Learning a second language

Interesting time for a thread bump and what you have just been posting kind of ties in with where i am currently standing.

I am still really enjoying learning Polish and about the culture in general. However i do feel that i am at a wall of sorts where there is only so much that friends can teach without me becoming a pain and would be better of trying to learn more with someone with the profession of teaching language. I have reached out to a couple of private tutors regarding this and am awaiting their responses.

Interestingly i can now speak Polish as poorly as some of the Polish staff can speak English so we are on par :D.
 
My wife is fluent in Portuguese (she's Brazilian) and also English. I'd love to learn Portuguese so I can talk with her, but I find other languages extremely hard to learn. I spent 5 years at school learning German and I'd say as best I have an extremely basic grasp. E.g. how much is this? Where is the church? Can I have an ambulance please my bone is broken.

I've tried looking into proper lessons, but languages lessons are super expensive, and London seems to be the only place that teaches Brazilian Portuguese :(
 
bobbarley said:
My wife is fluent in Portuguese (she's Brazilian) and also English. I'd love to learn Portuguese so I can talk with her, but I find other languages extremely hard to learn. I spent 5 years at school learning German and I'd say as best I have an extremely basic grasp. E.g. how much is this? Where is the church? Can I have an ambulance please my bone is broken.

I've tried looking into proper lessons, but languages lessons are super expensive, and London seems to be the only place that teaches Brazilian Portuguese :(
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The lessons i am looking at are online tutoring via skype. A lot of these offer a free lesson so you can get a feel for the tutor and they can get a gauge of your level of competence in said language. I will let you know how i find these types of lessons as I've devoted myself to taking a few of them before i cast any potential negative judgement.
 
3rd lesson in German tonight, missed a week because I was away on holiday. Got the lesson notes from my teacher and I felt so far behind. Started listening to German radio stations (goodbye Radio 1 with your non-sense) and watching German TV. Will be doing this everyday to keep me going while studying my German course materials.
 
Memrise is the best app I’ve used for languages. Listen to music and watch tv. Think about doing classes.
 
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I still can't work out why we still learn French & German in schools when it would make more sense learning school kids POLISH ( over 1 million of them now living here in the uk ) Or Spanish the 2nd most popular language after English.


I've been to France once in my life and most of my friends NEVER! I see and speak to Polish people everyday.
 
PiKe said:
Is it possible to learn a language with free online resources or is it better suited to attend a class?
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There are so many free resources and discord servers out there that it is definitely possible to learn with free resources.

I see a Japanese teacher on a bi-weekly basis and that's basically to go over grammar and conversation.

Using a spaced-repetition-system-based method for learning vocabulary (Anki) has been so helpful for language learning.

jasonsony735 said:
Or Spanish the 2nd most popular language after English.
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By that metric, they should actually be learning Mandarin, Hindi or Spanish.
 
jasonsony735 said:
I still can't work out why we still learn French & German in schools when it would make more sense learning school kids POLISH ( over 1 million of them now living here in the uk ) Or Spanish the 2nd most popular language after English.


I've been to France once in my life and most of my friends NEVER! I see and speak to Polish people everyday.
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Closer countries, UK have direct ties with them for historical reasons and people in the UK are more likely to visit France and Germany compared to Poland.
 
malachi said:
3rd lesson in German tonight,
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Fellow German learner here. Just dawned on me I took my first lesson on the 18th Oct 2015 so I'm almost exactly two years in! I started learning for a challenge to see if, as an adult, I could learn a foreign language. As a child I was terrible at languages and over the years have wondered if I was actually capable of learning one if I had a proper crack at it.

The answer is yes, though I find the number one thing holding me back is I rarely converse in German. My biggest tip would be find someone to talk to in German. Even if it is the boring simple stuff you'll start to imprint the patterns of the language in your mind.

Can post you up a few useful links and resources if you're interested.
 
Fourstar said:
Fellow German learner here. Just dawned on me I took my first lesson on the 18th Oct 2015 so I'm almost exactly two years in! I started learning for a challenge to see if, as an adult, I could learn a foreign language. As a child I was terrible at languages and over the years have wondered if I was actually capable of learning one if I had a proper crack at it.

The answer is yes, though I find the number one thing holding me back is I rarely converse in German. My biggest tip would be find someone to talk to in German. Even if it is the boring simple stuff you'll start to imprint the patterns of the language in your mind.

