are a few guidelines for which words to learn from an audio conversation or the reading material of your choice, including an example of a word list and how to decide what to learn from it.
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How to learn vocabulary - about the Spaced Repetition System (SRS)
You’ve probably been told in order to remember something you’ll need to repeat it as often as possible. This rote repetition mindset is what led many of us frenetically to read study material again and again before a test at school or university. While an all-nighter filled with repetition sessions definitely helps to save the day and pass the exam, there seems to be something in the air that made us forget every single thing we’ve learned after handing in the test.
The lesson? Rote repetition is good to pass university exams. However, it’s terrible for language learning, as it’s useless for your long-term memory.
Spaced repetition is the opposite of rote repetition. Instead of drilling something by force, you can consider it a way gentler (and more efficient!) approach to learning. With a spaced repetition system you’ll recall your vocabulary right before you’re most likely to forget it. The repetition occurs at pre-determined intervals that get bigger and bigger as time passes. Answering why exactly spaced repetition works would go beyond the scope of this article and tap into the world of neuroscience, but it’s a method polyglots swear by for decades.
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Anki as the language-learners’ best tool for using the Spaced Repetition System:
The terms Spaced Repetition System and Anki go hand in hand.
In short: Making vocabulary more memorable by involving your senses and via using spaced repetition is your best bet for learning vocabulary. To apply this method we suggest using Anki, as it offers the most room and opportunities for customization and the maximization of your learning efficiency.
Here are some resources to starting out with Anki.
The Anki Online Manual including some video tutorials about the basics such as:

• Shared Decks and Review Basics
• Switching Card Order

The Anki subreddit is also a great community of 65k learners.
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Emotions and your senses as the beating heart of vocab-learning
Vocabulary connected to memories with all your senses involved is a lot more memorable.
That's why most people can easily recall Egészségedre! ("Cheers!" ) but have trouble with simpler words. They associate positive emotions, like the fun of a Budapest-pub crawl or drinking with their Hungarian friends with the word.
Here are three actionable steps you can take instantly to make your flashcards more memorable (scroll down a little!).

10. Practice speaking – it’s time to get real

First, I want to dispel the myth that you have to be or live in Hungary to practice speaking the language, as this is plain BS. Since you read this guide, chances are you have internet access and this is all you need to speak any language you want, anytime, from anywhere.
Online video calls such as Skype enable us to do this. The only questions are where to look for conversation partners, what kind of conversation partner to look for, and how to practice with a conversation partner in the most efficient way.
The right Hungarian conversation partner for you
You have three options: To practice with a tandem language partner, a tutor, or a proper Hungarian teacher. Both of these options have their pros and cons.
Tandem partners are usually free but the exchange relies on its mutuality. This means your language partner wants to practice your mother tongue with you as well. Since your partner doesn’t have all the skills that require teaching a language, designing your progress here is mostly up to you if you want to make the most of your practice. Also, prepare your language tandem mostly won’t be able to answer all your questions regarding specific grammar rules or even vocabulary. This means you’ll probably have to do a lot of extra work after the exchanges.
If you don’t want to spend money and don’t mind giving back by helping with your mother tongue and are a structured person who doesn’t need much hand-holding, a tandem partner is a great solution.
Conversing with a tutor usually has a fee lower than learning with a teacher. Tutors have experience teaching the language and are able to answer most of your questions. They don’t hold a teaching degree, however, so a large part of structuring and topic design will still be up to you and your efforts.
If you're ready to spend a little money, are ready to look some things up for yourself but prefer a little structure and guidance, and don’t want to teach your own language yourself, a language tutor is what you want.
Practicing with a teacher costs money (but has become very affordable!) and the focus will be solely on you and your learning progress. A teacher will most likely have a certain kind of syllabus, will design the lessons according to your level, and will be able to answer all the questions you have regarding the language.
If you want structure, guidance immediate answers and are ready to spend money, a language teacher will work best for you.
Here's how to find teachers, tutors, and language partners (scroll down a little).
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How to make the most of your lessons
Before every lesson, it’s important you know what you want to get out of it. Maybe you want to perfect talking about yourself or maybe there’s something in the natural conversational audio that you want to dive deeper into. Perhaps you want to learn to talk business, talk about skiing, hiking, or the last book you read. Whatever it is – make it relevant to you. Don’t talk about things you won’t encounter in real life.
Make sure you have all your necessary references open during the conversation: an online dictionary, a relevant word list for your topic, Google Translate or whatever you find helpful.
Your main goal should be to not switch to English; to simply eliminate that option. Your conversations with your language partners should come as close to real-life, full-on Hungarian conversations as humanely possible.
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What about real-life conversations?
Have them, whenever you can. Following this guide isn’t about shielding yourself from practicing Hungarian IRL. It’s rather a more structured approach to reach your goal. We saw learners solely rely on textbooks and others solely rely on becoming streetsmart and just picking it up on the side via daily conversations with friends and family – none of them worked. That’s the reason I wrote this guide – to provide you with more structure and show you what works instead.
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It’s time!

Learning Hungarian (or any language) is a rewarding, enriching, and fun adventure and it’s important you perceive it that way. It’s a big project and requires work but so do all good things in life.
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I'm curious about what you think of this guide and would love to read about your experiences.

• How did you approach your learning so far?
• What's your single biggest challenge currently?/Where did you get stuck?
• What are your experiences with the various steps above (e.g working with a tutor, learning vocab, etc.)
• Anything else that comes to mind?

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Happy learning - jó tanulást!💚🇭🇺

Edit: Thanks for the suggestions! Keep them coming and I'll be adding stuff to this list for the next couple of days. I love this sort of stuff.
Good-riddance 2020. To celebrate New Years I am going to post a refactored list I borrowed from u/OnlyInEye's awesome 2019 post (which you should read that if you haven't). Originally this was for personal reference. Then I added some stuff, and tried to shorten things to fit all that extra stuff. The material overlaps a bit with the sub's existing resources wiki, but not entirely. I know I repeated a few things, but this is a list I've kept for a bit that grew after a while of lurking here (I just made this new account though). I hope the formatting works on Reddit.
Corrections are very welcome and encouraged. It would be sweet if this were an annual thing. I'm just happy to promote lots great Tagalog resources made by hard-working people. Also this AllLanguageResources site might be useful for more ideas (but most of the good stuff is already included here).

Resources

Books

• Filipino Phrasebook and Dictionary by Lonely Planet: word enunciation pointers (good for sentence flow)
• Making out In Tagalog: funny and actually more useful than your 100th Gn. Cruz example
• Pocket Tagalog Dictionary: good for vocabulary but not for sentence formation
• Essential Tagalog Grammar: A Reference for Learners of Tagalog by Fiona De Vos: learn sentence formation, grammar, uses extensive alphabetical lists of noun, verb, and adjective affixes, covers informal Tagalog, and verb conjugation (courtesy of u/dimension-traveller)
• Tagalog for Beginners: An Introduction to Filipino, the National Language of the Philippines by Joi Barrios: classroom-inspired introduction to Tagalog (worksheet/lessons and activities)
  • Personal experience: Confusing organization, half-baked grammar lessons, and just feels all over the place
  • I needed help from my SO (a native-speaker) about lots of partially-explained topics (e.g. I was introduced to the participle 'ba' but not where it's placed, or a bunch of really weird stuff which my SO told me I could safely ignore)
  • Missing basic stuff like a table showing all the possessive pronouns (ko/mo/...), which is odd at best
  • Silver lining: an endless source of Tagalog-related discussions with my native-speaking girlfriend
  • Followed by Intermediate Tagalog: Learn to Speak Fluent Tagalog (Filipino), the National Language of the Philippines
• Adarna: online Filipino book vendor
• Peace Corps Tagalog learning resources
• Elementary Tagalog: Tara, Mag-Tagalog Tayo! Come On, Let's Speak Tagalog! by Jiedson R. Domigpe and Nenita Pambid Domingo: workbook not included, more structured and heavier on classroom-like teaching
• Basic Tagalog for Foreigners and Non-Tagalogs by Paraluman S. Aspillera: first gives an introduction to the history of Tagalog, the Tagalog alphabet, the Filipino character, and more, learning bits of culture in each lesson (courtesy of u/dimension-traveller)
• WIKApedia Booklet (2015 Edition) by the PCDSPO: a project for Buwan ng Wika in 2015 intended brushing up Filipino skills and knowledge (usage, grammar, and syllabication) (courtesy of u/dimension-traveller)
• BuriBooks: a subscription service for graded readers supplemented with Tagalog learning resources based on those stories all in Tagalog! (courtesy of lenantonio)
• Essential Tagalog: Speak Tagalog with Confidence by Tuttle Publishing: common/situational vocabulary/phrase guide, some inaccuracies like unusual spellings (e.g. Facebook as peysbuk, upload as aplowd) (courtesy of u/dimension-traveller)

Audio

• Pimsleur Tagalog level 1 and 2: spaced repetition, apparently great for native-like pronunciation, speaking ($15/mo)

Apps (mobile)

• Ling: simple, metrics/progress tracking, word/sentence examples, speaking activities, and exams (8.99/mo)
• Drops: word heavy, light on sentence structure, with progress-tracking (9.99)
• Memrise: user-created lessons on an alright platform (some free and some pay)
• Easy Tagalog by Dalubhasa and Simply Tagalog: quiz format, boring
• Clozemaster: learn sentence structure (intermediate+), with MC or fill in blank (u/lenantonio) (free)
• Mango Language: learn sentence structure, grammar, but only one unit so far (which is still the case coming into 2020) (7.99/mo)
• Rosetta Stone: old fashion, many po examples, not recommended
• Pimsleur (App): a great way to get started with Tagalog by using their app for tons of listening material, examples, and sentences with games (courtesy of u/OnlyInEye)
• Glossika (App): the best comprehensive review with lots of examples and the only one to go from A1 to C1 (courtesy of u/OnlyInEye)
• Tagalog.com (App): already listed but for flashcards with sounds it is the best by far and it's free (courtesy of u/OnlyInEye)

Programs (desktop)

• Learning with Text (LWT): text + audio, click/highlight words, generate reviews, installation is a mess (free)
• Foreign Language Text Reader (FLTR): an old Java program similar to LWT, with less features (free)
• Readlang: import reading material (e.g. news articles, epub books) with the Filipino option (beta-language)
• Jorken's Calibre: language-learning features for e-book reading (supports lemmatization)

