I want to learn a bit of Italian but think of the nightmere I had with Spanish and French I don't know if I can handle it
If you already know some Spanish and French, learning another roman language should be easier. E.g. I never learned Italian, but with my school french and latin, I can at least partly read/understand (or better: decipher) italian, though I couldn't speak it.
Suebian (our local dialect) is not much better. We had once a cousin with her friend visiting us. A friend of my brother speaks with a strong suebian accent. My cousin's friend came from Hamburg (totally different dialect). After some time, he asked us to translate ...
I studied French in high school and university for a number of years but have zero comprehension of that.
On the other hand I spent nine years in Japan and worked pretty hard at learning that while I was there. I would up with a limited ability to express myself.
I think that you need to live in a country at least for six months or so in order to get a feel for the nonverbal aspects of a language. It is interesting how different other cultures are with respect to how people hold a conversation.
I also think that once you learn a second language learning additional languages is not so difficult. There is a lot about the techniques you develop in your head to deal with a second language that can be applied to the study of more languages.
Well having had Latin two years ago, I find that I can pick up on the basic gist of most things WRITTEN in French and Italian. I would like to learn German/Russian someday, but apparently that's really hard to do. For Latin I just grabbed the English/Latin dictionary, a copy of the Anead in Latin and a copy in English and read away. Only one to pass the exam with an 'A.'
I never did well in Latin until I did that. I was never able to remember the grammatical rules and declensions and all that, but by reading the different ways you could use words I (subconsciously I guess) was able to write in Latin rather well. Of course I never learned English grammar either so...
We moved to Mexico when I was 7, and lived in the Hilton Hotel for 6 months till we found a house in the suburbs. I made friends with the (female) desk clerks and rapidly began picking up Spanish (there weren't any other kids at the hotel to hang with...especially none that actually 'lived' there \ ).
Then when I started school (third grade), classes in the morning (8am-12pm) were in English. Classes in the afternoon were taught completely in Spanish (3-5pm). By the time I was in fifth grade, I would actually dream in Spanish.
I never actually studied Spanish formally, so my grasp of verb tenses now as an adult is shaky. But knowing a first Romance language certainly made others much easier (Latin, French). I wrote a poem in French when I was 15. I think it's a damned good poem! Much better than any I ever wrote in English. heh. I picked up a magazine in Brazil and remember reading the Portuguese without too much trouble.
Always had a *really* tough time ordering from menus though, no matter what the language. Whatever I ordered, it always turned out to be liver. Argh!!! hahaha
And German has so many words that have a similarity to English (since those 'English' words probably originally came from German in the first place!), that German seems easy to me too - but I've barely dabbled in it, so that's just my impression. It looks like it would be easy to get the hang of (not speaking of the irregular verbs, of course).
Russian (four years at uni) is definitely tricky; but the weird thing is that it has cases like Latin (like Latin nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and so forth). I like writing my students' names on the whiteboard in Russian. They really get a kick out of it.
I liked studying Russian because it was such a challenge; but I never actually learned to speak it conversationally. Guess I'll have to take up conversational Russian one of these days. My father's first language was Finnish, but I never learned any of it. I think it's probably a pretty difficult language to learn.
I have no verbal skills in my native language (English) and that has much to do with my inability to learn languages.
Not to say that I haven't gotten As in the majority of my foreign language classes (French, Latin, Spanish, Russian), but even living in a foreign country didn't do much good (Italy for three years, admittedly the majority of the time spent at work or sailing around the Mediterranean).
I'd say being able to converse with someone is a key.
While I can't say I know any foreign languages, I find it easy to travel. I haven't taken any Greek classes, but if you know the alphabet, it's not difficult to figure out what things say.
I think my favorite was Russian. Once again, after you know the Cyrillic alphabet, things are easier than you might imagine.
And German has so many words that have a similarity to English (since those 'English' words probably originally came from German in the first place!)
Even some german words like "Kindergarten" found their way into English. On the other side, there are some "false friends" (as our english teacher called them), e.g. "gift": gift (e) = Geschenk (g). "Gift" (g) = Poison (e).
My father's first language was Finnish, but I never learned any of it. I think it's probably a pretty difficult language to learn.
