languages

i'm both fascinated and infatuated with languages and cultures to the point where i'm considering dedicating a large part of my life to studying and learning them. at present, i only speak three. obviously i speak english, también hablo español, at nagsasalita ako ng tagalog. aussi, je comprends et parle un peu le francais, e anche italiano, ma questo è soprattutto perché parlo spagnolo abbastanza bene. adivino que se tenga sentido a también hablar portugués, pero no lo hago. i can also barely speak korean to the point where i can't actually type that out in korean.

but anyway, enough showboating on my part; i want to learn more about just about every language out there. since it's nearly 1:30 in the morning i can't be bothered to type a long drawn-out post, but i'll leave my point at this for now: if any of you can offer anything to expand my knowledge of language and linguistics, as well as the knowledge of anyone else who might be interested, please don't be shy and help me/us out here.

Hm, about the danish language. Let me see.
Well our alphabet ends with ÆØÅ instead of the normal XYZ.
Also a lot of the grammatic rules are just things you learn when you grow up, it really doesnt make sense and i doubt you'd ever be fluent in danish if you weren't born here.
Also the most popular tongue twister for foreigners is: rød grød med fløde
If you have any other questions, just ask since i'm really not sure what to tell you, haha.

Edit: And eh, no clue how interesting this is to you but several english words nowadays are sort of danish words from the time where vikings dominated a big part of england.
Like:
"gate" (gade)
"knife" (kniv)
"husband" (husbond)
"call" (kalde)
"egg" (æg).


Edit: I speak danish fluently ofcourse, i learned english from games and from talking it with english people. I understand swedish and norwegian simply because of danish and i understand 70% of german, but i can't even dream of speaking it, and it's only written german i can seem to make sense of. Same goes for dutch, reading the text isn't a problem tbh lol. And i talk just a bit of french.

Im currently taking a class about language, though specifically about the English language, from the perspective of ESL, or EAL (English as Additional Language, the more politically correct term for ESL).

While it might not be completely akin to your interests, I'll leave these few points here that I found interesting from the class (all related to language):

1. Children are able to distinguish between different dialects and languages as early as 3 months old, and if children are exposed to different languages at a young age (between 3 months and 5 years old), they will have an easier time learning something. If a child grows up in an environment in which they are exposed to both English and Chinese, when they are older and speak one fluently (say Chinese) and need to learn the other (English), they will have an easier time picking it up, because they have heard the inflections of the words when they were young.

2. It is easier to learn from your first language. Simply put, because you have more experience and more understanding of your first language, you learn better in it. Say you're a Chinese student in an ESL class learning say Social Studies. You'll have a hard time, because you have to translate twice (social studies language into English, then into Chinese), and thus lose parts of its meaning in the translations (as nothing is able to be completely translated to hold the same context, meaning, and usage). In such a situation, the best way to understand would be to translate it into the home language (in this case, Chinese) and then think about it from that language.

3. The study of vocabulary is overrated because words have different meanings in different contexts (The one we used in class was "respect", where every group had a different definition of it, encompassing a wide range of characteristics, some even conflicting). The importance is not in the amount of vocabulary, but the correct choice and usage of whatever vocabulary you have a grip on.

As for myself, I speak 2 languages fluently (Cantonese, English), understand a third (Mandarin), and speak to some extent 2-3 others (French from high school, Spanish from living in Costa Rica, and whatever Japanese I picked up when I went there for exchange a few years ago). I'd have to say the fastest and most efficient way of learning a language is to go to a place that uses it, and to be engrossed in it. Things tend to stay better when they are put into use, even for a short period of time.

2. It is easier to learn from your first language. Simply put, because you have more experience and more understanding of your first language, you learn better in it. Say you're a Chinese student in an ESL class learning say Social Studies. You'll have a hard time, because you have to translate twice (social studies language into English, then into Chinese), and thus lose parts of its meaning in the translations (as nothing is able to be completely translated to hold the same context, meaning, and usage). In such a situation, the best way to understand would be to translate it into the home language (in this case, Chinese) and then think about it from that language.

Interesting.
I speak two languages fluently, Hebrew and English. I've found that I learn better if I take notes in the language the teacher is not using. That is, in high school in the USA I took notes in Hebrew. In University in Israel I took notes in English. Then in grad school, which was taught in English, I took notes in Hebrew again.
Translating what the teacher was saying forced me to actually understand the material rather than just write down every word uttered.

