Learning another language

[Banana]

Does anyone here speak more than two languages? I'm saying two languages specifically because I know many have a decent grasp of their "native" language such as Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc?

I'm thinking of getting the Rosetta Stone language program and either learning Spanish and German. Has anyone heard if this program is worth it?

[Napoleon Chynamite]

Aside from Chinese and English I also speak Korean and Spanish, and a little bit of Japanese. I hope to be fluent in Japanese soon and study Portuguese someday. The girls at work also taught me how to count from 1-10 in Italian the other day and I know a few basic Italian greetings and responses.

I've found that the best way to learn a language period is to practice speaking it every day with native speakers of that language. Otherwise all the independent studying and memorization won't help. At the beginning, building up a vocabulary base is more important than grammar, because you can still communicate by uttering single words and brief phrases and pointing even if your sentence structure still needs a lot of work. Grammatical rules and structure, comparatively, will come with time and doesn't really need a lot of active attention in my experience.

[SunWuKong]

three years of high school French right here babieee! shit i hated third year of French class when the teacher made us watch French soap operas. that's why i didn't take a fourth year. when i was starting to learn Mandarin, sometimes i would blurt out French that i haven't used for years.

aside from that, i can pronounce some written Korean. 90% of the time i have no idea what i'm saying though, unless it's Konglish.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

I'm personally unimpressed with computer-based learning tools. I didn't learn anything from the Korean version of the Rosetta Stone which I started using last year. There's material I studied using that program which I still have trouble remembering, even though I've been working on Korean continuously since then. Eventually I ditched the computer and just skipped ahead to banging my head against newspaper articles with a dictionary in hand; these days I'm reading about one newspaper article a day in Korean, meeting with a language exchange partner a few times a week, etc.

In contrast, I can still remember pretty much all the Russian vocabulary and phrases I learned from the ~15 lessons of Pimsleur tapes I listened to on the subway for a period of about a month back 2004, despite the fact that I have made absolutely no effort to study Russian ever since then.

So yeah, my advice is Pimsleur tapes + a language exchange partner (e.g. look up your city on http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/)

[Banana]

Though you "speak" those languages, are you actually fluent in them? For example, I have a decent grasp of Chinese on a 6th grade level but I can't really read and write it.

Man, if practice is the only way to learn, I guess German needs to be pushed back a bit since it's difficult to find someone else that speaks it here. Odd since I work for a Swiss bank.

Alibaba, that's odd. I've always heard that those tapes were next to useless. From what I seen, Rosetta Stone forces you to associate pictures with phrases. I found someone that has spanish and am going to give it a try before I get Chinese and German.

[AngryABCGirl]

Though you "speak" those languages, are you actually fluent in them? For example, I have a decent grasp of Chinese on a 6th grade level but I can't really read and write it.

Man, if practice is the only way to learn, I guess German needs to be pushed back a bit since it's difficult to find someone else that speaks it here. Odd since I work for a Swiss bank.

Alibaba, that's odd. I've always heard that those tapes were next to useless. From what I seen, Rosetta Stone forces you to associate pictures with phrases. I found someone that has spanish and am going to give it a try before I get Chinese and German.


I think a lot of it depends on what kind of learner you are. Some people learn better visually and some people learn better verbally.

Watching TV shows really helped my Spanish and Cantonese. gotta love the univision telenovelas and tvb. I miss them so. I tried using a Cantonese tape program before, it was useless compared to practicing it with someone.

[SunWuKong]

Though you "speak" those languages, are you actually fluent in them?

maybe it's possible to become fluent in them if a language was actually your area of study in school, but i would think it's going to be difficult to become fluent in any non-English language in the US if you're trying to pick it up as a second language. i think you'd really need immersion for that. so maybe it's possible to become fluent in Spanish if you moved to Spanish Harlem or East L.A. or Miami?

[kimpossible]

Nonsense. We all know gonadal osmosis is the ultimate language learning tool. All you need to get started is your penis.

[eos]

i bought pimsleur for mandarin. still sitting on the table. also have japanese but don't remember what name was on the box.

i'm definitely a visual person. 2 years of hs french, i would look through the book and look at the pictures and try to pronounce the words. worked for me.

[kyopojin]

Though you "speak" those languages, are you actually fluent in them ?

For example, I have a decent grasp of Chinese on a 6th grade level but I can't really read and write it.