Online stuff

Links

• Tagalog 2019 Resources Updated (u/OnlyInEye): credit to OnlyInEye for many great suggestions
• PinoyDictionary.com: shows compound words, dictionary for local languages (u/Connecticutjeremy) (free)
• Tagalog.com: a gem beyond just a dictionary with accent marks, lessons, 25,000+ word audio recordings, 38,000 word dictionary, approx. 7,900 sentence examples showing proper usage (useful for verbs), and 4,000 flash-cards with audio included (u/jkos123) (free)
  • lessons: simple, formatted, and clean lessons
  • reader-assist: a tool for translating Tagalog sources to generate study material
• Diksiyonaryo.ph: Tagalog-only dictionary, useful for synonyms, usage pointers, based on the UP Diksiyonaryong Filipino by the UP Center for Filipino Language (free online, but you can buy a physical copy) (courtesy of u/lenantonio and u/dimension-traveller)
• FilipinoPod101.com:: largest repository of learning material for Filipino (lessons, videos, and audio files) (expensive)
  • A hit or miss for many (beware)
• ai.glossika.com/: great memorization and practice, quasi-Duolingo on steroids, and also covers sentence formation (u/AkoSiKoneho) ($30/mo)
• Living Language: vocabulary and phrases (expensive, more than glossika if you're paying per month)
• SEAsite: a classic resource for Tagalog grammar (free)
• UC Filipino Curriculum Project: topics from geography, food, to literature, no updates since 2006 (still nice) (free)
• Uni Lang: covers pronunciation and basic grammar (free)
• hawaii.edu: well-rounded resources from one of the few universities teaching Tagalog and local languages like Ilocano
• Learning Tagalog: learn Tagalog grammar free online, in-depth and technical grammar exploration
• OPLingo's Tagalog Grammar Lite: online book on Tagalog grammar

Tutors and Native Help

• Teachers at Tagalog.com: The aforementioned Tagalog.com site offers 1-on-1 teaching while allowing you to support your Filipino tutors by having more money go straight to their pockets (courtesy of u/jkos123) ($5-15/hr)
• italki): an affordable tutoring platform similar to languagetools.io ($5-15/hr)
• OPLingo (formally languagetools.io): affordable teachers (many Philippines-based are cheaper than western-based tutors) (1 hour sessions, $5-15/hr)
  • Tagalog Grammar Lite: IMO a gem considering it's free (and open for community-corrections)
  • Note the name-change (older posts will mention languagetools.io instead)
• philtalk: paid courses and chats
• HiNative: ask native speakers questions about their language (an example discussion of Tagalog grammar)
• Lang8: Natives correct your writing while you correct non-native learners

Discord

• Deeper Cave of Linguists (part of cave of linguist network)

Facebook Groups

• Learn Tagalog (approx. 11k members)
• Lets learn philippine language (tagalog) (approx. 4K members)

Podcast

• Go Filipino: Let's Learn Tagalog
• FilipinoPod101
• KalyeSpeak

Stories

• StoryBooksCanada

Ilocano

1. Ilocano Youtube Videos: Tagalog and Ilocano (for Ilocano-learners who are Tagalog and/or English speakers)
   
2. Peace Corps Ilocano: free book for learning Ilocano by Peace Corps
   
3. Let's Speak Ilokano: helps you understand writing and how sentences form
   
4. Ilocano Phrase book: lots of Ilocano phrases and English translations, with a grammar and pronunciation walk-through
   

Other stuff

• Pugad Baboy (comic)
• PenLab: Pinoy graphic novels (courtesy of u/]rangeflee)

Quick Aside: On Language Learning

• What do you need to know to learn a foreign language? by Paul Nation (courtesy of lenantonio)
• Stephen Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition: why certain language learners work so hard for nothing
  • What's important:
    1. Meaningful interaction in target-language
    2. (Mostly) comprehensible input (you won't understand everything, obviously, but that's not the point)
  • The five hypotheses
    1. Acquisition-Learning hypothesis: there are two systems (first one is more important)
       • Acquired system: subconscious learning (like children, inductive)
       • Learning system: formal instruction (the rules come first, deductive)
    2. Monitor hypothesis: the learning system 'monitors' the acquired system
       • The best learners avoid overusing and under-using their monitor
    3. Input hypothesis: natural acquisition requires target-language input one step above current competence
       • Learn when to avoid easy stuff (look for challenging material, but not so advanced that it's hopeless)
    4. Effective Filter hypothesis: factors like motivation, self-confidence, anxiety and personality traits are influential
    5. Natural Order hypothesis: some grammatical structures are acquired later than others
       • Note: Krashen rejects organizing a syllabus according to this natural order
  • Takeaway: Krashen's findings might seem obvious and self-evident but it was hot-topic back then, the point being that most of us are no doubt guilty of these blunders. This philosophy can be extended. To get good at 'A', do more of 'A' and stop doing so much of 'B'. "Classroom learning" is never enough. Use Tagalog at any level, preferably in the wild, in meaningful ways.

If you have not played far enough to hear the soundtrack with Latin lyrics, there are spoilers below.
The two songs from the secret final battle contain very Latin-sounding lyrics. I am of course talking about talking about The One They Call the Witch and Daughter of the Dark God
There have been numerous attempts to transcribe and translate them, with varying degrees of success. It's also been said that they might be "faux-latin" but I am not able to find the original source for this. Regardless, there still definitely seems to be some structure there, along with individual words that certainly match the overall theme.
The original thread was closed a year or two ago, so let's try again.
Warning: the following is probably like, 80% wrong.

Isolating the Vocals

Both tracks contain two sets of lyrics - a chorus and a solo. The chorus is quite hard to make out, so I defer to the original thread for transcription and translation. But the solo singer is easier - the way the song is mixed, the solo part is on the center channel while the instruments are mostly asymmetric. So, we can use something like GoldWave to subtract out the instruments and keep mostly the vocals. To do this, I am using Goldwave 5. Load up the track, then go to Effect -> Stereo -> Stereo Center. From there, click on Presets and select "Keep Vocals". Then, under Center Channel change "From Hz" to 300.0, and set FFT size to 14, Overlap to 16x, and Click OK. Let it do its thing for a second. Then fast-forward to 00:50 and click PLAY. It's not perfect, but it makes the solo vocal part stand out very significantly.
An alternative way to clean up the vocals is to first reduce the volume by 60%, then run Effect -> Stereo -> Channel Mixer and run "Double Vocals". Do this twice. This gets you dramatically filtering but also less distortion, as this does not involve an FFT. Then maybe follow it with Stereo Center, preset to "Keep Vocals" with a "From Hz" setting of 150Hz. This will reduce some of the precussion, without distorting the low end on the vocals too much.

Transcribing

With the solo vocal part more-or-less isolated, we can try to do an initial transcription. This prioritizes pronunciation over trying to use real words or making them fit together. If I had to sing it, this is how I would do it. Word breaks are largely arbitrary; matching the transcription to real words is best-effort.
The One They Call the Witch:

nos te vedes labilliae nostre seda deoridis e revirnst a cis perlos orbiti conteri dota se cordis morte vos te vedi nos veni es reverte deorinis e core vestes forte valos oro cosis per portis nous voredi vedes nos vorati vontus nos vorenos porte cis

Daughter of the Dark God:

ei de stelpa lapenist tre dies el par illi peste alia camur peli talia orbitis te qui allisano tes cordis sera cotse vedis labeli notre sida deorinis e cor e vestis forte valos oro cosis per te ei de vilna re qui tu ni e de vitra villis nati e te verna vedis navi il suasil que tira nous voredi vedi nos voreni vertos es torinas verta

There is a fair amount of ambiguity here. Sometimes it's hard to tell between e/i and n/d/t/l sometimes. The background audio isn't helping. But, this is probably the best I'll be able to get; the translation will hopefully resolve some of the consonant ambiguities.
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Translating

Credit goes to u/thyrandomninja and u/Kurosuzaku for doing a lot of the initial legwork. With the lyrics better isolated, I agree with some of the earlier transcription/translation, but in some places I substitute my own, because some things clearly sound different in the isolated version. Despite the audio processing this is probably something like 80% wrong; in some places you really gotta force the pieces to fit, which makes me way less confident about some parts. A big problem throughout is finding the boundaries between words. Did I mention I don't actually *know* any Latin?
For translation, I've been looking at three major sources:

• William Whitaker's WORDS - rule-based decomposition engine and dictionary (written in Ada), with its own fascinating history. Supports common letter substitution and breaks words up. Extensive vocabulary.
• Online Latin Dictionary - supports wildcard matching
• Latin-English Dictionary - another version of Whitaker's WORDS, with autocomplete, but without some of the correction / word-combining features?
• Google Translate - sometimes helps with grammar; not sure where it gets half of its definitions though. The voice pronunciation feature is sometimes useful though
• Latin Pronouns - because we are very likely to encounter some pronouns

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Anyway, this is what I end up with:
The One They Call the Witch

Line number	Time	Transcription (proposed)	Interpretation
1	0:50	nos te vetes labillae (alt: vedis?)	We forbid you to slip [perish/be dishonored] (alt: we saw you dishonored?)
2	0:55	nos te se da deo retis (alt: nostri sita deo ritis)	We give you the return of god (alt: our god is located thereon / our god is there)
3	1:01	ei revirenst a cis perlos orbiti	He revives from [this side of] the burning world
4	1:06	conteri dota se cordis morte	exhaust the endowment of my heart of death
5	1:12	vos que vedi nos veni	See you that we have come
6	1:17	es reverte deorunis (alt: deo rinis)	You are returned uninjured (alt: you return to god)
7	1:23	e cor et vestis forte vales	For heart and armor to prevail,
8	1:28	oro cosis per portis (consis?)	I pray to acquire from the gate
9	1:45	nous vereni vetes (alt: nous voreni ventis ?)	We are an obstacle to youth (alt: winds pushed us?)
10	1:48	nos vorati ventus (alt: nos voreni ventus)	We swallowed the wind (alt: we pushed the wind)
11	1:50	nos verenos porte cis (alt: vorenos)	Indeed, we are on this side of the gate (alt: We pushed [on this side of] the gate)

​
Then we move on to Daughter of the Dark God. This is much more difficult for me to make out, save for a few words here and there. We also notice that some of the lines from the previous track are re-used, and in some places a few of the words are altered.
Daughter of the Dark God

Line number	Time	Transcription (proposed)	Interpretation
12	0:21	id est ea(?) par lape dis	That is she(?) of [for?] the dark god
13	0:25	tri dies ii par illi peste	three days pass for the plague (the plague lasts three days?)
14	0:31	alia camur pellit alia orbitis (alt: canur) (alt: pelli talia)	the other horned one banished [to the] other world (alt: other dogs banished to another world) (alt: other horned one banished to such a world)
15	0:37	te qui ale sano tis cordis sera	You who cured your slow heart (??)
16	0:43	quot se vetes labili	How many [times did] you not let yourself slip (dishonored?) (?)
17	0:47	e notre se da deorunis (alt: notre sida deo ritis; see above)	We will give him uninjured (alt: our god is located thereon)
18	0:53	e cor et vestis forte vales	For [of] heart and armor to prevail,
19	0:59	oro cosis per te	I pray to acquire through you
20	1:26	Vidi vilna(?) ve qui tu ni (alt: ??? re qui tu ni)	See ??? how force you are not (alt: ??? thing that you are not)
21	1:32	il devitra velis nati (alt: vidi vitra vilis nati)	He wants to stray [depart?] children (alt: see worthless old glass?)
22	1:38	e te vernare dis nati (alt: ei te verna veris nati?)	and your offspring (?) of god arise (alt: and you are the true child of spring???)
23	1:43	E suas il? que tera	(??) urge (??) and earth (his own ??? and earth)?
24	1:59	nous vorati velis	We strive to devour (alt: [You] strive to devour us)
25	2:02	nos voreni vertos	We turned the wind (?)
26	2:05	is torinos vetato (?) (alt: is stori nos vetaro)	We overthrow its swelling??? (alt: he forbids us to rest?)