Want a quick start? Pronounce like Spanish ... I think the weight goes to the first syllabe, and pronounce "soft" as you were saying something romantic in German.
Alavilla mailla hallanvaara. (means roughly "danger of cold weather at night(s) in low areas (fields etc)")
Katso merta. (nope ... it means "look at the sea!" but somehow it's so funny when there are some turists in Italy saying exactly that..)
and Panna means "lay/put/****" so you don't want that whipped on your ice cream.
Suebian (our local dialect) is not much better. We had once a cousin with her friend visiting us. A friend of my brother speaks with a strong suebian accent. My cousin's friend came from Hamburg (totally different dialect). After some time, he asked us to translate ...
Suebian: "Male male male and wand na"
German: "Mal einmal ein Männchen an die Wand hin"
Ooh, I know these sort of dialogues:
1: "Spätzle, Bretzle, DaimlerBenz, nur mir Schwobe henns"
Learning Thai is the toughest for me so far (Japanese is relatively easy).
Thai is so tone dependent (tone totally changes meaning of words) that its hard to not inject rising and falling tones based on my mood or type of sentence.
Like a rising tone at the end of a sentence is so natural to me but it destroys the sentence meaning if you do so in Thai.
Once I thought of it as memorizing lines in a play or a song, it became easier. You don't learn Thai so much as memorize lines in a play. For a given thing to say there is practically only one way to say it (tonally speaking).
While tone can alter the underlying implications of a sentence in English:
I went to the store.
I went to the store.
I went to the store.
I went to the store.
I went to the store.
Using similar tones would radically/ridiculously alter the meaning of the words whose tones you injected emotion into:
Squid went to the store.
I disaster to the store.
I went pumpkin the store.
I went to eat store.
I went to the because.
Better example would be:
I went to the store. (Rising tone)
I went to the store. (High tone)
I went to the store. (Middle tone)
I went to the store. (Low tone)
Would totally change the meaning of the word:
I went to the pickle.
I went to the octopus.
I went to the Thursday.
I went to the store.
(Those are made up examples but it's not that exaggerated)
Stress is ok in Thai (my examples are more examples of stress than tone, but tone is impossible for me to type. But in English tones and stress tend to be intertwined, so it is good enough for casual discussion). But stress is just saying a word a bit louder, while not changing the normal tone.
My cousin lives in Thailand. She says Thai is an extraordinarily easy language. She speaks Chinese, English and says Thai is the easiest of them, even though it's her third language she learned.
FYI, Chinese is tone dependent.
So why are you learning Thai? Do you just really love the language or do you live there and thus are forced to?
To me learning Thai is like learning Czech. Nothing wrong with it but I don't always understand the reasons to go for a language that just simply isn't as widely useful as other.
Grammatically, Thai is incredibly easy (especially compared to Japanese).
It's just getting over my habit of use of tones to express feelings that is the hard part.
Plus, in writing Thai, there are about 32 vowels, which some are placed before, after, above, or below a consonant. Hard to get used to.
As for why, my fiancé is Thai and I plan on moving there at least for a year or a few. America is too expensive for me. A few odd remote projects from American clients should tide me over while I'm there.
Yeah, Thailand is quite cheap. Where are you going to be? I have been to Thailand 3 times and absolutely love it. They have good fruits and seafood. Man, the raw oysters--yummm....
I can speak English fluently, as it is my native language, and I can also parle français !
I started learning French years ago, and I never found it to be hard. In fact, the first year was the most difficult. In French class I learned all about object pronouns and intransitive and transitive verbs and the ways words work with echother and . . . my God, I learned grammar! All over again! . . . once I had a grasp of the mechanics of the language, everything since has been cake. Same with my English; my writing was not good until I took French and gained an understanding of grammar that my 1st-grade brain didnt quite absorb the first time around. Now my grammar and spelling are practically perfect (yes, I realize that I dont use apostrophes in my contractions . . . I only worry about that in actual essays and papers that I write for school . . . hehe)
I started to take Spanish this year, and I dont like it as much as French. Anyway, I think French is more useful than Spanish, so long as youre not going to South America or Mexico. But yeah . . . you have to get an understanding of mechanics before you can start rattling off writing and memorizing vocabulary. I remember my first year . . . "J'ai, tu as, il a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont" . . . umm . . . "huh??? I dont know what Im doing . . . I have to memorize all this??!?! What is it??" . . . on the avoir test I ended up writing "je avoir" and "tu avoir" and "il avoirs" for all the blanks and failed the test. Hehe! Being the good little student I was, I then asked my teacher to explain it to me. I learned what inflection was, and I learned what verb conjugation was! yaaaaaa!! Literally, I have never gotten a B or below on a verb test ever since.
