I've seen a lot of requests and questions regarding the B1 level, how to reach it, B1 Exams (Goethe Zertifikat B1), etc. and I was wondering if there's any way you can reach B1 on your own. So as soon as I finished my Goethe A2 course, I started my B1 journey. I researched, I asked my teachers about the books/resources before I used them and I studied every day, at least an hour a day and sometimes even three hours/day. So I thought I'd share some of my experiences
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\** NOTE:* Be aware that some of the things mentioned here might or might not work for you; this is just my personal self-study experience
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These are the resources that I've used and also how I've used them:
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1) BOOKS
Get some good books. I can't speak for all the books out there, probably there are betteworse ones, but these are the ones I've used:

• Menschen B1 Kursbuch, Hueber
• Menschen B1 Arbeitsbuch (mit CD), Hueber
• Aspekte Neu B1+ (Teil 1) Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch, Klett

I picked these ones because I got them at a very good price and also a friend of mine who was B1 at the time, told me that that's what they use in class at Goethe Institut. I worked through the books every day, doing one chapter from the KB and then one chapter the next day from the AB, so that I could apply what I learned from the previous day. Don't move on to the next chapter if there's something you didn't understand (especially Grammar), because you will encounter it again and again, and you'll soon find yourself unable to understand anything.

• USE THE CDs. Very important: once you finished a chapter, or a module, go back and do all the listening exercises (especially those in the Arbeitsbuch) because they use the vocab and grammar learned in those chapters.

\** Note: Unfortunately, the Arbeitsbuch has no answers at the back of the book, so if you're not sure about how you did the questions, here are the links to the official answers from Hueber Verlag*
Menschen Loesungsschluessel Arbeitsbuch B1.1
Menschen Loesungsschluessel Arbeitsbuch B1.2
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2) GRAMMAR
Grammar is essential and B1 is where it becomes essential. And you MUST know it. (Personal experience: I thought I had a well-consolidated vocabulary because I was able to understand a lot of words, but once I started to encounter structures like "je...desto or entweder...oder" things might start to get a bit tricky and no matter how much vocabulary you know, it'll be really hard to tell the meaning of a sentence. So Learn the GRAMMAR.
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German level B1 has a lot of grammar topics. In every chapter at least 3–4 grammar topics are present. List of Grammar topics in B1 is as follows.
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• VERB

Praeteritum formen: Ich suchte, du suchtest, etc. using “te” instead of partizip II.
Vergangenes berichten
vergangenheit, vorvergangenheit, plusquamperfekt
Futur I
Bildung des passiv; werden+partizip II, wurde+partizip II, sein+partizip II
Passiv mit Modalverb: Modalverb+Partizip II+werden im infinitiv
Konjuktiv II der Modalverben
Irreale Bedingungssaetze mit Konjuktiv II
Verb mit Pareposition
nicht/kein+brauchen+zu, nur+brauchen+zu
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• SUBSTANTIVE

Genetiv: “des”
n-Deklination
Adjektive als Substantive
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• ADJEKTIVE

Komparitiv und Superlativ vor Substativen
Adjektiv nach dem bestimmten und unbestimmten Artikel: Genitiv
Adjektivdeklination ohne Artikel
Partizip als Adjektive
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• PRONOMEN

Reflexivpronomen im Akkusativ und Dativ
Pronomen mit Praeposition und Pronominaladverbien
Artikelwoerter als Pronomen
Reflexivpronomen was und wo
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• PRAEPOSITIONEN

Wegen und Trotz
Innerhalb und Ausserhalb
Temporale praepositionen Vor, Nach, waehrend
aus+material
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• WORTSTELLUNG

Stellung von nicht im satz
Temporale nebensaetze: bevor, nachdem, seit/seitdem, waehrend, bis
Folgen ausdruecken:
deshalb, darum, deswegen
sodass, so….dass
Gruende und Gegenguende ausdruecken: weil/da, obwohl
Infinitiv mit zu
Relativsaetze: Relativpronomen im Dativ
Relativsaetze: Relativpronomen mit Praeposition
Verben mit praeposition und Nebensatz
Zweiteilige Konnektoren:
Sowohl, als auch
nicht nur, sondern auch
entweder, oder
weder, noch
zwar, aber
einerseits, andererseits
Saetze mit je….desto…
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• I recommend using this website: Longua All the Grammar Topics are listed there, from Adjective endings to Irregular Verbs and it also has downloadable PDF files with all essential Grammar (A1-C1)
• I also suggest getting this book: Deutsch üben Taschentrainer - Fit in Grammatik B1 (Hueber) It has good and really simple to understand questions and exercises and answers as well

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\** Note: Some of these (if not all of them) are explained in Textbooks, but some textbooks just go over them briefly. That's why I suggest if you didn't understand something or if it isn't very well explained in the book, look it up*
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3) VOCABULARY (+Listening)
Vocabulary is probably the most important part of learning German, and especially B1 Vocab is the starting point for all the daily and basic conversations that you might have in a German-speaking country.

• Official Goethe B1 Wortliste: The official B1 vocabulary issued by the Goethe Institut
• Memrise: It's a great tool honestly, use it every day as much as you can. (I've linked the B1 deck for the exact same B1 Goethe Word List) Search for B1 decks and relevant vocab
• Duolingo - You can still use Duolingo, but at some point, it's not effective anymore (I use it only for vocabulary)
• Read as much as you can - Fiction books, magazines, newspapers, articles, etc. This way you'll start encountering the words you've been learning and also understanding them because if you see them in a context they're easier to remember
• Arte.tv (https://www.arte.tv/de/) - One of the best resources out there if you enjoy watching documentaries, movies and pretty much anything. Arte is a free, and on-demand European (French & German) culture TV channel and most of the content is in German and has German subtitles
• DW Deutsch - Lots of resources for all levels: https://www.dw.com/de/deutsch-lernen/deutsch-aktuell/s-2146
• For Listening:
  • German Radio - Deutschland.fm (I recommend these: SWR2, NDR1, NDR Info, Bayern 2, WDR 5)
  • ARD Audiothek App (Radio broadcasts/podcasts in German)
  • 50 States - Through the USA with Dirk Rohrbach - Dirk Rohrbach is the first European that goes on America's longest river, Missouri. An amazing & very exciting podcast. Easy to understand as well (Also available in ARD Audiothek App)
  • Herr Professor Podcast (I just found these podcasts, but they are very useful and easy to understand)
• Watch Youtube Channels in German - there are so many good channels out there and with good content. Here are a few examples:
  • Easy German
  • 24h Deutsch
  • Y-Kollektiv (interesting videos with subtitles in German)
  • WDR Doku (documentaries) - probably a bit more advanced, but good content and clear spoken German
• Tagesschau in 100 Sekunden - News in 100 seconds, but you can also watch the whole thing (~15 min) Do this before you go to bed if you can every night

