How to learn any language
Trying to learn a new Language? Finding it tough? Don't know where to begin? I've been there and I've come out of that stage. Learning a foreign Language may be tough, but if you stick with it and learn it correctly, it WILL pay off (hopefully in the form of a vacation or extended stay in another country).
Language learning is portrayed as a difficult task, especially in the America's where monolingualism rules and there's no use for anything other then English. The general idea is that language learning is a task reserved for the overly gifted or overly driven. Spending 10 years to master a language is not something appealing. Here's the thing; for a lot of languages, a year of study is sufficient to get you to basic fluency. I've done the dirty work for you, I've scoured the net for the best info from all the polygots around the web, and compiled it into a neat little informative post
Table of contents:
1-FAQ
2-Language programs, costs and reviews
3-Listening-Reading
4-A few languages
5- Jobs and Languages
6-Glossary
7- Linky Linky
8- Facepunch Language Pals
1. [b]FAQ[/b]
Q:How long does it take?
A:It depends. For some languages that are close to your mother tongue (dutch for german speakers, italian for french speakers) all you need is about 200 hours of work. Of course, if you're after chinese, arabic or russian, you'll probably need at least 2 years. Sure it takes time, but much less than in a language school, because you can study when you want and have time, restudy parts you don't understand and don't need to follow the heavy pace of the less clever in the classroom.
Q:How is it possible to learn a language on your own ?
If you are motivated, work intelligently and consistently, you can learn most human languages on your own, no matter how unskilled you think you are. Of course, you can't learn a language while sleeping or without any effort. It takes work, but this can be fun and pleasurable while being very efficient.
Q:I was bad with languages at school?
So was I! For some reason, most schools teach modern languages as they teach Latin : you learn grammar rules, you memorize long lists of uncommon words and then use it to study centuries-old literature. Oh, and you do all this surrounded by people with different levels in the language. This way of learning/teaching might be great for your culture, but you should not be surprised if all you can say when you get to Mexico is Si or no. Having a bad record of language learning at school means absolutely nothing on your abilities to learn a living language on your own.
Q: I want to learn Thai/Khmer/Japanese/Korean/Russian/Hebrew or whatever. But I could never learn that script!
A: Word association are a powerful thing, even if you have a terrible memory. For example, the letter า in Thai looks pretty simple. But you have to remember the sound “Ah” every time you see it? You COULD repeat it three hundred times, but there is a way that could take you 30 minutes, or less. Imagine the path your pee takes against a tree when you relive yourself, and the sigh that companies it! Sure, that is simple, but what about something more complex. How about this? ท. Jesus fuck you say. What could you do with that? I've to associate it with a “t”. What about the 'T” in toe. Look at the letter, imagine that it's the toes on your left foot, and the little circle on the left is the nail on your other toe! Not that hard to remember, very hard to forget! In the end, your mind bypasses the Story entirely and jumps right to the sound. Easy!
2. [b]Language programs, costs and reviews[/b]
[Url=http://www.rosettastone.com/]Rosetta stone[/url]- ~$800-$1,000 (Full course)
1/5 stars
Rosetta stone, it's easily one of the most popular language programs. Does it work? Fuck no. Is it cheap? Fuck no. That's not to say it's terrible, it's okay. It's just that it's a huge waste of money. If you do have an extra thousand, it's better to spend it on many instead of one. Rosetta Stone's basic principle is that it “Immerses” you in a language. This would work great, of you were on Rosetta stone 24/7. You aren't though, that just doesn't work. A German kid spends 24 hours a day in a German speaking world, not two in Germany and then twenty two in England. If he did he'd grow up learning English. The single star is awarded due to it being okay, not decent, okay. The things Rosetta Stone teaches you is mainly useless. The program would be lucky to get you up to an A1 level, let alone the B1 or C1 they promise you.
Alternative- If you really want Rosetta stone, but you're unable to get it, get [Url=http://livemocha.com/]LiveMocha[/url]Instead. It's a Rosetta Stone clone down to the t, and it's entirely free. If you can put up with a few ads LiveMocha is Rosetta Stone for free. I personally would not rely on it as my primary teaching method, although I can make a good supplementary program.