My entire family speaks Spanish and only a good 10% of my family can actually speak English. However, my mom told me that I was speaking English perfectly at the age of two, to the point where I could fool people into thinking I was American. This was most likely due to my mom being a single parent and always either having to leave me at home or at a daycare where most of what was spoken was English (TV, teachers). I never really learned Spanish until I was 5 because I was visiting family and they would never understand a thing I said. That said, despite my heavy Spanish background, English has always been my first language and my Spanish has now grown to be mediocre at best.

Like my Spanish, I also understand Dutch a lot better than I speak it. I was raised on a Dutch school system up until college, but I'm not all that good at speaking it, in fact I lost most of what I learned in school due to me not constantly touching up on it after I left home for college. However, if it were to be spoken to me, I can guarantee I know what's being said. I also noticed that because I had learned how to speak and understand Dutch, I could pick up a lot of things in German because of how similar the two languages are. Dutch has strange grammar rules but it's really an interesting language to me.

Languages aren't for me. Only way I seem to really learn them is using the language.

Finns have to study Swedish at school (probably going to change when I graduate from "college"), but barely anyone cares about it. Sure there's 100% Finns who speak Swedish as their native language, but they can also speak fluent Finnish.

So I'm just going to say that I speak Finnish and English. I'm interested in Japanese, but I don't know how the hell I'll pull that out. learning words is one thing, but learning hungreds of hieroglyphs and how to use them is another thing.

毎日、日本語を勉強する。
私の日本語はあまり上手ではないと思うが、でも皆は「そんなことないよ！　貴方の日本語は本当に上手だよ！」と言っていた。

Still learning, don't think I'm so great in it yet. I'll get there, eventually though. Been studying too long to not reach it.

Languages aren't for me. Only way I seem to really learn them is using the language.

Finns have to study Swedish at school (probably going to change when I graduate from "college"), but barely anyone cares about it. Sure there's 100% Finns who speak Swedish as their native language, but they can also speak fluent Finnish.

So I'm just going to say that I speak Finnish and English. I'm interested in Japanese, but I don't know how the hell I'll pull that out. learning words is one thing, but learning hungreds of hieroglyphs and how to use them is another thing.

Easier than it sounds really, since they mostly just borrow pieces from one another. Learning how to use them is something you just pick up naturally through immersion in the language.

I can tell you that Japanese actually has relatively simple grammar compared to most other languages. The only real big wall for people trying to learn Japanese is getting all the Chinese characters learned. That seems to be a huge wall of intimidation for most people. Pronunciation of syllables is relatively easy. There are less than 100 syllables used in the entire language, and pretty much all of them end in vowels. The sounds of them almost never change, so if you see あ it's always pronounced the same way regardless of what's around it. Exceptions would be particles (due to the fact that they at one point used to be pronounced one way but over time were pronounced differently for the sake of sentence fluidity) and syllables that (optionally) become whispered at the end for the sake of easier pronunciation. But all languages have small word-slurring for the sake of easier pronunciation, so that's not something too odd. It comes off naturally when you get enough contact with how it works.

Really, Japanese isn't really hard to learn so much as it is too intimidating for people to learn. That's why it'd probably be best to learn kanji right off the bat when learning Japanese, that way the rest of the road is smooth sailing.

I guess I could go on more about language learning tips I've picked up on my own, but I'm a bit too lazy to type it out right now.

Kana → Kanji → Learn basic grammar (Particles are HUGE in this language, they completely make the meaning of many sentences. Using the wrong one could twist a sentence pretty badly) → Learn vocabulary and intermediate and advance grammar through natural immersion and a dictionary. Learning words outside of context might help, but it's really better to see the word actually used.

After a while you should switch to monolingual dictionaries. Don't use your own native language to get definitions of words anymore, use the language you're learning to get the definition of the word.

English, Mandarin and some Cantonese...

Would be nice to learn Latin, so that I can read the grace properly during formals!

Hadriel

I also love learning new languages, it's just awesome to know you can now speak to even more people on the world. Though I guess it's hard to get a high level on more than 3-4 languages (though I still have many years in front of me). I currently roll in portuguese (mother language), english (12 years of studying it + using it daily on forums/games and watching shows in english), french (2 years of studying plus now 10 months of living in Paris) and just a little bit of spanish from having been quite a few times to Argentina, Uruguay and Chile.