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4) SPEAKING
This is where it gets tricky. If you're like me (you don't live in a German-speaking country/don't have any German friends) then you know what are the odds of running into a Native/Fluent speaker of German. It gets even trickier if you live in an English speaking country because the odds are even thinner. But there are still a couple of things that you might try in order to practice speaking.
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Apps - it's true, it's not the same thing as speaking with someone in person, but at least it challenges and forces your brain to come up with stuff that you might say in a daily conversation.

• Tandem - This is a really nice app, where you can connect with people that are native speakers of different languages, and also people that are interested in learning your language.
• HelloTalk - More people have recommended me this one, but for some reason, I used a lot more Tandem. I thought I'd just link them both here, so you can pick whichever you like

Some of you might have friends or at least know people that can speak German on a decent level. Talk to them and tell them to correct you. If not, don't worry, you'll get the chance at some point. Apps are totally fine for B1.
\**Bonus:* This is something you don't hear a lot of people do, but I did it a couple of times and it's helpful. Try having mental conversations with yourself and see how long you can keep talking. For example, you can say "Wie war dein Tag?" and go on from there. And you'll see that if you avoid answers like "Gut" or "Toll", it actually gets pretty hard to say everything that you did in one day because you don't have the vocab yet. It's a bit strange, but helpful because it shows you instantly what you know and what you don't know.
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Other resources for B1:

• https://deutschlernerblog.de/deutsch-b1-deutsch-lernen-b1-deutschkurs-b1/
• https://www.goethe.de/ins/ie/en/spprf/gzb1/ueb.html (Goethe Zertifikat B1 Practice)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx_hT-3PXAg&t=15s (B1 Exam guide)
• https://www.swr.de/wissen/1000-antworten/ (More listening)
• https://www.radio.de/s/1live (More German Radio)
• http://conjugator.reverso.net/conjugation-german.html (Conjugates verbs - Very useful!)
• https://www.schubert-verlag.de/aufgaben/index.htm (More B1 Practice)

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I hope this helps! :)

I've gone through the first Genki textbook, twice. Genki is a good resource and likely the most popular one by a large margin, but it is not without its flaws. While going through it, I thought “why don’t I write down these things that it’s lacking on and then I can help others that are going through it for the first time and keep them from ripping their hair out”. Thankfully for me, I have no hair, and that’s why I was able to survive.
This is long. Real long. That’s just how I roll. It’s my way of the ninja. If you want short and to the point, then I suggest you ignore anything I write because you won’t like me much. When I write, I write (because that’s my way of the ninja).

First things first...

If you’re reading this, you’re probably just starting out. I feel like Japanese is very hard to learn at first because you gotta learn 50 different things all at once. You’ve got grammar, kana, kanji, and vocab. It’s a lot starting out and many folks jump in with fire and passion and they wanna be the very best like no one ever was and then…… yeah, life gives them a wet willie and they get burned out. It happened to me! I completely finished Genki and then got so burned out that I took 8 month off and forgot (almost) everything. All those flash cards? All the WaniKani levels? All the grammar? Sorry kid, you gotta start back at the beginning again. That sucked. If I had stuck with things, even if I cut my pace in half, I’d be so much further right now. If you’re just super smart or have already started on Genki, you can skip to the section below on Chapter notes. That’s cool. I won’t be offended. Mostly. Maybe.

Here’s some general advice for those of you just starting:

1) Learn the kana first. Duh and/or hello, right? Yeah. Gotta do it. What you shouldn’t do is do it the “I took Japanese in college 10 years ago” method of writing the chart over and over and over and over and over again in the back of a notebook. That sucks. Not that I know anything about that. By the by, Tofugu has mnemonics to help you learn the kana (hiragana/katakana) and there are a number of mobile apps and games you can learn from (I liked Tako's Japanese. There are plenty of others as well). You don’t need to know the kana like the back of your hand (I mostly knew hiragana by like 80%, but still screwed up some m’s, n’s, and don’t even try asking me the different between る and ろ); just know it good enough. As you do the exercises, it’ll really help burn the rest in.
2) Set a time period to learn everything by (1 chapter per month is very safe. See how long it usually takes to finish a chapter and go from there). This is important to stay on schedule and not quit forever because life got busy one day or one week. I personally was not working during this period (unemployed) and I may or may not have much of a social life outside of my lovely waifu harem, so I was doing 1 chapter per week, and that was a good pace for me. See what works for you based on the amount of time you can devote each day/week. While you’re studying you’ll want to use the Pomodoro Technique most likely. See the apps below.
3) Notes. You want notes. You want them because at some point you’re gonna have to go back and look at something from a previous chapter because of some conjugation rule or something. I kept a small notebook and just printed the chapter out (if you look enough, you should be able to find a PDF copy of Genki available to download somewhere) and pasted it in there. You could also just hand write notes chapter by chapter and I did that for the first 7 or 8 chapters but eventually just switched to printing because that saved me time. That’s more time for me to study each week.
4) As you go through the chapters, keep a small summary (like an index) of what you went over in each chapter. Come Genki 2, this comes in real handy (unless you memorized all the grammar and conjugation rules by heart before moving on. Ain't nobody got time for that)
5) Do those textbook exercises on paper! Open that notebook up, get out a pen and go go go (FYI: 0.3 needle sized tip is very nice. I love my 0.7 gel ink pen that’s smooth and fancy, but when you’re trying to write kanji in a small space, it sucks. Go with a needle point. Just trust me on this).
6) There are exercises for the kanji in the back of the textbook and workbook! I didn’t even realize this until I was halfway done…. Oops? On my second run through though, I skipped this entirely. My big thing is reading. Writing kanji is useful for sure, but even Koichi cut it from Textfugu/EtoEto because it’s not a necessity (and us gaijin aren't the only ones that can read kanji but not write them). I’ll go back and learn how to write all these boogers later. Right now, I want to focus on what will get me closer to reading proficiently. You do you though! There’s certainly no harm in learning to write the kanji right now; I just have other priorities and you may as well. If you're moving at a faster pace, you'll likely want to cut stuff. If you're moving at a slower pace, then you can include more stuff. I'm in the super fast lane like Speed Racer.
7) You’ll find little audio marks in the book; that means that that exercise is available on the disk and the answer is too! If you’re having trouble, use it. Just open up google translate and stick that next to the speaker and bam, you’ve got an answer to your problem.
8) I used Google Translate a good bit to check my work. It’s not perfect but at this level it works pretty well. It’s fun to fiddle with the particles and see how it changes a sentence (which can be quite helpful as well).

