Woo yeah I'm going to Hong Kong next year!!
Time to learn Cantonese!!!
[QUOTE=Disseminate;38429636]Woo yeah I'm going to Hong Kong next year!!
Time to learn Cantonese!!![/QUOTE]
Related to your studies or?
Wow, how did I not see this thread earlier?
I have been studying Japanese since Mid August. I started by learning kana in a couple days then moved on to using Human Japanese. I bought Remember the Kanji but felt it distracted from core studies. I bought Genki 1 about 1.5 months ago and I'm on chapter 7 at the moment. I still use Human Japanese as a pronunciation reinforcement. For about 2-5 hours a day my face is either in front of flash cards, my book or I'm talking with a friend on Skype, she is pretty helpful as a conversational partner but not as a full fledged teacher.
Next year I will be doing a study abroad program in Japan for a full year (or that is the plan rather). So I hope to learn as much as I can before I stay with a homestay family. My college doesn't offer Japanese classes at the main university so my only option for taking intensive courses is to study abroad.
My career path is Business Marketing and I hope to work Internationally between the USA and Japan, which is why I started studying in the first place.
[QUOTE=Mr.Twizzle;38428042]I'd prefer to learn casual speech. I wanna sound natural, not like a robot.[/QUOTE]
Fair enough. I personally just found it easier to learn formal and then casual, but ofc everyone goes about it differently
Also my sister just got back from spending a week in Hong Kong, while she overall enjoyed it apparently quite a lot of the people there are rude :v:
[QUOTE=Daniellynet;38431479]Related to your studies or?[/QUOTE]
International exchange. I'm pretty pumped, assuming courses match up properly
[QUOTE=Disseminate;38434088]International exchange. I'm pretty pumped, assuming courses match up properly[/QUOTE]
Ah, sounds like a lot of fun.
When you go, please do keep us updated, haha. (Assuming this thread is still here)
Definitely, it's going to be absolutely bonkers.
[t]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Hong_Kong_Skyline_Restitch_-_Dec_2007.jpg[/t]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0iBQ4_Ku0A[/media]
I'm fluent in both French and English, French being my first language.
I've had a year of Spanish and I forgot most about it since it's been years, I'm thinking of picking it up again though, it's so similar to french that I could probably be fluent within 2 years.
When I say similar, picture that, I could read and understand spanish newspaper and texts with no prior knowledge of spanish before even taking the class, I could understand spanish people talking to me, I just couldn't communicate back.
[QUOTE=Disseminate;38436855]Definitely, it's going to be absolutely bonkers.
[/QUOTE]
You just had to post that picture and video, didn't you? D:
I really, really want to go there, right after visiting Japan, but man, it'll probably be years before I go there.
By the way, how long will you be there?
A bit under a year.
Temperature ranges between 16-40 degrees Celsius over 12 months, hehehehe
I've never actually been south of Ohio (I live in southwestern Canada) so this is going to be amazing
[QUOTE=Mr.Twizzle;38414085]I thought for "Sometimes I..." you'd say "Ibland jag...", but my friend informed me I should say "Jag brukar ibland..". He said that "brukar" has no real English translation, but he said it's similar to "the". It's really confusing for me. So far I know like... 20 words and I always get he/she and him/her mixed up. But my friend's really helpful and I actually think I'm going to be able to learn it![/QUOTE]
Yeah, the grammar of other languages can be really different (more so the less related they are to what you're speaking already).
Like I'm starting to get into Hebrew grammar and it's pretty strange. "This new book is on the table" is literally "The book the new the this on the table"
[QUOTE=Mr.Twizzle;38414085]Sooo after a while of thinking, I decided to stop learning Portuguese and return to it at a later date. Why? Because it's a tad hard for me since I don't have any Portuguese friends IRL or on Steam. So I decided to take up a language a bit closer to English, Swedish.
[/QUOTE]
Hey mate,
giving up Portuguese due to lack of speaking practice was stupid idea. I'm not going to ask you to pick it back up, because you moved onto another language very quickly.