I disagree with whoever said that you must not translate back into English all the time. I think completely oppositely . . . All the vocabulary and stuff that I learn in French . . . I can memorize it and understand how to use it if I know the literal translation of it in English. "faire de la gymnastique" = to do of the gymnastics! Ça y est = That is to there (it is an expression for, like . . . "Thats it! We did it!) "café au lait" = coffee to the milk. You get the idea . . . hehe
People say that French is confusing . . . I dont know why! Its spelling is actually very logical; you just have to know what letters not to articulate. Hehe . . . even the accents start to come naturally after a while. They can still suck, but you get to be able to just . . "feel" where one goes, even in words youve never seen before. (In French, non-tilde-accents dont indicate irregular stress, like in Spanish)
I disagree with whoever said that you must not translate back into English all the time. I think completely oppositely.
I think 200 % different from you in this. FIRST - I would have no clue to which language to translate ever. Thanks to being 95 % fine in some and not 100 % in any.
Thatswhy when I study a language, I prefer to study it in the language I study. So take a French or Japanese study book, cassete, magazine, Cd, anything, that is ALL in that language, where they explain things in that language. I HATE when you learn something and the grammar is .. as you are supposed to think and supposed to mistake in the other language. That confuses me. So French > I want to learn it all in French. And I would like to do the same in Japanese, but probably before I learn to read, it may be easier to start the Japanese when explained in English. Untill I can read.
Comments
Originally posted by Leonis
I want to learn a bit of Italian but think of the nightmere I had with Spanish and French I don't know if I can handle it
If you already know some Spanish and French, learning another roman language should be easier. E.g. I never learned Italian, but with my school french and latin, I can at least partly read/understand (or better: decipher) italian, though I couldn't speak it.
Want to learn Chinese eventually (Cantonese)
Life is too short.
Originally posted by GardenOfEarthlyDelights
If you think German is bad, try Bavarian.
Suebian (our local dialect) is not much better. We had once a cousin with her friend visiting us. A friend of my brother speaks with a strong suebian accent. My cousin's friend came from Hamburg (totally different dialect). After some time, he asked us to translate ...
Suebian: "Male male male and wand na"
German: "Mal einmal ein Männchen an die Wand hin"
On the other hand I spent nine years in Japan and worked pretty hard at learning that while I was there. I would up with a limited ability to express myself.
I think that you need to live in a country at least for six months or so in order to get a feel for the nonverbal aspects of a language. It is interesting how different other cultures are with respect to how people hold a conversation.
I also think that once you learn a second language learning additional languages is not so difficult. There is a lot about the techniques you develop in your head to deal with a second language that can be applied to the study of more languages.
I never did well in Latin until I did that. I was never able to remember the grammatical rules and declensions and all that, but by reading the different ways you could use words I (subconsciously I guess) was able to write in Latin rather well. Of course I never learned English grammar either so...
Then when I started school (third grade), classes in the morning (8am-12pm) were in English. Classes in the afternoon were taught completely in Spanish (3-5pm). By the time I was in fifth grade, I would actually dream in Spanish.
I never actually studied Spanish formally, so my grasp of verb tenses now as an adult is shaky. But knowing a first Romance language certainly made others much easier (Latin, French). I wrote a poem in French when I was 15. I think it's a damned good poem! Much better than any I ever wrote in English. heh. I picked up a magazine in Brazil and remember reading the Portuguese without too much trouble.
Always had a *really* tough time ordering from menus though, no matter what the language. Whatever I ordered, it always turned out to be liver. Argh!!!
