Language Learner's Thread - Cunning Linguists Welcome. - General

[QUOTE=Cypher_09;47922225]There's a difference between STM and LTM.[/QUOTE] Ok....? 1 hour of time is added up over several days. (Like 10 minutes a day) I still have retained things even after a week. I don't know if you're being sour because of how things have gone in this thread or what. I don't know what you're trying to prove.

[QUOTE=thefreemann;47922336]Ok....? 1 hour of time is added up over several days. (Like 10 minutes a day) I still have retained things even after a week. I don't know if you're being sour because of how things have gone in this thread or what. I don't know what you're trying to prove.[/QUOTE] OH I thought you meant something else, nevermind :v: Nah I'm not being sour man

I've heard it only takes about a day to learn Hangul if you put in the effort. That's one of the reasons I wanted to learn Korean. It seems so straightforward. I'll probably revisit it in the future.

[QUOTE=Teddybeer;47922648] Well keep it up, but don't over do it.[/QUOTE] Not sure what you mean

[QUOTE=Teddybeer;47922833]Taking breaks helps.[/QUOTE] Oh yea, of course.

[QUOTE=thefreemann;47922811]Not sure what you mean[/QUOTE] Basically don't burn out. The best thing about memrise and anki imo is the way they work with your time. If you're on an elevator or train you can easily whip them out and get to work. So if you don't have it setup on your phone, I highly recommend doing so.

Yea I do have the Memrise app

[QUOTE=reevezy67;47922737]I've heard it only takes about a day to learn Hangul if you put in the effort. That's one of the reasons I wanted to learn Korean. It seems so straightforward. I'll probably revisit it in the future.[/QUOTE] Hangul may be one of the simplest writing systems in the world but god damn the language is difficult.

How is everyone's character handwriting? In any language. Here's some of mine that I wrote really fast, I have an exam where I need to write 100 Chinese characters or so. Mostly basic ones. [t]http://i.imgur.com/K6dv8nF.jpg[/t] Some huge mistakes, but I wrote them super fast. [editline]13th June 2015[/editline] I should probably write some neat ones.

Dunno, never really tried handwriting Japanese. I hand-wrote the kana and JLPT N5 kanji once a year ago, but since then the closest to "handwriting" I've come is on my phone with the whiteboard function in Anki. My English is terrible though, nigh unintelligible, and it always has been. My teachers since Kindergarten have tried numerous methods to make me improve, and they all failed.

Writing by hand is like 300% more effective for remembering a character than just reading it is. At least for me.

[QUOTE=reevezy67;47944768]How is everyone's character handwriting? In any language. Here's some of mine that I wrote really fast, I have an exam where I need to write 100 Chinese characters or so. Mostly basic ones. [t]http://i.imgur.com/K6dv8nF.jpg[/t] Some huge mistakes, but I wrote them super fast. [editline]13th June 2015[/editline] I should probably write some neat ones.[/QUOTE] you don't know fast until you have to do a 1000 words creative writing in an hour :v [editline]13th June 2015[/editline] man I haven't wrote chinese in a while

This is a cool thread, I have a degree in this. Funny enough, my Chinese characters look about ten times neater when I write them because I feel the need to impress. [editline]13th June 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=The Aussie;47921044]Duolingo doesn't have any non indo-european languages and that really annoys me. Most of the languages i'm interested in aren't western at all. I'm currently in the weird position of being torn between starting a new language i'm very much interested in (Japanese, Mandarin) and "finishing" my original language, French. I learned french through school, and although i like the language, i have no great love for France, not intentions to live there, or really travel there extensively. It's not really enough drive to move forward. However, i have put a few years of high school effort and a year of real effort into it. I used to be conversational but that's long gone. I'm apprehensive about starting a new language too. Can someone throw me some advice on the matter?[/QUOTE] Howdy. I can't gauge your French skills par l'ordinateur but if you already have a solid grasp on the language's grammar structure and sentence composition then you've mostly learnt what there is for you to learn about the language; no sense in learning vocabulary and common usage if you're not going to be using the language in an extensive way. However, unfortunately not much of what you've learnt from French will be useful in Japanese and Mandarin which are quite dissimilar from French. I hope at least you've got a good grasp of liaison though because that helps in understanding certain qualities about Japanese phonology. [editline]13th June 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=reevezy67;47922737]I've heard it only takes about a day to learn Hangul if you put in the effort. That's one of the reasons I wanted to learn Korean. It seems so straightforward.[/QUOTE] Hangul is agreed by most linguists in the field of writing systems to be one of the most effective systems in the world. It fits the language so well.

[QUOTE=thisispain;47945783] However, unfortunately not much of what you've learnt from French will be useful in Japanese and Mandarin which are quite dissimilar from French. [/QUOTE] At the very least, being used to a wider range of sounds is always helpful in listening and speaking (pronounciation, intonation) when learning a new language. For example, French and Japanese both have nasal vowels, which are almost absent in English. French might also help correctly pronouncing monophthongs, which are prevalent in Japanese, particularly at the end of words; I find that anglophones tend to struggle with these. The list probably goes on for a while. I agree it helps little with grammar.

