language
 

anybody here bi/multi-lingual, or trying to learn a new language?

any thoughts on the best ways to pick up a language, or reflections on the experience of trying to learn a language in general?

i got interested in mandarin chinese cause at work i always find spent cardboard with the symbols on it. at first i just tried learning the symbols... started practicing drawing them and ****, but then got interested in speaking the language as well. so now i've started doing pimsleur. i torrented rosetta stone but found it really wasnt that useful for chinese. so i've been doing the pimsleur tapes and so far i can basically introduce myself and explain that i don't speak the language very well.

i know batlord said something about cantonese vs mandarin which made me look it up and apparently both are different chinese languages. mandarin is the most commonly spoken language, and i think cantonese is the 2nd most common. there are up to like 10 different chinese languages. but one interesting thing about it is that when people speak mandarin vs speaking cantonese, the two languages are different and their speakers cant understand eachother. however, when it comes to the written form, they use the same symbols. so a person who speaks mandarin could write a letter to a person who speaks cantonese, and vice versa. they just can't speak out loud and understand one another, cause they assign different sounds to the various symbols.

I speak fluent English, good Latin, and passable French (Canadian) and German. Unfortunately I can't write in the latter two.

English is my primary language but I also spit hot fire.

Been doing Spanish for about two years now, feel like I'm not pushing myself enough but can have a conversation (just about). The reality is a lot of the time it's just gonna be tedious as fuck but if you don't really want to do it you're gonna get nowhere.

Spanish is good for me cos I have an interest in a lot of South American stuff. I do language exchange online with some Uruguayans which helps, their English is far superior to my Spanish though.

Re: Courses, I found Michel Thomas's to be the best, Pimsleur bored me to tears. Not tried RS but heard it's wank.

English to Spanish is meant to be quite easy, English to Mandarin :eek:, my mate's doing that, he said that there are no proper tenses or verb conjugations. 4 tones are used to distinguish meanings from pronunciations of the same word and 1 sound can have over 10 meanings. Then there's the writing system as well :D.

Suffice to say though, there is no easy way to learn a language and there is no substitute for living in a country that speaks it.

lol funny thing is i live in a country where spanish is everywhere, and i even have spanish inlaws that i would like to converse with, so i have all the reasons in the world to speak spanish

yet cant get interested in it

only interested in ch!nky language

cause its so alien and ****, makes it interesting

i feel like everyone and their mother speaks spanish

if i pull off mandarin i'll be one of the precious few



edit- pet_sounds would speak latin... this cracker is officially the oldest 14 year old alive

precious few billion lol... good luck.

i count the entire population of china as 1... similar to how a colony of ants comprises 1 super organism

nice attempt to rain on my parade, as always, though. you manic depressive new jersey dwelling ****

I said good luck..

If the mandarin fails I recommend trying russian. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit in high school even though I was forced into it. I even ended up competing in the olympiada my senior year.

I'm fluent in sarcasm. No really.

I learned a bit of German (sprechen sie deutsch), but it was just enough to get me around when I was there, and I've forgotten most of it. Funniest thing was when you got into a taxi, and said to go to the bar, the driver would always say "Oh jah! I take you to disco tech!". At first, I was like "No man, I wanna go to a bar", but then I found that they mean the same thing. At least it was like that in the 80's.

Immersion. Its the only way.

I did French all throughout school, but haven't spoken it regularly in about 7 years.

Hey BD! Welcome back! Too long away you have been! :thumb:

I'm quite decent at Korean. And Roxy is right, immersion is the key.

i sorta resent the fact that all the asians around here seem to be korean rather than chinese

I can converse in ASL, albeit clumsily. I learned a very small amount of pointed Hebrew, could never speak it but was slowly beginning to learn to read and write more confidently when that opportunity ended. I can still pick out letters and remember the very basic stuff but it's been a couple of years. I'd like to be fluent in as many languages as possible but it would make the most sense if I just aim for learning Spanish.

Fluent in English, trying to learn Spanish and speaking a crooked Portuguese.

The fastest progress I've had is obviously with the Portuguese, since very few people in this country speak English and you have to survive somehow. That makes you brain work extra hard. But I have to say I had the great fortune that my company was paying for private, one on one lessons with a teacher, which I had 2 times per week.

It's hard as hell but I am now very proud of the fact that I can understand most Portuguese and can communicate reasonably well.

I tried learning Spanish on my own (bought some books, read a lot of newspapers, my partner is Spanish and speaks to me half Spanish half English) and I am still not at the level where I would feel comfortable speaking it. The sole reasons being that I'm too embarrassed.

So I plan to find a Cervantes institute somewhere and SPEAK SPEAK SPEAK. And combine that with lessons in grammar. Too much grammar can be disheartening but as my teacher always says, repetition is the mother of learning and eventually, things will start seeping in without you noticing. But you DO have to do the work.

Learning a new language is NOT easy. Perseverance is the key.

