Learning Languages
alieNDN
2,181 Posts
Hey,just curious how many folks here have undertook learning a language on their own terms, WITHOUT visiting a place where the language is native (which is the best way to learn it). They say learning a language, playing instruments and stuff like chess is the best way to keep the brain sharp as you age...-What language did you learn?-What did you find was the best approach?I'm currently trying to learn Spanish. I got a couple of books, and a cdrom interactive tutorial on Spanish. What I'm doing right now is watching my Futurama DVDs with Spanish audio...its almost MORE hilarious! Bender is a trip. Any cool spanish speaking shows/movies i should get DVDs of?down the road, i'l like to learn French too...are there sequences of learning languages that are easier than others? ie, learn spanish then french or french then spanish? 
Comments
Watch telenovelas and try to follow along.
Peace
T.N.
I learned English and French in school, Italian for a year too. Afterwards I learned some Japanese, some Oriya, some Hindi and even a little Danish during various terms abroad. Currently I do a Hindi course at the university to further improve it.
However, learning without a native speaker sucks IMO and there is hardly anything equal. host family + language course = real shitt!
It??s also fine if you have one native speaker, i.e. for mutual training (partner wants to learn your native language).
post-1066 invasion language merge
read up on some characters and start picking out menu items...
repeat. repeat.
then you're half-way to reading japanese and only a few diligent years away from translating those craaazy japanese OST covers....
i'l be picking up simpsons seasons 4-8...they got french and spanish audio. for those that learned languages, how long did it take you till you had a good grasp of basics...where u were basically able to saying things, even if it sounded a bit broken.
ps: something i always wondered about...i've heard people say english is one of the hardest languages to learn. is that true? at first i couldnt even think how...but then u got words like "tongue" and "argue" that are spelled similar, but pronounced totally different...
ps2: will i be able to pick up on bossa nova lyrics?
ps3: i want one...they aren't in stock anywhere (ps3s)
but seriously, the hardest part for me is to learn how to pronounce things right.
i still cant pronounce "th" proper and i was wondering for quite long time why there are different ways of saying 'flood' and 'food'
ahh, that makes a lot of sense.
when i was a kid i asked my mom "mom why can't these people speak english, im 7 and i can speak english, am i smarter than them?"
I don't know where you live, but down here it seems almost impossible to not know at least a few words in spanish. Shit, most people here can hum the spanish national anthem!
From personal experience I think learning an asian language was really cool, but also it takes an outrageous amount of effort. Don't learn Korean anyways. That shit is a bitch.
But anyways, back to spanish, its a good way to go, and unlike the french (from what I've heard anyways) Mexican people in general are usually open, funny, friendly, and appreciate it when somebody is trying to learn their language. I love mexican culture, but I grew up in Bakersfield, so maybe I'm biased or something.
my friend pointed out how its hard/impossible for some people to even pronounce words in other languages because they incorporate sounds/vowels or whatever that dont even exist to them. i can understand that i guess...
in our education system, french is taught as a second language, but it kinda bored me in a class environment and didnt learn much...
...kind of unrelated, but anyone ever see two mute people communicate to eachother? man, watching their hands do sign language is poetry
this is what i was looking for,haha did u watch it in dvd? i gotta check out Amores Perros, and i wanna watch the movie Amelie without subtitles, cause the director was like you gotta know french to really appreciate it cause stuff is lost in translation.
I'm in Quebec & I find French useful. If you're Canadian & don't speak it well, you should make a point of learning it. I speak a few languages - I did my degree in Russian. I've also taken some classes in Yiddish. I was good in Hebrew, but haven't used it in years & have forgotten most of it. My Mandarin is getting better all the time. I get some practice at work. I've taken some Italian & Spanish courses. If you have any French, you should be able to learn those languages quickly.
peace
h
yeah i have the dvd
which languages are not "whats the point" then? English only ???
around 250 Mio. speakers have French as first or 2nd language
France, parts of Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, North- and Northwest Africa.
Regarding Asian languages I agree that it??s a lot of work to learn it properly if you are of European/American background.
I.e Japanese is easy to speak and to understand, but hard to write and read. Mandarin is similar.