Update: As per the testimony of one of our regular users, i have gained new insight on the "gold course" option. It seems to be working well with incorporating the different elements of language. Livemocha has been upgraded to 3/5 stars, pending more information.
[Url=http://www.pimsleur.com/] Pimsleur[/url]-$30-$1,000 (Depends on course)
3/5 or 4/5 stars
I'm going to start with the one, glaringly obvious flaw in this program. Here goes. It's got a huge focus on Audio, and leaves the writing part of the language for dead. That's not to say that there is no writing, there is, but it's very little. Now, onto the good parts; it's a solid program, and it's especially fantastic for beginners. The program teaches you to recall information at a conversational pace, and it's half an hour lessons once a day is easy to stick to for the more unmotivated of us. Pimsleur, through repetition, gives you a solid and firm grasp in the building blocks of the language. It's lack of writing is a big killer for me though. Honestly, it greatly depends on the language. More phonetic languages like Japanese are better, as you can simply sound out the word, while making minimal mistakes. French, on the other hand is highly fickle. Sometimes you can write what you hear, and others are packed with soundless letters. I'm looking at you, French. Some programs have a reading/writing section tacked on, but these are different to the course work and are not as good
Alternative- [url=http://www.michelthomas.com/]Michael Thomas[/url]Michael Thomas is almost the same, but it lacks writing completely. It is much cheaper though, and all the big languages are there. But if you're thinking of jumping into Gaelic, you might be sorely disappointed.
[url=http://ankisrs.net/]Anki[/url] - Free (Thanks Hell_Kyrone!)
4/5
Anki is an online flashcard program where you make your own flashcards (Or download ones from others!) to help you remember vocab. The main difference here is that Anki used a spaced repetition to lock down the vocab in your mind. Anki can be used for vocab for any language, including ones with a non Roman alphabet. Examples of this include Russian, Japanese and Arabic. Anki also has the advantage of being multi-platform, allowing people to use it in the smallest of time pockets. The versions on the Apple store are payed though. Anki's biggest advantage lies within it's customizable decks, spaced repetition and it's price; that being, free. You really can't go wrong. The only slight downside i can think of would be the lack of any audio. Sometimes words can be pronounced completely differently to how they look. This can be pretty obvious in languages like French and German.
3-[b]Listening-Reading[/b]
[url=http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=6366]Listening-Reading[/url]
[url=http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Listening-Reading_Method]Alt link[/url]
Ever heard of it? Unless you're into languages like I am or frequent a place like Fluentin3Months or How-to-learn-any-language (More on these Later, restrain from a google search). How would you like to read fantastic literature, learn a language at the same time and read classics in their original language? Too good to be true? Listening-Reading was conceived/invented by someone only known as Miss Hooper. I'm not going to post the whole thing through, so use the link above for it. Listening-Reading is full of success stories. I remember reading one report about a man whole learned Russian in 6 months, and was able to speak to a native speaker. He was making many, many grammar mistakes but he didn't even care. The only resource he used was Listening-Reading from day one. As in, absolute beginner. Sound amazing? It is. The lady that invented the method wrote it after three years of not writing English, she's never even learned to write English. If that doesn't convince you, please, leave. The only real problem in this is the lack of grammar instruction and the relative difficulty of finding materials. That being a bilingual text and an audio book in your target language. Interesting texts can also be a challenge. You need to be able to read it a few times without becoming bored. The other main difficulty would be finding texts and Audiobooks in smaller languages. I am currently unaware of any site where you are able to find public domain Listening-Reading materials.
This method can be used from beginner to advanced. When i say beginner, I'm talking about absolute beginner. It's entirely possible for me to pick up a bilingual text in Russian, Swedish or any language for that matter and start learning. This method does take a long time though. Repitation is need and long texts are preferred. Longer is much better, texts such as the harry potter series, Catch 22 or Lord of the Rings are perfect for this.