​

Line-by-line translation notes

1. We're off to a rocky start. It is possible that "lav illi" (or "lav illae", as it more clearly sounds like) is one word, or two words split differently. I can't find "lav" in a standalone dictionary, but Google translates it to "lay". As in like, lay down / defeat? Alternative possibilities are lavillae ("lava, diminutive") or maybe lavi + illae ("wash" + "that / those") but that doesn't seem to make sense. An alternative could be labillae ("disaster / dishonor / landslip / fault") and this seems the most plausible and despite the -ill- suffix (diminutive) seeming out of place, we'll go with it. Google's Latin language model is of very limited help - for instance, "vos te vede" translates to "You will phpBB", which is clearly wrong. (Yes, I know the Romans had relatively "advanced" technology, but *damn*...). I could also see vides ("look / see / seem") being vetes ("forbid / reject / prevent") but vides makes more sense? I am not sure if "vetes" is supposed to agree with "nos" or with "te" (probably nos?) but I'm out of ideas.
2. This one is surprisingly messy. "Nostri" (we) could be "nos te" (we you); "seda" (calm, restrain [verb]) could be "se da" (-selves give), or sita ("positioned / situated / centered upon"). And "deoritis" could be a combination of many things: * deo + redis - "god" + "return" [verb] * deo + ridis / rinis - "god" + "thing / event / cause" * deo + runas - "god" + "dart" * deorines - drain / swallow down * deorunis - "uninjured". Prior transcriptions suggest this, but I do not hear the "u" sound, nor do I know where Google got the definition from. Putting it all together, "nostri seda deo redis" seems tempting, because it would mean "our restrained god returns" or something. But, "seda" is a verb, and I am not sure if there is a noun equivalent that sounds similar. Another possibility is "nostri se da deo redis" - "we give/devote/surrender ourselves to god return". The word da means a lot of things, and the conjugation is important, too. Apparently, "da" is the 2nd person singlar form of "do/dare/dedi/datus", and "nos" (we) would be the 1st person plural, so that doesn't seem to fit? So we can try "nos te se da deo redis", or roughly "we selves give [to] you return [of] god"? This too seems a bit ambiguous, but at least "da" now agrees (??) with "te", both being 2nd person singular? Maybe the 2nd person singular subject is implied, like "[You] give us "? Latin has flexible word order, but it "tends to" follow subject-object-verb (ie, "we saw him" -> "we him saw"), so "nos te [se] da" seems consistent with this, with the inflected "te" in the middle and the verb at the end? I am not sure how much it makes sense to have "se" where it is, but deep gramatical knowledge is really really beyond me here. A linguist I am not.
3. I am not sure if "revirnst" is even a word (or if here's even a "t" at the end). Possibilities include some inflection of revires ("re-" and "strength/powemight/violence"), or revierns ("re-" + "lively or vigorous"; maybe "reinvigorated / revived"). I considered "revierns ta" vs "revienst a" but "ta" isn't a word? On the other hand, I am pretty confident in "a cis perlos orbiti". Cis (is pronounced with a "ch") refers to "*this* side of something" (as opposed to "the *other* side"). For "perlos orbiti", Google (and prior translations) give us "burning world". I believe "a" is a preposition meaning "from" and such. So, "revive from the [near side of] the burning world?" Not sure what the "e" is doing there; it could be "ei" as an exclamation, or as a pronoun ("of")? Google sometimes just ignores this. It is also possible that the first word here is "e", which acts as a pronoun and maybe joins this with the next line. So maybe the combined meaning would be something like "[of] the return from the burning world [is] what exhausts the endowment of my heart of death". But that's a lot of assumptions...
4. The first part is really hard to make out here. The transcription of conteri dota ("waste / exhaust", "endow") is probably wrong. There might be another consonant in there somewhere, but I can't put my finger on it. I originally thought this might be quampridem but that seems like a stretch too (Whitaker actually breaks this into two words). I could also see the end being "sui / se", or "mortis / morte", or something else entirely. Google and a more generic Latin dictionary give vastly different meanings here.
5. I was inclined to go with "vos te vedi", but it looks like "vos" and "te" are two different forms of "you" - the first being the plural (or polite) form, and the second being the singular (or casual) form. French / Spanish / Russian (and others) have something similar. So for "vos" to be the subject and "te" to be the object just doesn't seem to make sense? So, going with "que", which sounds equally possible. Google gives us the translation here.
6. There's that word again, "deorunis". The "n" in this line is more pronounced. Google's pronunciation pronounces it a bit differently, but it sure fits nicely this time around. I'll just go with the Google Translate version here, but see point #2.
7. Another line with lots of ambiguity and possibilities. This is the best I can come up with, though that's not saying much. I am least sure of vestis, though I suppose "vestis forti" could mean "strong clothes" or I suppose "armor". Then, vales could be an inflected form of "valeo", which is a verb meaning to "be strong / powerful / successful; to prevail". Especially given the line that follows, it would make sense for her to ask of such things from the gate, even though the combination of manual translation and Google makes this come off a bit wonky. I suppose vales could be valos ("stake / pole / point"; maybe "spear" / polearm?) but vales makes more sense because it's a verb, and Latin *prefers* Subject-Object-Verb structure (though this is by no means guaranteed). Similarly, forti ("strong") could be forte ("fortunate") or, more likely "forte" could actually be an inflected form of "forti", in context. If I had an intuition for how these inflected forms work, this would be far easier...
8. This one seems straightforward. The line is repeated in the second track, but changed to "oro corsis per te" ("I pray to acquire through you"). Both seem to fit.
9. Lots of ways to transcribe this one, which changes the meaning quite a bit. Google (and prior translations) tell us "voreni" = "pushed", and attempts have translated this line as "we pushed the wind".Other candidates for the second word could be: * vorati ("swallow / devour") * vereni ("spring-time of life") * veredi ("horse / hunter") * vereti ("ver + eti", "advance" + "spring" ???). And the third word could be: * petis ("to attack") * ventis ("wind") * vetes ("to forbid") ... so "nous vereni vedes" would get us to "we forbid/reject/prevent the spring-time of life")? That... actually seems plausible, except if "vetes" is a verb, it is the 2nd-person singular form of "veto", which doesn't fit with "nos" (and it is also the subjunctive mood, as in wishful thinking or imagining, but that might be okay). Unless again, the 2nd person pronoun can be implied? Some languages allow this, but what about Latin? I could see "voreni" or "veredi", depending on which filter settings I use. I could also see "petis" ("to attack") being thematically relevant, but like "vetes", this is the 2nd person singular form ("you [singular] attack") and doesn't fit with "nos" ("we").The other strange thing is the first word sounds like "nous" rather than "nos". Google translates this as "us" rather than "we" (an inflected form?). So maybe the verb really *is* a 2nd person singluar verb, and "tu" (subject) is omitted/implied, and "nous" is the object? But I do not see "nous" on the list of pronouns, so ..... ? I am completely out of ideas for this line (and largely the one that follows). I'm just going to go with one, even if I don't like any of them.
10. Prior transcriptions give this as "nos voreni vontos" and Google seems to think "vontos" is a word, but I can't find it in other sources. Could be anyone's guess. The closest thing I can find is an inflection of fantum ("temple") but that clearly sounds like it starts with a 'v', right? I must defer to earlier transcriptions / translations for this one. On the other hand, if we go with vorati ventus ("devour"), ("wind"), we actually get somthing plausible. OLD gives a possible definition for vorati as "perfect participle masculine plural", which *maybe* might be the "we" form of "voror", but linguistics is not my strong point. I guess "perfect" would mean like, "we [fully] devoured the wind" but I am probably grasping at straws again.
11. There's "portis" ("[of] gate") again, so we're hopefully on the right track. Earlier transcriptions use "nos vorenos" ("we pushed") but I am still not sure where Google is getting "vorenos" from. I can't find this in OLD or in Whitaker. An alternative could be verenos maybe, and at least that's more of a word? Plugging "nos verenos porte cis" into Google Translate actually gives us something reasonable, but I am a little disinclined to drop the previous translation quite yet. So, take your pick. Google helpfully gives us "are" in this translation; I know in some languages the present-tense form of "to be" ("am/are") can be omitted. If nothing else, their language model is hopefully recognizing this properly.
12. Another line where there is much difficulty isolating the words. Somewhat arbitrarily, that is what we come up with. We start with "id est" ("he / that" + "is") but it could involve dies ("day, time, age") instead. The next thing I cannot make out, but the pronoun ea (nominative she) seems like as good a guess as any. Then par ("equivalent", in this case, "for??") could make sense. I suppose labe ("disaster, landslip, dishonor, blemish, stain, fault") could also be lape ("stone"). Both are nouns. I kind of like "labe" better because we (think?) we saw labillae earlier. Come to think of it, "labe" could mean "dark" in this context, which seems to fit? If this is right, the only thing I can think of for the ending is dis, meaning "[to/of] god". I thought I heard an "n" and a "t" at the end, but I can't find ways to make them fit. We'll just go with it.
13. Can't make out the first part. I think "ille" is an inflected form of a third-person pronoun, meaning "he" or "that one". I think "peste" means "plague" or "disease" or some such. At least it seems somewhat thematically appropriate. I am least certain of ii ("pass [time]") here.
14. This one could go so many different ways; I am 99% sure this is wrong. Here, "orbitis" is an inflected form of "orbiti" ("world"), meaning that "world" is an object of some action. And if "alia" is right, it might be talking about [something being done to] the "other world", which could be a stretch but at least it fits thematically. There is ambiguity between camur ("curved / having such horns") / canur (something about dogs) / canor ("song") and alia ("other") and talia ("such"). Or it could be "eli talia". I don't know where Google found "canur" - I can't find it anywhere else.
15. This could be "allisero" ("to crush / bruise") or it could be "ali sano", which would mean "to nourish / cure / heal". I can't make out which one it is.
16. We start to see repetition of the first track, except it changes from "nos te" to "vos se", meaning (I think) it goes from "we [did something to] you" to "you [plural] [did something to] yourself". The next word seems to be a form of "vidi / vide", meaning "to see". So, this line parallels the first track but goes from "we saw you" to "you saw yourself". I can't make out what follows, but "ille / illae" seems to be a pronoun (again, assuming I'm right about word boundaries). I can't figure out what comes before it, though.
17. It sounds like "nostri" becomes "notre", except although "notre" is a thing in French, I can't find a Latin equivalent. Maybe the "s" is hard to hear this time around?
18. Seems to be unchanged from the previous track, but is still equally hard to make out. At least they sound consistent. I guess vales ("to be strong; to prevail") could also be valos ("stake / pole / point / [spear]")? I kind of like "vales" because it is at the end, which is a little more consistent with the generally more common S-O-V order.
19. Here again, "per portis" changes to "per te", changing the meaning from [I pray to acquire it] "through the gate" to "through you". Seems logical.... and at the very least, it helps establish the point of view of the speaker, and in some sense, the audience.
20. Vidi / vedi is probably "look / see / looked / saw", but I cannot figure out what comes after. The word boundaries are difficult here, as always. "Vilna" isn't a word, and neither is anything close that I can find. If we pick different work boundaries, we could break it up as "??? nate qui tu ni" ("son that you are not") but I can't come up with a reasonable candidate for the first word. Maybe "e te vel nave qui tu ni", or maybe "??? re qui tu ni" ("??? thing that you are not")? But I am still missing the first few words.
21. Not sure if this is "vidi vitra" or if there is a pronoun + "devitra". Pretty sure "vitra" means "glass" of some sort, and the "vedi" before it means "look / see". But I cannot make out what comes after. Whitaker parses devitra as a single word (root+suffix), meaning "instrument / means / place [of] detour / stray / depart". But I can't find references to this anywhere else; WORDS uses a root/suffix approach to potentially parse "words" that weren't ever actually used. It is very likely wrong, but I'll go with it...
22. I think "e te" means "of your", and then we have verna, which is an inflected form of several possible words, from "slave", to "spring", to "revive, awaken, flourish". I guess the exact source word depends on the context, and what agrees with what we already have. But it may as well mean "your slaves see a ship". I suppose vernare could fit, but it could also be verna + re ("thing). I am guessing the rest is dis + nati, which fits the title of the song at least (and it helps that the verb is at the end). Another possibility is veris ("true, real, genuine, actual").
23. I am out of ideas here. suas could mean "to sew", or it could be a pronoun ("his/her own"), or it could be suasi ("to warn / foretell"). Furthermore, "tera" or "terra" sounds more like "kira" or "qui ra". Both are nonsense? The rest is anyone's guess.
24. This may as well mean "we eat curtain". Running out of ideas on the whole "voreni" thing. Possible candidates are "varati" (related to "bend/curve"), veredi ("horse / hunter"), "veriti" ("to revere / respect"), "vorati" ("to swallow / devour"), "viridi" ("green / grass"). Your guess is as good as mine.
25. I am not sure that "voreni" is a word. I am not sure where Google is even getting parts of it from. The closest single thing I can find is "vorati", meaning "to swallow / devour [completely]". Appropriately ominous, I guess?
26. I originally left this one largely to Google, and originally it translated "es tor inas verta" into "You laid aside for this purpose". I guess es could mean "to be" or "to eat/destroy", which is relevant but I gotta make the rest of it fit. Using different letter grouping and an alternative source, I think what I have now makes slightly more sense. Still, it's probably wrong. The last syllable is particularly hard to make out.

