Do you speak another language?

furnace said:
One of the things I've always wanted to do is learn another language, namely french. My grandad speaks (well, spoke - he had a stroke and forgot a lot :eek: ) French, German, Spanish and English, fluently, and could speak a little bit of many other languages. He always said to me that once you learn one new language, the others become a lot easier...

Can you speak other languages? How did you learn them? I'm hesitant about buying these "Learn French" dvds, I had one before but it just taught you loads of odd words, rather than how to string together sentances and actually speak...
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I did French at A-level, but what really helped me wasnt so much the classroom aspect, but the fact that I lived there for 3 months at one point. Its amazing how quickly you can pick up a language when you're immersed in it.

One thing you could try is finding a foreigner who wants to learn/improve English. A friend of mine did this with a Chilean lady in London. Every week he;d go to her home (or vice versa) for a couple of hours, and they'd converse in one language or the other, alternating. He learnt Spanish really quickly....

(Obviously once he was done he SENT HER BACK ;))
 
Puedo hablar un poco español. Puedo pedir una cerveza o ayuda con direcciones.

But my spelling is appauling and tenses are all over the place...:(

I can order a beer in greek and I know a fair bit of french.
 
Greek and broken Italian. I'd like to become fluent in Italian as well as spanish, and I also want to learn Arabic in the near future.

By the way, has anyone tried the Rosetta stone way of learning a language?
 
I can speak Spanish and Dutch Fluently because of my dad is half South African and half Lebanese i can speak a little Italian too but i only know how to swear :p
 
A.N.Other said:
I would love to learn Chinese (well, Cantonese), though. That's an amazing language.
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Might be better of learning Mandarin like everyone else? :p

I'd love to give it a go, but i just cant see myself getting anywhere. Defeatist, i know!
 
GCSE A Grade French and then some (doing AS forced by stupid high school, we did the GCSE 2 years early -__-)

Started Spanish (not by choice, again) this year, but am quite miserable at it :P
 
I did G.C.S.E French a year early, Grade C higher Tier, and just about managed a C in Spanish, lower tier. God knows how! Cant speak a full sentence of it anymore lol
 
I did A-Level French and GCSE German. I have never really had call to use them but sometimes I'm suprised how much I remember when I need it. Also learning some Spanish at the moment.
 
Crispy Pigeon said:
I'm doing degree-level German and learning Ancient Greek.

The second is a lot, lot more fun for some reason. :confused:
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I salute you, I hated ancient Greek and I couldn't learn a word of it :p
 
Can't speak any other languages. I had to study french for 5 years and it was something like 3 hours a week at our school. I ended up with a grade D but honestly can't say anything in it of any use. Waste of time for me, could have finished school earlier :p ;)
 
Speak Two Languages and Ward off Dementia

A study by Canadian researchers has found that people who speak two languages regularly over a lifetime have warded off the symptoms of dementia by an average of four years as compared to people that speak only one language.

Principal investigator Ellen Bialystok says they are 'pretty dazzled' with the results." In the proccess of using language and using two languages, you are engaging parts of the brain that are active and need that kind of constant exercise," she said.

"I've been investigating the cognitive effects of bilingualism in children for a long time and so about five or six years ago we wondered if we could find these benefits throughout adulthood and we did," said Ms Bialystok.
 
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