At least those tests have speaking and writing sections. TOEIC is just reading, grammar, vocabulary and listening. All multiple choice.
People who are pretty fluent can get poor scores if their grammar isn’t great, and it’s possible to get a perfect score with only so-so speaking skills if you just memorize enough.
My main problem with the app is there is no introduction to the words before the units. After the first section or two you are given sentences where most words are completely new in their forms required by the grammar of the sentence, and you’re just supposed to know them somehow.
With Russian that is really demoralizing. I understand the web browser-based lessons are more robust, but I fit it in the same way i fit in my reading, on my phone when i have time during work, etc. They need an introductory vocabulary lesson for each section.
Memrise has been pretty helpful for me.
Oh, and another thing is that these tests have expiration dates. Usually, only tests that are less than 2 years old are accepted. Because somehow people who have taken an English test at the highest level will forget the language after a couple of years?
I can somewhat understand investing 200+ € into proving such a competency once in a lifetime and than having it on file for any future eventualities, but not doing it again and again.
A lot of companies are trying to make the tests cheaper by using AI to grade them, but that’s a whole other issue.
I agree that the test should only be necessary once, though. The assumption should be that language ability only gets better over time unless someone has literally not even used the language in many years.
And even if one hasn’t used a language for a long time: I have found that once learned, a language isn’t unlearned. I notice that with different languages. French for example I learned in school but then never used except for reading the occasional recipe. But every time I’m in France it takes a few days and then I’m able to hold simple day to day conversations. Languages don’t die in an individual, they hibernate.
Maybe you’re right. I was 15 or 16 years old the last time I studied Latin, but I should try to pick it up a bit again, now that there are apps for that. I still remember bits and pieces of it.
I had hoped to use Latin as a springboard for other Romance languages, but then I got sidetracked with Japanese… Maybe I still can, eh?
They cant all be great jokes. If you dont like it, Soumi.
I can learn Finnish if i stay up for 25 days straight? Not bad!
Starting is easy, but its difficult to Finnish
I still get words like nukkejani (my dolls), uimareitako (are they swimmers), vaa’allasi (on your weighing scale) etc wrong and I have been learning Finnish since I was born.
Ui (swim or you swim), uida (to swim), uimari (swimmers), uinut (somebody has swam or you are sleeping), uidaanko (shall we swim), uimaan (to swim as in let’s go to swim), uinen (I might swim) uiko (is s/he swimming?), uimareistako (from swimmers?) etc
Vaaka (Weighing scale) is really annoying too because of the apostrophe they aren’t usually used in Finnish like: vaa’alla (on scales) vaakoja (many scales) vaa’alle (to the scale) etc.
Nukke (doll) and ui are the hardest words to for me to do the inflected forms on. Nukke “bends” weird and ui adds a lot of letters. My dyslexia doesn’t help either…
Found an Irish language wordle
The survival of Welsh – after centuries of attempted suppression by the English since the Act of Union of 1536 – is a miracle, and every Welsh person, whether or not they speak it, should celebrate that fact.
Meanwhile, Pig Latin seems to be a dying language, compared to its one-time popularity. Here’s a sample from a huge movie from 90 years ago:
Something occurred to me when responding to a question about different names for countries in various languages. Romance languages refer to The Netherlands as “The Low Countries.” German and English do not, and I wonder if it’s because that term includes three countries (Benelux) in some references. 
I think English and German do. Nether is a word that means “lower”
The Netherlands - the low lands.
Not sure that Benelux is properly referred to as the Nether Regions. Incidentally, the Netherlands decided that “Holland” was not an appropriate exonym fairly recently
It is complicated.
Low countries/Lage Landen, Pays Bas, or even Low Germany in older English usage refers to an area that at his largest includes the entire lower Rhine, Meuse, Schelde, IJsel etc… region and even includes western parts of modern Germany like Köln (Cologne) and a fair bit of modern northern France like Lille and Lens.
Borders moved around, nations rose and fell, merged and split, world wars, Napoleon who always makes things complicated… And now nobody agrees what to call what.
In modern use Low Countries, Lage Landen and its many varieties usually refers to the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) in most languages.
Modern confusion happened when Belgium split off ( 
) and Luxembourg went because a female monarch might give them cooties but the remaining Kingdom of the Netherlands (lit. Low Lands) kept that name in most languages but people often refer that as Holland which was a County dissolved in 1795.
This is by the way not unique in Europe. Many geographical names like Germany, Poland, Prussia, Austria etc… can only be interpreted if you know who used it when in what original language and from what geopolitical background.
Even our own national hymn declares us off German Blood 
True, but it’s the one word equivalent for the three words used elsewhere. That’s only half of what’s odd about it.
ETA: Thanks @Jeroen_Metselaa for clarifying. We also have Low Country references in the US, which I hear most often in South Carolina.