​

Overall notes

Latin is a highly inflected language, meaning that words can take on many forms, depending on context. English has a little bit of inflection with words like "he / him" or "who / whom", depending on what role the pronoun plays in context. Well, in Latin, it's not just the pronouns changing forms, but *nouns* and adjectives too. And they could have something like 5-6 different forms, which have to agree, and change depending on what kind of action is being performed on an object. There are also two forms of "you", kind of like in French. It's a bit hard to explain in English, but this sort of thing happens in many other languages, like Spanish, Russian, etc. Hungarian cranks the level inflection up to eleven. On the other hand, Chinese has virtually none of it.
Because of the inflections, the word order in a sentence can be flexible - that is, you can say the words in any order, and the subject and object become obvious from the endings. That said, Latin "generally" follows a Subject-Object-Verb order (whereas English uses Subject-Verb-Object).
In order for the translation to make sense, the noun/adjective inflections have to agree with the verbs, tenses, and forms involved. But, since I don't know any *actual* Latin, I cannot intuitively tell if they line up. We can look this stuff up, cross-check it, and (likely need to) alter the transcription, but I am out of ideas for tonight.
I've largely ignored verb mood, tense, and to some extent, person, in my "translation" (ie, verb variations like see / seen / saw / had seen / would have seen, etc) so in some places the meaning could be off because of this. I'd be down to do a grammar cleanup pass, but I'm not sure the transcription is accurate enough to warrant it. So it would be nice to hear from others first.

Final thoughts

I am seriously hoping that someone with an *actual* knowledge of Latin will come along, and put my "translation" completely to shame, tell me all the million of ways I'm wrong, and provide a corrected version. But then at least we'll know what it means.
​
If you've managed to read all the way to the bottom, I am truly impressed.
EDIT: minor formatting fixes; realized "re" = "thing" and updated accordingly

I tutor Spanish and have an excel doc with a few thousand verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. and while I have it organized pretty well for my needs I am curious as well what words, phrases, etc I should sharing/teaching to my various students as they are all at various levels of development and I want to insure I am not teaching too far above their ability to understand and retain.
.
I'd like to be able to scrape books like these: Example PDF and get a list back of every word used and how many times it was used. For verbs though, I would like it to recognize that tengo, tiene, tenia, etc are all conjugations of tener and just list tener rather than each individual conjugation. Or like how went and goes are conjugations of the infinitive word "to go" in English.
Ultimately, I'd like for the program to scrape a set of books, say 20-100 at a time, determine what words get used at what frequency, and weight them on a scale so that I can then have a rough idea which words are used most often in reading/literature for each age group.
I found this resource :Word Extract which I think might be a good starting point. I think the harder part will be getting either this program or a separate one to be able to recognize what conjugated words are which without having a database with all said words and their respective conjugations.
I'm willing to read and mock up various programs before asking for coding input, I would just like to know where I should start and what resources would be most beneficial to get me going?

Hey guys,
I'm currently writing a book about Syrian Arabic. It's gonna be a grammar book but without complex linguistic terms or explanations. I plan to make it clear, as complete as possible and with many example sentences translated in a simplified interlinear gloss method.
I made a short preview of it to get your opinions and suggestions on how I can improve it, on what would be the most helpful for you.
My book will be divided in several parts:

1. The root system
2. The verb forms
3. The noun forms
4. The adjective forms
5. Arabic vs English tenses
6. A part on particular verbs like كان، صار، ضل, etc
7. And then many parts on very common expressions / words, like هون 'here' and هنيك 'there'

(By the way, the part on the verb forms and conjugation has already been written completely and published on my website, you can download it for free in English or French).
On this book preview, I show you how the chapter on هون and هنيك could look like. It's not finished, of course, but you can get the way I developped it.
Direct download of the preview book on Internet Archive.
Again, I'm open to any suggestion, so don't hesitate to comment here!

First, I want to begin by saying that getting massive amounts of input is incredibly important. It's just that there's more to the story than that. There are five particular things that I'd like to discuss:

1. On immersion, in the literal sense
2. On immersion, in Krashen's i+1 sense
3. On immersion, before achieving a foundation
4. On immersion, after achieving a foundation
5. My experience with Russian and Japanese
6. TL;DR -- based on the above, the big picture behind how I conceptualize language learning

On immersion, in the literal sense

While "immersion" is currently a buzzword, it's not a new idea in linguistics. About 150 years ago a French linguist named Lambert Sauveur wrote a book about language learning in which he completely rejected classroom antics. He felt that language should be learned completely "naturally", like a baby, without any sort of formal instruction or error correction. The topic has been being discussed ever since. Different schools of thought advocate for different balances of immersion:study.
u/TottoriJPN wrote a very readable/TL;DR overview of some "natural" theories about language learning on the LanguageLearning forums. Each post is a paragraph or so overview of a major theory with a few links to further reading and one sentence takeaway. You can read those here:

• Learning Methods 101: Natural Methods
• Learning Methods 102: Linguistic Methods (a followup)

If you don't feel like reading the posts, what I think is important to point out is that immersion is kind of hit or miss. Some people achieve incredible results with it, whereas other people can literally live for decades in another country but fail to achieve even a basic level of fluency in their target language. They're literally immersed, learning the language would improve their quality of lives and they have every opportunity to go out and practice/learn the language... but, for whatever reason, they don't.
Even conservatively speaking, then, I think it's safe to say that immersion isn't all you need without any conditions. There's obviously more to the story. But what? (if you read through the posts, you can extrapolate that people who learn from immersion had some sort of force constantly pushing them towards refinement/improvement... those who immersed for the sake of immersion without worrying about getting better plateau'd and didn't grow beyond that point -- this is what I talk about in pt4)
Then, here's why I don't think immersion is a silver bullet, especially if you go before already speaking the language.

On immersion, in Krashen's i+1 sense

(Not necessarily following the above) 50 odd years ago a linguist named Stephen Krashen made a very bold statement: Input is the only causative factor driving second language acquisition. In other words, input is the only thing that matters.
He posited five hypotheses:

1. We learn best when we consume "comprehensible input" -- stuff that is i+1, where i is our current level. In other words, to learn, we should consume content that's above our level but still within reach.
2. There is a difference between (intentional) learning and (unintentional/organic) acquisition of language. Krashen thinks that improving in a language is 100% a result of unconscious acquisition (ie, not grammar studies).
3. That's not quite to say that conscious learning is useless: we use consciously gained knowledge to monitor our speech and correct mistakes (ie, i learned the te forms, and I used to monitor my speech to remind myself that I should say のんで not のて)
4. We aren't blank slates; we're hardwired for grammar and there's a certain predefined order in which we'll pick it up
5. Negative emotions, such as nervousness or boredom, negatively affect on our progress (thus we should have a "silent period" in which we only consume the language, as to avoid negative emotions that arise from speaking before we're ready)

Now, this seems very convincing. Obviously, if we spend 100 hours in Japanese or read ten books, we have to learn something. Right? There is even data showing that vocabulary size is directly correlated with what and how much we read.
Having said that, quite significant critique of Krashen's work also exists.

• A Critical Review of Krashen's Input Hypothesis: Three Major Arguments
• Importance of Language Input in Language Learning (less dense, but auto-downloads a .pdf)

Again, I want to point out that none of the critical responses make any attempt to suggest that input is not incredibly important. Here's a few examples of what types of points get brought up:

• Incomprehensible input can sometimes be very useful. The negative feedback gained from not understanding something serves as a catalyst to further your learning. In simpler terms, it's easier to fill in a hole after you know that it exists.
• How do we determine our "current level" of proficiency? Even if we were to somehow be able to deduce our current level of proficiency, how can we reliably determine what is "one step above" our current level of proficiency? Even if we can accurately and concretely define what "one step above our current level of proficiency" is, how can we be sure that the content we're consuming is "i+1" content? ( I had gotten this partially wrong — see u/fillanzea ‘s post below for clarification )

I want to expand a bit on this second point. Take the final two lines of The Hollow Men, a poem by T.S. Elliot:
> This is how the world ends
> Not with a bang but with a whimper
This would probably look like an excellent "i+1" sentence if you happened to be sentence mining. It's incredibly poignant and profound, but consists of simple grammar and only one difficult word: whimper. Exactly the sort of sentence I'd like to memorize, personally.
The issue is that, even if you perfectly understand every single word and grammar point in this sentence, the meaning might still go over your head. The poem was written in 1925, reflecting on the state of European culture after world war one. It heavily alludes to the book Heart of Darkness and is full of references to Christianity. Google around and you'll find incredibly long analyses of this poem. There's a lot more going on here than meets the eye. Without the right background, you probably won't know that you don't know.
Now, of course you're not always going to be poring over poetry or something like that. All I want to accomplish here is to demonstrate that there are indeed circumstances in which you might not understand something you read, despite knowing every kanji/word/grammar point in the sentence. Sometimes it will be for purely linguistic reasons -- you might see それとなく and think you understand it, because it's got simple words, without realizing that it's a phrase -- or, as in the case of this poem, you might be missing cultural/historical context.
If you're interested in this idea, I'd like to share two things:

• Matt vs Japan: Language Isn't Math (~8m)
• Beyond Anki: Why even native speakers must take literature classes

On immersion, before achieving a foundation

Anyhow, the real reason I made this post:

• A few days ago, there was (apparently) someone who had complained that they still had a low level of Japanese despite having spent thousands of hours watching anime/drama/etc
• Another person responded to that saying if you study a lot, but are still at a low level, chances are what you're doing isn't really studying
• Another person responded to that, saying immersion is all you need

I think that all of these people have something valuable to say. I agree with both responses. I think that what is being missed is that learning isn't an either:or thing. You need immersion and study.
In educational theory, there is an idea called the zone of proximal development.

