Thread: Learning Languages

Originally Posted by Hillie

I'll have a look at those Pimsleur ones for Russian. What I do now is study the book I have and pronounce it and then get a lot of молодеч from my girlfriend. I prefer to study with something that tells me how it works, and not just senseless repetition of words (I tried someone's Rosetta for two hours and ditched it ). What helps is to get in touch with the language. I haven't studied a lot of Swedish, but I can read it decently and can keep up with most conversations.

Besides the spoken languages I know/use a bunch of programming languages, which has shifted from the generic programming stuff to HVL/HDL/property stuff.

JimR: I'm a native Dutch speaker and there are a few more here on the forum.

Indeed...can you tell me how in god's name do you pronounce that G sound? I sprained my uvula on that one, I think...

Has anyone used pimsleur and/or rosetta stone?

I have both for mandarin. Been attempted to learn and failing...

I recently grabbed some Rosetta Stone, and I have the Pimsleur too. I think they both do very well for what they're focused on. Pimsluer is focused on getting you conversational asap, while Rosetta Stone is focused on vocabulary.

Keep at the mandarin- it'll eventually come. From what I understand, there are some tough sounds involved that we don't use, making it pretty tough.

Originally Posted by JimR

Indeed...can you tell me how in god's name do you pronounce that G sound? I sprained my uvula on that one, I think...

As one of my friendly colleagues said: "Dutch..... it's not a language, it's a throat disease!".

I tried a few times and it appears, maybe slightly overstated, it's bringing the back of your tongue up in the back of your mouth where the front stays down and one exhales and makes the sound.

Hmmm, that doesn't sound helpful at all. Let me see if I can come up with a better explanation.

Learning languages is a great thing and I applaud your effort.
I would love to learn more Spanish and improve my French beyond a grade one level as well.

X

I try to learn European Portuguese as my first Romance language and it is tough. Whenever I switch my TV to a Portuguese channel, I despair that I will never be able to understand them. Fortunately for me, there are pretty good free lessons on internet that one can use together with books or software and which make the learning more fun.

Has anyone tried to learn a foreign language through their non-native language? I am a Czech living in the US and most of the resources I can get here are in English. It is somehow strange to learn Portuguese via English for me as the Portuguese grammar, word ordering etc. is definitely more natural for Czechs than for the English speaking people; and I do get lost in translation occasionally, too.

I learned Norwegian (my wife has family there).

11 weeks on a submarine with a couple tapes and a text or two got me pretty far. I haven't really studied a bit since becoming a landlubber.

German will be very usefull the day you will go to Solingen to get a custom blade.
German, latin, ancient greek and spanish are all languages I should get back to. I can read a latin text and translate it pretty well as I read, but grammar isn't too good.
Chinese, japanese or korean will be the next language I will learn. My dream is to work as a sommelier in an asian hotel. Russian could be helpful in this setting in China.
French/english, french/spanish or english/spanish is a combination too many people would fall under.

I am glad we have so many languages in the world. It would be a boring place if we all spoke the same. I enjoy speaking spanish and have a chance to practice it a lot here in California. I suppose learning a language that no one else in the area spoke would be much more challenging to keep up with.

I've learned to get by quite well in Spanish by having a Colombian girlfriend. On the pillow is my favorite way to study. She and I are long through, so I would love to Start Italian with a beautiful new "teacher"