Learning a second language

PiKe

PiKe

PiKe

Caporegime
Joined
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I've always admired people who are multilingual, I don't particularly need to speak a second language but it would be nice to able to and to not be so ignorant that the entire world speaks English.

Is it possible to learn a language with free online resources or is it better suited to attend a class?
 
https://www.kli.org/ :)

More seriously, I think it would depend on your relevant ability and the language you choose. People generally find it easier to learn a language that has more common ground with a language they already know.

Perhaps the best approach would be to pick a language you have a particular interest in (and thus more interest in learning) and start with free online resources rather than paying for a class. You can always pay for a class later, if you find that the free online resources aren't effective for you. Do you have any areas of interest that are relevant to a language in some way and would therefore work as additional incentive to learn? For example, Mary Somerville learned ancient Greek in part because she knew she'd enjoy reading ancient Greek mathematical texts in the original language. Like you, I've always admired people who are polylingual and that's why she came to mind. She was also a polymath (mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer) but it was her casual ease with multiple languages that caused her to stick in my mind. Not many children declare that they will learn Latin because they've decided they want to and then go on to do exactly that. Which reminds me of something else about learning a language - using it is part of learning it. You'll probably find it much harder going to learn a language without any use of it as you learn. The reason for the reminder is that Mary Somerville's uncle tutored her and speaking Latin with her was an important part of that. That's something that a class might be useful for, but you might well be able to get that online too.

Apparently the chief translator of the EU is fluent in 32 languages. 32! After 5 years of study I could still only speak 1 and could slowly decipher 2 others in written form only. Maybe the reason why I admire people who are polylingual is that I'm obviously lacking in ability in that area. I've known people who can think in several languages. I don't really understand how people can do that. I understand that they can, but not really how they can.
 
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As an English speaker it would be much easier for you to learn something like Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French or even Danish. The structure, the alphabet for a start is much more familiar.
 
Out children are being raised tri-lingual. Personally I have a lot of difficulties learning new language but I can get by in French and have basic German. Hope to have French fluent within 2 years,German within 7
 
D.P. said:
Out children are being raised tri-lingual. Personally I have a lot of difficulties learning new language but I can get by in French and have basic German. Hope to have French fluent within 2 years,German within 7
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Same here, I have and seemingly aways will be awful with other languages. I have tried over here I really have but in the end I buckled and just employed a translator to work in my office.

I am absolutely blown away by my children though. They are educated in an English speaking school, we speak English to them at home, they can however have a conversation quite easily with their friends in Hindi or Gujarati. It's quite amusing when I go out on a Sunday with my son to play football that he becomes my translator for the day if I need to do any shopping etc. He is 8 years old. Brilliant.
 
i recall watching something that was stating how the more languages you know the easier it is to pick up another because you have a larger pool of reference for the ways different languages communicate and can pick up on the similarities that make it easier to remember.

i've ended up in a kind of promise that i need to learn german (more than the very very basic amount i have at them minute).

angilion is dead on about having a need for the language, talking to people really speeds things up, in germany we had an american chap had been studying german for 12 years (so, y'know, he knew german) but it was amazing to see how he was still being corrected on minor things like pronounciation or grammar by the locals.

same thing happened to a hungarian chap who didn't know german that well but he did know english and we'd speak regularly (like many europeans he'd learned it at an early age but never used it) and between me and the american chap it was noticable how much quicker and more confident he got with both hearing and speaking in english.

i'd say you need to conciously be learning the language, but its only when you immerse yourself in it and have some rambling conversations with others that you really develop the speed and confidence to use it effectively.
 
French is quite simple once you get to grips with whole male/female thing. I learned Arabic, which is whole different ball game. Makes all the difference when working over there though.
 
Rifte said:
I am absolutely blown away by my children though. They are educated in an English speaking school, we speak English to them at home, they can however have a conversation quite easily with their friends in Hindi or Gujarati. It's quite amusing when I go out on a Sunday with my son to play football that he becomes my translator for the day if I need to do any shopping etc. He is 8 years old. Brilliant.
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That is awesome, your kids are winning in life. I hope you pay them for their translation services! :p
 
I'm currently re learning (did it at GCSE) German because my girlfriend speaks it. It's (in my opinion) a very complicated language, compared to French/Italian/Spanish - full of rules that aren't always applied, inconsistent application of masculine/feminine/gender neutral terms.
For example it's "das Kleid" (the dress gender neutral) but "der Rock" (the skirt masculine) when you'd logically expect both to be either feminine or neutral words.