1. There is some stuff that you can do all by yourself
2. There is some stuff that you could do with the help of a teacheresource, but not by by yourself
3. There is some stuff that you could not do even with the help of a teacheresource

To put that into perspective, I'd like to ask you to skim through this video of a guy solving a sudoku puzzle. Let's think about those zones in terms of numbers on the board:

1. He begins with only two numbers; this is " i "
2. Those two numbers enable him to solve certain squares; those squares are " i + 1 "
3. The rest of the squares are "i + (more than one)". Given his current situation, he cannot solve the squares.
4. Once he solves the squares in step 2, everything changes. The squares that were previously i+2 become i+1.

Basically, depending on where you are in the puzzle, certain squares are and aren't solvable.

• A person who hasn't solved any squares could spend weeks doing serious math trying to figure out the i+2 squares, but not get anywhere. For this learner, those squares aren't worth much.
• For a person who has solved the first batch of squares, focusing on those squares that were previously i+2 (but are now i+1) enable them to make progress in the puzzle and eventually solve it

IMO learning works in the same way.
Theoretically speaking, I suppose it's possible that we could i+1 our way to proficiency. But this isn't an ideal world, and we have a few issues:

• We're not linguistics and probably can't accurately assess our "current level"
• Even if we could accurately assess our "current level", non-linguistic factors might prevent us from realizing that what seems to be an i+1 piece of content/sentence is actually i+(more than one)
• Even if we could accurately assess our current level and perfectly identify content as being i+1 or not... the technology doesn't exist to create a personalized sequence of i+1, 2, 3... content. We have to go digging through content and "mining" for ourselves in order to find the content that's actually i+1.

When we're a total beginner, the content that's truly i+1 is very limited. Taking the time to work through Genki or something like that gives you a foundation that basically gives you leeway. The perimeter of a 1x1 square is 4, of a 2x2 square is 8... etc. If we can build an even slightly bigger square, we expand the range of content that could potentially sit at its perimeter, being i+1.
It's not that you have to do this, it's just that spending the time to build a foundation makes it more likely that you'll succeed with a given piece of content. The bigger base you have, the more likely you are to be able to latch onto and learn something. Eventually your square of knowledge gets so big that you can learn from practically anything even without explicit effort.

On immersion, after achieving a foundation

From there, I think a lot of people assume that all we have to do is reach a certain "critical mass" of knowledge and from there we can learn everything we need from immersion. In my experience, however, that's not quite true. The reason why is pretty simple, and it comes down to what we can/do and can't/don't notice.
When you first begin immersing, it's impossible not to notice all the stuff you don't know. You're watching a drama and somebody says some word you don't know, so you say huh? and look it up. Boom! Word learned. You're reading a book and encounter an unfamiliar grammar structure, so you Google it. Boom! Grammar point learned. There's just tons of stuff to pick up.
Eventually you get through all those individual pieces but still find stuff you don't understand: now you start noticing more subtle stuff. You misunderstand a sentence despite seemingly knowing all its constituent parts only to realize that, sometimes, stuff is worth more than the sum of its parts. それとなく, from earlier, is a fixed phrase... you won't understand what it means just because you know the words それ and ない, or even if you know the grammar point ~ともなく.
So, I want to highlight that contrast for a second.

• Someone who just begin immersing and isn't really familiar with Japanese will likely be thrown off by a phrase like それとなく. They'll post about it in a shitsumonday or something, it'll get explicitly pointed out, they'll feel dumb for a second and then the sentence clicks
• Someone with a bit more experience under their belt will have developed a kind of "sixth sense" to smell subtleties like this out and probably be able to identify the source of their troubles without asking for help

So, having said that, I feel that there is almost always going to be stuff that we won't notice. I've read dozens of novels in Japanese and recently began experimenting with translation. I've translated fun stuff in a club, scholarly articles for friends and recently began doing some corporate stuff at work. Now, about a year ago I began going through JLPT prep books just for fun. I do one test per day day when I first get to work as a 10 minute "warm up".
Recently I worked through an N5/N4 prep book, and to my surprise, I learned about several nuances to beginner grammar points that I hadn't noticed in literally ~20,000 pages of immersion, a couple hundred hours of drama and two years living in Japan. Here's a few:

• There is difference between (verb)間 and (verb)間に (the same thing with まで andまでに, but that's an N3 grammar point) . When you say (verb)間, the nuance is that you did something for the entire duration between point A and B. When you say (verb)間に, the nuance is that at some point between point A and B, you did something.
• ので and から are not always interchangeable. You can not put any sort of command after ので. So it's okay to say うるさいから 、けんかをやめろ, but it's not correct to say うるさいので 、けんかをやめろ.
• Similarly, different things come after 後 and 後で. A concrete action comes after 後で, but a continuing situation/action comes after 後. Thus, it's correct to say 退院した後 、ずっと元気です but not 退院した後で 、ずっと元気です

If I hadn't picked up on these nuances after 20,000 pages, somehow I don't think I'd have picked up on them after 20,000 more. For this reason, even though I can read Japanese very comfortably follow audiobooks/dramas/etc without much effort, I still begin every day with a 10-minute warm up. I quite regularly find little stuff that I hadn't known about.

My experience with Russian and Japanese

My native language is English, but I left the US when I was 19 and studied/worked around the world. That's lead me to engage with several languages in a variety of different ways. Notably:

• I studied Japanese formally in Japan for 2 years, spent ~2 years purely immersing with books/no anki or conversation, then for the last odd year have been doing these grammar "warmups", chatting with a tutor and expanding into audiobooks/dramas/YouTube/anime/etc.
• I studied practically zero Russian, but did spend ~2,000 hours conversing in it over the course of five years. Maybe more. (I learned present/past conjugations of verbs and the basics of noun declension/the case system with a textbook; that's all I did for formal studying).

Now, I want to make a few comments based on that:

1. While I'm so much more proficient in Japanese than Russian that I would almost say I don't speak Russian... if I were to record a video of me speaking both Japanese and Russian, you'd probably think I was better at Russian.
2. While I feel very comfortable consuming Japanese content, it feels like a foreign language and it goes through my head. Russian feels like my language and it goes through my heart; I'm much better at picking up on emotions and stuff like that in Russian, and it takes much less energy to watch a Russian show than a Japanese one.
3. While my Japanese is undeniably more correct than my Russian, my Russian sounds much more natural than my Japanese. Why? Having gone through so many conversations in Russian, I just know what Russian people will say in a variety of situations and how they express emotions. We've got certain "go to" phrases in our native languages; I've got parallel phrases for all of these in Russian, but I don't know what exactly a Japanese person would say in that context.

So... basically, I want to say to say that there's really (at least) two sides to fluency:

• On the one hand, there is accuracy/knowledge. You know the rules of the language.
• On the other is familiarity or intimacy; you're comfortable using the language.

I think that we build the first one via input, the second one via output.

• I'm currently working through a textbook in Russian because I need to iron out my foundation in order to read books. People don't speak like they write; I can understand someone discussing master and margarita, but I can't understand the book itself.
• I'm currently focusing a lot on conversation and creative writing/translating stuff into Japanese. I've got tons of knowledge, but I need to put in the mouthwork that will let me be comfortable using it on the fly. There are many ways you could say something, but not all of them are natural.

That in mind, what the big-picture of language learning looks like to me

This isn't an either:or situation. You need both immersion and study. Here's how that looks to me:

1. The beginning consists of a lot of explicit study in order to build a foundation. Eventually we reach what I call the nope threshold: a point in which immersion becomes tolerable. In order to avoid being a "perpetual beginner" who knows a lot about Japanese but not much Japanese, we apply the 50% rule. Maybe it's not quite 50:50 at first... but in addition to studying, we also "check in" regularly with Japanese content that we eventually hope to consume. At first they'll seem impossible and we "nope out" -- but eventually, they'll begin seeming doable. At that point, we should begin focusing on doing.
2. In the intermediate stages, there is a ton of low hanging fruit. Thousands of words and simple grammar points to stumble into. So long as we immerse, we can't help but learn, whether we do any formal study or not. Steve Kaufmann, a very successful polyglot, discusses this in his video on the stages of language learning: at first, immersion will be difficult... but we're just so excited to be doing something in our language that it's motivating. Eventually we get our feet under us and immersion gradually becomes a pure joy: we improve in the language as a byproduct of engaging with the content we find meaningful.
3. After immersing for awhile, we'll have picked up most of the low-hanging fruit. We wonder why Japanese needs like six different phrases to say "immediately after A, B". As progress starts slowing down, I think it's time to add a bit of intentional study back to our regimen in order to work out nuances and little details that we missed. This comes full circle: we'll be able to engage more deeply with what we consume, and also to consume it with more ease.
4. Eventually we'll reach a point of linguistic mastery, and at that point the answer does become nearly pure immersion. As I discussed in part two, when I brought up The Hollow Men, this poem went over my head despite being a native English speaker who perfectly understood every single vocabulary word and grammar structure. I missed it because I lacked the historical information about when it was published, the cultural knowledge of what was going on in Europe after WW1, I hadn't read the heart of darkness that the poem draws from nor was I versed enough in the Bible to pick up on all the religious references.
5. Even if we reach a point in which we're completely bilingual.... that doesn't mean there's no reason to study. As I've began translating stuff, I've found I'm held back by my English just as often as my Japanese/Mandarin. While I can understand the JP/CN, I don't know what a corporate financial report or legal document discussing privacy policies should look like in English, for example. Even now, I spend a lot of time studying the writing of more experienced writers.

TL;DR

It's not an either:or thing. Explicit study and immersion go hand in hand.
Depending on tons of factors (our level, our native language, how many languages we've studied previously, our background in linguistics, our tolerance for ambiguity, our level of patience, our level of motivation, etc...) our ideal balance of input/output/explicit study might shift.