And German has so many words that have a similarity to English (since those 'English' words probably originally came from German in the first place!), that German seems easy to me too - but I've barely dabbled in it, so that's just my impression. It looks like it would be easy to get the hang of (not speaking of the irregular verbs, of course).
Russian (four years at uni) is definitely tricky; but the weird thing is that it has cases like Latin (like Latin nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and so forth). I like writing my students' names on the whiteboard in Russian. They really get a kick out of it.
I liked studying Russian because it was such a challenge; but I never actually learned to speak it conversationally.
Not to say that I haven't gotten As in the majority of my foreign language classes (French, Latin, Spanish, Russian), but even living in a foreign country didn't do much good (Italy for three years, admittedly the majority of the time spent at work or sailing around the Mediterranean).
I'd say being able to converse with someone is a key.
While I can't say I know any foreign languages, I find it easy to travel. I haven't taken any Greek classes, but if you know the alphabet, it's not difficult to figure out what things say.
I think my favorite was Russian. Once again, after you know the Cyrillic alphabet, things are easier than you might imagine.
Originally posted by Carol A
And German has so many words that have a similarity to English (since those 'English' words probably originally came from German in the first place!)
Even some german words like "Kindergarten" found their way into English. On the other side, there are some "false friends" (as our english teacher called them), e.g. "gift": gift (e) = Geschenk (g). "Gift" (g) = Poison (e).
Originally posted by johnq
Want to learn Chinese eventually (Cantonese)
Good luck on this
Grammar and style in Cantonese change all the time. And you need to spend quite a lot of time on slang (average 1 new word per week).
Cantonese "was" my mother tongue until I moved to Canada 19 years ago. I still can speak decently but not to those new words
Originally posted by Carol A
My father's first language was Finnish, but I never learned any of it. I think it's probably a pretty difficult language to learn.
Want a quick start? Pronounce like Spanish ... I think the weight goes to the first syllabe, and pronounce "soft" as you were saying something romantic in German.
Alavilla mailla hallanvaara. (means roughly "danger of cold weather at night(s) in low areas (fields etc)")
Katso merta. (nope ... it means "look at the sea!" but somehow it's so funny when there are some turists in Italy saying exactly that..)
and Panna means "lay/put/****" so you don't want that whipped on your ice cream.
I'm learning Spanish.
My advice is to not treat them as foreign languages but rather get a feel for it.
Language shouldn't be something learned analitically, it should be something subconsciously intuitive.
Try to imagine yourself an infant with no other language in stock.
And NEVER translate back into English in your mind. This will mess up everything.
You MUST think in the language while studying it from day 1.
Further questions PM me.
Originally posted by GSpotter
Suebian (our local dialect) is not much better. We had once a cousin with her friend visiting us. A friend of my brother speaks with a strong suebian accent. My cousin's friend came from Hamburg (totally different dialect). After some time, he asked us to translate ...
Suebian: "Male male male and wand na"
German: "Mal einmal ein Männchen an die Wand hin"
Ooh, I know these sort of dialogues:
1: "Spätzle, Bretzle, DaimlerBenz, nur mir Schwobe henns"
2: "!?"
Grüsse nach Benztown!
Thai is so tone dependent (tone totally changes meaning of words) that its hard to not inject rising and falling tones based on my mood or type of sentence.
Like a rising tone at the end of a sentence is so natural to me but it destroys the sentence meaning if you do so in Thai.
Once I thought of it as memorizing lines in a play or a song, it became easier. You don't learn Thai so much as memorize lines in a play. For a given thing to say there is practically only one way to say it (tonally speaking).
While tone can alter the underlying implications of a sentence in English:
I went to the store.
I went to the store.
I went to the store.
I went to the store.
I went to the store.
Using similar tones would radically/ridiculously alter the meaning of the words whose tones you injected emotion into:
Squid went to the store.
I disaster to the store.
I went pumpkin the store.
I went to eat store.
I went to the because.
Better example would be:
I went to the store. (Rising tone)
I went to the store. (High tone)
I went to the store. (Middle tone)
I went to the store. (Low tone)
Would totally change the meaning of the word:
I went to the pickle.
I went to the octopus.
I went to the Thursday.
I went to the store.