Hindi on the other side is easy IMO, but has a couple of sounds that do not exist in other languages and these are really hard to pronounce.
I'm half French so in theory I'm fluent in French and English, although my French is very rusty, what I do to improve it is to force myself to think in French - although, again, you can't start to do that till you've reached a certain level.
But once you've got one of the romantic languages down you should be able to at least get the gist of the others when they're written down - I've never made any effort to learn any italian, but sometimes my mum will speak to me in Italian (she's a language teacher) and most of the time I can understand, broadly, what she's saying. I also learnt Latin though, to a decent level, which helps too no doubt.
Dead languages are actually quite cool to learn - although not useful, obviously. I learnt Sumerian and Middle Egyptian (hieroglyphics) to a workable level for my degree; getting to grips with the grammar of languages completely different from your own is enjoyable, when it clicks after days/weeks/months of not making sense, ha ha...
But yeah, just try and listen to (and think/speak in) a language as much as you can...
French is still the official language of nearly 40 countries around the world so not totally useless. And, yeah, if you've got French then other Romance languages come more easily. But I can see that there's not much call for it down on the Mexican border. If you've learned Latin at any point then you have the key to a lot of different languages.
I think that if you live outside of USA, you're more inclined to encounter French speakers on a regular basis. It looks like Spanish is the American equivalent to French in Canada.
Spanish - I wanted to learn this for 2006. I've got the Michel Thomas course and I think it's very good. Slsk it. No writing or homework, just speaking. I just wish I'd had the free time at work to keep the headphones on for 1-2 hours a day, everyday. But I've still made progress and can order everyone's food, ask what time the next bus is etc.
I think there will ultimately be 3 languages in common use; English, Spanish and Mandarin. I read an interesting article [will google the link for you later] which highlighted the dismay of the Japanese teaching elders that the kids all want more English in school because [and this is what I read] most of the internet is in English - English has "Won" on the internet.
Which was nice.
I do wish I knew more languages, I've taken both spanish and french but the few sentences I've known have been forgotten due to lack of practise, might try watching Futurama in spanish, seems like a good way to refresh things.
Down here you almost NEVER hear french, except from maybe the occasional tourist.
From my point of view (as an American) I would rank "important" languages as being:
English (obviously)
Spanish
Mandarin
Japanese
If only because of the 'global marketplace', these are languages that would come in handy.
What about India? Shit, most of those folks speak English better than me anyways, so whats the point.
Yeah, I had a girlfriend for two years who was first-generation Swedish-American. I ended up learning Swedish through pestering her with questions and buying some dictionaries and a grammar book. Interesting language, but not super useful, as you say. But her mom was very impressed.
I'm a real nerd for languages, though. I translate Spanish for a living and can get by in Portuguese, Cantonese, French, German, Russian and Swedish. One of the biggest benefit of learning foreign languages is that it vastly improves your understanding of your native tongue. You don't tend to think about why things are the way they are when you grow up speaking a language, but when you have to learn another, it opens your mind in different ways.
I also find that, when learning a language, it's really helpful to talk to yourself in that language. A little crazy, sure, but it works!
HUGE CO-SIGN!
Howard Stern made the same comment!
He was banned from radio in Quebec later that week! Lol
A lot of people in India actually speak English, but only a part of them is really proficient. If you want to do more than the usual tourist thing (hunting raers...) it??s extremely helpful if you know Hindi and/or the local language.
It??s interesting that nobody mentions Arabic, because that??s another language (including various dialects) spoken by a huge mass of people. I will try to learn that a little in the future.
"important languages" from the "global marketplace" perspective also includes at least Arabic (240Mio native + 50 Mio 2nd language), Portugese (around 200Mio people) and Hindi (370 Mio native + around 500 Mio 2nd language) added to the ones mentioned above IMO.
BTW: Yes of course, French is not that important if you stay close to the Mexican border - no doubt.
about that native tongue thing...while watching futurama, i picked up on a word, i think it was lugar, which is similar to a word in konkani (what my parents speak), an i guess it was used in the context of place, when we use it for space. thought that was an interesting commonality.
Co-sign, i took one latin course while on a hiatus from spanish and it helped me understand the concepts better.