Learning a language late in life?
- Thread starter Junglist
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I fancy learning Dutch or Spanish, myself. No idea on my chances of success though
Why not?
shialabeouf-just-do-it.gif
I always felt German was pretty easy to learn and understand, due to the similarities with English.
Then I met my wife... now all bets are off!!
german has the most ridiculous word order and the whole gramatik is based on the words gender so if you don't remember every single words gender you can never make the sentence properly
Is this some kind of troll post?
Soldato
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Hard to tell with GD
It's never too late. As long as you're motivated and you're serious about it, you'll be fine.
I would recommend getting lessons as they'll be by far the best way to progress.
Regarding Scandianvian v French, they're very different languages. Scandianvian (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish) are simple languages in that verbs, adjectives and whatnot are generally regular, meaning you have relatively simple grammatical structures. Also being a Germanic language means the grammar and sentence structure is very similar to English. The challenge will be that you won't really have a chance to practise or indeed hear it spoken anywhere!
Regaring French, yes, there are many French/Latin words in English, but the grammar is a nightmare and I would argue that French is a much more difficult language to learn [than Scandi] based on structure and grammar alone. However, you are much more likely to hear it and therefore pick it up quicker.
FWIW, I speak French, Danish and Norwegian, amongst other European languages so I feel fairly qualified to judge.
Italian is quite simple so that shouldn't be too hard either. It's all a question of motivation!
I would recommend getting lessons as they'll be by far the best way to progress.
Regarding Scandianvian v French, they're very different languages. Scandianvian (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish) are simple languages in that verbs, adjectives and whatnot are generally regular, meaning you have relatively simple grammatical structures. Also being a Germanic language means the grammar and sentence structure is very similar to English. The challenge will be that you won't really have a chance to practise or indeed hear it spoken anywhere!
Regaring French, yes, there are many French/Latin words in English, but the grammar is a nightmare and I would argue that French is a much more difficult language to learn [than Scandi] based on structure and grammar alone. However, you are much more likely to hear it and therefore pick it up quicker.
FWIW, I speak French, Danish and Norwegian, amongst other European languages so I feel fairly qualified to judge.
Italian is quite simple so that shouldn't be too hard either. It's all a question of motivation!
Soldato
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A lot of our regularly used words come straight from French. With the old English words it may share a root with an Old German word but often they have changed so much in the last 2000 years as to be barely perceptible. Likewise unless you are really into linguistics any grammatical similarities between German and English are not on the face of it obvious at all.
Caporegime
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I have always wanted to learn Spanish, but I dont think learning from home is possible.
im learning polish using michel thomas method ,this really is an amazing method for a goldfish brain like mine , and a perfect excuse to talk to polish girls /women at work
Can you tell me more, been with my polish missus 9 years now and can just about understand a lot of polish, can't speak or write it though.
As someone who speaks three languages fluently, I love going to Holland and speaking English to my wife to ask her what she wants when ordering, then turning to the staff serving us and in fluent Dutch ordering. The looks we get is amazing, so many people just get thrown off completely
I learned Dutch by living there, I had no choice. It was hard but not impossible. Good luck dude
I learned Dutch by living there, I had no choice. It was hard but not impossible. Good luck dude
basically its an audio course where theres a teacher and 2 students learning and making mistakes as they go ,you are like the third student.
it sort of builds the engine of the language , just needs vocab for fuel after that so to speak
Man of Honour
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Ugh French 
I'd disagree (as a few others have in this thread) with this. I've started learning Norwegian and found it much more similar to English than I have any other language. I've found the sentence structure to be very familiar and aside from a few extra grammatical bits (grammatical gender for one), even some of the vocabulary isn't that far off English.
Norwegian is also the ideal "middle ground" language so you can pick up some Swedish and Danish along the way.
EDIT: Edit to say, Slavic languages are hard. Free word order, crazy verb structures, lots of cases...nightmare. Tried learning a bit of Bulgarian and it's difficult. Plenty of language exchange partners available though as lots of Bulgarians want to learn English.
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