Can post you up a few useful links and resources if you're interested.
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Yes please, every little helps :)
 
So, it's my birthday today. ( it was nice understanding the polish version of this with ease ).

My father has a fun little thing he has always done with my birthday. He acknowledges whatever it is im " interested " in at that time or what im pursuing. And then proceeds to find something in the deepest depths of realm of online shopping/charity shops.

Couple of examples : I was coding a few years back and he got me a really old school coding guide, one year i started to really enjoy my classic music and he found me a gramophone in a charity shop ( amazing )

This year he has really really made me smile, i just got home from work and he handed me a really undescript white package that to my eye reminded me of a cd box;
d68bb368-b5d4-4770-a5bf-ff9ac44c85b9
d68bb368-b5d4-4770-a5bf-ff9ac44c85b9
jH4nEy4.jpg


I opened it and was absolutely surprised to find a extremely vaguely titled CD inside;
kQfVU7w.jpg


What a day! Do love my old man :D
 
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malachi said:
Yes please, every little helps :)
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I think you said you are starting from scratch so hopefully this is relevant.

Grammar:
I don't know what your knowledge of English grammar is like but if English is your only language chances are it could be a bit hazy. Not your ability to use the language but being able to define or explain the parts of speech, what is meant by mood, what are direct and indirect objects and so on.

I found a fantastic book called "English Grammar for Students of German" by Cecile Zorach and Charlotte Melin. It takes each concept and explains it first in English with examples then goes on to explain how it works in German.

You can buy it second hand very cheaply here. I bought a 4th edition rather than the 6th edition in print now but as far as I know little has changed between versions. At £2.80 inc del vs £25 new it is worth a punt :)
https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/...lish+grammar+for+students+of+german&kn=&isbn=

Dictionaries:
I mostly use dictionary apps on my phone though I do have a small Collins paper dictionary. I find it useful when the online dictionaries give you a dozen meanings for a word and you can't work out what the main meaning is. In these situations the paper version tends to be much better.

https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/
Play store: LEO dictionary by Leo GmbH
My first port of call and favourite digital dictionary. I like the way it displays the singular and plural of nouns together in search results. With verbs you can bring up the conjugation table. (I also like the way it shows cases and prepositions that go with the verb.)

https://www.dict.cc/
Play store: dict.cc dictionary by Paul Hemetsberger.
A useful feature is you can download the dictionary and use it offline. None of the others work without an internet connection.
I also find it is the best for text-to-speech when you're not sure how to pronounce something. If you use the website there are normally several recordings of people speaking the word. The app will also speak words but doesn't let you choose between the various recordings.

https://de.pons.com/
Play Store: PONS Online Translator by PONS
A nice dictionary though I tend to only use it when I cant get a good idea of a word's meaning from Leo.

http://www.duden.de/
The equivalent of the Oxford English dictionary. It's all in German.

http://www.linguee.com/
Among other sources this site searches bilingual documents for your search term. You can see the word/phrase used in context both in German and English. A lot of these are EU government related docs so the translations are good.


Useful Websites:
The following 2 sites are useful for explaining grammar topics. They also have worksheets to do.
http://www.nthuleen.com/teach/grammar.html
http://www.deutschseite.de/index.html

News:
Tagesschau
These are daily news summaries. The one below is 15 mins long though you can find various durations down to 100 seconds if you google. They tend to be spoken quite fast and I've not come across any with subtitles.
http://www.ardmediathek.de/tv/Tagesschau/Sendung?documentId=4326

Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten
Slow spoken news with transcript available to read along. Also available at full speed.
http://www.dw.com/de/deutsch-lernen/nachrichten/s-8030

TV series geared towards learners:
Mein Weg nach Deutschland

With hardcoded subtitles
https://vimeo.com/56079996

with no subtitles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMj9kUPrnBk

Some exercises you can do after watching each episode.
http://www.goethe.de/lrn/prj/wnd/deu/mse/deindex.htm?wt_sc=mwnd_miniserie

Deutsch Plus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lk9rS7n-4Q

Deutsch lernen Extra auf Deutsch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOEPADpap_A


List of assorted german radio stations.
http://web.ard.de/radio/radionet/
 
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