4- [b]Language Bio's[/b]
I'm going to do a few languages, listing some general info, time to learn and difficulty for English speakers. 1 is easy and 5 is much more difficult. No language is impossible. I want to outline the language for prospective learners. I've also added in trivial things such as Chic.
[u][b]French[/b][/u]
3/5 Stars
French is an amazing language spoken in over 15 countries and spoken by 213 million people! French learners enjoys a wealth of resources for their language. Any language program worth it's salt will have an option for French. This language is associated with the stunning French culture and scenery, due to this French is regarded as a hugely chic language. The grammar is difficult at times, and sometimes nonsensical. But I love it anyway. This is the only language I've had any experience in. I'm around a B1 level, and pretty happy. The French are pretty ruthless about mistakes, so be careful. French spelling can be pretty irregular and can often be riddled with silent letters. It can be confusing for many learners.
[u][b]Japanese[/b][/u]
5/5
Learning Japanese will connect you with a huge, fascinating [del]weeaboo[/del] Japanese culture. While Japanese is only spoken in Japan, many Japanese people do not speak English, this gives you hundreds of opportunity to participate in the tourism industry and work as a translator for Japanese businessmen. The spoken language is mostly simple, but the written language is quite difficult. This may be due to the three separate alphabets. Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji. Hiragana is used for most words. Katakana is used for words that have been taken from other languages, like pizza or pasta. Kanji is, however, a whole other ball game. It's exactly like Hanzi in Mandarin, a character for each word. Although the inclusion of radicals (Kanji within Kanji) makes this easier. With a good amount of study a large amount of essential Kanji can be learned in as little as six months. Grammar is refreshingly simple and the lack of tones is a blessing.
[u][b]Russian[/b][/u]
4/5
Russia is a huge language that connects you to the many countries of eastern Europe and Russia itself. The Alphabet is quite exotic looking, however, the alphabet should not take up more then a few hours of your time. Russian literature is varied and fascinating. Grammar is not simple because of the case system that changes the ending of most words according to their function (subject, object, etc...), their number and sex. Neither spelling nor pronunciation compensate this, although some of the grammar is refreshingly simple. But don't be discouraged. Russian is still way easier than non-Indo-European languages and ideographic languages such as Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Speaking Russian is seen as highly chic, giving you an aura of mystery for speaking such a far east European language. Russian words change according to their grammatical role in the phrase. The system is complex and riddled with exceptions - bad news for the learner.
In Russian, here the word order does not matter much, since words change their endings to denote their function. Most words change with their function, genus, number etc..., so you get a lot of freedom with syntax because the relations between words are clear from the words themselves, so their position is mostly irrelevant.
[u][b]Italian[/b][/u]
2/5
Italian is much easier to learn then french or German. If you speak another romance language (French, Latin, Spanish or Portuguese). Italian is much more phonetic then French, although not as perfectly phonetic like Spanish. An hour a day if you don't speak any other romance language should get you to advanced fluency in about 12 to 18 months. Italian is widely studied so it has plenty of resources to find. The word genders and other things, such as the odd conjugation of frequently used verbs is hard at first but gets easier as time goes on. Most other romance languages suffer this. The rolled r can be tricky at first but otherwise the language should be quite easy. Finally, the Italians are quite forgiving of mistakes, and often do not expect people to speak their language. This can be a huge confidence boost and they are often happy to help you. Native french speakers should be able to master italian in as little as 6 months, other romance speakers should be able to speak Italian in 6-12 months, depending on effort.
[u][b]Spanish[/b][/u]
2/5
Spanish is a pretty easy language, and dead easy if you already speak a romance language. It's main difficulties come from word conjugation, word genders and subjunctive mood. Subjunctive mood is unused in English, and needs to be master if you don't want to sound like a moron. The good news is is that it's uniform across all romance languages. Fun! It is lucky that Spanish has such easy, phonetic spelling too. Spanish also has the advantage of transparency with english. Spanish, however, suffers along with all other romance languages in things such as intonation, verb conjugation and genders. Spanish, being a easy language from a linguistic standpoint, should take over a year in hour a day study to get to a reasonable fluency. Speaking another romance language can allow you to speak Spanish fluently with a huge discount, with up to 80% less time needed depending on how many other romance languages you speak. Six months of hour a day sessions should see you to fluency. This goes both ways too, if you want to learn another romance language after Spanish you will also get a discount. Romance languages all shared subjunctive mood, and it's regular across the board!
