The Language-Learning Coffeehouse

[Omni]

Jun 17, 2011 18:20:45 GMT -5 Tam said:

(Oh, and also... as a bit of a preemptive reminder... Proboards doesn't like us to communicate on the boards in any language other than English, so it'll be best to keep the non-English exchanges in this thread to a minimum. I think little snippets will probably be alright... just as long as we don't start having full-blown multilingual conversations. ^^

Actually, they removed that part from their ToS. I think they still generally had the idea for specific forums to stick with specific languages for the most part, but you still shouldn't have to worry.

[Celestial]

Methods of learning...my one for learning English was basically 'stick yourself head first in a foreign country's school and hope for the best'. xD Although it works best when you're still a kid.

Tamia, Ukrainian is very nice and very useful to learn. It is very similar to Russian in many respects, although the alphabet is different in a few respects (one of the most dramatic is the fact that Ukrainian Cyrillic features the letter 'i') so if you learn Ukrainian, it is easy to make the transition to Russian and vice versa.

It may be just me but Cyrillic is not as scary as most people think. Many of the letters can be matched up to ones in the Latin alphabet (although depending on who you ask, some Cyrillic letters can use several different combinations of Latin letters to create an equivalent) in a practice called 'Translit'. It may be theoretically possible to learn Cyrillic using the Latin alphabet first to get used to the sounds and then begin to convert that knowledge into raw Cyrillic.

[Jove]

I speak English (barely) and I used to speak a bit of French. It fell out of my head though. I'd like to learn Japanese for TOTALLY PRACTICAL REASONS. Also German because my ancestors were German and it's a really cool language.

[Tam]

Jun 17, 2011 18:31:36 GMT -5 Omni said:

Jun 17, 2011 18:20:45 GMT -5 Tam said:

(Oh, and also... as a bit of a preemptive reminder... Proboards doesn't like us to communicate on the boards in any language other than English, so it'll be best to keep the non-English exchanges in this thread to a minimum. I think little snippets will probably be alright... just as long as we don't start having full-blown multilingual conversations. ^^

Actually, they removed that part from their ToS. I think they still generally had the idea for specific forums to stick with specific languages for the most part, but you still shouldn't have to worry.

Yeeeeeah sorry guys, my bad. ^^; You're right, Omni; the ToS no longer list any rules about language that I can see. I was basing that statement off an older thread that I remember getting removed, but I forgot there'd been a rule change. Apologies.

Jun 17, 2011 18:36:55 GMT -5 Celestial said:

Tamia, Ukrainian is very nice and very useful to learn. It is very similar to Russian in many respects, although the alphabet is different in a few respects (one of the most dramatic is the fact that Ukrainian Cyrillic features the letter 'i') so if you learn Ukrainian, it is easy to make the transition to Russian and vice versa.

It may be just me but Cyrillic is not as scary as most people think. Many of the letters can be matched up to ones in the Latin alphabet (although depending on who you ask, some Cyrillic letters can use several different combinations of Latin letters to create an equivalent) in a practice called 'Translit'. It may be theoretically possible to learn Cyrillic using the Latin alphabet first to get used to the sounds and then begin to convert that knowledge into raw Cyrillic.

It would definitely be cool to be able to use Ukrainian to get started on Russian. =D And thanks, Celes — that actually makes me feel a lot better about learning the alphabet. xD; I haven't really been around a lot of Ukrainian speakers who could tell me about it. The language is usually only spoken by the oldest residents of my community. Younger generations just don't learn it anymore, which I find kind of sad.


As for methods of learning — my French has been mostly immersion-based, I think. I spent about eight months living with a mixed group of Francophones and Anglophones (and one bilingual), and some of that time was spent in a largely French-speaking city, so I kind of needed to figure out the language in order to get by. Some of those Francophones remain very good friends of mine, so I still get occasional practice while talking to them.

I also took a year of beginner's French classes in university, which filled in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge, like grammar and conventions and such. I think you need both formal study and immersion in order to learn any language properly. They each cover very different aspects of the language. >.>

[Terra]

Ooh, this looks cool. =D I haven't had a ton of experience with languages besides English, but I just started a Spanish 101 class, and I'm hoping to continue to pursue that. I've also attempted Chinese and Italian, but never got very far in either one. (I might want to return to these eventually - Chinese because I'm half-Chinese myself, and Italian because it's similar to Spanish.) Japanese looks interesting, too. I think I'll focus on Spanish for the time being, though. I want to have a decent grounding in that before attempting others. Otherwise, I might start mixing things up. XD;

Jun 17, 2011 20:33:09 GMT -5 Tam said:

Jun 17, 2011 18:36:55 GMT -5 Celestial said:

Tamia, Ukrainian is very nice and very useful to learn. It is very similar to Russian in many respects, although the alphabet is different in a few respects (one of the most dramatic is the fact that Ukrainian Cyrillic features the letter 'i') so if you learn Ukrainian, it is easy to make the transition to Russian and vice versa.

