learning a new language

joelk2

joelk2

joelk2

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Im 35 and can only speak english in this day and age i feel rather embarressed by this.

has anyone got any tips on learning a new language? ive been listeneing to hours of the learn while you sleep things (albeit not while asleep) i spend plenty of time in my car to and from work and listen to it during the day while at work. things dont seem to be sticking.

is this the best to go about it? shoiuld i keep listening over and over until it finally sticks?

its spanish im trying to learn. i know very very basic stuff, Hello, Good Bye, Goodnight, how are you etc.. stuff to get a conversatoin started but zero to back this up.
 
It's probably because you are lacking two very important things for learning a language

1) Genuine motivation/need
2) Application

Without those, you'll probably find a language tricky to learn.
 
The people I know who are bilingual or multilingual, either spent time as a child in the country that speaks the language/languages or they learned as adults and are all of high intelligence. They have that knack of picking almost anything up easily with excellent working memory.

As above though, it's likely easier if you have a genuine need to learn the language.
 
If I were trying to learn a language now, I'd join a group so that you can all speak together. That will push you far harder than listening and repeating.

We always used to watch French news at school. That was great because the videos gave you the context and your mind sort of shuffled everything else around so you understood it over time. The news uses quite a large variety of words too. Strongly recommended.

Ayahuasca said:
The people I know who are bilingual or multilingual, either spent time as a child in the country that speaks the language/languages or they learned as adults and are all of high intelligence. They have that knack of picking almost anything up easily with excellent working memory.

As above though, it's likely easier if you have a genuine need to learn the language.
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You're sort of making it sound like it's impossible to learn a new language. Yes, those things will make it easier, but actual lessons will people half way there.

To put it into context, though, it took me about 10 years to be relatively fluent in French through school. It was only in the last 2 years or so that I was thinking in French.

10 years later, I struggle.
 
joelk2 said:
Im 35 and can only speak english in this day and age i feel rather embarressed by this
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Just out of curiousity, it must have been something that has sparked this feeling? The vast majority of my friends/people i know don't speak 2 languages just because to be honest...everyone else speaks English! :o

I wouldn't say it is something to feel embarassed about but fair play for trying to learn a new language. Even a basic grasp/a few sentences is better than a huge amount of people!
 
Fair play to you for at least wanting to learn
Problem with those there's no interaction to say yes you're doing well, that's not quite right etc
Find a local pub where the foreign students hang out
Making an effort to speak to them in their own language usually goes down well and makes you new friends
Good excuse to go for a beer as well :D
 
you learn a language by actively using it.

you can only self learn to a certain point, and then you have to actively practice it with people who can actually speak that language.

if the sentence structure is different from english like German then it becomes very complicated to use the correct words and to make actual sense to a German person.

since all their words have genders and sentence structure changes depending on things such as that.
die, das der becomes dem, den etc its way to much effort.
then theres "you" having an informal version "sie" and a formal version "du"
you can't say "du" to anothjer adult unless they refer to you as "du" first...
but to kids you must never use "sie"
everything gets way to complicated once you learn the basics

be grateful everyone else is learning english


if you really want to try

duolingo app is fairly decent, michel thomas audio tapes are pretty good.

but you can't master a language without ever speaking it.
 
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Duolingo is excellent in that it keeps you motivated as progress is a game. When I cannot stand to do grammar exercises in the normal sense Duo allows me to keep going over those days of low motivation.
 
Monkeynut said:
Duolingo is excellent in that it keeps you motivated as progress is a game. When I cannot stand to do grammar exercises in the normal sense Duo allows me to keep going over those days of low motivation.
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in my experience you can learn the basics pretty fast with duolingo but it's not really learning the language.

it does a terrible job at explaining sentence structure and how other words in a sentence can change how other words are spelt and what not.

you can probably get to around the level of a 3-4year old with duo lingo, which is probably a lot more language than you would imagine
 
arknor said:
in my experience you can learn the basics pretty fast with duolingo but it's not really learning the language.

it does a terrible job at explaining sentence structure and how other words in a sentence can change how other words are spelt and what not.

you can probably get to around the level of a 3-4year old with duo lingo, which is probably a lot more language than you would imagine
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I find its strength isn't in its completeness but rather it's ease of access... Even on days of low motivation I can still stomach Duolingo rather than giving up altogether. Clozemaster is good for this also.
 
thanks for the replies chaps.

i guess in my setting there isnt a real need to learn, just a want. i guessed with all the time i have available to listen to things it would be an obvious starting point.

as far as what has made me now want to learn. i work with people for all different countries. the guy i sit next to at work is portugese and he can speak, portugese, spanish, italian, french and english.

its always kinda annoyed me that whenever i have been to spain that i am expecting them to speak english. the majority do but im taking it for granted.

i dont want to be fluent, but would love to be able to have a general conversation with someone.
 
Monkeynut said:
I find its strength isn't in its completeness but rather it's ease of access... Even on days of low motivation I can still stomach Duolingo rather than giving up altogether. Clozemaster is good for this also.
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literal translations would have been nice imo.

just word for word translations in the english sentence order would have made it so much easier.

I found my self doing it in my head because it would help words stick better
 
No classes near you?

Can't you Skype some random Spaniards :p
Learn the basic **** yous then progress.
 
Monkeynut said:
Duolingo is excellent in that it keeps you motivated as progress is a game. When I cannot stand to do grammar exercises in the normal sense Duo allows me to keep going over those days of low motivation.
Click to expand...

That's the problem I always had with Duolingo. It doesn't explain anything! How is that helpful to me? You really have to have some knowledge of the language before you try and learn it that way, in my experience.
 
I've heard Language Transfer is a very good way to learn, and it's free. They even let you download all the audio as a torrent if you want it offline.

I'd quite like to learn Spanish too. I did learn from lesson 1 that (largely) any word that ends in "al" is the same in English and Spanish just with a different pronunciation, therefore you already know a tonne of words. "metal", "elemental", "legal" etc. I like this way of learning :p
 
I might as well be listening to the teletubbies when I listen to another language. Another great feat of manipulation, getting all other countries to speak our language so we don't have to learn another one.
 
I’m finding Duolingo helpful for improving my ancient schoolboy French. While my confidence and grasp are improving, I suspect Duolingo alone will never get me to being a fluent French speaker.
 
I'm still trying to learn German, which is one of the reasons I moved. Abit extreme case as you cant get no better than living in that country you want to speak the language of but I'm learning for personal career reasons.

If you have Netflix, changing the language and having English subtitles helps and listening to their radio stations.
 
Practice with another person is the best way, after living in a country where they speak it.

I learnt Portuguese and Spanish from ex girlfriends over the years as those were their birth languages. Spent 3 months in Brazil at one point which helped a lot. Communicating with them every day in their language was the best way I learnt as I was always practicing and learning new words and using them. Unfortunately since the last relationship ended I haven't had anyone to practice with at all so have probably forgot a lot of the words.

Just started a new relationship with a Filipina so now it's time to learn Tagalog! Bought a study book already to get me started and once I know the very very basics I am going to try and practice every day with her.
 
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