I speak French as a second language (not fluently) and I am trying to find somewhere on Lemmy where people who speak French as a first or second language could communicate with me and people with a similar interest. At my level, just trying to go to French Lemmy instances or communities isn’t practical, the proficiency difference is way too large. Are there any communities dedicated to what I am trying to describe? If not, maybe i should create something new where people just submit posts in French and people can have discussions on them to practice and build up their vocabulary. It could be like a centralized pen pal community.
It’s social media…
Just go and do your best, you’ll pick it up fastest that way.
Make a burner account if you’re afraid of looking stupid.
But nothing would be better than just jumping into a French instance and giving it a try. Even if it takes months before you really understand stuff.
You are right, and I have tried, however it is painful needing to translate while on a phone when there are so many different words i don’t understand in a short sentence. Not to mention the slang and internet culture associated with posting online on memes and stuff.
If you’re on Android, you can long press the home button and translate everything on your screen, even if it’s text in an image. I use this feature frequently when practicing Chinese with my girlfriend.
Also, just remember the amount of times you’ve seen someone post on a forum in what appears to be perfectly coherent English, and then end their post with “sorry for my bad English, it’s not my first language”. I personally have witnessed that situation here and on the alien site probably hundreds of times. Languages are usually pretty error tolerant, especially if you have a basic understanding of the grammar rules and double check what you’ve written with a translator before hitting send.
iOS does something similar, but you take a screenshot and it translates all the text in the image. Just tap on the preview in the bottom corner, click the select all text button, then it should show a translate button. If there’s not enough foreign language then you have to manually highlight and hit translate. That part is annoying.