It may be just me but Cyrillic is not as scary as most people think. Many of the letters can be matched up to ones in the Latin alphabet (although depending on who you ask, some Cyrillic letters can use several different combinations of Latin letters to create an equivalent) in a practice called 'Translit'. It may be theoretically possible to learn Cyrillic using the Latin alphabet first to get used to the sounds and then begin to convert that knowledge into raw Cyrillic.

It would definitely be cool to be able to use Ukrainian to get started on Russian. =D And thanks, Celes — that actually makes me feel a lot better about learning the alphabet. xD; I haven't really been around a lot of Ukrainian speakers who could tell me about it. The language is usually only spoken by the oldest residents of my community. Younger generations just don't learn it anymore, which I find kind of sad.

I actually know a couple of Ukrainian girls who know the language. One of them started learning it before she started learning English. XD They've gone to Ukrainian school since they were young and learned it there, along with talking to their parents, of course. So, it's not totally disappearing around here, at least.

[Sq]

I so badly want to be fluent in a second language someday. But so far I haven't been very ambitious in achieving that goal. ;__; I took the 2-year minimum Spanish in middle and high school, and when I got to college for some reason I thought it would be cool to learn French... but I nearly failed out of it. Now I'm going back to Spanish this fall. And I've forgotten almost everything I learned back when I was 13, but hopefully the easy stuff will come back to me. Hey, I still know all the colors and stuff! =D

I'm excited to go back to learning Spanish! I like it a lot more than French, and found it easier (or maybe it just seemed easier because I learned it at a younger age... and also it wasn't college XD). The French pronunciation was sooo hard for me. I had barely been exposed to any French before that, so it was all totally new. I'm around a lot of Spanish where I live, which will be nice when I finally learn it.

Hmm, other than that, I dunno. I know a ton of random Japanese words from watching too much anime, but that doesn't really count. xD But that's another language I wouldn't mind learning someday.

[linsay|ahdodadodaday]

i think like everyone here i got into japanese thru anime and that was one of the main reasons i started learning japanese. but i think, inevitably, as an chinese gal my attention turned to the korean language and culture so i think when i finish japanese i'm going to start with korean i've heard the grammar is quite similar to japanese so i'd hope it wouldn't be /too/ difficult to learn...but if i did it would be my sixth alphabet (if you count simplified and trad chinese characters as an alphabet xD)

i think my favourite language right now, aside from korean, is french. i did it for 6 years and the only reason i stopped it was because i felt the course was ridiculous (srsly, some of the vocab and topics we covered i don't think even native speakers would know xD) and i didn't like the small groups we were learning in, i prefer massive classes :3

and it's interesting that someone brought out learning methods. my view on these has completely changed after i met possibly the most amazing person ever (in my eyes anyway x3) just randomly in a starbucks. i was revising latin vocab out loud with some of my friends for the exam that afternoon in starbucks when we were interrupted by a guy who was interested to know what we were doing. turns out he was a doctor for the UN and the WHO, and was responsible for founding a language training programme in the UN and overseeing the training of UN doctors to be proficient in at least 5 languages so that they could go on missions to developing countries. the reason that he had interrupted us was because he thought that the 'western' way of teaching languages was absolute nonsense and wanted to give us a lecture on learning languages and revising for our latin test 'properly'. i won't go into detail because some of it was quite...woah, rude xD but it must have worked cus i scored 186/200 in my latin test in the end x3 but yeah, he was a really nice and knowledgeable man and i could see what he meant because my japanese teacher uses a 'japanese' style rather than western style of teaching and it's completely different but more efficient imo :3

[Deleted]

I don't know English at all, unfortunately. My desire to wax poetic and be a sesquepedalian are impossible.

But seriously now...

I took three years of high school Spanish, and I am planning on teaching myself to speak it from here on. I don't think I can say I "know" it yet, though, especially having had a horrible teacher this year who honestly made me forget what I learned in the first two. ...I also can count to five in French and (thanks to The Book Thief) swear in German, but I don't think that those count.

I plan to take Japanese (or Arabic, if Japanese isn't offered) in college, then I want to teach myself German. Japanese for the nerdy purpose of translating video games when there isn't an international release (looking at you, Capcom) and German because I want to visit some German speaking areas.