• Our ideal personal balance is going to change over time
• The ideal balance of two different learners won't always be the same

Here's all the resources I've found to learn and become fluent in Japanese. Not all of these resources are free of course, but there's a lot of great things here!
​
1 – Textbooks - Genki 1, Genki 2, and “An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese”. In colleges, Japanese 101 and 102 go through Genki 1...Japanese 201 and 202 go through Genki 2...and Japanese 301 and 302 go through "An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese"
-Genki 1 and 2: (https://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-Vocabulary-Academic/dp/B07QN3QTNH/ref=sr_1_7?dchild=1&keywords=genki+1&qid=1587082541&sr=8-7)
-Intermediate Japanese: (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077GP2P42/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
​
1a - A Guide to Japanese Grammar - A Japanese Approach to Learning Japanese Grammar(http://www.guidetojapanese.org/grammar_guide.pdf) (http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar) - Greatest textbook I've found at teaching grammar! This textbook is online for free, and in physical form on amazon. I was amazed how well this book goes over grammar!...and just how closely it followed my own notes on the language!
​
2 – Anki (A flashcard app for your phone) (https://apps.ankiweb.net/) - You can create flashcards and review them during breaks (standing in line, bathroom, laying around being lazy). It helps immensely goingover characters, kanji, words, grammar over and over again using flashcards onyour phone! There's a desktop version to create and edit decks...and apps on both iphone and android that you can transfer your decks to. There's also tons of pre-made decks people have made that you can download (Hiragana and Katakana are good ones to start with)
​
3 – italki.com - Have conversations and lessons with a legit Japanese person! I’ve found when I learned other skills (guitar, piano, computerprogramming, etc.) that you really need someone to talk to to ask questions andcorrect you in mistakes you didn’t even know you were doing! Talking with a Japanese person greatly helps to correct your pronunciation and grammar! More so, just being able to practicespeaking and having a conversation with a native speaker is essential!
​
4 – Japanese Cable (forjoytv.com) - 77 Channels (news, dramas, music, cartoons, etc. live from Japan) I typically have Japanese music videos playing in the background as I’m working or doing otherthings. It really helps in hearing the language being spoken, and I’ve foundmyself catching certain words and phrases here and there already! They often have lyrics written on the screen too, so I try to read along as they’resinging. (Channels 63-67 are all music video channels)
​
5 – Reading manga in Japanese (I just got a beginner manga とつばと) - Having regular books like this is definately helpful! I've been told to be careful though, as manga likes to use words and phrases that aren't often spoken in normal conversation.
​
6 – Youtube – Japanese Ammo With Misa (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSyd8tXJoEJKIXfrwkPdbA) has excellent videos on Japanese,and goes into great detail (and tangents) on how she has personally experienced it spoken. Misa also has a website devoted to teaching Japanese (http://www.japaneseammo.com/), which is also excellent! "Abroad in Japan" (https://www.youtube.com/usecmbroad44) is also a good one (although he doesn't teach Japanese persay)!
​
7 - Kanji List - "Kyōiku kanji" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%8Diku_kanji) is taught in Japanese Elementary Schools (1,026 kanji) and "jōyō kanji"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_j%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji) is taught in Japanese Secondary Schools (2,136 kanji total - including the Elementary 1,026). I've been told by a friend of mine who moved to Osaka, that after a year there, he's noticed only the first 1,000 kanji are really used...and he rarely sees the other half. There's actually more kanji than this, but these are the only ones that are actually taught in schools...and only half of those are really used commonly.
​
8 - Type with Japanese! - Google Japanese IME (Japanese Typing on PC) (https://www.google.co.jp/ime/). Alt-Shift Enables/Disables Japanese typing mode...Alt-Caps Lock changes from hiragana to katakana...after typing a word, you can click tab to go through all possible kanji it can refer to and select the one you meant. There's also japanese typing apps on phones! (I use the "fleksy" keyboard on Android - After enabling Japanese mode (bottom of the language list named 日本語) Scroll left on the space bar to transform into Japanese Mode...Scroll right on the space bar to transform into English Mode)
​
9 - Japanese Dictionary (https://jisho.org/) - Type in english or japanese words, and figure out the actual translation easily
​
10 - Japanese Kanji Stroke Order (https://www.tanoshiijapanese.com/dictionary/) - Search for a japanese word and the app displays the correct stroke order to draw the kanji
​
11 - Japanese Pitch Accent - Extremely important! Very quick and easy to understand. Learn this early on, so you can memorize words correctly the first time!
-Jisho Chrome Extension - (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jisho-ojad/dpaojegkimhndjkkgiaookhckojbmakd?hl=en)
-Online Dictionary - (http://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/eng/search/index)
-Japanese Dictionary - (https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4140113456/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8)
-Lesson for the Basics - (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-bk_4WvY58)
​
12 - Pronunciation (https://forvo.com/search/) - Search for any Japanese word, and there's several audio recordings of native speakers saying the word. Note: Kanji vs Non-Kanji spellings are considered 2 different words...so try both to get more results (For example, たべる and 食べる are considered 2 seperate words on the site)
​
13 - PC Chrome Kanji Reader - rikaikun (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rikaikun/jipdnfibhldikgcjhfnomkfpcebammhp?hl=en). If a kanji appears in chrome, if you mouse over it, a tooltip appears telling you what hiragana and english meaning the kanji / word is
​
14 - Kanji Handwritting Detection (https://kanji.sljfaq.org/) - This simple website let's you draw a Kanji you may have seen in a book, and does a fair job of showing you what that kanji means.
​
15 - Japanese Verb Conjugators (http://japaneseverbconjugator.com/) (https://cooljugator.com/ja) (https://conjugator.reverso.net/conjugation-japanese.html) - Type in a verb, and these websites will show a bunch of conjugations of the verb.
​
16 - Pacific League Baseball (https://tv.pacificleague.jp/ptv/pc/) - If you're interested in Japanese Professional Baseball (NPB), this site is very similar to mlb.tv. You can catch any game live (and replays dating back 10+ years)
​
17 - Use Google Chrome Webpage Translator - In Google Chrome...Right Click on a web page and click "Translate to English". It does an ok job translating the page for you. It's not amazing, but it gets the job done if you're trying to put in credit card information to pay for television!
​
18 - Google things! Google translate is quite poor unfortunately...but there's tons of additional resources by just searching "Japanese Colors, Japanese Numbers, etc."
​
Anyways, have fun learning Japanese!

Obligatory thank you for gold and silver, kind users! I'd also like to make mention of this recent post by u/shade0000. If the resources here aren't up to snuff for you, make sure to check this out as it covers resources that will help you get to N1 and beyond.

So you've decided to start studying Japanese!

And you've found yourself here, at this subreddit! However, you find that you're unsure of where to go, you're not entirely sure about what it is you need to do, what you need to look at, who you need to talk to.

Say no more.

This post will be an attempt at giving you, the fresh self-learner of Japanese, just about all of the resources and information that you'll need to thrive and succeed. The only thing that you truly need to get started is patience and perseverance. But without further ado: here's all of the resources (that I can think of) that I used to start learning Japanese, and what got me long past N1.
I will write down my explanations for each of the resources I give, but feel free to skip through them if you don't feel like reading through, and just grab the links. I'm sure that in the comments people will have their own feelings about some of the resources (or have their own), but I owe my own proficiency to this process.

A Note:

This list is intended on taking you from absolute beginner to at the very least upper intermediate. If you're doing everything here, then as small as this list is it's all you need to get yourself to a higher level in Japanese. Your own pace decides how well this list will work for you, and what you do once you've exhausted this list will determine how much farther you climb. I'm just trying to help you get your foot in the door. :)

Japanese Road Map (creds u/odditycat)

This post is made in chronological order for what you should do. This section will cover this in more detail.
The first step is to learn the hiragana and katakana. You need to be able to recall them, but you don't need to be able to read them at any kind of fast speed yet. You'll get plenty of practice with them as you continue your journey.
Next, start learning basic grammar, vocabulary and kanji. Most textbooks and online courses will teach you these together which makes this easy to manage. These are predominantly written, but some will include speaking/listening content. Most will take you to an N4/5 level.
After you complete the course you'll be able to move on to intermediate material. Reading and listening practice is important here and you'll want to continue to expand your vocabulary using one of the 2 routes previously mentioned.

Kana

Real Kana, the only resource that you really need to learn to read all of the Hiragana and Katakana. Usage is simple: head to the Hiragana category and select the first column to the left (A, E, I, O, U). Note that you will be given the readings for each of the hiragana as well. Once you've selected a column, head to "Study", and guess away until you can successfully guess each Kana correct. Then head back to "Hiragana" and select the next column, INCLUDING THE PREVIOUS COLUMN. This helps you to reinforce your Kana knowledge, and by the time you've finished all of the columns, you will have learned Hiragana (which is possible to do in less than a day). Rinse and repeat with Katakana.
Kana.pro is another extremely good Kana learning website, with the exact same idea as the above Real Kana, but with the added benefit of giving you multiple choice when performing the quiz. For the best results, read the "How to use" at the bottom of the page.
For those that want to learn how to write the Kana, I would find a Kana trace paper online and download + print them out.

Kanji

As a beginner Kanji looks like a very daunting task, and by far what will feel as the biggest wall between you and Japanese. And while this is partly true, it's not that difficult of an endeavor. In learning Kanji there are two main approaches, in-context and out of context.
In-context simply means learning the Kanji that you encounter in sentences or what you're reading, at the time of seeing them, within the words that they appear as. The advantage with this method is that you don't have to worry about learning a single Kanji's (potential) multiple readings, as all Kanji readings are learned on a case by case basis, and it gets your foot in faster to the world of Japanese. For example, after seeing the word 先生 enough and googling / throwing it in your dictionary, your brain will make the connection that 先生 is read as せんせい (or in other words, 先 is read as せん and 生 is read as せい). You then may see 生ごみ and come to learn that this 生 is actually read as なま. Through these interactions you create your map of Kanji and come to have a good, almost instinctive sense of how the language is read. It's downside is that your memory of Kanji will always be fuzzy, and you will have many moments of "if I see it I'll remember it", which may be unsettling if you're ever in a position where you need to write Kanji.
Out of context means that you learn each of the Kanji individually, with a focus on remembering a key meaning of that Kanji for the purpose of memorization and recollection. The benefits to an out of context approach is a much stronger memory of the Kanji themselves for the purpose of writing Kanji out. Because of the stronger mental map the out of context approach gives you, it also helps you remember words you've learned easier. It's downside is that it takes more time, and in general has a tendency to cause suffering.
Arguably, however, the best approach is a mix of the two, where you learn the most used Kanji out of context and then move into gaining the readings through an in-context approach. But if you're not particularly concerned with learning how to write Kanji, the in-context approach will work just fine.
With regards to where you could start doing an out of context approach if that appeals to you, try Kanji Damage or WaniKani online. You can also do Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, or something like Kodansha's Kanji Learner Course (KKLC). Each have their pros and cons, fans and critics.