Here’s some apps and things that will help you along the way:

* Anki
In case you didn’t already know about our Lord and Savior 暗記 (Anki), hollowed be thy name, then allow me to spread the gospel. Anki is a digital flash card app. That means it saves you time. That’s more time you can spend learning Japanese and watching hentai and stuff (strictly for educational purposes, of course). Anki spaces things out (“SRS”) and you can find decks other people made (like this real nice Core 10K deck you should study from in addition to you Genki vocab).
How you set up Anki is up to you and your time. I’m doing 10 new cards per day per deck (Genki + Core 10K). I know that doing more than 10 gives me too many reviews. Some folks like doing 20. Some do 5. 10 is my magic number. Just make sure you’re doing enough new cards per day to cover the entire next chapter before you start it (that’s usually ~70 words or so). Oh and BTW, you can find more than one Genki deck for Anki if you look in their database. Pre-made decks are a major benefit to Anki and digital flash card apps in general.
After you’re done studying for the day, you’ll want to review that day’s new cards and the cards you got wrong. There’s a right way and wrong way to do this. Guess who did it the wrong way at first? Yeah…. So, what you don’t want to do is press and hold (on the mobile app) on the deck ==> Custom Study ==> Review Ahead. That shows you tomorrow’s cards. All of them. You don’t want that unless you plan on taking that day off. This is also problematic because while your normal study will give you 3 options for spacing how well you know a card, reviewing ahead keeps things locked in place. Cards that are stuck on 2 days will stay on 2 days when you see them again in two days. So if you are doing a review ahead every single day, then your workload will only increase and it will screw up the SRS.
What you do want to do is custom study ==> review forgotten cards ==> 1 day. You can review those cards all you want and it won’t screw with the SRS any. If you want to re-review again, just press and hold and select “rebuild”. There’s probably a good Anki guide out there somewhere but I never really found one and just had to learn from my own mistakes. You’ll want to make sure you’ve got furigana enabled. I encountered a problem early on where the furigana wasn’t showing on my cards. I almost had a heart attack until I figured out that you can enable furigana.
This is up to you, but something I do to save myself time and move at a bit of a faster pace is I set my new reviews to come up first. This is dependent on you using WaniKani btw. So anyway, then I check (when I’m studying the core 10K deck or any non-genki deck that’s massive) and if a new word is within 3 levels of my current level, I’ll suspend it (Jisho.org tells you what level a word comes up in WaniKani). I figure that I’ll be learning that word soon anyway, so why do double-duty? I wanna finish this blasted 10K deck (and all flash cards) as soon as possible because yeah, that’s a daily commitment that I don’t enjoy much and it’s going to take a looooong while. I also suspend any katakana loan words that are easily recognizable (ie: those that are basically identical to their English variant). Whatever it takes to thin the deck but still keep learning, I’ll do it. Maybe you love flash cards; I don’t. I especially don’t like doing them every. Single. Stinking. Day.
BTW: you will really want to up your vocab game if you wanna read native Japanese stuff. Here’s the Core10K deck: http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/Core_10k . Ideally you want the “full” deck with all the media.
* WaniKani
Opinions vary on WaniKani, but personally I love it. If you don't already know what the heck it is, it's a tool to help you learn the kanji and their readings through mnemonics and SRS. If you do choose Wanikani, I suggest reading this very handy guide that will help you out and keep you from making the same mistakes I did when I first started WaniKani and let myself get burned out (and then set everything aside and forgot everything >_>). WaniKani is not free after level 3, but it is pretty affordable. Protip: you may get a discount for a yearly subscription thrown at you near the end of level 3 (I got offered 50% off). If you plan on buying a lifetime subscription, wait until near the end of December when Tofugu has their big FUCKIN' SALE and everything they sell is on a super discount.
* Dictionaries
Jisho is pretty popular and gets the job done when you need to look something up on the computer. It’ll also tell you how to conjugate words which is really nice when you’re trying to make sure you’re doing things correctly.
On mobile, I like Akebi (Android only; sorry iOS users). I haven’t tried a ton of dictionaries, but I like this one. It works. It gives me definitions. I can look up kanji by drawing them. You can even send words you looked up straight to Anki. Pretty spiffy. I like it.
* Pomodoro
Special thanks to Lifehacker for this one. Pomodoro is a work/rest cycle with long and short breaks. It’s quite useful. You can find apps for you computer (likely mobile as well). I found one and I use Linux!
https://lifehacker.com/productivity-101-a-primer-to-the-pomodoro-technique-1598992730
https://zapier.com/blog/best-pomodoro-apps/
* Cooljugator
This is the one-stop shop for all your verb conjugation needs
https://cooljugator.com/ja
* Other apps to check your work
As I said, I mostly use Google Translate. But if you just simply don’t understand something no matter how hard you try, then you can try HiNative where someone else that speaks Japanese and your language can chime in and try to help answer your question. You can ask in the LearnJapanese ShitsuMonday open thread (an open thread starting every Monday).
If you feel that you need more help with grammar and want to practice more, keep in mind that Genki’s website has an online tool you can use for free: http://genki.japantimes.co.jp/self_en
Not an app, but you want the book All About Particles. You really want this book. It goes in to great detail about all the particles (duh); much more than any textbook. Sometimes I won’t fully understand a particle and all the particulars to it and this has really helped me with that.

