learning languages.

anyone learning a foreign language? what difficulties do you find? what are your most successful technique tips?
i'm currently learning french, mandarin, latin and icelandic. yeah, i guess i'm a bit of a polyglot.

I've tried to teach myself German and Esperanto. Not at the same time though.

If you are really serious, learn ONE language.

Join online sites where you can correspond with people in that language.

Go to countries/places where the language is spoken and talk as often as you can in said language (I think this is the best tip).

Esperanto was an easy language to learn but has one fatal flaw.

No bugger speaks it.

I was lucky to have been born from a french canadian dad and a anglophone mother, most latin langues like italian and spanish are easy to understand for me, my ex wife is japanese and its been 8 years now and i still have issues following a conversation.

reply to post by CJCrawley


i thought esperanto was popular?

i've found it's 'easy' to learn a few languages at the same time as long as they are quite ifferent to each other.

reply to post by taoistguy


Popular in the sense that lots of people are learning it - yes.

But try and find a fluent speaker.

There's a club you can join (I forget the details) where you can visit loads of different countries and can live over there for a time with fellow Esperantists. Speaking only Esperanto.

Sounds an interesting gig, I've never done it.

Esperanto is an auxiliary language.. If you can learn that language, basically any European language can understand what you're saying.. Google translate is good but not the best.. Try Busuu.com, or hello world.com instead of forking out a fortune for Rosetta Stone, or travelling. Try making friends that also speak the language you desire...

i have been learning japanese for about 5 years.
nihonga ga muzukashii da yo!

either im stupider than i thought or japanese is an incredible complex language!!!

reply to post by okamitengu


how do you learn it?

taoistguy
reply to post by okamitengu

 

how do you learn it?

ready, ..

pimsluers 1 2 & 3
rosetta stone
japanese for busy people vol 1&2
WEA course Japanese 1
lived in japan for a year
have japanese friends who help!

apparently i learn it "poorly" heheheh

reply to post by okamitengu


wow.
do you ever use youtube?
i use it a lot. great for chinese tv news and programs.

To get technical for a moment about Esperanto.

I didn't like the insistence on the objective case ending -n.

English doesn't use objective case endings except for the pronouns, and it presents no problems.

Also I'm concerned that it - being an artificial language created by a man in 1887 - is permanently preserved, like a fossil, and is not allowed to evolve.

If that had happened to English, we'd still be talking Anglo Saxon (which is now utterly obscure and foreign to modern Anglophones).

reply to post by CJCrawley


but wouldn't that eventually result in modern esperanto, olde esperanto and american ezperanto?

taoistguy
reply to post by okamitengu

 

wow.
do you ever use youtube?
i use it a lot. great for chinese tv news and programs.

no but i watch alot of movies and tv shows from japan in japanese.
usually on tv.

for some reason i find you tube irritating for anything except short clips..

reply to post by taoistguy


Yes, you would find different dialects forming, and possibly even new languages.

All the Romance languages (Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian) are all different versions of the original lingua franca spoken over large swathes of Europe - Vulgar Latin.

Nothing wrong with that, we still have Latin - you are studying it.

And we would still have the original Esperanto, though it may be shunned in favour of the more user-friendly Esperanto dialects.

It could endure the same fate as Latin, where Vulgar Latin became a popular spoken dialect and Classical Latin was just used for writing.

I'm learning German through a website called Duolingo.

The best part about it is it has really obscure phrases that are silly enough to be easily remembered such as:

Mein Kuh ist schön -my cow is pretty/nice

Ich besitze ein Pferd- I own a horse

And this little gem that kind of hurt me a little:

Ich spreche zu meine Vater nicht - I do not talk to my father.

reply to post by TheToastmanCometh


i use a similar technique. after learning a few words such as pronouns, verbs, adjectives and nouns, i create silly sentnces that stick in the mind:

i have 2 red sheep.
you see 4 blue pigs.
we eat 11 green cars.

reply to post by taoistguy


Easiest for me, was to learn how to read it. It'll allow me to immerse myself into that common language flow....even though I had no idea what is going on.

Then would be a focus on common verbs..

After that, any course would be easier to comprehend.

My 2¢.

Want to learn a new language? Best way to do it?
Submerge yourself into the culture of whichever country's language you want to learn and fend for yourself.

You'll learn very quickly.

Much more efficient than buying a CD Rom from tv.

reply to post by unb3k44n7


oh yes, immersion. sadly, i can't afford that. ( so i watch the youtube vids, visit chinatown and hang about language students! lol)