[u][b]German[/b][/u]
3/5
German is the portal to the wonderful countries of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and is a majority or official language in Liechtenstein, Belgium and Luxembourg. The German were nice enough to eliminate some of the silent spelling over the years. French haven't extended us this courtesy yet. German is still a touch more difficult, even with the reforms.
German isn't rosy though, three genders can be annoying, and certain quirks, such as the second verb going at the end of a sentence can be more then bothersome. German tends to have huge words. Luckily, due to regulation pronunciation, any new (Long) German word can be pronounced at first sight. German, like French, has the added bonus of being somewhat related to English. So we share about 40% of vocab with them, due to English being from the Germanic language family. Speakers of Dutch will learn this language much quicker then speakers of other languages. A year or less to fluency. If you only speak English, an hour a day could take 18 to 30 months.
[u][b]Mandarin[/b][/u]
3/5 Spoken, 5/5 written
Chinese (Mandarin): Easier then you think. For example, learning to spell a word is kind of like learning a character. Tones aren't that big of an challenge either. If I say. You speak Chinese. But if i raise my voice at the end of the sentence, it becomes. You speak Chinese? It's more complex then that of course, but that's the gist of it. Learning Mandarin is rather chic and it has HUGE momentary gain. Syntax is rather simple, verbs never change form either. No conjugation, no declination, no masculine or feminine, no singular nor plural forms. Speaking is easy, taking about a year. Reading will take you 3 or 4 years though. But by then you would have already mastered the verbal language.
[U][B]Esperanto[/B][/U] [b]Thanks Thelurker1234! Not only for the review but for being a huge help to the thread![/b]
Difficulty: 1 out of 5
A little language you may or may not have heard of, Created in 1887, designed to be an international language, a secondary language everybody could learn. And yet retain their original language and culture. Not quite a chic language but if you happen to meet one of the 2-10 million speakers of esperanto, you will definately make friends with them. And you could consider it more useful than say, latvian, where all the speakers are concentrated in a small area, Esperantists are all over the world. Grammar consists of the same word order as english, and nouns, adjectives, verbs are all recognizable on sight by the word ending, including which form they are used in (Such as past or present tense). There are no exceptions to the grammatical rules, which can be learned in a matter of weeks. There are also no genders, complex verb conjugation, none of that! Vocabulary consists of about 2000 words, new words are formed by chaining two or more together, a real bonus here though is that you will recognize many words on sight, ESPECIALLY if you know latin. And esperantists tend to be very helpful if you somehow have any problems.
If you wish to give this a try, [URL="http://pacujo.net/esperanto/course/"]click this link[/URL] and sign up for the 10 lesson email course, which also includes a vocabulary list.
5-[b]Jobs and languages[/b]
Learning a language isn't just for fun, it can be also be an amazingly smart career move. Learning a language for your career isn't just limited to becoming a translator or interpreter. While this is the base of all language related jobs, what you do in your work day can be amazingly varied. What ever career you are planning to get into, there is almost nothing that doesn't exist that could not be improved by knowing another language. This doesn't mean you have to learn the "big" languages. Any language you learn is an invaluable skill, and can make your resume stand out from the others. Although a wrong assumption, learning languages is normally viewed as a task reserved for the highly intelligent or highly gifted.
Let's think of the most unrelated job you can think of. Steel milling. How the fuck can we relate that? Simple. Apply as a salesman, sell steel people located in the country that speaks your language. Businessmen will always trust you more and be more comfortable in their mother tongue. What if you can't find work, you learned, say, Farsi, Turkish, Czech, Greek or even Khmer. Simply apply at your countries Dept. of foreign affairs, or equivalent. This is one place where speaking a language from a smaller country is an advantage. Vacancies in places such as France, the USA, China, Japan, England and Italy tend to go fast, and are highly competitive. Places like Iran, Turkey, Czech Republic, Greece and Cambodia aren't highly contested. There is much more freedom in these jobs, and they are highly paid to boot! Even if that doesn't tickle your fancy, how about a job in journalism? Hell, even the games and technology needs multi-lingual people! Games don't translate themselves! Learning a language is an amazing career choice, and it's also an impossibly fun thing to do, and connects you to a huge portion of the world.