2. It is easier to learn from your first language. Simply put, because you have more experience and more understanding of your first language, you learn better in it. Say you're a Chinese student in an ESL class learning say Social Studies. You'll have a hard time, because you have to translate twice (social studies language into English, then into Chinese), and thus lose parts of its meaning in the translations (as nothing is able to be completely translated to hold the same context, meaning, and usage). In such a situation, the best way to understand would be to translate it into the home language (in this case, Chinese) and then think about it from that language.
.

When I'm studying in a different language I usually won't translate things at all, what I'm studying here in France is all learned directly in french. If I had to take a test in portuguese on what I've learned here I would have a very difficult time. It's still harder than having classes in portuguese, of course, but that's just because I don't speak french as fluently. I never make the step french -> portuguese, attempting to translate doesn't work for me, I just change the language I think in and then work only on that language (like I'm currently thinking in english while I spent my day at work thinking in french).

I'm currently working on a personal project on teaching Vietnamese for free on Youtube.
Apparently, I suck at teaching, so I'm just saying. If I one day ever complete it, you'll be welcome to give feedbacks.

P.S: This was driven by the number of Vietnamese kids in the US who can't comprehend/use any of the language. Some of them actually do wish to study seriously yet have no means to.

interesting input, all of you. personally i've taken up the practice of taking all my class notes in spanish like SaptaZapta and reading novels in spanish if applicable (i just bought Rumbo al Hermoso Norte, friends who read it in english said it would be a good read). i'm also trying to improve my french, but since my entire OS is set to spanish i can't do much immersion when it comes to computers. all i can do is set specific websites or programs to french.

@shidoshi i also prefer to learn languages without translation; since i live in california where there's a large spanish-speaking population i don't have a problem with my spanish, but i think french is going to be harder for me once i get to the point where i can communicate quasi-effectively.

@shidoshi i also prefer to learn languages without translation; since i live in california where there's a large spanish-speaking population i don't have a problem with my spanish, but i think french is going to be harder for me once i get to the point where i can communicate quasi-effectively.

Regarding french, you can come talk to me. I'm also still learning french though, but I can keep some conversation, I've been here for 10 months already =D

<3 Ben.

As you know, I'm going to college for East Asian Lanauges. :3
I speak English natively, born in the south and have a bit of a twang I guess. However, I've been learning Chinese for three years Japanese for two and Korean for three I guess, however Korean for me is very limited because it's self taught online slang and random words that I pick up.

Give Chinese a try Ben, it's well worth the time and if you can jump the biggest hurdle of pronunciation and character meanings then the rests is cake.

I speak English natively, born in the south and have a bit of a twang I guess.

I've never heard a southern twang in your voice. Ever. If you told me that you were born in the south I wouldn't believe it.

I've never heard a southern twang in your voice. Ever. If you told me that you were born in the south I wouldn't believe it.

Really? People mention that I do. I personally don't think I do, but I guess it's just with some of the words I say.

I really wonder how you would do trying to speak Dutch. People who aren't Dutch seem to have a massive problem with pronouncing the letters G and R the way we do.
It litteraly sounds like they are choking trying to say a word like Gast/Goed/Geel etc etc

I really wonder how you would do trying to speak Dutch. People who aren't Dutch seem to have a massive problem with pronouncing the letters G and R the way we do.
It litteraly sounds like they are choking trying to say a word like Gast/Goed/Geel etc etc

When I was in belgium I was immeresed in dutch, I found G's quite simple, but the R is a whole different story, I simply cannot roll the R from the back of my tongue, it has to be done from the front.

Maar... mijn Nederlands is niet zo goed...

dutch doesn't seem so hard, but the pronunciation part could be complicated. i already have trouble speaking french since everything comes out in a spanish accent for me.

i found this really interesting:

[video=youtube;L8oz6ad2o1w]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8oz6ad2o1w&feature=channel_video_title[/video]

EDIT: this too.

[video=youtube;eOpi2wz5iBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOpi2wz5iBE&feature=relmfu[/video]

Spanish is my first language, English is my second, I've learned some in school and most of it online, and I speak a little Chinese because my parents are =]