Incase you decide to pick it back up, try Italki or mylanguageexchange to look for speaking partners. You get to make new friends all around the globe, awesome! But if commitment isn't your thing, try Verbling. It's chatroulette for language enthusists. 5 minutes taking to someone in your language, 5 minutes in your target langauge. Pretty cool right?
[editline]14th November 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=peterson;38431765]Wow, how did I not see this thread earlier?
I have been studying Japanese since Mid August. I started by learning kana in a couple days then moved on to using Human Japanese. I bought Remember the Kanji but felt it distracted from core studies. I bought Genki 1 about 1.5 months ago and I'm on chapter 7 at the moment. I still use Human Japanese as a pronunciation reinforcement. For about 2-5 hours a day my face is either in front of flash cards, my book or I'm talking with a friend on Skype, she is pretty helpful as a conversational partner but not as a full fledged teacher.
Next year I will be doing a study abroad program in Japan for a full year (or that is the plan rather). So I hope to learn as much as I can before I stay with a homestay family. My college doesn't offer Japanese classes at the main university so my only option for taking intensive courses is to study abroad.
My career path is Business Marketing and I hope to work Internationally between the USA and Japan, which is why I started studying in the first place.[/QUOTE]
That's great mate! What a fantastic example of how people can learn a langauge on their own, without expensive software or classes. I wish all the best, i know you don't need my help. You've got your hit sorted.
[editline]14th November 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=Heigou;38437118]I'm fluent in both French and English, French being my first language.
I've had a year of Spanish and I forgot most about it since it's been years, I'm thinking of picking it up again though, it's so similar to french that I could probably be fluent within 2 years.
When I say similar, picture that, I could read and understand spanish newspaper and texts with no prior knowledge of spanish before even taking the class, I could understand spanish people talking to me, I just couldn't communicate back.[/QUOTE]
Fuck mate, you could be fluent in 6 months. It'd be an hour a day, but you'd be fluent. C1 level. I kind of get the same thing with French as you get with spanish. Except you're more "This says this and that", and i'm more "I know what that means, and that looks similar to that so it could either mean a or b".
We all have our ways of learning vocabulary words
[img]http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/46482_10151084367262583_1395287793_n.jpg[/img]
I really want to study over in Austria or Germany for a semester or a year, but I don't know a lick of German and there are no courses I can take at the moment for me to learn the language.
Any advice?
[QUOTE=Fhenexx;38454697]I really want to study over in Austria or Germany for a semester or a year, but I don't know a lick of German and there are no courses I can take at the moment for me to learn the language.
Any advice?[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.ielanguages.com/German.html[/url]
[QUOTE='Rain [Amber];38454807'][url]http://www.ielanguages.com/German.html[/url][/QUOTE]
oh damn, bookmarked that, Won't look now, but before I go to germany I'll look through it to brush up everything.
[url]http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/[/url]
[url]http://cantonese.ca/[/url]
Couple Cantonese vocab sites if anyone wants to give it a shot someday. There's no other way to learn it than by yourself and with practice - no Memrise courses for Cantonese, etc. Thankfully, all dialects of Chinese share the same characters and grammar, which was a huge relief - many tools for learning those!
Popping in here to learn French, I always had French classes in school (Mandatory here in NB Canada) but those were pointless.
Anyone French here willing to pen pal with me?
Also has anyone else used the Duolingo site? It was working well and I liked it but then the audio isn't working for me where it wants me to listen and type. It was but then it just stopped.
There's quite a few languages I'd like to learn at some point, but I've wanted to learn Russian for a while. No real idea where, when, or how to start, though.
[editline]dfas[/editline]
Hell, maybe I can become a linguist or something some day.
[QUOTE=Rhenae;38458019]Popping in here to learn French, I always had French classes in school (Mandatory here in NB Canada) but those were pointless.
Anyone French here willing to pen pal with me?
