I’ve been thinking about trying to learn a new language, French or Italian probably (for future holidaying purposes as these are the two places I’d like to go to, mostly for the food and because I did some French at school so I should hopefully have a bit of a head start on it). Basically in this modern world I feel a bit rubbish only being able to talk in English. That and I’ve got a week off and I’m bored.
I might also try picking up a bit of Gaelic for a laugh and so I can understand what people ar singing.
Anyway I found out the BBC have an excellent section on their website for learning languages (http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/) which should give me a decent start.
So has anyone else tried learning a new language? How easy or hard did you find it?
I speak a little Gibberish, but mostly I concentrate my efforts on speaking Balderdash. I can read Crap effortlessly, but don’t speak it much, what with all the Gibberish and Balderdash to work on.
I can muddle through in Spanish and French. French was my high school and college language, then I did 4 semesters of Spanish at the Community College 2 years ago. French is still much easier for me to comprehend spoken, and I’m sure that has to do with the fact that my ears acclimated to it at a much younger age.
I’m hardly fluent in either, but I believe that–except for a very few–achieving fluency in speech and comprehension is near impossible without at least some immersion. I read them more easily.
luxembourgish, french, german (fluently)
english … almost fluently, with a lot of mistakes, but who cares
It’s all about communication, as long as you can talk to the people around and make them laugh and become friends, that’s all that really counts.
It took me a long time to understand that. In our school system we used to be trained to a “no mistake” attitude. Means, you’d better be quiet than make mistakes. That was a real disadvantage when I went to France for studies as the French can talk for hours without even taking a breath, while my own clan would stay mute like a goldfish. Later when I began to play ITM, it was the same story again. Most musicians were native english speakers while I had only very basic english skills. So I played the goldfish-game again for a while. But finally I managed to overcome my inhibition and shyness and began to talk and now I can talk so much I could almost be nominated a honorary French citizen, hehe
So take my advice: whatever your language skills, just talk, talk, talk. Don’t care about funny accents, creative vocabulary, cryptic grammars. Just communicate! That’s what the whole language thing is about.
I’ve been studying Irish for about 3 1/2 years now.
I used to be nearly fluent in French (which I studied in high school and college), but time, and the lack of an opportunity to use my French, has pretty much destroyed what I had.
I speak French. Enough to get by. I read it well. If you go to France you do better to go to the South, where people will encourage you and correct your pronunciation in a friendly way. In the North of France, in Normandy in particular, most of the natives simply look down their noses at anyone trying to speak French and then speak to them in fluent English. It is more discouraging than you might imagine.
The little Gaelic I know is a confusion of Irish, Gaelic and Welsh, with some Manx thrown in. It’s improving slowly.
I know the odd phrase in a number of other languages - curiosity value only. But I can ask for tea and say please and thank you in Arabic. And ask for “Breast of Chicken” in Chinese. Very useful, since I’m a Veggie.
I’m not really fluent in any languages but thankfully, a great deal many people speak English to help break the language barriers. I know a tiny bit of Tagalog because I’m half-filipino, I know a little Spanish because, well, I live in San Diego. I learned a little Greek on a whim because I was very interested in ancient Greek & Roman literature for a time. I’ve had the most success with Romanian because I’ve gotten several opportunities to travel to Romania on business but just know enough to get by. Pimsleur has some good training courses/CDs and there certainly is a plethora of other training courses out there. By far the easiest way to learn is to know someone that you can communicate with that’s native to that language.
That’s wonderful advice! I’ve often said that the main reason kids learn language so much easier than adults do is we adults are indoctrinated to need to be “correct”…and we’re shy because we know we don’t speak the new language perfectly. Kids, on the other hand, will happily rattle along in whatever they can make work, and pantomime the rest.
One of the philosophies at Oideas Gael is that you should speak Irish as much as humanly possible during the class week…even if all you can manage is “Faolchú Rua is aimn dom” over and over. I try to encourage myself by thinking of all the non-native English speakers I meet day after day (living in California, it’s a pretty regular thing). It certainly doesn’t bother me when they make grammar or pronunciation errors…it’s all part of the learning process. That helps me to be a little less hard on myself.
Absolument. But can I get my children to understand this? Not a bit of it. Despite this, my son is fluent to a degree in Japanese, just because of his impatience to get one of the Zelda games. And playing it through, in Japanese. Total immersion. It’s the best way.
I have studied Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.I actually studied Telugu and Hindustani but that’s a million years ago… The only one that “stuck” was Italian. It came very easy to me and I could actually speak it when I went there on holiday. It didn’t seem to help, though in overcoming the “here’s another Yank tourist” bit.. I got one compliment at the Vatican…
I don’t know why it is that Italian comes so much easier. I am surrounded by Spanish speaking people, but I just find it harder to pick out words, etc. I think Italian has the most direct-to-Latin word foundations and it’s very logical in pronunciation for the foreigner (unless you get into fancy regional dialects or something) . I find Portuguese words to be a bit easier to remember in my mind’s eye than Spanish because it’s notation is kinda peculiar and imperfect.
If you are into challenges, I kind of think it would help more to learn French, if social acceptance as a traveler is a factor. I dont think speaking Italian will get you anywhere better in Italy. You have to have family there to be treated well, unless yer a cute young lady, which you are not, to my knowledge.
It’s not so much for social acceptance, just that I aim to go to those places at some point and I always feel bad not being able to talk to locals in their own language besides please and thank you.
The other reasons can probably be explained by that hobbies thread…
I speak fluent Standard American English.
However, having grown up in the shadow of New York City, I can axe you if you wanna peesa DISS? And could well enough GeddoudaTOWN!, and/or simply FUGGEDDABOUDIT!!!
Tha beag Gaelic agam, agus
Je parle un peu Francais.
Inglese.
One could call Glaswegian and Philadelphianese their own seperate idioms, though. Just ask someone from Philly to say, " Aw, I’ll order a water." and you’ll see what I mean.
I used to be fluent enough in Portuguese that I could pass for Brazilian for about 10 minutes at parties and such.
Brazilian-- “Bla, bla, bla, studying this, doing that”
me-- “Oh! Wow! You don’t say! My goodness!”
B-- (here a long joke)
me-- laughs in correct place
B-- Cool party huh, I brought the barbecue, what did you bring?
me-- I brung the fruit salad.
B-- Um, you’re not actually Brazilian, are you?
I got to that point by hanging out with Brazilian grad students for about 2 yrs. They loved to give me tapes of their favorite music. I’d write the lyrics out as best as I could, and then ask them to correct what I had written and give me a translation. This was such a great experience, because along with the language I’d also get the story of why the music was meaningful for them.
For me, the words and phrases from lyrics stuck with me much better than what I learned from language tapes.
I purchased two courses on tape (10 tapes and 12 tapes) and listened to them obsessively. I took 3 college courses. When I actually went to Brazil, for the first 2 weeks all I could hear was the last word of every sentence. All the rest of the sentence went by in a blur. But I had enough vocabulary to be able to play 20 questions until I finally figured out what was going on.
Almost all the Brazilians I met were extremely hospitable about me learning their language, and enjoyed to the hilt the comedy that comes from the inevitable mistakes and miscommunications. They laughed with me, not at me.
Wow, I miss it!!
Haven’t worked on it for about 10 yrs…when I get back to it I plan to get the Rosetta stone series.
Anyway, I really recommend getting some music and working with that!
Um, you’re not actually Brazilian, are you?
until I finally figured out what was going on.