Grammar

Tae Kim's Guide is by far my favourite early grammar resource, as it covers just about everything you need to know as far as grammar goes that will help you get started in understanding Japanese text. Follow the guide with a pen and paper as it will help you reinforce the grammar. It also helps to do a lesson (or two, depending on your pace and what you can stomach) a day, and before starting the new lesson to revisit the previous one. It's also free.
There also exists Imabi, which has by far the most in-depth explanations on grammar written for English audiences on the net for free. It's only downfall is that because it's very in-depth, it may be a bit much information, but it's good to use as a backup for if/when you don't understand certain explanations through Tae Kim's guide.In addition, the highly acclaimed
Genki. With the wide range of information available on the internet, I didn't personally see it as a good option for learning Japanese as the book goes for over $20 CAD; however, upon searching there was an archive online that is graciously hosting the books (Genki 1 and 2) for free online, so I would suggest searching that up. I won't provide the link here because I haven't looked into its legality.
Maggie Sensei is a fun website that I've followed for awhile. The content creator is Japanese, and she's been writing columns for Japanese grammar for years. When you come across something that you can't quite understand, I like to check here to see if she hasn't already come up with an article for it, as her structure is very easy to follow.
One niche one that was nice to have for awhile was the Japanese Verb Conjugator. The usage of it is easy (once you know what the dictionary form of a verb is, see grammar guides). You plug in the verb, and it will show you all of the inflections the verb can have. It's not entirely perfect, but repeatedly plugging in verbs in this site is how I personally learned the conjugations.

Vocabulary

In terms of learning vocabulary, this is the one area where it doesn't matter too much what you look at; that said though obviously there are better tools than others. After going through any of the above grammar guides fully, you should have already attained enough vocabulary to pass even the N5, which is a decent starting foot.
One is just about anything you can find on your respective phone's app store. I've had a lot of success with apps like JA Sensei, Minna no Nihongo, Japanese 5k With Pictures on Android, or things like Learning Japanese is Easy, The Japanese App which is one of the most comprehensive, and Mirai Japanese, my personal favourite starting out on the iPhones. I would generally avoid most applications that offer phrases, as some may run the risk of being either outdated, "textbooky" or incorrect altogether; that said, not all are bad. Double check with a native Japanese speaker if you can, or even make posts on here and ask if they are natural or not. Someone will be more than happy to answer your questions.
Another application that you can use is Anki. Anki is one of the more powerful SRS (spaced repetition system) applications on the web, and it has many wonderful advantages. One of which is that you can share decks online with others, and hubs exist where you can download those decks for your own benefit, but it's most efficient use is your ability to create your own custom decks, to personalize your learning journey. Downloading several of the addons for Anki to help you get to that next step is also highly recommended. In terms of shared decks, one famous example being the Japanese Core 2k/6k and 10k decks online. They offer pictures and audio clips to follow along with, so you really can't go wrong, and with diligence they will put you on the right track to learning Japanese vocabulary.

Learning Pitch Accent（高低アクセント）(+Intonation)

Pitch accent knowledge is fundamental to your Japanese speaking journey, and knowledge of it, especially early on, will aid you far more than you could imagine. Pitch accent in Japanese isn't as harsh as something like Mandarin's tonal system, where messing up the tone of a word completely changes the word or makes it incomprehensible. However, it does make or break your Japanese accent, and ultimately is what makes you sound foreign. Think of pitch accent in Japanese as stress accent in English. The word "joystick" is pronounced with stress on the "Joy" sound, where the rest of the word falls in tone. If, for example, this order was to be reversed, and "stick" is where the stress lied in someone's pronunciation, you as a native speaker would find it odd and unnatural, albeit not entirely incomprehensible.
The same goes for pitch accent. If a goal of yours is to sound like a native, then knowing about pitch accent is crucial. If this isn't of any particular concern to you, then it's not something that you have to learn: after all, you will still be understood. But there definitely is zero harm in knowing.
There are four patterns in Japanese pitch accent: Heibangata, Atamadakagata, Nakadakagata, and Odakagata (平板型、頭高型、中高型、尾高型 respectively). A pitch accent change will always occur in the second mora of a word (mora being the word's rhythmical beat). This fact will contradict anyone that tells you that Japanese is pronounced completely flat, as such is not the case.
For example, let's take the word 平板（へいばん). へいばん has 4 morae (へ・い・ば・ん) . In the Heiban pattern, the first mora will always start low, rise in the second mora, and stays flat. (へ・い・ば・ん、L・H・H・H）.
In Atamadaka, the first mora will always start high, fall in the second mora, and will not rise again. For example, 教師（きょうし). きょ・う・し would be pronounced H・L・L.
In Nakadaka, the first mora starts low, rises in the second mora, and falls somewhere within the word before it ends. For example, あ・な・た (L・H・ L, falls on the third mora), 反面教師(はんめんきょうし）（は・ん・め・ん・きょ・う・し, L・H・H・H・H・L・L, falls on the fifth mora)
Lastly, in Odaka (the most insidious), the pattern closely resembles Heiban; however, the pitch change occurs after the word has concluded (where the particle would follow). I'll use the famous はし example, but the word 端（はし, for the edge or corner of something）is an example of a Heiban word, and particles that connect with this word follow its pitch pattern. If we were to connect が, as in 端が with its Heiban pattern, it would read as (は・し＋が）L・H+(H). Whereas in an Odaka word, like 橋 (はし), the change appears after you've added your particle. 橋が→は・し＋が → L・H+(L)
When an accent falls, it can never rise again within the same word, so you will never find a pattern that looks like L H L H H, or HLHH.
I would highly recommend starting to learn pitch accent from Tokyo Dialect (標準語) first, as it's easily the most accessible.

Dictionaries

Free dictionaries on the phone have only gotten better over time.
My personal favourite and one that I've been using since the beginning is the Aedict dictionary on Android, which has a number of very useful features. One of the cool features on it is that you can save words to a notepad and make a quiz out of them if you so choose, or you can select to quiz yourself on JLPT grade words or common Kanji. It also has sentence examples with more of the common words. The best mobile dictionary by far goes to Apple's Japanese app. The application is vastly different on Android so I don't like it as much, but I've been hard pressed to find a better application. A shoutout to u/jdt79 for suggesting Takoboto, which is another really good Android app for dictionaries.
Online, Jisho reigns supreme. It comes with everything you'll need without the hassle of downloading separate applications, albeit example sentences can be iffy. You also have the option of the EJJE Weblio Dictionary for quick stuff, but I don't like it as much as 英辞郎 on the web, as their example sentences are light years ahead of either (at least from what I've seen).

Reading / Listening Material (+Native Material)

One thing about reading / listening is that at first it will suck. You will suck. But in order to get better you have to endure the period of you sucking so that you eventually flourish. Don't be discouraged; rather, accept it, embrace it and move forward. You'll be glad that you did.
NHK Easy News (News given with easy to understand Japanese with Furigana (readings above the Kanji))
Fukumusume (written mostly in Hiragana with English translations)
Japanese Youtube. There's more than enough content for every type of person. As I have fairly limited tastes when it comes to YouTube videos, I can't make a lot of good suggestions. However, if you're someone that likes Video Game Let's Plays: キヨ is my all time favourite.
Japanese Podcasts. Podcasts like Nihongo Con Teppei and Marimoeo are great for listening to natives, especially considering that they don't speak too fast. You can find other Japanese podcasts on the Apple's Podcast section in their store, or on Google Play Music. Additionally you can find some other ones on YouTube if you search "ポッドキャスト”, and Seesaa.
Manga. Most Japanese manga have Furigana (Kanji readings in Hiragana) for them, coupled with the fact that they also include pictures makes them ideal for learning. You will also encounter a lot of grammar that you may not learn through the resources above, and in those cases, Googling the grammar that you're not sure about online will be your best course of action.

Speaking (Discord)

You probably won't find a more ideal speaking environment than on Discord. You'll find other Japanese learners like yourself who will help you to achieve your goals, as well as finding Japanese natives who are willing to guide you and help you along your way. EJLX (English Japanese Language Exchange), Japanese and English (日本語と英語), Language Practice and Learning, Japanglish Couch Potatoes to name a few. When joining voice calls, please remember and ensure that you respect those that you talk to and treat everyone as you yourself would like to be treated. We're all human beings at the end of the day.

Concluding

This is still a work in progress, but I hope that my explanations of what I've picked and why is thorough enough and comprehensible enough for everyone. If there's anything anyone else feels is missing from this list, please don't hesitate to add it in a comment. Thanks for making it this far, and I hope you have a great day. Kick some Japanese (language) ass!
First Edit: Included road map from u/odditycat, added pitch accent section Second edit: Added additional resources,

TL;DR -- Get the file here. Alternatively, you can also get the file here.
If you have trouble opening the file, maybe give the .ods-version a try.
​
See my earlier post.
See a preview image here.
You can also get a pdf version, although this one is not as handy to use and has less data.
​
Motivation: Pitch accent information is often not supplied in your standard Japanese-English dictionary. Still, some dictionaries and apps do give this information and in any case, you can find most words' pitch accent on OJAD. However, while this makes acquiring pitch accent information on nouns a fairly stressless task, pitch accent remains a big problem for words that conjugate. You can hardly memorise the pitch accent pattern for every possible conjugation for every verb you will every know in Japanese. This is why we need some clarity regarding the actual rules underlying the pitch accent of conjugated verbs (and adjectives, etc.).
(Before anyone says this in the comments, I know that NHK has put out an app and a paper dictionary that give information on this topic. However, as I don't own them and they are not easy to get, I was still motivated to tackle this project.)
​

1. This is geared towards intermediate learners which already have a basic understanding of pitch accent.
2. This is more or less still a work in progress, but it has reached a state where it is already usable.
3. I have used (mostly) OJAD data and analysed it carefully to extract pitch accent rules.
4. I've uploaded it for free download on top. Let me know if the links don't work
5. The spreadsheet includes links to other useful resources for studying pitch accent in general
6. I'd appreciate some feedback!

Welcome to the sixth post in the KDRAMA 101 series! This time we are tackling speech levels and referent honorifics.

Intro/Refresher

The Korean language is known for its complex honorifics system, the proper use of which is crucial for all social interactions. The use of the honorifics system conveys important information about the context (situation) of the speech and the speaker’s relationship with respect to the subject of the speech (the referent) and the listener of the speech (the addressee). The relationship indicated can be based on a variety of factors such as age, gender, social status, and degree of intimacy.
The Korean honorifics system is comprised of both specialized vocabulary and grammar rules. For vocabulary, certain verbs, nouns, and pronouns have alternative honorific terms. The alternative honorific terms are synonymous to the plain terms but used only when the context and/or purpose requires their use. For grammar rules, different honorific markers, such as suffixes and particles, are used to modify words (verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc.) to indicate the honorific or the plain form of the word.

