Learning another language.

[Costock_Fox]

23 minutes ago, Wookie said:

It's the conjugation which is a right bastard with German. Du/Sie/er/sie/ihr/wir 

Yeah I heard they wake up with sticky eyes as well.

[Vacamion]

 

Languages are my thing.

 

I speak fairly fluent German with a noticeable Saxon accent, passable French, and I can get myself fed and watered in Spanish, Russian and Dutch.

 

I learned Latin at school (when no lessons were offered)  by getting a maths teacher with a classics degree to teach me at lunch time. He taught three people the year after me and finished up teaching full Latin classes (brushes lapel).

 

I have beginner's Hindi/Urdu (can read the Devanagari script but not the Urdu), can sing a few Bollywood songs and, about half the time, make out the jist of fluent speech.

 

I know enough French, Spanish and Latin to be able to usefully make a bit of sense of written Portuguese, Italian etc  and I can struggle through a few other European languages.

 

I found Arabic really difficult (the verbs are utterly bonkers) and tonal languages (eg Chinese languages) are beyond me.

 

Anyone asking me which new language someone should learn, I would suggest in terms of ease, usefulness, relatedness to other languages, go for Spanish.

 

It uses pretty much the same alphabet as ours, the sounds and pronunciation are fairly constant and the grammar is not terribly difficult.

 

Go for it...

[RODNEY FERNIO]

My genius first from Cambridge relative taught himself to be fluent in German, French and Spanish by the time he was 19.

Learnt Greek , Hebrew and Urdu while at university..... and said they were stinkers to master.

Since university wanted more challenges and mastered Japanese and all the Chinese language variations.

He has just got a love for languages.

His best mate was a senior wrangler i.e the one that gets the top marks in the maths tripos at Cambridge... the hardest exams of the lot.

 

Bizarre really as the rest of our family are pretty thick !

 

[kushiro]

• Noticed a few people on this forum saying they were studying Japanese, or were thinking of doing so. It's a relatively easy language to speak - so regular in pronunciation. If you are thinking of taking it up seriously and learning Kanji so you can read, this is the book you need. I used it so much that it basically fell to pieces like the famous one hoss shay. Didn't start until my late 30s - it's a fantastic challenge - really stimulates you intellectually to devise ways of remembering 2,000 different characters. It sounds daunting, but all Japanese school children manage it so there's nothing stopping you if you have the time and motivation. 
• 

[Buce]

 

 

Spanish is a doddle - just take the English words and put an 'O' on the end; if you're still struggling to make yourself understood, try saying it more loudly.

[Captain...]

https://www.fluentin3months.com/skype-language-exchange/

 

There's some good advice on that.

 

Wordreference.com is also a great resource, lots of native speakers on there who will help you understand the actual meaning behind a word or phrase rather than just the dictionary definition.

[Alf Bentley]

13 hours ago, Captain... said:

The first thing to understand is that going to a class once a week is no where near enough to make any progress, even if you do the homework you need to add so much more to see any results.

 

Learning a language isn't difficult just really hard work , but very rewarding, put the time in and stick at it.

 

Completely agree with that. First time I started to learn Spanish (in my mid-20s), I went to an evening class - and made very slow progress.

A couple of years later, when I decided to travel to Latin America, I just got a decent "Teach Yourself Spanish" book and cassette (pre-Internet days). By the time I arrived in Mexico, I had a good basic grounding, which I was then able to build on by listening and talking to natives, reading local papers with dictionary to hand etc.

 

You're likely to make much quicker progress learning solo, provided you're motivated and prepared to put the work in (I did about half an hour every night when I was learning solo).

 

One proviso to that: the bit you miss out on when learning solo is conversation practice. It can be worthwhile learning the language solo up to an intermediate standard, then signing up for a conversation class or arranging a 1-to-1 exchange.

 

If possible, once you have a decent grounding, it's good to go native and spend some time continuously with native speakers. I did French A-level at school and emerged with a decent level of paper French, but very poor conversation. In my early 20s, I went grape-picking and hitch-hiking in France several times - working, drinking and conversing in a fully French environment. Within a couple of years, my spoken French was better than my written. Same happened on my year abroad for my languages degree (early 30s). I spent 6 months completely native in Paris - sharing a flat with a French bloke, working with French, socialising with French, and barely speaking a word of English. Short of emigrating to France, I'll never again achieve the high level of spoken French that I'd reached by the end of that 6 months.