CHAPTER NOTES

Finally, now we get in to my critiques. This is written a bit short hand as that’s how I wrote it when I went through the chapter, intending to flesh it out more later. This is meant as a reference guide, not as a detailed explanation. Okay now, let’s start with….
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Chapter 5:
I felt like it did a poor job of explaining difference between い and な adjectives. I really don’t like how Genki puts “(な)” on the end instead of using kanji with furigana so that the reader knows they are な adjectives. Your mileage may vary, but I really just never cared for that (and even found it quite confusing at first!). Also, I could be wrong, but I felt like I never really learned when to add な to the end of a な adjective in Genki. If you’re unsure as well, then try reading these:
https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/47734/when-should-i-use-%E3%81%AA-in-na-adjectives
https://www.thejapanesepage.com/grammana_adjectives/
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Chapter 7:
Here it’s important to pay attention to the Expression Notes to learn how to say "when I was a child". You’ll need to know how to say this later.
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Chapter 8:
You learn short form conjugation here. Pro-tip: short form conjugation is very common and is very good to know backwards. I strongly advise you to just make everything short form when you’re doing your exercises from here on out. I assume you know the polite forms pretty darn well by now and they are not nearly as important to know as short form. Get in all the practice you can by just doing everything in short form from now on. I didn’t really figure this out until Genki 2.
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Chapter 9:
I felt like the guide for following the て-form rules were poorly explained and it doesn't differentiate た and だ): Here’s a better explanation I found. http://www.brighthubeducation.com/japanese-lesson-plans/62054-past-short-form-in-japanese-lesson/
Irregular verbs are a thing. Genki decided to leave us hanging on their short form conjugation, so here you go: くる (きた) and する (した). You can follow the past tense short form guidelines for negatives and add なかった.
Not a biggie but Genki uses うち for house even though earlier it was given as 家/いえ. Just so you know, they both mean house but one refers specifically to your house. Genki didn't think this was important.
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Chapter 10:
I feel like the book never says how to say "I like both X and Y". Here you go: X も Y も 好き. The book also never explained what 中で means (it means “among”; check Jisho).
Something else it never really did was describe how to say “go from (A) to (B) by (X)”. It’s not hard to figure out, but would have been helpful to add to the lesson. This is due to Genki's very limited explanation of から. Until this point, it was used only as "because" but it's never mentioned that it is also used to say "from". Here’s where to find more information:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammacompound#Expressing_reason_or_causation_using_and
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/complete/verb_sequences#Before_and_after
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Chapter11:
Genki I love you, but man is it annoying that you’ve done a bad job of explaining some of these things. In this chapter, I feel like they did a subpar job of explaining たい conjugation; especially for verbs. There is mention that verbs conjugate as an I-adjective but never mention that this is *short form* conjugation. One can figure it out fairly quickly if they're good with short form conjugation but to mention just a blanket "i-adjective" conjugation is confusing and not helpful.
Likewise, there was a poor job explaining of how to conjugate the たり form. Likely because did a bad job of explaining short form conjugation, so check this:
https://wtawa.people.amherst.edu/jvrules/index.php?form=representative

FIN

That’s it! Hopefully this helps those of you that are going through Genki for the first time because man did some of this stuff drive me crazy. If you feel that something I’ve mentioned here is inaccurate (such as if I say something was not covered but it was) then please let me know and give me the page # where I can find this.
I’m going through Genki 2 right now and so far so good. If it starts screwing up like Genki 1 did, then I’ll write another survival guide specifically for that.
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(edit Mar 11: many thanks to those of you who have sent me feedback publicly and privately! I'll be revising this in the coming month based on your input. My #1 goal is to save folks the frustrations I've had while studying. I want others to be able to avoid the mistakes I've made and have the information that I had to find myself. Slowly I'll be able to change that as I learn more. Not just with Genki, but in general with studying Japanese)

Tuvan (Тыва дыл, Tıwa dıl; [tʰɯˈʋa tɯl]; also known as Tuvinian, Tyvan or Tuvine) is a Turkic language spoken by slightly fewer than 300,000 in the Tuva Republic in south-central Siberia. Diaspora groups of Tuvan people that speak varying dialects can also be found in Mongolia and China.