Here is the number one motivator for learning a foreign language. Money. Money. Money. Here's a statistic that might interest the American's reading this.
[i] A survey among 419 employers and 511 workers last fall revealed that 42% of employers expected the demand for business proficiency in Chinese to be high among recruiters; 70% said the same of Spanish. However, a majority of workers said that they neither planned to learn Spanish nor attain business knowledge of Chinese in this period. [/i]
Holy shit right? If Chinese doesn't tickle your fancy (It's not as hard as you think), then Spanish is the way to go. If you read the Language profiles above, you'll see that it is also easy as hell to learn. A huge bonus if you ask me. This was only two surveyed languages, different languages would have different demands. The difference can be huge, from a humble 5% increase, to a massive [i]20$[/i]. I don't need to spell it out to say how huge that can be. If you have a job where you don't translate often, I'm sorry, but you aren't entitled to a pay increase. But in the long term, learning a language is invaluable. Learning more is even better!
6- [b]Glossary[/b]
A1,2-B1,2 &C1,2- [Url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages]CEFR[/url] CEFR is a common system used to indicate the level of language proficiency one has attained. A1 is an absolute beginner, with a few phrases and words, and C2 is native fluency. A full definition is in the link.
Polygot- A person who speaks multiple languages. Knowing two languages does make you a polygot. As long as you learned the second language. If you "Inherited" your language from your parents you are bilingual or trilingual. Polygots tend to know many languages, more then 6 or 7 is generally conidered to be a hyperpolgot. More then 50 is considered to be a liar.
Chic- Stylish, awesome, cool, fasionable.
7-[b]Linky Linky[/b]
*[Url=http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/default.asp] How to learn any language.[/url] A fantastic resource for anyone looking to improve or learn more. It's an online forum dedicated to Polygots, you can't go wrong! The people here are, quite frankly, language nerds and are happy to lend a hand.
*[Url=http://www.fluentin3months.com/] Fluent in 3 months[/url] The guy who runs this site has plenty of language tips, including the one about the Thai script earlier. He does sell his own methods but he has heaps of other useful info on the site.
*[Url=http://www.memrise.com/welcome/]Memrise[/url] [QUOTE=.Isak.;36941802]Thought I'd pop in to vouch for a program that's helped me with basic vocabulary a lot.
Great UI, sometimes has voiceovers so you can pronounce words, addicting, and a great system (that works very well) to memorize words. I've been using the basic german one for a while, already learned several new words. Worthwhile to try.[/QUOTE]
*[Url=http://duolingo.com/]Duolingo[/url] Duolingo, by the makers of Captcha, aims to translate the web and help you learn another language. It doesn't work on speaking and uses a skill tree sytem to track progress. It's in open beta atm, languages offered are German, Spanish, English (For our spanish friends) and French. Mandarin will be coming shortly. Duolingo is ad free.
*[Url=http://www.guidetojapanese.org/]Guide to Japanese[/url] A website for Japanese grammar, suggested by MountainWatcher!
*[url=http://www.sharedtalk.com/]SharedTalk[/url][QUOTE=jeimizu;36939569]Sharedtalk is great once you know enough of a language to hold basic conversations, although finding people who speak some of the less used languages can be difficult.[/QUOTE]
*[URL="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jipdnfibhldikgcjhfnomkfpcebammhp"]Rikaikun[/URL][QUOTE=Chezhead;37037310]Rikaikunis very useful for kanji. Just mouse over the character and it tells you what it is.[/QUOTE] Thanks Chezhead!