(Those are made up examples but it's not that exaggerated)
Stress is ok in Thai (my examples are more examples of stress than tone, but tone is impossible for me to type. But in English tones and stress tend to be intertwined, so it is good enough for casual discussion). But stress is just saying a word a bit louder, while not changing the normal tone.
FYI, Chinese is tone dependent.
So why are you learning Thai? Do you just really love the language or do you live there and thus are forced to?
To me learning Thai is like learning Czech. Nothing wrong with it but I don't always understand the reasons to go for a language that just simply isn't as widely useful as other.
It's just getting over my habit of use of tones to express feelings that is the hard part.
Plus, in writing Thai, there are about 32 vowels, which some are placed before, after, above, or below a consonant. Hard to get used to.
As for why, my fiancé is Thai and I plan on moving there at least for a year or a few. America is too expensive for me. A few odd remote projects from American clients should tide me over while I'm there.
Careful about the traffic jams. Those could kill.
I started learning French years ago, and I never found it to be hard. In fact, the first year was the most difficult. In French class I learned all about object pronouns and intransitive and transitive verbs and the ways words work with echother and . . . my God, I learned grammar! All over again! . . . once I had a grasp of the mechanics of the language, everything since has been cake. Same with my English; my writing was not good until I took French and gained an understanding of grammar that my 1st-grade brain didnt quite absorb the first time around. Now my grammar and spelling are practically perfect (yes, I realize that I dont use apostrophes in my contractions . . . I only worry about that in actual essays and papers that I write for school . . . hehe)
I started to take Spanish this year, and I dont like it as much as French. Anyway, I think French is more useful than Spanish, so long as youre not going to South America or Mexico. But yeah . . . you have to get an understanding of mechanics before you can start rattling off writing and memorizing vocabulary. I remember my first year . . . "J'ai, tu as, il a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont" . . . umm . . . "huh??? I dont know what Im doing . . . I have to memorize all this??!?! What is it??" . . . on the avoir test I ended up writing "je avoir" and "tu avoir" and "il avoirs" for all the blanks and failed the test. Hehe! Being the good little student I was, I then asked my teacher to explain it to me. I learned what inflection was, and I learned what verb conjugation was! yaaaaaa!! Literally, I have never gotten a B or below on a verb test ever since.
I disagree with whoever said that you must not translate back into English all the time. I think completely oppositely . . . All the vocabulary and stuff that I learn in French . . . I can memorize it and understand how to use it if I know the literal translation of it in English. "faire de la gymnastique" = to do of the gymnastics! Ça y est = That is to there (it is an expression for, like . . . "Thats it! We did it!) "café au lait" = coffee to the milk. You get the idea . . . hehe
People say that French is confusing . . . I dont know why! Its spelling is actually very logical; you just have to know what letters not to articulate. Hehe . . . even the accents start to come naturally after a while. They can still suck, but you get to be able to just . . "feel" where one goes, even in words youve never seen before. (In French, non-tilde-accents dont indicate irregular stress, like in Spanish)
<<Le français, c'est ça que j'm !>> 8)
Originally posted by Mac OS X
I disagree with whoever said that you must not translate back into English all the time. I think completely oppositely.
I think 200 % different from you in this. FIRST - I would have no clue to which language to translate ever. Thanks to being 95 % fine in some and not 100 % in any.
Thatswhy when I study a language, I prefer to study it in the language I study. So take a French or Japanese study book, cassete, magazine, Cd, anything, that is ALL in that language, where they explain things in that language. I HATE when you learn something and the grammar is .. as you are supposed to think and supposed to mistake in the other language. That confuses me. So French > I want to learn it all in French. And I would like to do the same in Japanese, but probably before I learn to read, it may be easier to start the Japanese when explained in English. Untill I can read.
Originally posted by Mac OS X
I disagree with whoever said that you must not translate back into English all the time. )
\\
That's me you're disagreeing with.
I would rather keep the language modules separate so they will never get confused. I see so many americans here get french confused with spanish, etc.
You'll see what I mean when you start to pick up on spanish.
From experience and talking to other tri/quad lingual friends I have...
Don't translate them back.
Plus, English=sux.