 

I know this is controversial, but I'm also an old-fashioned believer in the usefulness of learning a decent level of grammar. To me, it's like Dr. Frankenstein building his live monster - the grammar is your skeleton onto which you can build everything else you learn later (terminology, phrases, personal expressiveness etc.).

[Voll Blau]

Doing German with Duolingo and it's improved my vocabulary no end, but isn't all that helpful with sentence structure and so on. That said, German mates say I've really improved since I first met them so pretty happy with that. Went to Vienna recently and found myself understanding far more written language than I ever had before, and snippets of spoken language too - which for me is the real test as to how good your skills are. Found myself being spoken back to in German when asking for stuff, which I guess is a compliment but a tad embarrassing when all you can do is respond "Errrrrrrr mein Deutsch ist nicht sehr gut." 

 

I think speaking with confidence in the key. Managed to get through our Euro 2016 trip by remembering French (I've got an AS Level in that) and just being confident in what I was saying. Managed to get my mate's car fixed at a Renault garage just using French too, so was pretty happy with that.

 

Always like to at least learn how to say "hello", "goodbye" and "thank you" for when I go abroad somewhere - plus how to ask for a beer if possible. A Czech guy I used to work with taught me that before I went to Prague and my pint was always fuller than my mates who asked in English.

[Fox92]

2 hours ago, Buce said:

 

 

Spanish is a doddle - just take the English words and put an 'O' on the end; if you're still struggling to make yourself understood, try saying it more loudly.

Spanish is what I am going to learn.

[lgfualol]

Surround yourself in the language, turn your phone to german, watch tv shows/have subtitles and read books. 

[bovril]

I'm starting to learn Turkish but not getting far. I understand Russian and would like to get reasonably fluent in it, reckon it might be useful. 

 

Should probably go in 'what grinds my gears' thread but really irritates me when marketing men use Greek or Cyrillic characters to represent a letter in the Latin alphabet like in the Death of Stalin poster I see all over the tube.

[James.]

I would recommend the Michel Thomas language CD course - they are available for all main European languages. This really helped me get a foothold in Spanish while I was travelling in South and Central America last year. They will only really teach you to speak as opposed to read and write but for me that was perfect. The learning method is very powerful.

 

By the end of 9 months, despite my wife doing most of the talking (as usual) given she was already proficient, I ended up at a decent level.

 

Really rewarding overall.

[MikeyT]

I did German at school. Can still remember some stuff here and there but have always wanted to learn French. I've been considering that for a short time so may go for it. 

[Great Boos Up]

14 hours ago, Vacamion said:

 

Languages are my thing.

 

I speak fairly fluent German with a noticeable Saxon accent, passable French, and I can get myself fed and watered in Spanish, Russian and Dutch.

 

I learned Latin at school (when no lessons were offered)  by getting a maths teacher with a classics degree to teach me at lunch time. He taught three people the year after me and finished up teaching full Latin classes (brushes lapel).

 

I have beginner's Hindi/Urdu (can read the Devanagari script but not the Urdu), can sing a few Bollywood songs and, about half the time, make out the jist of fluent speech.

 

I know enough French, Spanish and Latin to be able to usefully make a bit of sense of written Portuguese, Italian etc  and I can struggle through a few other European languages.

 

I found Arabic really difficult (the verbs are utterly bonkers) and tonal languages (eg Chinese languages) are beyond me.

 

Anyone asking me which new language someone should learn, I would suggest in terms of ease, usefulness, relatedness to other languages, go for Spanish.

 

It uses pretty much the same alphabet as ours, the sounds and pronunciation are fairly constant and the grammar is not terribly difficult.

 

Go for it...

............you're a cunning linguist.

[Parafox]

14 hours ago, Vacamion said:

 

Languages are my thing.

 

I speak fairly fluent German with a noticeable Saxon accent, passable French, and I can get myself fed and watered in Spanish, Russian and Dutch.