*[QUOTE='Rain [Amber];38077023']Sorry if one's been posted already but for learning Japanese, I've found this site pretty damn helpful (I don't use JUST this site though so keep that in mind) [url]http://japaneseclass.jp/info/tour/1[/url][/QUOTE]
*[url=http://lang-8.com//]Lang-8[/url] Practice writing by having your work corrected by native speakers, for free! Thanks Mr. Epicness!
8-[b]Facepunch language pals![/b]
[img]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/55263305/fplanguageexchange.png[/img]
Thank's Disseminate for putting this together. If you'd like to volunteer, just pm Disseminate. It doesn't matter if your language is Russian or Romanian! You never know who might be learning what.
That's about it, I will be adding more as time goes on, i'm welcome to suggestions and submissions.
I've been trying to learn Japanese for 2 months now so that I can finally understand those unsubtitled hentais :V.
I took German for 2 years at highschool but I would really like to start learning again. I felt as if grammar was rushed and we were really only taught vocabulary properly.
You could talk about the language levels from A1 to C1
I think the best way to learn the language is just simply move to the country that speaks it. I, for example, learned german in about a year to level C1 in Germany, when if I would have taken courses in my homeland it would take me ages, and I wouldn't be as confident as I am now.
Will French be difficult for Russian and English speaking person? I always wanted to learn that.
I'm learning German and Japanese. I use memrise.com for vocab and livemocha.com, duolingo.com for german grammar and
[url]http://www.guidetojapanese.org[/url]
this website for jap grammar.
Currently speak Finnish, Swedish and English, learning German. Cool language, hope to start learning Japanese or Russian afterwards.
Polish here, started 2 days ago learning grammar (going to poland in a month or so)
goddamn it's hard.
Also would like to learn latvian but there are literally NO resources hahaha, not to mention it would be rather useless (no offense to latvians, but there simply aren't a lot and I don't plan on living in there).
[QUOTE=Kefirman;36550968]Will French be difficult for Russian and English speaking person? I always wanted to learn that.[/QUOTE]
If you read the post, i did go through that. French shares a large amount of vocab with english due to the Norman invasion of England in 1066. For example, la cafe, coffee, and a cafe, a place where coffee is tradionaly served. If you want to learn French i recomned L-R'ing Le petit Prince (The little prince) and prehaps using Livemocha, duolingo and memrise to help you. Don't worry, L-R helps your pronounciation heaps.
[QUOTE=The Aussie;36551342]If you reda the post, i did go through that. French shares a large amount of vocab with english due to the Norman invasion of England in 1066. For example, la cafe, coffee, and a cafe, a place where coffeee is tradionaly served. If you want to learn French i recomned L-R'ing Le petit Prince (The little prince) and prehaps using Livemocha, duolingo and memrise to help you. Don't worry, L-R helps your pronounciation heaps.[/QUOTE]
Le petit prince is an excellent book, it's pretty interesting philosophically as well as from a language perspective. While there are some cognates between French and English, there are a significant amount of false ones.
(I took french for like 8 years, still crap at it)
[QUOTE=trotskygrad;36551387]Le petit prince is an excellent book, it's pretty interesting philosophically as well as from a language perspective. While there are some cognates between French and English, there are a significant amount of false ones.
(I took french for like 8 years, still crap at it)[/QUOTE]
L'equipe. Every time i see it i think "Equiped!", and then take a second to realize it means team. I call them "False friends"
I remember my Japanese teacher in high school. I don't think she was even qualified to teach Japanese. She was old, delusional, and didn't necessarily teach. The only reason I got by was because I read through the textbook while half the class was failing. Hell, I learned more from the teacher assistant that already knew Japanese from vacationing there. I'm looking forward to actually learning multiple languages though. Anyone know where I can find a source to learn tagalog? I want to learn it so I can actually speak to my parents in tagalog instead of them having to translate it every time I go to the Philippines.
[QUOTE=The Aussie;36551530]L'equipe. Every time i see it i think "Equiped!", and then take a second to realize it means team. I call them "False friends"[/QUOTE]
that one I'm pretty used to
la douche though
ahhahahaha
I always forget that one
[QUOTE=The Aussie;36551530]L'equipe. Every time i see it i think "Equiped!", and then take a second to realize it means team. I call them "False friends"[/QUOTE]
That's simply you getting both terms confused. False friends is what teachers that teach basic english call words that are similar but have different meanings.
