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Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 30, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Can anyone recommend a good resource for learning Russian? I had been using Duolingo, but I didn’t feel like it was truly helping me become conversational in the language. I would take night classes, but I have a side job that requires me to keep most of my weeknights free. Something I could use while at work would be optimal, but I’m open to whatever recommendations people can provide.

You could start a Russian language culture war discussion thread. Duolingo has managed to create a system that provides a very strong illusion of progress: all these stages, ingots, stars and what not end up making you believe you're getting somewhere, but all they do is mask the lack of real progress.

I’ve never used it myself, but was shocked at how passable my coworker became at basic conversational French from scratch using Duolingo every day.

It might depend on how closely related the languages are. English and French are not that different. Turkish, Arabic or Mandarin are a whole another story.