 

I learned Latin at school (when no lessons were offered)  by getting a maths teacher with a classics degree to teach me at lunch time. He taught three people the year after me and finished up teaching full Latin classes (brushes lapel).

 

I have beginner's Hindi/Urdu (can read the Devanagari script but not the Urdu), can sing a few Bollywood songs and, about half the time, make out the jist of fluent speech.

 

I know enough French, Spanish and Latin to be able to usefully make a bit of sense of written Portuguese, Italian etc  and I can struggle through a few other European languages.

 

I found Arabic really difficult (the verbs are utterly bonkers) and tonal languages (eg Chinese languages) are beyond me.

 

Anyone asking me which new language someone should learn, I would suggest in terms of ease, usefulness, relatedness to other languages, go for Spanish.

 

It uses pretty much the same alphabet as ours, the sounds and pronunciation are fairly constant and the grammar is not terribly difficult.

 

Go for it...

All that and now you live in Glasgow?

 

Now, there's a real challenge to speak their lingo.

[Costock_Fox]

5 hours ago, lgfualol said:

Surround yourself in the language, turn your phone to german, watch tv shows/have subtitles and read books. 

Yeah that worked wonders for me in Italy for 4 months. Got home, mate asked me what hello was in Italian and I completely forgot. What a tit.

[Vacamion]

9 hours ago, bovril said:

Should probably go in 'what grinds my gears' thread but really irritates me when marketing men use Greek or Cyrillic characters to represent a letter in the Latin alphabet like in the Death of Stalin poster I see all over the tube.

 

There just aren’t enough rep points for this opinion.

 

The Russian letter “Ya” used as a backwards R, really rips my knitting.

 

 

[fuchsntf]

On Thursday, October 12, 2017 at 21:14, Vacamion said:

 

Languages are my thing.

 

I speak fairly fluent German with a noticeable Saxon accent, passable French, and I can get myself fed and watered in Spanish, Russian and Dutch.

 

I learned Latin at school (when no lessons were offered)  by getting a maths teacher with a classics degree to teach me at lunch time. He taught three people the year after me and finished up teaching full Latin classes (brushes lapel).

 

I have beginner's Hindi/Urdu (can read the Devanagari script but not the Urdu), can sing a few Bollywood songs and, about half the time, make out the jist of fluent speech.

 

I know enough French, Spanish and Latin to be able to usefully make a bit of sense of written Portuguese, Italian etc  and I can struggle through a few other European languages.

 

I found Arabic really difficult (the verbs are utterly bonkers) and tonal languages (eg Chinese languages) are beyond me.

 

Anyone asking me which new language someone should learn, I would suggest in terms of ease, usefulness, relatedness to other languages, go for Spanish.

 

It uses pretty much the same alphabet as ours, the sounds and pronunciation are fairly constant and the grammar is not terribly difficult.

 

Go for it...

If you want to travel many continents, Spanish will serve you well. For me it was the easiest to learn, lived and worked the language,

Probably the easiest language for the English to learn, and be understood instantly after a few good sentences, is Spanish.

More people speak Spanish than English around the world.

 

To learn a language,... my way was to listen to radio at all times, even if its just in the background,go to the cinema without subtitles, ....TV can be Disruptive.

Chose Short sentences, that you feel confident with and build from there.Go to the countries backstreets, listen to the accent twists, but still use

the pronunciation you learnt at first. Living in any area, you will find yourself automatically taking on the traits /slang and twangs Of the locals, whether in the

Office, on the street, or within factory type enviroment.

I must add, I have kept up my German, its my home, but I happily  speak it with a cross between an  English dutch accent.

Spanish and French, I am losing, Urdu wasnt difficult (speach) , but lack of need meant it drifted out of mind, once We left the Indian continent

 

..We Anglo-saxons are still stubborn and often inflexable towards languages...but thankfully now,

Like this forum shows, quite a few generations across the Board seem to now have that  "Want"

 

To learn the Heart of foreign destinations, even if its only continual 2 weeks holidays yearly, begin to learn the language,it compensates itself when

, you go to the non-tourist spots, the good backstreet areas, and traditional local Restaurants.

