A great advice is to learn only one language at once. Don't try rushing things and learning two or more languages at the same time, you will get a lot confused. As a portuguese speaker, latin languages are easy to learn, and I often understand things written in Italian or French without even knowing the language itself (false cognate here is a bitch though), so, learning close language to those you already know might be a good idea. Unless you try learning German. You will problably think the teacher is cursing you.
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Learning a Foreign Language
- Thread starter avalanche3387
- Start date
Cresselia~~
Junichi Masuda likes this!!
True. Learning French and Spanish together is just hell.
But learning French becomes easy after someone learns 2 years of Spanish or so, approximately.
In high school, I took 3 years of Spanish and I hardly remember any of it.
The one language that I'm familiar with the most is American Sign Language. It's actually very similar to any other language, it's just that you "speak" and learn it differently, obviously.
The one language that I'm familiar with the most is American Sign Language. It's actually very similar to any other language, it's just that you "speak" and learn it differently, obviously.
You'd think that after 5 years of Italian, I would have me fluent in it.
Well.. I'm not even close. It makes it easier for me to learn Spanish though, so that's a plus.
Well.. I'm not even close. It makes it easier for me to learn Spanish though, so that's a plus.
Ahaha, tell me about it. Do you remember how I said Turkish and Azeri are almost mutually intelliglible? Well, almost. There are quite a few vocabulary differences and most of those make you think Proto-Turkic peoples were also proto-shitty sitcom writers.
For example, Turkish and Azeri both use the word "karhane", but the Turkish word comes from is karı+hane (woman+house) while the Azeri word comes from kâr+hane (profit+house). So in Turkish "karhane" (also spelled like kerhane) refers to a brothel, while in Azeri it refers to a workplace. So an Azeri in Turkey can ask for directions for an office and find himself in front of a brothel.
The same thing can happen the other way around, too- in Turkish "bardak" means glass while in Azeri it means prostitute. Hell, a small diplomatic crisis erupted over this. Some cultural background: We Turkish like our tea in glasses like this. It's a cultural thing that's used all across the country. We call those glasses "ince belli bardak"- literally "slender-waisted glass". Now you probably see where this is going: The Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs was in Azerbaijan sometime during the mid-1990s, and he got his tea served in a cup during a meeting. Obviously, like the Turkish guy he is, he asked for a "ince-belli bardak", which resulted in lots of hostile stares and red-faced people around him while he was oblivious to the whole thing. The situation gets even worse when you consider that the ex-Soviet countries are notorious for sex trafficking. Thankfully, the whole thing was clarified within a few hours.
Oh, there's yet another misunderstanding that caused a diplomatic crisis. During a meeting, the Azerbaijani president Haydar Aliyev called the Turkish president Süleyman Demirel "a great businessman" and thanked him for Turkish investments in Azerbaijan. Nice, right? Yeah, except the Azeri word for businessman (also meaning a strong, wealthy man) is "pezevenk", which means "pimp/women trafficker" in Turkish and is commonly used as a swear word. Comedy gold.
Now currently, when having meetings Turkish and Azeri ministers use translators, which is just as hilarious. The Turkish and Azeri presidents speak and get their speech "translated", but the "translators" usually just say the same thing verbatim in a different accent as everybody in the room try to contain their giggles.
One last example, this one from Turkmen- the Turkmen word for weapon/arms is "yarak" which means, well, dick in Turkish. So the Turkmen Army "Türkmenistanyň Ýaragly Güýçleri", written in Turkish as "Türkmenistan'ın Yaraklı Güçleri" means, uh, "Turkmen Forces with Dicks". So if a Turkmen talks about, say, a bloody, massive armed clash, the Turkish person will interpret it quite differently (hint: orgy).
I can just go on and on, but I'll stop here.
My school offers American Sign Language and taking it was easily one of the best decisions I ever made. I'm still taking it, and it's just a really fun class. It's so different because everyone communicates with their hands and not with their voice. I find it really great for any visual-learners out there. :)
Certain languages may be better in the long run to learn *coughSpanishcough*, but learning about deaf culture is really interesting and I think learning the language has it's own uses if you ever run into a situation where you need or are trying to communicate with a hard-of-hearing individual. Learning about the culture on its own will make you have a new respect for the deaf community, as I certainly did. Some of the hardships these people faced are just really sad.