I can speak fluent American-English & 3 Chinese dialects ( Cantonese,Mandarin,& Hakka ) @ native level.

My Chinese education back home ended in 5th grade,I came to US at the age of 11-12.I can read Chinese ( traditional script ) newspapers & books without any trouble,but can only write some common Chinese characters otherwise mostly by eyesight copy-write.

[AdornA]

I have learnt French too. Oh my god what a headache! I wonder how people are able to speak french. It's sooooooooo difficult, isn't it?

[CBC guy]

I basically learned Chinese (reading and writing, along with Mandarin) almost from scratch by going to a private tutor (who was from Beijing) once a week for two hours for nine years. She didn't know English much at all, so that kinda FORCED me to learn Mandarin fast. This is actually one of my proudest achievements as I knew almost zero Mandarin before. I suppose that language partners do help a lot.

Cantonese doesn't really count, I learned it naturally as a little kid. Still speak it at home.

English doesn't really count either, picked it up naturally as a kid at school from Kindergarten on, (our family moved to Canada when I was 5) now considered my first language.

I still have a sprinkling of French and German from my high school/University days. I can make basic conversations haha.

I recently bought a CD-ROM and a phrasebook for Japanese, but I really really need people to practice with. :tongue:

In China sometimes there is this deal between students of different nationalities where the Chinese student will teach Chinese to the foreign student and the foreign student will teach the language in question (usually English, but I found Korean, Japanese and French being taught in this way as well) to the Chinese student.

[SunWuKong]

I have learnt French too. Oh my god what a headache! I wonder how people are able to speak french. It's sooooooooo difficult, isn't it?

not really. ce n'est pas difficile.

[AngryABCGirl]

for those of you who have done language exchange partners,

How have you gone about doing the language exchange partner thing?

Do you share an article to read and discuss it or what?

How do you use the time efficiently, etc.?

I'm looking to brush up on my Spanish after reading this thread, and maybe even find a Cantonese speaker here if possible.

[SunWuKong]

for those of you who have done language exchange partners,

How have you gone about doing the language exchange partner thing?

Do you share an article to read and discuss it or what?

How do you use the time efficiently, etc.?

never had a language exchange partner, but my friend and i were playing Chinese chess at a coffee shop one day and this Japanese language exchange group sat down next to us. it was a few white guys and a white girl, and one Japanese girl. i don't even remember hearing any Japanese being spoken, maybe only a few words here and there. most of the conversation consisted of the white people talking about how they love Japan, especially the sushi. it was pretty annoying. the Japanese girl was mostly quiet. at least they didn't talk about anime, i guess. at one point one of the white guys asked us if we were playing some Japanese chess game whose name i forgot. dumbass.

I'm looking to brush up on my Spanish after reading this thread, and maybe even find a Cantonese speaker here if possible.

from what i've seen, the best way for a Mandarin speaker to learn Cantonese, and vice versa, is to date someone who speaks the other dialect natively.

[kimpossible]

Everything you need to learn Japanese right here. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=GU3-e8RbVE4)

[raacluse]

Man, if practice is the only way to learn, I guess German needs to be pushed back a bit since it's difficult to find someone else that speaks it here. Odd since I work for a Swiss bank.


Based on the following article, it might be better to learn Swiss German. (Or maybe not.):

How Many Germans Can Switzerland Take?
28 Feb 07 / Tamsin Walker / Deutsche Welle

The pride of Switzerland

When a Swiss tabloid launched a campaign last week asking the nation how many Germans Switzerland can stomach, it did more to highlight an old inferiority complex than to reveal the dawning of a new anti-German age. The mass-circulation Blick paper, which described the recent influx of Germans as "the invasion from the large northern canton," asked its Swiss readers if they too, had had enough of "cheap workers, arrogant expressions and objectionable self-confidence?" The responses, predictably, were mixed.

But the fact remains that Switzerland is currently the most popular destination for Germans seeking to resettle abroad. In 2006 alone, some 25,000 flocked over the border in search fertile ground for the good life they failed to find at home, and the trend shows no sign of abating. Even so, Germans by no means constitute the largest foreign group living in Switzerland, so what's all the fuss about?


Oliver Classen, spokesman for the Swiss NGO Berne Declaration, said the current anti-German media frenzy is an inevitable part of the EU-Swiss bilateral relations which relaxed freedom of movement between Switzerland and the European Union.