Besides the obvious sightseeing, sitting around an unknown fountain or square, exchanging ideas/opinions and humour with kids

or simply with the locals in their own enviroment, Farms, towns, bus-train stations is really exciting and rewarding...Even if occasionally hands and smiles

are used to back up even the small skills learnt.

Plus waiters /Hoteliers/police and civil admins, take s totally a different stance and view, when the guy/gal opposite savvies their language.

A number of times I have thrown or whispered a few uncomplimentary words to a waiter, where then they have shown more respect and civility.

Thats why when entering a restaurant/hotel a few words in their language, tends to have immediate effect, Even when dropping back i nto English

.

Germans on the street are humerous, witty and funny and like the English enjoy sarcasm and dry wit.

German, old school trades, Punctiality  is Still  a must, IT and Financial trade people, well off the mark/minutes.

Germans are happy to help, when foreigners try to communicate in their language.

French..people around Paris can be unhelpfull and arrogant (usually Ignorant non Parisians)

Elswhere in France  especially the south , like the Spanish, Italians,Belguims   they laugh with you, not against you.

 

Sometimes its just nice, to give yourself / wife , time to go to foreign field just to learn the language, you dont have to be

Rich or have a university education, in fact over all these years, its been a positive observation how many "commoners"

have learnt, understood the daily use of their new language quicker and in depth.

 

Many foreign kids have learnt the Rules of comprehension and Grammer in their own language, to higher finishing levels, than

many of their English counterparts, that English for Northern europeans is an easy 2nd language to learn, or just to use temporary,

and to be understood without too much problem...Tha t said I suppose it  depends on the individuals, experience and perspectives.

Latin based peoples will usually have a good command of the language, but in their early years, may lose out on debate and

understanding just on their heavy accents...

 

Some N.Europeans have told me, that with the exception of strong scouse, Glaswegian, or Georgie accents even dialect, they understand

98% of the English thrown at them, but S.African, Aussie, Kiwis, even some areas of America, they just cant grasp.

An Asian speaking English depends then on presentation and pronunciation.   

At least now, we are alot closer together because more people want that 2nd even 3rd language.

 

I wanted to learn a b out the different cultures, and why all these people on far shores were different,

My Largests learning curve and collection of fact, is that the facade we hold onto, the pretence of difference,

is only that a facade in reality Experiences   shows that  there is no difference

, the level of dreams and desire can seem different, but isnt that so within the same country.

Our basic wants and variety of ideas are the same, even follow the same tracts of life.

Edited 13 October 2017 by fuchsntf

[fuchsntf]

14 hours ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

Completely agree with that. First time I started to learn Spanish (in my mid-20s), I went to an evening class - and made very slow progress.

A couple of years later, when I decided to travel to Latin America, I just got a decent "Teach Yourself Spanish" book and cassette (pre-Internet days). By the time I arrived in Mexico, I had a good basic grounding, which I was then able to build on by listening and talking to natives, reading local papers with dictionary to hand etc.

 

You're likely to make much quicker progress learning solo, provided you're motivated and prepared to put the work in (I did about half an hour every night when I was learning solo).

 

One proviso to that: the bit you miss out on when learning solo is conversation practice. It can be worthwhile learning the language solo up to an intermediate standard, then signing up for a conversation class or arranging a 1-to-1 exchange.

 

If possible, once you have a decent grounding, it's good to go native and spend some time continuously with native speakers. I did French A-level at school and emerged with a decent level of paper French, but very poor conversation. In my early 20s, I went grape-picking and hitch-hiking in France several times - working, drinking and conversing in a fully French environment. Within a couple of years, my spoken French was better than my written. Same happened on my year abroad for my languages degree (early 30s). I spent 6 months completely native in Paris - sharing a flat with a French bloke, working with French, socialising with French, and barely speaking a word of English. Short of emigrating to France, I'll never again achieve the high level of spoken French that I'd reached by the end of that 6 months.

 

I know this is controversial, but I'm also an old-fashioned believer in the usefulness of learning a decent level of grammar. To me, it's like Dr. Frankenstein building his live monster - the grammar is your skeleton onto which you can build everything else you learn later (terminology, phrases, personal expressiveness etc.).