Good luck. :)

i find cardboard with chinese writing on it at work and i cut it out and take it home with me. my coworkers know me well enough to expect this kind of behavior but i do get some strange looks from the people at the security checkpoint when they check my bag

Yeah, if I was working the security checkpoint I'd give you some strange looks too. Have you tried searching for immersion software such as Rosetta Stone? Check with SourceForge, you might be able to find something there. Better yet see if you can make a Chinese friend and then communicate with them via Skype, if they're willing to help you. The biggest thing you have to realize is that when you say "Chinese" there's a dozen different sub dialects. Same thing with Korean.

yea i torrented rosetta stone... didn't really get much from it tbh. i didn't get very far in it but yea

i also got pimsluer which basically just drills the same basic phrases in you... i make progress with that slowly but surely. but i really don't have the time to really 'immerse' myself

and i realize that there's more than one chinese language.. mandarin is the spoken language i'm working on.. but as for the symbols, they are used in more than just mandarin hence why i call them chinese

Yup, they are. It's just that they mean different things. For instance Water in Korean (물) is used in different things such as drink can or hair coloring.

From what I heard about RS, it teaches you shit you won't need. And re: Pimsleur, that's spot on and is why I couldn't really get into it. I'm probably going to finish it though, imo just bombard yourself with as many ways of learning as possible.

Try Michel Thomas, there is a Mandarin course but I can't comment on it, my mate has used it and he says it is excellent. Did the Spanish and it was top notch, you get an understanding for how the language actually works as opposed to phrases being repeated for 30 minutes like on Pimsleur. Can construct sentences pretty quickly and understand written Spanish and that. Each unit has about 10 lessons in it, there are 13 units (8 + 5 advanced) and each file is about 6/7 minutes long. Can just stick it on your phone on the train or whatever and the job's a good 'un tbh.

I have the Dutch course as well because it's meant to be one of the easiest languages for a native English speaker to learn and I enjoyed the Spanish course so I'm gonna try that.

If you want other suggestions:

• Sign up to Twitter and follow accounts that teach that language
• Use Memrise on the internet, fun way of learning words & gives you mnemonics for remembering shit. Especially handy for Chinese characters
• Get Duolingo
• Try to get some children's books in that language

Be warned the bloke student on the Michel Thomas course is a thick twat and annoying as fuck.

i'm pretty sure that children's books in china are just sewing machine user manuals

thanks for the suggestions though. i'll see if i can't find that michel thomas thing for free online.. i have never heard of it tbh. is it an audio program? that's the main thing i like about pimsleur.. i can have it on while i work or do other ****. of course it requires me to say the phrases out loud, so i end up walking around the truck at work going ching chong chang chong to myself

Yeah it's an audio program. Having used both I think MT is much better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rsMIbxQK4U

The whole thing is on Youtube? :D

This is the one you want - Total Mandarin Chinese (Learn Mandarin Chinese with the Michel Thomas Method): Amazon.co.uk: Harold Goodman: 9781444138030: Books

:D

I'm bilingual (Russian and German) and I know some French and Spanish, but I've forgotten most of those two by now.
I've learned English at school, but really got to know it watching cartoons, and later through books and movies.

^that's sort of what i'm hoping to do with chinese.... been watching crouching tiger hidden dragon and **** like that. i recognize some of the basic phrases and words that pimsleur introduced.. but yea i need a lot more work

i tried 2 torrents of the michel thomas program for mandarin but none of them have finished downloading successfully... one seems completely dead, and the other installed a bit then stopped, then installed a bit more and stopped.. currently stopped at like 49%. not really looking to spend money on this **** but if it was like 10-20 bucks then maybe.

Not sure whether it's possible to really learn such a completely alien language by oneself. Possibly the very basics, but for anything besides that you might need a teacher, tons of effort and some linguistic talent.
Especially it being a tonal language might make it really hard.
I guess knowing the phonemes of five languages I'm a little better equipped than most people, but whenever a chinese friend of mine tries to teach me the pronunciation of some word, I feel completely lost. I can't even pronounce his name 100% right, but luckily we call him "The Chinese Guy" anyway.

yea i know, that's basically the only reason i want to learn it

cause its like everyone and their mother speaks spanish

don't know anyone(personally) who isn't chinese that speaks mandarin

Cause you couldn't go for a romance language something close to your native tounge.
Diving into the deep end no floaties, admirable,but you'll give up.

alright, we'll see

i'll use that post as motivation to continue

then in a year or two when i speak decent chinese i'll bump this thread and shame you

It's not hard to fake being decent at a language online when translators are relatively accurate and easily accessible. Make a youtube video talking shit to her in Mandarin.

Good luck with that...I'll except a shaming from you when you speak Arabic, like I do.

Anyone tried Duolingo? It's addictive.

Yeah it's good.

Cool, my name is DwnWthWlvs if you want to add me.

You should make that your name on here. All the cool kids are doing it.

i considered arabic but chinese seems more interesting to me

the only benefit to speaking arabic for me would be being able to read the quran and converse with bearded thugs

And it sounds hardcore.

I have this theory that there is no Arabic and people just make that throaty ch-sound a lot.
Just like there's no Russian and people are just drunk and add -ski to words and sound angry doing that.
And of course there's no German, people are just trying to sound hitlery, while Adi in turn just babbled nonsense himself, rolling the R a lot.

it does

but chinese is funny sounding which makes it fun to learn. cause of the tonal nature of the language, it's impossible to try to speak it without sounding like a kung fu parody

plus chinese just looks cooler in written form, which is one of my main priorities

plus it has over a billion soulless chinese native speakers, making china the world's largest ant colony