Speech Levels (Addressee Honorifics)

The most well-known aspect of the Korean honorifics system is its speech levels, also known as addressee honorifics (hearer honorifics), represented by distinctive sentence enders. The sentence enders are determined based on sentence type and the speaker’s relationship to the listener (addressee) of the speech.
The selection of which speech level to use is heavily context and purpose dependent, thus different speech levels are used to indicate varying degrees of social hierarchy, familiarity, and formality along with the purpose or intent of the speech. This means that sometimes a speaker will even use a mix of different speech levels when interacting with the same person within a given situation. Furthermore, depending on the exact context of use and communicative intent of the speaker, the meaning conveyed by the speech may be opposite or different than what that speech level traditionally represents (for example, if the speaker was being sarcastic). Thus no one style is polite or impolite in all situations, the context must be considered when figuring out the intended meaning. In general though, when the speaker wants to show respect toward the listener (addressee) of their speech, they will choose a honorific speech level.
The general consensus is that there are six speech levels in modern Korean, two of which are considered honorific (the polite and deferential styles) and four of which are considered non-honorific (the plain, intimate, familiar, and blunt styles). Of the two honorific levels, the deferential level is considered to be formal speech and used in official/formal situations, whereas the polite level is considered informal speech and may be used in non-formal situations. Of the four non-honorific levels, the familiar and blunt styles appear only in limited social environments and their use is decreasing in modern Korean.
The table below gives examples of the four mostly commonly used speech levels in modern Korean conjugated with the verb 가다 (to go) and examples of situations where use of each speech level is appropriate.

Speech Level	Declarative Suffix	Example	+/-Honorific	Examples of Use
Deferential	~ᄇ니다 (~pnida)	갑니다	+ Honorific and Formal	public or formal discourse such as broadcasting and conference presentations * addressing the public * when a subordinate addresses a superior * when first meeting someone, especially in a non-casual setting
Polite	~요 (~yo)	가요	+ Honorific and Informal	addressing someone of senior status in casual, non-formal, and everyday types of conversations * when talking to strangers * when addressing acquaintances
Plain	~다 (~da)	가다	- Honorific	addressing intimates of a similar or younger age * in written form for nonspecific listeners *upon agreement by both parties
Intimate	~어/아 (~eo/a)	가	- Honorific	talking with close friends of a similar age, family, or people who are younger * when a superior addresses a subordinate or children * upon agreement by both parties

Note

When discussing Korean speech levels in Korean, there are usually two categories used: 존댓말 (jondaemal) and 반말 (banmal).

• 존댓말 (jondaemal) is honorific speech, which includes both the deferential and the polite speech level in the table above. Use of 존댓말 implies that the speaker is treating the listener with respect (존대 literally means respect).
  
• 반말 (banmal) is non-honorific speech, which includes both the plain and the intimate speech level in the table above. 반말 (banmal) can be literally translated as half-speech.
  

Depending on the sentence type, the sentence ender changes. The table below shows the sentence ender for each speech level for different types of sentences.

Sentence Type	Declarative	Interrogative	Imperative	Propositive (Suggestive)
Deferential	~ᄇ니다	~ᄇ니까?	~ᄇ시오	~ᄇ시다
Polite	~(어/아)요	~(어/아)요?	~(어/아)요	~(어/아)요
Plain	~다	~니/냐?	~라	~자
Intimate	~어/아	~어/아?	~어/아	~어/아

Subject Honorific Suffix ~(으)시 (Referent Honorifics)

In contrast to speech levels, use of which is dependent on who the listener is, the use of the honorific suffix ~(으)시 is dependent on who is the subject (referent) of the speech. When the speaker attaches the honorific suffix ~(으)시 to the stem of the verb, they are showing respect to the doer of the action. It is possible for the referent and the addressee to be the same person or to be different people.
The honorific suffix ~(으)시 is a pre-final ending that comes between the stem of the predicate and the final-ending. Through its use, verbs without alternative honorific terms can be changed into honorific forms. Because it is the honorific form, it is used with the two honorific speech levels (polite and deferential). It is not used when the speaker is referring to themselves.

Example:

Kim Tan says to the teacher: 선생님 어디에 가세요? (Teacher, where are (you) going?)
where 가세요 = (가+시+어요) {verb stem 가 + subject honorific 시 + polite speech level ender 어요}
In this example, the referent and the addressee are the same person (the teacher) and Kim Tan uses both the subject honorific suffix and the polite speech level to show respect to his teacher.

Sources
Byon, Andrew Sangpil (2007). Teaching the polite and the deferential speech levels using media materials: Advanced KFL classroom settings. http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/CJKProceedings
Albany University EAK102 Ch9 Lecture notes. https://www.albany.edu/korean/EAK102%20Ch9%20Lecture%20notes%20on%20honorifics.pdf Last accessed May 29, 2020
Ku, Jeong Yoon (2014). Korean Honorifics: A Case Study Analysis of Korean Speech Levels in Naturally Occurring Conversations. (Accessed sub-thesis version, submitted to The Australian National University.)
Park, Mi Yung (2012). Teachers’ Use of the Intimate Speech Style in the Korean Language Classroom.
Wong, Kit Ying (2011). The system of honorifics in the Korean language. Retrieved from City University of Hong Kong, CityU Institutional Repository.
National Institute of Korean Language (2010). Everything You Wanted to Know about the Korean Language. (English version) Title in Korean: 우리말이모저모
The next post will cover how to address others. Enjoy your kdramas till then!

So, you want to learn Lithuanian? Congratulations on embarking on this challenging journey. I’ve created a list of some resources which will assist you in going from nulis to herojus in no time. Whether you’re willing to throw fat stacks at learning or prefer to find free resources I’ve included a mix of both and some comments about each resource based on my own and others’ experience with the resource. It will take some time and dedication, but I believe in you. Sėkmės! (Good luck!)

Free/Paid	Category	Name/URL	Comments
Free	App	Discord Lithuanian Language Learning, Cave of Linguists	There may be a Lithuanian room in CoL. Also you may want to search for other Lithuanian Discord servers.
Free	App	Hello Talk	Allows you to connect with native speakers. Also has pay to remove ads.
Free	App	"Learn Lithuanian Free" by MetaLanguage
Free	App	Ling Google Play	Their language app is split up by individual language. Search for “Ling Lithuanian” in your app store of choice.
Free	App	Lith Dict 4 Droid	Lithuanian dictionary to add to Android phones. You can also do this by going to settings > general settings > languages and then adding Lithuanian as a secondary language. Most keyboards will then have both languages available to you.
Free	App	QuickDic Restored	Another dictionary for Andriod.
Free	App/Website	Memrise	To enroll in Lithuanian for Memrise you have to enroll on their website and sync the app.
Free	Books	Look! Listen! Say it! Communication Training (Level A2 - intended to be accompanied by a CD, but not available through this resource), No Day Without Lithuanian, Part 2 (Level B1/B2), Grammar Training Notebooks (Level B1/B2), Vocabulary Textbook (Level B1/B2), Lexical textbook (Level B2/C1), Grammar Exercises (Level B2/C1)	These are PDF versions of resources and books publicly-available through the EU Structural Assistance Program, primary aimed toward B1, B2, and C1 learner.
Free	Podcast	Lithuanian Out Loud	No longer produced, but has a lot of episodes for you to listen through.
Free	Podcast	Real Lithuanian Podcast Patreon	Good once you have some language skills.
Free	Program	Gramtool	Python program to check grammar.
Free	Website	Cooljugator	This website helps you with verb conjugation.
Free	Website	Debeselis	Site for making friends trying to learn.
Free	Website	Facebook	Search for Foreigners or Expats in Lithuania/Vilnius/whatevercity and look for groups. You’ll find others trying to learn.
Free	Website	Forvo	Website for assistance in learning pronunciations.
Free	Website	IKindaLikeLanguages Level 1, Level 2, Level 3
Free	Website	Joel Mosher’s Learn Lithuanian web page	Has links to books and some other resources for learning.
Free	Website	Omniglot overview, Book listing	This site has links to a lot of resources and such as books, radio, and other websites.
Free	Website	/languagelearning	Lots of good resources and strategies for general language learning as well as Lithuanian specific.
Free	Website	Youtube: Antanas Cases, Antanas Lessons, Antanas Podcast, LaisvėsTV, LithuanianForYou, Proto Industrija, Žinių Radijas	There are many other good options here as well. Search for Lithuanian language.
Free	Website	Vilnius University, Web Archive Link	VU created this website to assist people in learning Lithuanian. Flash player is required, so it may not work easily on modern browsers. Update: It appears this site is no longer in use, but there is an archive version which works. Thanks to Wulfharth_ for finding the Archive version.
Free	Website	Vytauto Didžiojo University, Accentuator Tool, Morphological Annotator	Tools which analyze words and shows you the possible forms and their morphologies.
Paid	App/Website	Glossika
Paid	App/Website	Pimsleur
Paid	App/Website	Transparent	Possible to receive for free through Government work or universities.
Paid	Book	Easy Lithuanian	I’ve had three language courses which all used this book.
Paid	Book	Practical Grammar of Lithuanian	Basically a text book for Lithuanian grammar.
Paid	Books	Interlinear Books	Books and short stories in both Lithuanian and English.
Paid	Instructor	Lithuanian with Dovilė, FB Link
Paid	Instructor	Talk like Antanas, FB Link, Patreon
Paid	School	School Listing	List from Lithuanian government of language schools in various Lithuanian cities.
Paid	University Course	Vilnius University	Courses offered at Vilnius University – not cheap, but I believe they certify you in that language level.
Paid	University Courses	University Listing	Links may be depreciated as this website isn’t maintained, but has a list of five universities who provide language courses in Lithuania.
Paid	Website	Flyent	Listen to Lithuanian conversations. Has a free trial.

Keep in mind that learning from an app isn't ideal because there's no feedback if you say something wrong or mishear how the app says it. You'll get some experience with hearing the language, but make sure you supplement it with Lithuanian conversations to hear how people actually talk and get feedback on how your pronunciation is. Also be aware that usually apps give you the formalized way of speaking and not how most people actually talk (for example “let’s go/we go” is “(mes) einame,” but typically people would say “einam” in actual conversation).
I don't want to discourage you, but if you don't talk in Lithuanian and hear Lithuanian frequently this will be almost impossible to learn. In order to make it easier the below list has recommendations for learning strategy. Thank you to TLHarker for providing the foundation of this list.

1. Make flashcards on Quizlet; just Google Translate common sentences and memorize them, but keep in mind that Google Translate is far from perfect and it’s especially bad with less common languages such as Lithuanian.
2. Write a diary/journal in Lithuanian each day. Practice with introducing yourself first and then move on to things you did that day.
3. Place sticky notes on objects around the house with the Lithuanian word for them. When you interact with these read the Lithuanian word out loud.
4. Start watching LRT (Lithuanian Television) and/or listening to Lithuanian radio.
5. Give it a half hour twice a day to not overwhelm yourself.
6. Change your phone/tablet/computer language to Lithuanian so that you learn it as you use it.

The grammaword endings are difficult to remember and they take time to learn; invest the time and you’ll get through it. Finally, come back and read posts in here in Lithuanian and try to understand what they’re saying. Contribute when and where you can.

The following description is not provided by this sub or any of it's contributors.
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