Linguistics

As a Sayan Turkic language, Tuvan is closely related to the Tofa language, a moribund language in Russia's Irkutsk Oblast, which it once formed a dialect continuum with. From being a Turkic language in general, it is more distantly related to other languages such as Tatar (not to be confused with Crimean Tatar, to which they're both related as well), Kyrgyz, and of course everyone's favourite language, Uzbek.
Classification
Tuva's full classification is as follows:
Turkic (Proto-Turkic) > Common Turkic > Siberian Turkic > South Siberian > Sayan Turkic > Tuvan
Phonology and Phonotactics
Tuvan has 16 different vowel phonemes, contrasting 8 different qualities and 2 different lengths. Tuvan also has 8 'low-pitch' vowels that appear in word-initial syllables. Foг most sрakегs, this is rеalizеd as very low modаl voice, which hаs the aсoustiс сorгelate of low pitсh (low fundamental frеquеnсy). Early studies analyzed these as separate vowels, giving a total number of 24 vowel phonemes; however, following Anderson & Harrison (1999), from which this work draws, here they are analyzed as suprasegmental features. Thus, in the IPA, the phonemic vowels are /i y e ø ɯ u a o/ and their long counterparts. Note that, throughout this write-up, the vowels /y ø ɯ/ might be written with their turcological symbols, ü ö ɨ/ï, respectively.
Like most Turkic languages, Tuvan has a process of vowel harmony, inherited from Proto-Turkic, which already had it fully formed. Tuvan has two types of vowel harmony, Back and Round. Because of Tuvan's perfectly symmetrical vowel system, both classes contain four phonemes and no phonemes are left out of the harmony processes, i.e. there are no neutral vowels.
Out of these two, back harmony is the most robust. The process of back harmony means that either all vowels must be front vowels (the first four listed above) or back vowels (the last four). Vowels in suffixes take their cue from the closest vowel to the left, whether it's in the root or another suffix. Thus all Tuvan suffixes have at least two allomorphs, one for front vowels, and one for back vowels. An example of this is given in is-ter-im-den ('footprint-PL-1-ABL), at-tar-ïm-dan (name-PL-1-ABL), where you can see the front and back alternations of the three suffixes. Back vowel harmony arises even when consonant clusters from borrowed words are simplified by vowel epenthesis, showing just how robust this type of vowel harmony is.
Unlike other Turkic languages, such as Uzbek, where vowel harmony only applies weakly (and might be more of a relic than applying at all), Tuvan only has four morphological suffixes exceptions to back vowel harmony, allative, diminutive, durative and sequential. They may be classified respectively as invariant (non-alternating) elements (allative), borrowed suffixal elements (diminutive), or fused elements (durative, sequential). Other exceptions to back harmony occur in some compound words, through ablaut (an intensive form is created by applying ablaut to the second vowel of a disyllabic adjective; this ablauted vowel is always front, regardless of the first vowel) as well as due to co-articulatory features in fluent speech. The latter of these causes disharmony in several other Turkic languages as well.
Round harmony, on the other hand, is much more restricted in its appearance. Under round harmony, high vowels that follow a round vowel must also be round. Thus, round harmony only targets two vowels, /i/ and /ï/, which become realized as /ü/ and if the vowel before them is a round vowel. The only time the rounded high vowels appear in post-initial syllables is when this process of vowel harmony takes place. Native words thus contain no examples of a round vowel followed by a high unrounded vowel. Furthermore, due to phonotactic contrasints, no rounded vowel may follow an unrounded vowel. Thus the only time that the mid-rounded vowels, /ö/ and /o/ occur in native words is in the initial vowel position, with a few exceptions that originally derived from compound words.
There are 19 native Tuvan consonant phonemes, with two more appearing only in loan words. Tuvan consonants undergo a predictable pattern of surface changes when they are realized in a word. Tuvan bilabial stops only contrast in word-initial position. For some speakers, the contrast between [b]/[p] and [d]/[t] is one of (weak) voicing, while for other speakers they are contrasted by aspiration.
No onset clusters exist in native Tuvan words, being limited solely to borrowings. Only two possible clusters exist in the coda - [rt] and [jt]. All other word-internal clusters are heterosyllabic (i.e. they occur in two different syllables). The following syllable types are attested in native Tuvan words: V, VV, VC, VVC, VCC, CV, CVV, CVC, CVVC, CVCC. Stress in Tuvan is weak, and falls on the final syllable of a word. This stress is not sensitive to vowel quality, thus it is not attracted to long vowels; if suffixes are added, the stress typically shifts to the final suffix, though there are a few non-stress-bearing suffixes.
Morphology and Syntax
Tuvan, like all Turkic languages, is an agglutinative language, meaning suffixes are tacked on to the ends of words, often forming one long word that could represent a full English sentence. However, Tuvan does have a few morphological processes -- elision, vowel lengthening and reduplication -- which are not agglutinative.
Tuvan's basic word order is subject-object-verb. Noun phrases and verb phrases are head-final, with the maximum expansion of the noun phrase being [Demonstrative-Possessive-Adjective Phrase-Noun] and the verb phrase being [Direct Object - Indirect Object- Subject - Verb]. Some freedom is permitted within the verb-phrase for focus, with objects that move closer to the verb being more focused; however, the verb always occurs finally. Postpositions are also used in the language.
Tuvan makes no morphological distinction based on noun class/gender. However, there is one exception, the words meaning 'old' and 'young', which have different words based on whether the object is animate (people, animals, trees, the heart, etc.) or inanimate (things, plants, body parts). The animate words for old and young are, respectively, kirgan and anyak; the inanimate ones are, respectively, èrgi and čaa, with the latter also meaning 'new'. Tuvan likewise has no definite articles, with the demonstratives taking its place when something needs to be overtly marked.
However, despite not making any morphological distinctions based on noun class, Tuvan nouns do decline for seven cases -- nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, ablative and allative -- as well as for plurality. The plural marker precedes any possessive and case affixes. Nouns that are quantified by a number generally do not take the plural suffix, and ones that take a numerical-qualifier can take the plural to give a distributive meaning (i.e. 'I have read many different books').
The base case of Tuvan nouns is the nominative case, which is also the unmarked case. The nominative case is used to mark the subject of the sentence, as well as the first nominal in a two-part possessive construction. It's also used in constructions with 'auxiliary' nouns. Furthermore, it is used for an indefinite direct object of a transitive verb.
The ablative case is used to mark motion away from an object. This has been extended into temporal use as well, thus mart aydan (March month-ABL) means 'from March'. It also marks the source and the comparandum in a comparative construction. Furthermore, in uses specific to Tuvan among the Turkic languages, the ablative is used to mark the agent in certain passives and to give a partitive meaning. It is governed by certain postpositions as well.
While the accusative case in general is used to mark direct objects, it does not do this automatically in Tuvan. In fact, the accusative's primary function in Tuvan is to mark definiteness or specificity on direct objects. Furthermore, it make mark the subjects in some subordinate clauses, as well as the predicate itself in aother types. It can be used along with a third person possessive as a vocative and in some dialects its used to mark a causee over the dative case.
Contrary to other Tuvan cases, the allative case has basically one function, to mark direction wards a location, though it may also be used to denote motion around an object. This case is not descended from the Old Turkic allative case, but possibly arose from the word čak ('moment').
The Tuvan dative case serves to mark the recipient or indirect object of a verb. It is also used to mark an expressed causee in causative formations, as well as an expressed agent in passive formations. Tuvan also uses the dative instead of the locative case in the past and future to express location, and it can sometimes be used to express direction instead of the allative. It also marks the experiencer subject with certain adjectival predicates and is required on the object of other adjectival predicates.
The Tuvan genitive case's primary function is to mark the possessor in a possesive construction, followed by a noun with with a possessive suffix (see below). It can also be used to mark the subject in some subordinate clauses.
The locative case expresses location solely in the present-tense in Tuvan. This has been extended to temporal locations as well, in which case it is still used in the past tense.
A salient feature of Tuvan is that possessive constructions mark both the possessor and the possessum (thing possessed). The possessor in the clause takes the genitive case, whereas the possessum is marked with a special suffix corresponding to the number and person of the possessor. Some of these forms can be seen in the table below.
Tuvan also has a class of 'auxiliary nouns', which often indicate what would be indicated with prepositions and postpositions in other languages. Postpositions are found in Tuvan as well, but there is a formal difference in how the auxiliary nouns act when compared to the postpositions, so the two are treated as separate classes.