[ZiYu]

Everyone here knows or is learning so many languages. Seriously. You guys are so amazing. *is swept away by everyone's mad skills*

I'm only bilingual myself. =P English is my first language, and I've been learning Chinese (Mandarin, and simplified, thankyouverymuch) for nine years. Out of necessity, not interest.

And I pretty much never did any work on languages outside of class, which explains my still-lackluster Chinese. Can't go without reading if you really want to pick up the language.

Haha. I haven't read a single book in Chinese. Like. In ever. *is shot*

[Sock]

I only speak English fluently, but I know a little French and I'm planning on learning Norwegian (strange choice, I know). I just find it hard to find a language program I like. :/

[Pacmanite]

I don't know many languages, and I never had the patience to do more than just keep up with most language classes I took at school.

Except Latin. <3 I love Latin. It's so structured and composed, and yet powerful, meaty. Reading the works of Classical authors in the original language is something of visceral experience... what would normally be mediated through a translation (sometimes a stuffy old one at that) you have to deal with first-hand. Poetry is probably my favourite genre to translate.

Ooh, and if anyone here's interested, I'm partway through translating a very bizarre 9th century letter, Ratramnus' Epistola De Cynocephalis. Because I'm sure you're dying to know whether people who have dog heads should be considered human or not. xD ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=news&action=display&thread=46940

[insanepurpleone]

English is the only language I know fluently. I studied Spanish for four years, so I could probably get by with Spanish if I ever needed to, but my grammar is atrocious. I also studied Japanese for a year, but I really only know bits and pieces of it. I also recently took a class on Latin and Greek word roots in English, which was interesting. And useful, since English has borrowed so much vocabulary from those languages.

I'd love to learn Dutch, since that's where my dad's side of the family is from, but Dutch language programs aren't really common here. XD I'm really more in the "I'd like to learn a bit of lots of different languages" camp; if I had space in my schedule, I'd try to fit in a lot more language classes.

I'm actually a linguistics major, which might explain my interest in broad language knowledge as opposed to learning one language fluently (not that I wouldn't like to be fluent in another language, though). People don't really seem to get what linguistics is very well, though. The first two questions I get when I tell someone my major are almost always "What is that?" and "How many languages do you speak?" As my semantics professor liked to say, linguists study language, not necessarily languages. Yes, many linguists focus on a particular language, dialect, or language group, but it's a bit more complex than that!

[linsay|ahdodadodaday]

Jun 22, 2011 9:10:46 GMT -5 Pacmanite said:

Except Latin. <3 I love Latin. It's so structured and composed, and yet powerful, meaty. Reading the works of Classical authors in the original language is something of visceral experience... what would normally be mediated through a translation (sometimes a stuffy old one at that) you have to deal with first-hand. Poetry is probably my favourite genre to translate.

^
YOU LOVE LATIN TOO?! ooomg love you <3
xD
i love the poetry too (catullus and ovid are my favourites), it's the analysing that i hate the most xD but like you, i love reading it all in the original latin; there are some feelings and meanings you can get from the latin that just can't be conveyed in an english translation <3

[Shadaras]

Latin is awesome and I would love to learn it someday. xD

English is the only language I'm fluent in. I've taken three quarters of college Italian, so I have a decent academic knowledge of it. I'd like to keep going with Italian, though perhaps not as formally; it's a beautiful language.

I know scraps of French (took a semester, hated the spelling) and Spanish (it permeates the culture here). Don't feel a need to really study either; I can half-understand a lot of them from my general understanding plus Italian and English, anyway.

I'd love to learn Hebrew, weirdly enough. xD I suspect this is because of Wolf, in large part. At some point I'll be around someone who knows the alphabet, at least, long enough for them to explain to me how to read it, at the very least. :3

I think it'd be awesome to be fluent in another language, but it's more interesting (or easier, at least) to just pick up bits and pieces of everything. Though it does get difficult keeping languages apart; the bits of French and Spanish I know get blurred into Italian fairly often as is. >.>

[Deleted]

Jun 22, 2011 12:51:50 GMT -5 Shadaras said:

I'd love to learn Hebrew, weirdly enough. xD I suspect this is because of Wolf, in large part. At some point I'll be around someone who knows the alphabet, at least, long enough for them to explain to me how to read it, at the very least. :3

Hebrew is awesome. =D Speaking as someone who only knows the alphabet and little to no vocab, of course. But it's a very pretty-sounding language, and I'd really fancy learning a Semitic language--Arabic is an appealing language, too.