Also has anyone else used the Duolingo site? It was working well and I liked it but then the audio isn't working for me where it wants me to listen and type. It was but then it just stopped.[/QUOTE]
Je parle francais, mais je fais des erreurs quand je l'ecris, parce que j'ai jamais appris a ecrire en francais
Je peux parler francais avec toi, la pratique aide a apprendre et se rappeler de nouveaux mots.
Okay people talking about French & Russian etc I'm just posting this now;
[url]http://www.ielanguages.com/languages.html[/url]
It has; French, German, Italian, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish, Spanish, Danish, Catalan, Norwegian, Brazilian Portuguese, Icelandic, Latin, Faroese, Russian, Finnish, Ukrainian, Turkish, Croatian, Indonesian.
The more obscure languages have quite smaller lessons etc in comparison but it's a very helpful site all around imo.
[editline]15th November 12[/editline]
If someone can find a resource that good for Asian languages I'll be your best buddy forever
[QUOTE=fear me;38458503]There's quite a few languages I'd like to learn at some point, but I've wanted to learn Russian for a while. No real idea where, when, or how to start, though.
[editline]dfas[/editline]
Hell, maybe I can become a linguist or something some day.[/QUOTE]
Start by learning basic vocab (I, myself, you, we, one, two, three, etc). For example for French you'd memorize je, tu, il/elle, vous, nous, and ils/elles. From there you memorize a couple verbs, like manger and penser. When you have the basic idea, you'd start learning some basic grammar (je mange, tu manges) and gradually more complicated stuff (je ne mange pas, il est tres bien, j'aime le fromage).
For a symbolic alphabet, it's not really too much more difficult - instead of memorizing "pork" you memorize the symbols, "猪肉" (lit. pig meat) and the sound associated (joo rho).
For a non-latin word-based alphabet (eg Russian), you should memorize the alphabet first, and then it's exactly like learning a latin-based language, ie French.
Ah, [URL="http://www.russianlessons.net/lessons/lesson1_main.php"]this[/URL] is pretty helpful. A place to start, at least.
So from what I've been told French & Spanish are VERY similiar, to the degree if you knew Spanish and someone spoke to you in French you'd understand at least a bit of it. Well it's the same for my friend who knows Afrikaans with his Dutch friend, she speaks to him in Dutch and he just responds in English as he doesn't know the Dutch language, only Afrikaans but they're very similar.
Is there a list of languages like this somewhere? Like if you know ______ you may understand a bit of _____
[QUOTE='Rain [Amber];38467443']So from what I've been told French & Spanish are VERY similiar, to the degree if you knew Spanish and someone spoke to you in French you'd understand at least a bit of it. Well it's the same for my friend who knows Afrikaans with his Dutch friend, she speaks to him in Dutch and he just responds in English as he doesn't know the Dutch language, only Afrikaans but they're very similar.
Is there a list of languages like this somewhere? Like if you know ______ you may understand a bit of _____[/QUOTE]
I don't know how far this goes, but if you understand english you may understand a bit of swedish. I was on holiday a couple of months ago and met a swedish kid, he spoke to me in swedish and I could understand what he was saying. It was pretty surreal.
Learning German, this is fun.
Okay, here is what is wrong with Rosetta Stone.
First it gives you easy stuff like this in like the 6th page of the 1st lesson (Which is supposed to be [U]easy[/U]):
[t]http://puu.sh/1rliH[/t]
But then the next page:
[t]http://puu.sh/1rlkw[/t]
WHAT THE FUCK! THIS BELONGS IN LIKE THE 3RD SESSION!
I'd learn speech first (with romanized words), then the characters. In this day and age if you know the romanization of characters, you can type them on a computer - you just won't be able to read menus for a while.
Worst feeling ever when you try talking to a native speaker and they laugh at you.
Oh well, learning experience I guess. :(
Anybody know of any active Japanese groups/chats etc. on steam? Or friendly servers for basically any valve game
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.