"Germany is for Switzerland what Poland is for Berlin," Classen said. "The bilateral agreements have opened the borders and the fears in Switzerland are similar to those that Germany had in the face of EU expansion."

Job-snatching Germans

One of the most outspoken concerns is that the German arrivals are stealing jobs from the indigenous population. But a spokesman for the Swiss Employers Association, Hans Reis, said the worries are largely tabloid press hot air. With the economy booming, and industries across the board advertising job vacancies, he said he welcomes German workers.

"We need qualified people," he said. "The good thing about the Germans is that they are well-qualified, they work hard, and they don't have any problems with the language."


Jens-Rainer Wiese who writes a blog about being a German in Switzerland agrees that Germans are important for the Swiss economy.

"They don't have enough well-trained people to advance the economy here," he said. "We are helping them to forge ahead."

But the other worrying word on the street is that all these highly qualified Germans are also willing to work for a franc or two less than their Swiss counterparts. Reis, who concedes that Germans are sometimes used to lower wages, rejects the claim that they are pushing Swiss wage prices down.

"That may be the case if you had one job and a lot of applicants, but that is not the situation here," he said. "Companies here are just happy to fill their vacancies."

Cultural, linguistic divides

Wiese said he believes the real gripe for many Swiss people is a simple culture clash issue.

"The main problem is German directness," he said. "The Swiss are reserved and very polite, whereas the Germans are loud in public and just come out and say what they want. The mentality is very different."


The most common criticisms of the Germans in Swiss circles are that they are "too fast, too loud and too arrogant." Wiese said the linguistic difference between the two countries is often mistaken for the widely perceived arrogance.

"When Germans come to Switzerland, they only speak High German, not Swiss German, and that automatically leads the Swiss to think they are arrogant," he said.

Considerable importance is placed on the local language as something which separates Switzerland from its neighbor. Gregory Waldis, an actor who grew up in Switzerland, but who has lived in Germany for several years believes the linguistic difference between the two countries has led the Swiss to respect Germans to the point of fearing them.


"The official language in Switzerland is High German, but nobody there speaks it other than the authorities," Waldis explained.

He said the use of the High German for official purposes puts the language -- and by association, the Germans who use it -- on a pedestal.

"When I first moved to Germany and heard everyone speaking high German, I thought they all sounded so intelligent," Waldis said. "It’s pretty impressive for the Swiss ear."

[Banana]

The only reason why I want to learn German is so I can go to the local Jewish community center and start screaming at people.

[popculturepooka]

Best way to learn a language? Date someone who speak that language. Simple.
Believe me, nothing makes you want to learn a language as fast as when your siginificant other is yelling at you in said language. You'll want to know what they were calling you.
That's how I learned all my Japanese derogatory terms. :)

Arguements are great ways to put your language skills ot the test, because you have think on the fly and still be able to get your point across.

I heard Rosetta Stone sucks btw. Try FSI (Foreign Service Insititue?) Their programs are pretty good.
OH yeah and get a language partner, and start listening to foreign music, and if possible t.v.
When you wake up in the morning instead of thinking "oh I have to shower, eat, brush my teeth etc..." in english, try saying it in the language...and if you don't know the word, look it up. Whenever you remember start naming stuff in said language as you see them. Talk to yourself in imaginary two sided conversations in said language.

There ya go.

[Flutterby]

Job-snatching Germans
One of the most outspoken concerns is that the German arrivals are stealing jobs from the indigenous population.
Who in Switzerland is hiring these Germans?

[Banana]

I tried studying French just to impress some French chick when i was stationed in paris. god, what a pathetic waste of time. why does the french language even bother having long words?

you actually pronouce about 1/4 of the actual word anyway.

[sageb1]

I think as a result of too many concussions, I cant learn another language without help.

Though I used to be able to learn Malay phrases and other stuff, but since the last concussion I need Babel Fish to annoy my Greek domme MSN friend.

[CBC guy]

While I was studying Mandarin in China a while back for a Chinese exam I started having dreams entirely in Mandarin.. it was weird.

[tripostrophe]

I'm planning on brushing up on my Korean this summer, and also half want to learn Mandarin -- any recommendations? (I don't even know the four tones yet, so...). Please PM if you have any good programs/methods/etc.