blaurebell wrote:By the way, I wouldn't want to go back to language learning without the internet. It's just so fantastic to have a whole library of books, movies and series in gazillion languages available, as well as a ton of free language learning resources. To think that my dad still had to learn to read Russian with a paper dictionary!
Yeah that would be miserable. And to be honest, without the internet I wouldn't know HOW to learn a language in the first place. I had always wanted to learn a language but never knew how until one day I finally got frustrated and googled "How to learn a language" -- HTLAL popped up. It was like the best day of my life
As much as "year abroad" and "exchange student" stuff sounds great, I never had that opportunity and now it is a complete impossibility. I have also never had the funds to get the thousands of hours of immersion possible from Netflix, YT, and other streaming sites. Even italki cuts the price of tutoring sessions to 1/3 of what I'd need to pay locally, (if not more) and allows me to schedule them when I need them rather than setting up a fixed routine of paying every week whether I really need the lesson at that time or not.