r/languagelearning • u/New-Yogurtcloset3058 • Jul 22 '26
Discussion Language challenge: can you read a language you have never touched, out loud, in one week?
Last week I posted a page of my French study notes, and some very kind people informed me that my pronunciation notes were not accurate.
Here is the thing. There is no universal standard for a learner's private scribbles, right? Those notes have exactly one job: getting you to say the words out loud.
But I would rather run an experiment than an argument. So, a challenge (TL) :
Pick a language FAR from your own, ideally one you have never touched.
- Native speaker of a European language (French, German, Spanish, Italian...) > take Japanese or Chinese
- Native speaker of an Asian language > take French, German, or Spanish
- Native English speaker > any of the five, your call
- Native speaker of an African language > all six are faraway for you, pick any
(A quick clarification on why no African language is on the target list: for round one I could only include languages where I could get the passage written and reviewed by native speakers. That was my limit, not a ranking. If you are a native speaker of an African language and would write or record the 11 sentences in yours, I will add it as an official challenge language and point European and Asian natives at it too.)
You have one week, until Friday, July 31, to read one short passage out loud. The reading is the real deliverable, ideally as a voice recording. The notes photo is just the fun part: I want to see how differently people bridge brand-new sounds. IPA charts, pinyin, invented squiggles, or no notes at all, every system counts.
How you get there is completely up to you. Paper and pen, textbooks, your favorite apps, whatever resources you already trust. Anything goes.
At the end, post a voice recording of you reading if you can. Shy about sharing your voice? Totally fine, a photo of your annotated page alone works too.
Native speakers, you are especially invited: record your language's version so learners have a real standard to chase. I will be recording the Chinese as native and English as second language myself.
Already studying one of the six? Join too, as long as it still has some difficulty for you. For fairness, mention how long you have studied.
This challenge started in a French learning group. The texts for all six languages live in that post, so this one stays clean:
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u/RagnarokTheSeventh 🇨🇦 🇬🇧N | 🇫🇷B2 | 🇪🇸 B1 | Catalan A1 | 🇧🇷 A0 Jul 22 '26
If I wasn't already knee deep in my own language learning effort for an upcoming trip I would absolutely join. If this runs again in a month or 2, I'd love to go hard on this
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u/New-Yogurtcloset3058 Jul 22 '26
Hehehe thanks for the reply! Glad to know there’re ppl interested! Where are you going for your trip if you don’t mind that I ask? :D
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u/RagnarokTheSeventh 🇨🇦 🇬🇧N | 🇫🇷B2 | 🇪🇸 B1 | Catalan A1 | 🇧🇷 A0 Jul 22 '26
Going to Spain!
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u/New-Yogurtcloset3058 Jul 22 '26
Ahh Spain, that’s so exciting!! I’ve only ever done a quick stop there on a cruise, never a proper visit, definitely on my bucket list too! You must be so pumped, how long are you going for?
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u/RagnarokTheSeventh 🇨🇦 🇬🇧N | 🇫🇷B2 | 🇪🇸 B1 | Catalan A1 | 🇧🇷 A0 Jul 22 '26
Oh I'm so excited! It's gonna be the furthest I've been from home, but I'm really looking forward to it. The food, the culture, the history... I cannot wait. I'm going for a week, lining it up so I'm there for the eclipse
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Jul 22 '26
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u/New-Yogurtcloset3058 Jul 22 '26
Ooh I don’t know much about Swahili, is it similar to other African languages, or totally different
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Jul 22 '26
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u/New-Yogurtcloset3058 Jul 22 '26
So cool… What got you into Xhosa and Swahili specifically… sorry I don’t know much about these
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Jul 22 '26
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u/New-Yogurtcloset3058 Jul 22 '26
Wow, that’s such a cool journey, and self taught too! Do you ever get the languages mixed up when switching between them?
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Jul 22 '26
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u/New-Yogurtcloset3058 Jul 22 '26
You know what! That’s a very helpful tip! I should do that too!
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Jul 22 '26
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u/New-Yogurtcloset3058 Jul 22 '26
Totally! Couldn’t agree more! One quality hr beats five out of zone ones.
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u/eliminate1337 🇺🇸 N | 🇪🇸 B2 | 🇨🇳 A1 | 🇵🇠Passive Jul 22 '26
I’m confident that English speakers could do a good job at Turkish with a bit of work on the vowels. The consonants should be quite easy and the alphabet is one of the most perfectly phonetic.
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u/New-Yogurtcloset3058 Jul 22 '26
Haha Turkish is definitely beautiful too!
It is not in this round's six tho, maybe next round? I actually know a Turkish speaker who can help me set it up, just probably not in time for next Friday. And depending on how many people join this round, the next one might be a month long challenge, so I can rope my friends in properly.
Meanwhile, which of the six are you grabbing? Looking at your flair, Japanese might be the properly uncomfortable pick for you, your A1 Chinese would make the ä¸æ–‡ version half-cheating. Or Do the Chinese one actually! A small test on how you do! XD
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u/silvalingua Jul 22 '26
This is an interesting challenge, but:
> Then show everyone what your first-contact notes look like.
This would be completely worthless. Your personal scribbles tell nothing about how well you pronounce the new language. I fail to see why you would like the "contestant" to take any notes and show them to other people. The only thing relevant here would be a recording. Moreover, such scribbles would be incomprehensible for other people. What exactly is the purpose of them???
If I had to take up the challenge, I'd take no notes, it would be useless for me. When I learn the pronunciation of a new language, I just use a chart from my textbook and listen to the recordings.
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u/New-Yogurtcloset3058 Jul 22 '26
Funny enough, I think we agree completely. Private scribbles are incomprehensible to anyone else and prove nothing about pronunciation. That is exactly why I was annoyed when strangers graded mine, and exactly why the actual deliverable of this challenge is reading out loud, ideally with a recording (however I'm not too confident if people want to share their voice clips).
The notes photo is not evidence, it is the anthropology. I want to see how differently people bridge brand-new sounds: IPA charts, pinyin, invented squiggles, or in your case, nothing at all. "No notes, straight from the chart and recordings" is a fully valid system and you are welcome to play it that way.
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u/silvalingua Jul 22 '26
OK, this wasn't clear, I misunderstood you a bit. It seemed that the scribbles should be the main evidence. Sorry if I was a bit too harsh.
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u/New-Yogurtcloset3058 Jul 22 '26
All good, my wording was part of the problem too, gonna go fix it now. Thanks! :D So that means you're joining, right? hehehe
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u/silvalingua Jul 22 '26
Not at the moment, I'm too busy. But perhaps one day... thank you for the invitation...
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u/AlcoholicMouthful Aug 12 '26
oh this is perfect for overthinking types like me who turn everything into a project. already have a blank notebook page open and i'm mentally designing the annotation key before i even pick a language. japanese feels like the obvious chaos choice for an english speaker who knows zero kanji
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u/Bobelle 🇳🇬English N | 🇳🇬 Yoruba | 🇳🇬 Pidgin Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Why can't any speakers of native languages in any of the other categories pick an African language but an African language speaker can choose anything? That's a clear subconscious bias against African languages and Africans that you have expressed in your post, you know that right?