Apps like Duolingo are good to help your learning but really you could do with a bit more than that. Watching English films with German subs or vice versa are both enjoyable ways of picking bits up, and when I fly Eurowings I always grab one of their bilingual flight magazines and try to understand the German text by reading it back to back with the English and seeing how much I get right.
Speaking is the hardest because you need someone to speak with!
 
After whats been going on over the past 18 months and also meeting my Serbian friend last year back in Hungry, I decided I want to learn another language. I can only speak English, while she can speak English and Serbian. The ability to speak another language fluently, which isn't your native language does get you that bit further in life. I am 33 and unless it something to do with technology then I struggle to learn new things. This is why I booked myself onto a 12 week German course which starts next week. At least then if I am in a classroom with a teacher who I speaks German I am more likely to pick it up.

£110, 2hrs a week, over 12 weeks, materials plus access to Rosetta Stone while you are not in class seems abit of a bargain to me.
 
My pro tip is this (having learned Dutch fluently myself):

Find out the TV channels in the country you want to learn and see if they subtitle or dub their TV. Find their TV guide and start watching telly / films on their streaming sites (like Iplayer and whatnot). Pay attention to the subtitles and if they dub try and understand it. It'll be hard at first but eventually you'll start cracking it and once you know the first few words, the rest come faster and faster as the gape you need to fill in get smaller and smaller.

TV was the single biggest contribution towards me learning Dutch, and when I say I speak it fluently, people in Amsterdam actually think I'm a local.

YMMV OFC.
 
I struggle but I think it's just that we are not expected too and a bit lazy, impressive how many people do speak so many languages though. I can barely speak and write English lol. Apart from primary I don't remember learning anything at school.
 
Diddums said:
My pro tip is this (having learned Dutch fluently myself):

Find out the TV channels in the country you want to learn and see if they subtitle or dub their TV. Find their TV guide and start watching telly / films on their streaming sites (like Iplayer and whatnot). Pay attention to the subtitles and if they dub try and understand it. It'll be hard at first but eventually you'll start cracking it and once you know the first few words, the rest come faster and faster as the gape you need to fill in get smaller and smaller.

TV was the single biggest contribution towards me learning Dutch, and when I say I speak it fluently, people in Amsterdam actually think I'm a local.

YMMV OFC.
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I agree, someone suggested to me picking German films in Netflix and even if they are crap to watch. You are watching them to read and understand the language with subtitles.
 
Motivation might be an issue if there's no real reason i.e. you're moving abroad or your spouse speaks another language too.

I once attempted to learn Dutch but just lost interest after a couple of days.
 
dacads said:
Motivation might be an issue if there's no real reason i.e. you're moving abroad or your spouse speaks another language too.

I once attempted to learn Dutch but just lost interest after a couple of days.
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+1

I want to learn Russian but motivation became an issue.
 
A lot of it is down to how you learn. I was taught French at school and got a 2:1 from a good university with a joint French / English degree. When I moved to France, I very quickly discovered I barely spoke any French at all, and I'd estimate in my first 6 months here I learned more than I had in my entire degree. I'm about to move to Mexico, not speaking a word of Spanish, and I'm hoping to be fluent within 2 years.

For me, traditional learning methods are pretty useless as I find it incredibly hard to retain the information, no matter how hard I try. Total immersion within a country works far better as far as I'm concerned.
 
jsmoke said:
I struggle but I think it's just that we are not expected too and a bit lazy, impressive how many people do speak so many languages though. I can barely speak and write English lol. Apart from primary I don't remember learning anything at school.
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Me :p

3 to be exact.

And it's "expected to" not "expected too" but at least you are aware :p
 
I'm currently trying to self-teach Norwegian. It's quite an easy language for a native English speaker, and I also learn a lot of spoken Swedish and written Danish too, so it's an almost three-for-one language to learn (it's often touted as the best middle ground of the three Scandi languages).
 
dacads said:
Motivation might be an issue if there's no real reason i.e. you're moving abroad or your spouse speaks another language too.
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I actually found my Chinese has regressed after marrying a Taiwanese woman and living here for 5 years :p Her English was better than my Chinese when we first started dating (or more specifically, her vocabulary was), so English became the default language for our communication. Now it's way too easy to just have her deal with things :p

I remember back when I lived in China, having to phone my landlord (who spoke no English) to explain that the water pipes had burst and the flat was flooding. Pretty sure I couldn't do that now!

That said, I've started revising what I used to know through textbooks, my reading and listening are better than they ever were, just the speaking I need to catch up with, which is all on me.
 
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