Furrin Languages

[CastleRubric]

….anyone have any experiences learning a language other than Engrish as an adult?

I'm learning Russian and have tackled three others at different times for different reasons

Russian seems stripped of the 'connective tissue' like helping verbs and tense….,makes it pretty easy from that standpoint……

any helpful hints or websites you use?

I jus listen to audio CD's while commuting and then practice a few works with an engineer at work from Ukraine…..

 

[UKserialkiller]

The Pimsleur method worked when I tried doing Cantonese for two weeks. That **** worked. But I quit like I do most things in life. Just listen to that in your car on way to store, work, anywhere.

 

[CastleRubric]

I've used that company's CD's for reinforcing Japanese -- agree that their format is good

Cantonese has a lot more tones than Mandarin does't it?

Willy, did you have someone that spoke Cantoneese that you could bounce the pronunciation off of real time?

Chinese is a *****…….

 

[Phantom]

oreignFay anguagesLay are impleSay

 

[UKserialkiller]

I've used that company's CD's for reinforcing Japanese -- agree that their format is good

Cantonese has a lot more tones than Mandarin does't it?

Willy, did you have someone that spoke Cantoneese that you could bounce the pronunciation off of real time?

Chinese is a *****…….

Yep. The tones are what get me. Other than that, Chinese structure is pretty simple. It's the tones that make it all messed up. My wife speaks alittle bit of Cantonese. Very little. She is fluent in Japanese and Malay. My father in law is very fluent in it. So no, I didn't have someone to bounce off. What made me quit was I tried like hell to get a couple of basic sentence structures with the right pitch tone for about two weeks. Tried to speak to my father in law and he couldn't understand a damn word. He basically told me to quit because I suck at it. haha

But you have someone to speak too. That's the most important thing. Keep with it man. Don't quit.

 

[HymanKaplan_rivals48997]

I was a Czech/Slovak linguist in the Air Force. Czech wasn't that difficult, it's probably one of the easier languages that was offered at DLI (I attended in 1985)

If you can get some native language newspapers, it helps a lot.

 

[Big_Blue79]

I've used that company's CD's for reinforcing Japanese -- agree that their format is good

Cantonese has a lot more tones than Mandarin does't it?

Willy, did you have someone that spoke Cantoneese that you could bounce the pronunciation off of real time?

Chinese is a *****…….

Took a year of Mandarin in college. It's by far the hardest class I ever took, and I was in the freshmen level crap. If I just had to learn the speaking/understanding and pinyin parts it wouldn't be too bad (although there's a lot of different sounds and tones), but adding in the characters, even simplified, is like a whole 'nother class. I used the Rosetta Stone stuff for a little bit. It seemed effective, but I just didn't have the time or will to keep going.

 

[Tampa UK]

Sort of related, I've wanted to start my children in some language classes because I figure something like arabic or Mandarin will be very useful to know 20 years from now. They're both too young to even know english at this point, but supposedly thats the best time to start.

 

[funKYcat75]

I only speak the 'easy' languages (Spanish, French and some Italian) so I got nothing for you. However, I did read an interesting thought/question today. If someone is born deaf, what language to they 'think' in? Stuff like that blows my mind.

 

[CastleRubric]

I only speak the 'easy' languages (Spanish, French and some Italian) so I got nothing for you. However, I did read an interesting thought/question today. If someone is born deaf, what language to they 'think' in? Stuff like that blows my mind.

that just made my freakyin head hurt

I think learning any other language is physiologically good for you -- and I also think there' a connection between the parts of your brain that supports music -- and language

German is fun because no matter what you say….it comes out sounding like you're invading and torching a small village…….something I think too much about

I think Auburn is going to run at will on us
I think it'll be a higher scoring game

31-27 --- ochen hresho (wish I could write the actual Russian acrylic for that)

 

[Tinker Dan]

I only speak the 'easy' languages (Spanish, French and some Italian) so I got nothing for you. However, I did read an interesting thought/question today. If someone is born deaf, what language to they 'think' in? Stuff like that blows my mind.

Like... How does a blind man know when to quit wiping?

 

[Hank Camacho]

Sort of related, I've wanted to start my children in some language classes because I figure something like arabic or Mandarin will be very useful to know 20 years from now. They're both too young to even know english at this point, but supposedly thats the best time to start.

I dated a girl whose family fled Azerbaijan when she was very young and ended up in Kentucky of all places. When she got here she was 7ish and her older brother was 13ish.

She speaks English like a Midwestern newscaster (you would not know that she was not born here) but her brother has a very heavy Russian accent. It is kind of amazing to hear the difference between them. I attribute it to the age difference between them while learning the language. I would start your kids learning another language as soon as possible.

And, as an aside, they spoke a mix of Russian and English at home that was always hilarious to listen to. Russian may actually be an angrier and more forceful language than German, if that is in fact possible.

 

[KingOfBBN]

Russia's alphabet is different than ours though, right? Was that difficult to learn and get used to?