Nominative	1.POSS	2.POSS	3.POSS	1.PL.POSS	2.PL.POSS	3.PL.POSS	English
xap	xavïm	xavïŋ	xavï	xavïvïs	xavïŋar	xavï	'bag'
küš	küžüm	küžüŋ	küžü	küžüvüs	küžüŋer	küžü	'strength, power'

The possessive markers precede the case markers, but they follow the plurality marker.
Tuvan has six pronouns, distinguishing two numbers (singular and plural) and three persons. Gender is not distinguished in the pronouns. The third singular form is also identical to the demonstrative 'that'. These pronouns are declined for all seven cases; the singular ones have certain irregularities in their declension patterns, but the plurals all decline regularly. The pronouns, in the nominative case, are summarized in the table below.

Pronoun	Meaning
men	1st singular
sen	2nd singular
ol	3rd singular
bis(ter)	1st plural
siler	2nd plural
olar	3rd plural

Tuvan pronomial verbal markers can appear in two ways on verbs, either as enclitics or as suffixes. All main-clause verb forms take them as enclitics (except one of the past tense forms, to be described below), whereas all subordinate clauses use the suffix form. These markers, except for the third plural, are always required, whereas the pronoun is optional and frequently dropped; Tuvan is thus a pro-drop language.
In terms of tense-aspect-mood, Tuvan has an extensive number of affixes to express an extensive amounts of distinctions. Likewise, auxiliary verbs are also used to further increase the distinctions available. Some of these are described below.
Tuvan has two past tense categories, an 'assertive/definite' and a 'non-assertive/indefinite', past. Both of these are represented on the verb with an affix. The assertive past is the one exception to the use of the pronomial enclitics among main clause verbs in Tuvan. For most verbs, there is no clear-cut semantic distinction, though there are minimal contrasts that could be established for a few verbs. Generally, the non-assertive is the unmarked form, and refers to a general point in the past; it can also be used to express a point further back in the past, such as the English past perfect. The assertive, therefore, may refer to a recent or definite time in the past, and also refers back to things already introduced; in many people's speech, it occurs primarily with first person subjects. A full conjugation paradigm for the two past tenses can be seen in the table below.

Non-Assertive Past	Assertive Past	English
uškan men	uštum	I flew
uškan sen	uštuŋ	You flew
uškan	uštu	S/he flew
uškan bis	uštuvus	We flew
uškan siler	uštuŋar	You (pl.) flew
uškan(nar)	uštu(lar)	They flew

Non-past is expresed as one form in Tuvan, thus ažïdaar men can mean "I work" or "I will work". Non-past actions are commonly denoted by auxiliary verbs, which may express a progressive or non-progressive meaning.
Tuvan has six aspect markers on the verb, the iterative, used colloquially to mark expressive actions as well as iterative actions; the perfective; the resultative, used to mark and emphasize actions completed in the past, and used to emphasize the truth of a statement the hearer doubts (e.g. I did see you!); unaccomplished, used to mark an unaccomplished action and now mostly extinct. It carried a sense that the verb would be completed in the near future; emphatic, marked with reduplication, which adds emphasis to the verb or the connotation of a rapid/intense action; cessation, 'to stop doing X'.
Tuvan also marks an extensive set of modal categories on the verb. These include the conditional, marking conditional statements in the past and future, and used to mean 'in order to'; the concessive mood, corresponding to English 'even though' or 'although'; the conciliatory, or optative, which signals the concession or agreement on the part of the subject to perform an action; the desiderative; the evidential mood, which can also signal reported speech or the inadvertant, involuntary or unexpected nature of an action; the imperative mood.
Verbs are negated with a suffix. Tuvan also has a system of converbs, which can add shades of semantic meaning to the verb. Likewise, there is an extensive system of auxiliary verbs, which, when used with certain converbs, can add a further distinction in various tenses, aspects and moods. One example of this is where an auxiliary can be used to create a continuous meaning. Furthermore, other auxiliaries can add various shades of meaning, such as a self-benefactive voice, capabiliative mood, inchoative aspect, benefactive voice, etc. Some auxiliaries determine the meaning depending on the converb or semantic class of the verb, but most auxiliaries only have one meaning, despite the converb. A list of these auxiliaries, and their additional meanings, can be seen in the table below.

Auxiliary	Meaning
al-	self-benefactive voice or capabilative mood
ber-	inchoative aspect or benefactive mood
bar-	completitive/perfective action or translocative action (across space)
bol-	possibilitive mood
čït-	capabilitive mood
čoru -	imperfective or durative aspect
egele-	inchoative aspect
kag-	'already'
kel-	cislocative
kir-	completive or terminative aspect
kör-	attemptive mood
olur-	imperfective aspect

Miscellany

• Tuvan currently uses a modified version of the Russian Alphabet, with three additional letters.
  
• Historically, Tuvan was written with the Mongolian script, and a Tuvan monk designed a Latin based script
  
• There is no traditional way to transcribe Tuvan Cyrillic, so traditional methods are often resorted to; Turkologists often use the Turkic Notation, which was used through this post
  
• Tuvan throat singing is a well-known musical style of the Tuvan people, as well as of other peoples of the steppes. A link is included below.
  