I think having learned a language makes it easier to learn more. Your first foreign language will be your most difficult to learn, but the second is easier, and the third is easier than that and so on. You learn to think in that learning mindset, and learn how to learn a language. Benny Lewis used that argument to say that people should learn Esperanto to help with their language learning. I dunno if i agree with him or not.

I might be able to stop attending mandatory English classes as of next year, scored 663/677 at my school's written TOEFL exam. I'll just need to pass a short oral evaluation in September and that'll be it. That should give me some free time to actually practice my Chinese, which would be a welcome change given I haven't progressed much this year. That or I start studying Japanese in parallel.

[QUOTE=thisispain;47945783] However, unfortunately not much of what you've learnt from French will be useful in Japanese and Mandarin which are quite dissimilar from French. I hope at least you've got a good grasp of liaison though because that helps in understanding certain qualities about Japanese phonology. [/QUOTE] At the very least by having learnt a foreign language before he'll have learned to deal with one of the big obstacles that every language shares. Which is learning to think differently, because phrases you use in English won't make much sense to speakers of your target language. For example you can't say you're allergic to something in German, you've got to be allergic against something. You can't say "I'm hot", you have to say "me is hot" when you're talking about temperature. At least in my opinion that's one of the harder parts, it's much harder to self correct. You can't quite pull up a chart to look over your text and notice that, like you can with say, case or conjugation.

[QUOTE=thelurker1234;47948071]At the very least by having learnt a foreign language before he'll have learned to deal with one of the big obstacles that every language shares. Which is learning to think differently, because phrases you use in English won't make much sense to speakers of your target language. For example you can't say you're allergic to something in German, you've got to be allergic against something. You can't say "I'm hot", you have to say "me is hot" when you're talking about temperature.[/QUOTE] The trick is to try to formulate your sentence directly in the target language, rather than think of the sentence in your mother tongue and translating it afterwards. [editline]13th June 2015[/editline] This is why most automated translators are gimped. They try to convert a sentence into another language by looking for the equivalents of the words in the original phrase, while a human translator understands the sentence's meaning and reformulates it in the target language.

[QUOTE=jA_cOp;47946937]At the very least, being used to a wider range of sounds is always helpful in listening and speaking (pronounciation, intonation) when learning a new language. For example, French and Japanese both have nasal vowels, which are almost absent in English. French might also help correctly pronouncing monophthongs, which are prevalent in Japanese, particularly at the end of words; I find that anglophones tend to struggle with these. The list probably goes on for a while. I agree it helps little with grammar.[/QUOTE] Anglophones do struggle a lot with it to the point that I don't think most L2 learners of French can even hear those subtleties. [editline]13th June 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=The Aussie;47947033]I think having learned a language makes it easier to learn more. Your first foreign language will be your most difficult to learn, but the second is easier, and the third is easier than that and so on. You learn to think in that learning mindset, and learn how to learn a language. Benny Lewis used that argument to say that people should learn Esperanto to help with their language learning. I dunno if i agree with him or not.[/QUOTE] I've heard the argument made before that the brain maintains a cognitive library of grammar and learning strategies, so each insight into a different languages gives you better understanding of the mechanics of language. This can be as simple as say, learning French gives you insight into the mechanics of the related Romance languages.

I can confirm that once you know French, Spanish and Italian are much easier to learn.

我的中文手写不太好。我只会用键盘打字。:tinfoil:

How is my Russian cursive? It's difficult reading stuff with и, м and л (and to write as well) [t]http://i.imgur.com/DkTCq03.jpg[/t]

[QUOTE=thefreemann;47954436]我的中文手写不太好。我只会用键盘打字。:tinfoil:[/QUOTE] 你的中文比我的中文好。

Word play (in the case of making jokes) is one of my favorite things in Chinese (and other languages). When you can understand it well, it's hilarious.

这是学习汉语的议题 這是學習漢語的議題 traditional is weird

he jungs. ein deutschlernender hier, der nur hallo sagen will also hallo :) [editline]16th June 2015[/editline] ein deutschlernender der auch in deutschland ist wie man vielleicht auf englisch sagen würde, fuck yeah

wie lange bist du schon in deutschland, und wo kommst du her? ich will da gehen, aber ich hab kein geld dafür. hast du die abitur, oder eine gleichwertiger abschluss? arbeitest du, und wo? bist du eine bürger? alle diese sachen muss ich wissen

我能用『还有』在写作吗？ 我有六瓶啤酒。 还有，我有三杯可乐。 这些都对吗？ [editline]17th June 2015[/editline] Preparing for my written exam. [editline]17th June 2015[/editline] I guess this is better, got some help. 我有六瓶啤酒。 还有三杯可乐。

Cxu tie esperantistoj?

[QUOTE=inebriaticxp;47984298]wie lange bist du schon in deutschland, und wo kommst du her? ich will da gehen, aber ich hab kein geld dafür. hast du die abitur, oder eine gleichwertiger abschluss? arbeitest du, und wo? bist du eine bürger? alle diese sachen muss ich wissen[/QUOTE] ich bin seit nur einem monat in deutschland, aber ich bleibe für zwei weitere monate. ich komm aus den USA. ich bin weder student noch bürger. nur gast :)