American Sign Language is mostly easy, but requires a lot of memorization and you must pay close attention to the teacher or risk losing important details. The way I go about doing this is to study for about 5-10 minutes a night to get more familiar with certain signs. Overall though, the class is pretty fun and unique.
Certain languages may be better in the long run to learn *coughSpanishcough*, but learning about deaf culture is really interesting and I think learning the language has it's own uses if you ever run into a situation where you need or are trying to communicate with a hard-of-hearing individual. Learning about the culture on its own will make you have a new respect for the deaf community, as I certainly did. Some of the hardships these people faced are just really sad.
American Sign Language is mostly easy, but requires a lot of memorization and you must pay close attention to the teacher or risk losing important details. The way I go about doing this is to study for about 5-10 minutes a night to get more familiar with certain signs. Overall though, the class is pretty fun and unique.
I tried this with Spanish in high school since my parents forced me all the way up to honors (5 total). Didn't go so well. That's one thing I really dislike back then having to take it because there were plenty of other more interesting classes to me, like computers and marketing. Not that learning a foreign language isn't a good idea, but it just wasn't for me and ended up having to suffer through it while barely faking my way through it.
Learning French and it is a bitch. Doesn't help that the French people around me are all guys and I can't stand the sound of french coming from males. Any advice?
duolingo.com is a nice site that does a really neat and unique job in teaching {German/French/Spanish/Italian}, while being varied, rather fun, competitive {if you have friends to compete with}, and, perhaps most importantly, free. I highly recommend giving it a try. It also has mobile phone apps to access it on the go if you're interested - I believe those are also free.
that was so amazing i swear
but perhaps there is one thing they could agree on
they should check out my new weapon
weapon of choice
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I'm currently in Finland as a foreign exchange student, and as an American where English is my first and only language, Finnish is really hard for me. I have studied Chinese and Spanish in the past, but only for a couple years each. The difficulties I have with Finnish come from: 1) Almost everyone here speaks English and I'm unable to stop them from speaking English with me, so I cannot get full immersion. 2) Finnish grammar is so ridiculous, it's to the point where, if I have a question about a grammar concept, most native speakers here are unable to explain why it is what it is, other than "It just is."
I've been here for about 4.5 months already, and will only be here for maybe 6.5-7.5 more months, and it's pretty frustrating knowing that I should be better at Finnish than I am now, and a lot of the reasons why I don't speak as well as I should come from things that are either impossible or very hard to control.
If you think German grammar is hard, maybe you should take a look at Finnish...
Finnish has 17 cases for every noun, and each case is kind of like a preposition (telling you where the noun is in relation to you), except you add them to the ends of nouns. So, for example, lukio is a kind of upper secondary school. If I said I was at lukio, I would say Minä olen lukiossa. The -ssa ending tells you that you are AT lukio.
Along with the 17 cases, there are other endings you add onto words to change the meaning. For example, Suomi is a kind of base for Finland. But, if you say suomalainen it means "Finnish person" and suomea is "Finnish language," but you can also say Olen suomessa, it means "I am in Finland." Suomeksi is something similar to "in Finnish (language)" and an example usage would be like Mikä on [insert English word here] suomeksi, which means "What is [insert English word here] in Finnish (language)."
Along with the ridiculous amount of noun endings, half of which don't translate into an English equivalent, you have to conjugate the verbs (and there are a lot of rules involved with this, about when you take out certain letters), there are a lot of different ways to conjugate things (present perfect, present imperfect, past perfect? Something like that) based on the context. Also, there is a verb for negative things (Ei). If you say "I don't like you" it would be En tykkää sinua. You have to conjugate ei to match the pronoun and then the verb you use has to be in infinitive... and also there are about 10098210398213 different ways to say I depending on if it's possessive and so on (minä --> minulle --> minun --> minulla).