Samples

Spoken sample:
Conversation/interview
throat singing lullaby
More throat singing
Final throat singing
Tuvan storyteller telling an epic tale
Introduction to another epic tale
Written sample:
Тыва чоннуң эртинези – хөөмей
Делегейниң эң улуг күчулүг, чараш, арыг, байлак хемнерниң бирээзи – алдарлыг Енисейниң – Улуг Хемниң шуурап баткан ораны, делегейде чок дээн делгем чаагай Азия диптиң географтыг төвү, чүрээ, буурул баштыг Саян сыннары хаажылаан Тыва чурту бойдустуң эң ховар чурумалы, тураскаалы болуп турары дег, тываларны өске чоннардан ылгап, алдаржыдып, киискидип турар онзагай демдектер эвээш эвес.
(Excerpt from an essay about Tuvan throat singing)
Tyvan Wikipedia

Sources

• Wikipedia pages on Tuvan
  
• Topics in the Phonology and Morphology of Tuvan, K. David Harrison, 2000
  
• Tyvan, Gregory David Anderson & K. David Harrison, 1999
  
• Online Tyvan-English Dictionary
  

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In the recent discussion sparked by the proposal to separate the community, a lot of people concluded that some materials to help new conlangers avoid the same old mistakes may be handy. I've been conlanging for a very long time, and seen a lot of newcomers on this sub, so I thought it may be appropriate to give my take on common pitfalls and how and why to avoid them.
The Romlang/Germanic Lang
Ok, I'll admit that this is more a stylistic pet peeve than a mandatory rule for successful conlanging, but I think it's a pet peeve that most people who've been on here a while share. I think it's worth saying, though, that everyone has seen someone make minor variations on Latin, German, or Norwegian. The thing about these languages is that, conlanger or not, most of us (at least Westerners) are already relatively familiar with them. Conlanging should be at some level a learning process, and it's just hard to get much out of a language that's a slight variation on something we've seen before. That being said, if you have a genuine, serious, deep interest in Romance languages or Germanic languages, go for it. If you want to capture others' interest, though, try adding something unique. For instance, check out Brithenig, a Romlang set in Great Britain that displays some fantastic influence by the Celtic languages. Alternatively, if you're just looking for a place to start, there are some fantastic languages out there that aren't spoken in Western Europe. These actually tend to be a lot more interesting to English speakers at least, just because they often employ some very different ways of communicating from what we know. My recommendations might include Chinese, Hebrew, Navajo, Malay, Arabic, Shona, Yoruba, Cherokee, Hawaiian, Korean, or Guarani, all of which tend to be both quite well documented and quite different from European languages in at least some regards. Don't take my word, for it, though - find your own. In exploring, try to go into the deep stuff in addition to the phonology and one or two grammar quirks. I can't recommend Wikipedia enough for starting, but don't be afraid to go out and read actual linguistics papers (*gasp*)! Lastly, in the interest of removing mental blinders, I leave you with this.
(A side note to Germanic langers in particular - if you haven't already, read up on historical umlaut and the tense-lax distinction. You can't just stick front rounded vowels everywhere and call it a Germanic-style language.)
The Relex
While we're on the subject of going outside our linguistic comfort zone, it may be apropos to mention the infamous relex. It's harder to address this because not every relex looks the same, but this is a concern I've seen a lot of people express about their own languages. Unfortunately, there's no substitute for plenty of experience in linguistics (which you can gain! I know you can! Yes, Wikipedia articles use a lot of technical vocabulary, but if you're interested just keep following links and searching any terms you don't understand. If you make a concerted effort to push your boundaries, you can learn all about the real limits of human communication.) if your goal is to make something that genuinely works differently from English. However, I am willing to offer a few "gimmicks" that you might not be familiar with:
Classifiers - many East Asian languages have a separate part of speech whose job it is to describe and quantify nouns. They are commonly used with numerals or demonstratives to help count nouns, while at the same time they usually have some semantic or connotative meaning. For instance, in Mandarin you'll commonly hear a phrase that goes something like:
我家有四口人。
My family has four (mouth) people.
In this sentence, the character 口, meaning "mouth", is being used a measure word to both quantify the number of people and to serve a connotative function (i.e., characterizing your family members as mouths to feed.)
In a similar vein, Noun classes - any system of separating nouns into categories. Technically, you're probably already familiar with these in the form of mostly arbitrary classes aligned with biological gender (which the aforementioned Latin, German, and (sorta) Norwegian all have). There are tons of other ways, though. Many languages separate on animacy, or the ability to act with one's own agency (animate things include people, animals, and sometimes natural forces like fire). It's also common to distinguish based on physical properties like shape or material. My personal favorites come from the Bantu languages, which use several semantic classes to derive tons of nouns from a set of roots as well as mark number.
Clusivity - In English we primarily distinguish pronouns by number and whether or not I'm included, and secondarily whether you are. In many languages, though, whether you're included is in parallel to whether I'm included, so there's a category for you, me, both, or neither. In parallel with number as well, you can imagine this as a 2x2x2 box with eight compartments. One of them isn't filled, since you and I can't both be included in a singular pronoun (unless... I did have the idea once where this does exist, and expresses solidarity. Irrelevant.), leaving you with seven pronouns (before case) instead of six. As you'll know by now if you stopped and thought for a second before continuing to read, the end result of this is simply that you have two first-person plural pronouns: one that does include the listener, and one that doesn't.
Other persons - while we're talking about pronouns, it's worth mentioning that there can be more than three persons. People will vary on how they number the extra ones. Hypothetical person (usually called 0th) is just like the word "one" in the sentence "One can retire ten years earlier if they merely follow the five financial secrets I reveal in my new book that's hitting shelves in March." That is, it refers to anyone generally that happens to do something rather than a specific referent. Another big one is the proximate-obviate distinction - separating third persons based on how salient they are (just read it.)
Whew. There are also some less gimmicky or easy to explain linguistic topics that you should really familiarize yourself with:
Voice - it's not just active and passive. Voice is really about emphasis, and there's any number of ways to do it (or don't at all, like many natlangs). Fun fact - English also has a mediopassive: in the sentence "The cake is baking.", the cake is grammatically a subject but semantically kinda an object, which some linguists consider a separate voice in constrast with something like "I'm baking the cake.", where the same verb takes a totally different type of argument set.
Argument agreement - it's not just conjugation or noun-adjective agreement. Any related items can be marked to show that fact. Agreement is used as a device to reduce syntactic load.
The information theory behind word order - don't just pick your word order by throwing a dart at a list. There's a reason some word orders are more common than others. A TL;DNR for this paper is that languages that mark heavily on the verb work best as SOV, and those that don't work best as SVO.
Morphosyntactic Alignment - I notice that a lot of people go for ergative-accusative even though it's really pretty uncommon. I would certainly recommend familiarizing yourself with it, but to satisfy that lust for non-Englishiness might I instead suggest a split-S system.
Dependent clauses - just might be the hardest part about making languages (for those of you that haven't heard, by the way, English is a syntactical clusterfuck when it comes to these. It's worth reading up to avoid copying English's weirdnesses.). Just remember: subordinate clause=adverb, noun clause=noun, relative clause=adjective.
The Oligosynthetic Language
I actually rather like oligosynthesis sometimes, and I have experimented with them like every schoolboy conlanger, but it's worth mentioning that they can't really make valid systems of communication, for theoretical reasons that plenty of 19th-century philologists before you have learned the hard way. In a (rather big) nutshell, here's why:
The thing about oligosynthetic languages like Toki Pona is that they're still lacking information in their canon. "Learning" Toki Pona as it's published doesn't actually allow you to communicate fluently - you still have to internalize the more complex meanings that you form by combination, but unlike in other languages, a lot of such specific meanings don't even have universally agreed-upon forms. Even after you learn every Toki Pona root, you can't tell someone else "I went to the bookstore yesterday to buy the next book in my daughter's favorite young adult fiction series" until you've also learned the agreed-upon combination meaning "bookstore," "yesterday," "next," "daughter," "young adult," and "fiction." No oligosynthetic language is so self-explanatory that speakers don't have to agree on semantic combinations the same way they have to agree on the atomic roots. It is advantageous that the combinations are mnemonic, but they're not instantly self-evident; they have to be memorized just like words. Then there are the pragmatic concerns once the language is learned - the paucity of roots means that any sequence could be meaningfully parsed multiple ways, obscuring intended meaning. As the makers of philosophical languages discovered in the late 1800s, such an organized system of word building also ensures that things with similar meanings sound similar, which makes it unbelievably easier to misinterpret flawed information transmission (hear things wrong). A lot of linguistic information theory is concerned with the "rate of transmission", which is increased when context and sound convey maximally different information. All language employs redundancy in order to absolutely ensure that there's no confusion in the event of this flawed information transmission. When words are built in an oligosynthetic system, a lot of morphemes are being employed to convey information that's already evident from context, since it's specifying the general semantic area of whatever the word is, and only small portions of the word serve to make minor distinctions within a semantic area, which pragmatically turns out to be the most important job of transmitted, as opposed to contextual, information. However, by definition the morphemes must be usable in all contexts, so that same morpheme that must be lengthy and distinctive where it counts must also be lengthy and distinctive where it doesn't. As a result, oligosynthetic languages tend to be less informationally dense. Toki Pona in particular is prohibitively wordy since its creator decided to make some roots two and three syllables long even though there's only a couple hundred. It's a sure sign that no one actually uses it that it hasn't been compressed and made irregular, which is exactly what would happen in a fluent community almost instantaneously. Oligosynthetic languages look good until you try using them, at which point they inevitably break down into something that looks like an irregular natlang. Human languages look like they do for a reason, and if there were a simpler and easier way to use language it would have naturally come to exist by now. Always remember that.
The No-Phonotactics
Most languages have some pretty specific rules about how they organize their sounds. This may be a hard one to come at from English, since it has very difficult-to-define phonotactic rules and plenty of unique words. Most languages, it's worth mentioning, don't. I don't want to go on at length about what's really a complex main topic in linguistics, but it's worth investigating. It's also worth pointing out that European languages in particular can be very consonant-heavy and allow more complex sequences of consonants that most languages. Investigate African or East Asian phonotactics to get a good idea of other areas of the spectrum.