For example:
[I]constipated[/I] (eng) and [I]consipado[/I] (pt) sound almost the same, but in english its the cause of a painful defecation (according to wiki) and in portuguese it's simply a cold.
So you know when a portuguese guy doesn't really know english is when he says
"- It's so cold out here, I think I'm constipated
- Hey what the-"
I took 4 years of (old) Greek in middle school, and I must say that it helps out a lot with learning new languages. Especially vocabulary; it's amazing how many words are derived from Greek (and Latin) ones.
I would kill to learn swedish or finnish.
You folks have the most beautiful countries. I would love to actually go and see them.
Je connais le francais mais j'aime pas utilizer les accents
But you need accents to tell the difference between pasta and goose liver
[QUOTE=Karmah;36556325]Je connais le francais mais j'aime pas utilizer les accents[/QUOTE]
*je n'aime pas
I know french pretty well, took it for 3 years in school, is there an accurate scale anywhere that shows approximately how fluent you are based on how much you know?
I can fluently speak luxembourgish, german, french and english. Although in Luxembourg this isn't really a big deal as everyone learns all of these languages in school. Pretty much everyone here speaks atleast three of them. It is pretty handy though knowing all those languages.
[QUOTE=Wealth + Taste;36556507]*je n'aime pas
I know french pretty well, took it for 3 years in school, is there an accurate scale anywhere that shows approximately how fluent you are based on how much you know?[/QUOTE]
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages[/url]
That's what i use to rate myself. It's pretty acurate and easy to follow but if you want an exact mesure i recomend taking some sort of test.
I'm currently trying to learn British Sign Language, not a spoken language but a language in its own right, given that the grammar is totally different from english, and there's a limited vocabulary, it can be pretty hard.
I learned Morse code from memrise.com, really fun. I'm not exactly fluent at it, but I can read and write it well enough.
I know Portuguese and English, I recommend Portuguese for everyone, ideal for surprising BRs in online games.
[editline]30th June 2012[/editline]
You got any tips for keeping up morale? I find myself giving up on this pretty easily :v:
Does anyone have any advice on learning german? Apparently I was fluent at around age four, but it's been a really really long time, and I don't even know where to begin.
On the plus side, I've at least got some solid motivation behind me in the form of german/canadian citizenship. Once I manage a solid footing in the language, I can hopefully go meet the other side of the family :v:
[QUOTE=Lapsus;36558165]Does anyone have any advice on learning german?[/QUOTE]
If you can, try watching movies in German, listening to German music, and talking to native Germans. German is easy to pick up, if you can immerse yourself in it.
[QUOTE=eichhornch;36557292]I can fluently speak luxembourgish, german, french and english. Although in Luxembourg this isn't really a big deal as everyone learns all of these languages in school. Pretty much everyone here speaks atleast three of them. It is pretty handy though knowing all those languages.[/QUOTE]
Isn't Luembourgish a mix between Dutch, German and French?
Man, you know what I love about French? If you word everything just right, you can replace every vowel in any given sentence with an apostrophe.
[QUOTE=MountainWatcher;36557918]
I know Portuguese and English, I recommend Portuguese for everyone, ideal for surprising BRs in online games.
[/QUOTE]
Would it be easier to learn Portuguese if you knew Spanish?
[QUOTE=Arkei;36558816]Would it be easier to learn Portuguese if you knew Spanish?[/QUOTE]
Much easier. Romance languages (French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Latin) are easier if you know another romance language. Spanish is the most closely related. Around 85% of the vocab is shared and the grammar is pretty similar.
[QUOTE=The Aussie;36559014]Much easier. Romance languages (French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Latin) are easier if you know another romance language. Spanish is the most closely related. Around 85% of the vocab is shared and the grammar is pretty similar.[/QUOTE]
Spanish with a mouth full of olives.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.