And then there's the problem where the spoken language is completely different from how it's written. For example, if someone were to say "I am not," written it would be something like Minä en ole, but in spoken could be something like En mä oo...
(sorry for such a long post being my first, but this discussion was really interesting...)
I've been here for about 4.5 months already, and will only be here for maybe 6.5-7.5 more months, and it's pretty frustrating knowing that I should be better at Finnish than I am now, and a lot of the reasons why I don't speak as well as I should come from things that are either impossible or very hard to control.
If you think German grammar is hard, maybe you should take a look at Finnish...
Finnish has 17 cases for every noun, and each case is kind of like a preposition (telling you where the noun is in relation to you), except you add them to the ends of nouns. So, for example, lukio is a kind of upper secondary school. If I said I was at lukio, I would say Minä olen lukiossa. The -ssa ending tells you that you are AT lukio.
Along with the 17 cases, there are other endings you add onto words to change the meaning. For example, Suomi is a kind of base for Finland. But, if you say suomalainen it means "Finnish person" and suomea is "Finnish language," but you can also say Olen suomessa, it means "I am in Finland." Suomeksi is something similar to "in Finnish (language)" and an example usage would be like Mikä on [insert English word here] suomeksi, which means "What is [insert English word here] in Finnish (language)."
Along with the ridiculous amount of noun endings, half of which don't translate into an English equivalent, you have to conjugate the verbs (and there are a lot of rules involved with this, about when you take out certain letters), there are a lot of different ways to conjugate things (present perfect, present imperfect, past perfect? Something like that) based on the context. Also, there is a verb for negative things (Ei). If you say "I don't like you" it would be En tykkää sinua. You have to conjugate ei to match the pronoun and then the verb you use has to be in infinitive... and also there are about 10098210398213 different ways to say I depending on if it's possessive and so on (minä --> minulle --> minun --> minulla).
And then there's the problem where the spoken language is completely different from how it's written. For example, if someone were to say "I am not," written it would be something like Minä en ole, but in spoken could be something like En mä oo...
(sorry for such a long post being my first, but this discussion was really interesting...)
As a Spanish native speaker i learn English grammar mostly by PKMN games and pronunciation in Law & Order and other TV Shows. Then i take French and English when i was 12 and later in High School i take German. From all of this i can tell you that French was more troubling to me than English, specially in Nasals pronunciation. I only have German for a year but i like it a lot, English knowledge was quite useful, more useful than my Spanish knowledge in French!
So even if i don't have proper preparation at English, i think i can defend myself when speaking with the World (i don't know but i think i have a very Spanish-Mexican style when i write in English for the order of the words). So what i can tell to you is that watching Movies or TV Shows for the languages you are learning it's quite useful, you learn more about the common style of speaking, most used words and a lot about the culture of what are you watching.
Sorry for the bad English :(
So even if i don't have proper preparation at English, i think i can defend myself when speaking with the World (i don't know but i think i have a very Spanish-Mexican style when i write in English for the order of the words). So what i can tell to you is that watching Movies or TV Shows for the languages you are learning it's quite useful, you learn more about the common style of speaking, most used words and a lot about the culture of what are you watching.
Sorry for the bad English :(
I know English and Irish and I'm currently learning german.I hate german though but I guess I have to learn it because of school.
I speak English and Tagalog and I consider myself pretty lucky to have grown up in a bilingual household. I'm also fortunate to have friends and family in Japan so I'm learning that too. The only real difficulty with the language are the levels of formality which annoys me because I tend to sound kind of rude haha.
I've always wanted to learn Japanese as a kid but I could never get accepted into the schools that had the class. I ended up starting Spanish in 7th grade and became pretty decent at it after the first year. I could somewhat hold conversations with people in IRC without them questioning it. Then sometime around 9th grade I stopped caring. Even though I kept taking Spanish classes up to 11th grade, now I don't know much other than basic greetings.
Maybe one day I'll actually try to learn Japanese or relearn Spanish.
Maybe one day I'll actually try to learn Japanese or relearn Spanish.