My grammer has always been awfull, but to be honest your last paragraph is spot on...That why I believe our foreign counter parts

Pick up English rather easily, they learn their own language and have a strong hold onvtheir own language grammer, more than their

English counterparts...Even teenagers leaving school in Northern Europe, from the basic schools have a good/high level of own language

Skills and knowledge.

Comprehension, and spelling rule  Memories helped me , build on foreign languages.My grammer was always a challenge to hold,

Sometimes  to behold..

Funny thing after reading your post, we could of rode parrallel lives, your experiences ran close to mine...

My wife and I married in Mexico, while dropping out and deciding to travel.My wife was a foreign language Marketting secretary

and "fremdsprecherin' We always dived into the language, we were expec t ed to come across...

Before I  met her, I enjoyed also the French wine, and farm  experiences,

and landed withca Frenchgirl, who boosted my French experiences( Note - language!!)

[Costock_Fox]

My old Spanish tutor was a professor who taught Spanish and she said the first month of her course was always to teach us how to use grammar which shows how important it is and how bad we are at it over here.

[Webbo]

Conjugating verbs is the hardest thing. If the teachers would explain what preterite and pluperfect actually meant it might help knowing when to use it.

[Countryfox]

 

I picked up a bit of German when I was younger reading comics ...     Its stood me in good stead for later life ...     Yavull Herr Doctor !! ...  Mine got !! ...  Britisher pig dog !! ...    svine hund !!! ...   achtung !! ...       not many I'll grant you but those simple phrases can get you through a trip to the Fatherland.     

[martyn]

Been mentioned here a few times already but I highly recommend the Michel Thomas audio courses when starting out. It really does give an excellent foundation Only downside is he isn't a native speaker but his method is fantastic.

 

Think since he died many of his courses have been re recorded by native speakers.

 

I did Spanish, as my girlfriend when I started to learn (now wife) is Mexican and I wanted the ability to speak with her parents and older relatives who couldn't speak English, thus also gain respect for trying to learn.

 

You'll never learn a language fully off night school or 1 audio courses. Augment them with reading (I read Marca for sports and Harry Potter as easy reads), grammar, tv/films (even kids stuff) and most importantly speaking. Im lucky in my situation that I have access to a native Speaker every day, but if you can find a Skype exchange /native speaker to converse with, even just for 10 mins a day, it'll make a massive difference.

 

Hardest thing is to stay motivated, so having a goal in mind or an incentive to learn also key.

 

 

Edited 14 October 2017 by martyn

[Alf Bentley]

15 minutes ago, martyn said:

 

Hardest thing is to stay motivated, so having a goal in mind or an incentive to learn also key.

 

 

That's a simple point but an important one.

 

The obvious goal is to plan to spend time in the relevant country, traveling, working or holidaying in a way that you use or improve the language skills you're learning.

Alternatively, the goal could be to pass an exam and access more advanced study, to get a more interesting job or even to get to know women/men from the relevant country.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Webbo said:

Conjugating verbs is the hardest thing. If the teachers would explain what preterite and pluperfect actually meant it might help knowing when to use it.

It's amazing that only the English have no idea about English Grammer isn't it?

 

I remember when I started teaching English a few decades ago I had to teach grammar rules to myself. It certainly shows the difference between a mother tongue and a foreign language.

 

However for today's language users, grammar is really overated, communication is about being understood and understanding not about being perfect - how many of us really need to be able to write a decent article or essay in the foreign language. 

 

The most important requirement for learning a new language is motivation. If you can self motivate you don't need classes. Rosetta Stone is a great method for learning and the internet has everything you need free for most languages. You have to understand that it seems almost impossible when you start and the better you get the easier it becomes.

 

Spanish is probably the easiest to learn upto an intermediate level. Knowing French will help you with Italian (and of course Latin will help you with both). Languages like Arabic and Chinese are much harder as they truly are foriegn to us. Writing Chinese involves tidy pen control and hand eye coordination which was far beyond me.

 

Also the older you get the more difficult it is for both auditory reasons and muscle control. Most foreign languages involve facial positions that the English language hasn't trained us to adapt.