Alright, so, I have decided that I don’t want to learn with a book. I never enjoyed that and I gave it a shot again with Colloquial Icelandic, and, no surprises, I don’t enjoy using it. So I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands.
I want to first get an overview on the grammar. I’ll probably skim Colloquial Icelandic for anything grammar related to get a picture of what I need to focus on. I need to mention here that my native language is German, so the four cases are all well known to me (though there may be differences I’m not aware of—please mention if you’re aware of any).
Then I want to start reading simple books. Ones for children. Then more complicated ones. I’ll write out all new words and add them to Anki. I’ve got a few good ideas for how to use Anki effectively. I will need a few things before I can really start though:

• A dictionary. Preferrably German—Icelandic, but English would do too.
• A grammar reference. I’m 1000‰ certain I won’t grasp all just from skimming one book.
• All regular paradigms, for verbs, nouns and adjectives. Preferrably with examples (to already add to Anki).
• A list of the most important irregularly inflected words.
• Books. Easy books, not that easy books too, but mainly the really simple ones for now (I’ll work through the hobbit or so once I got a feel for the language). Kindle or pdf are both acceptable.

Also, there are some things I’d like to know already:

• What are the principal parts in Icelandic? Meaning, which forms of verbs, nouns and adjectives do I need to know to know what declension/conjugation paradigm a word has?
• Are there any differences in the usage of the cases between German and Icelandic?
• Does a genitive object come before or after the owned thing? i.e. “barnið mannsins” or “mannsins barnið” for “the child of the man”?

Also, I can’t torrent anything. I could always ask a friend to get it and send it to me, but unless you think it’s really worth it I’d rather not.