Language learning discussion

[Mélusine]

i think this deserves highlighting as a particularly useful skill to develop when speaking. a few generic words can be used for several meanings, eg. 'money you can only use in one place' when you don't know how to say 'gift voucher'*. using similar words you can say 'the place you get money from' to mean 'bank'. so you needn't spend ages learning/searching for specific vocab and it often ends up being pretty funny, kind of like a real life version of taboo or articulate

*yes this one i have had to use myself

It looks like me sometimes while helping lost tourists ^^

[Synthpopalooza]

I have the same problem.  Even though I am fluent in Spanish as my second language, I still have trouble following conversation.  I can pick out words occasionally. 

[princeofdoom]

I actually have a hard time processing things said in English more than most native speakers, so I almost feel like not getting things in other languages affects me LESS than most people; I already have ways to work with/around it.

Also, with student recordings, you get a lot of repetition and very set ways of saying things. When I was actively learning Japanese, I had the lessons down pat, but still couldn't understand most of what people said, because I didn't know the words people were using in real life. I had learned a very small set of phrases and grammar, and if people used words or grammatical forms outside of these, I was completely lost.

But when you're reading, you can look up words or grammar you don't know without worrying about asking your conversation partner "What does this word mean? Could you rephrase that? I don't know what this grammar means, do you mean X?" every few minutes.

[Laufeysdóttir]

My biggest problem with understanding spoken language is often in either dialect or some bad habit that people have when they use their mother tongue. Icelanders are particularly horrific at non-pronouncing huge parts of words, either dropping bits and pieces, smashing the words together or just leaving out entire words, even. A friend of mine is one of the absolute worst when she speaks fast, once heard her pronounce "Ég veit það ekki" (= I don't know that) as something resembling "Veihggi"...

*snicker* I reckon this sort of thing happens in every language.

there's the famous example in Welsh where "Dydw i ddim yn gwybod" (also "I don't know) is pronounced mbo!!! (mostly it's more like dw i'm bo', though. much better!)

[Laufeysdóttir]

I'm learning Icelandic because I kinda just fell in love with its sound and look

only reason for learning any language, as far as I'm concerned. I have 0 motivation if I don't think a language sounds cool.

[Richard Weir]

(Here in California, the only overlap between local radio and languages I've learned is Spanish.)

I wonder if there are any good Spanish-language internet radio stations?

[tabeabd]

Yeah, reading text is so much easier than listening. Plus you can spend more time on it. And I find that both are much easier than actually speaking. For me, understanding is much easier than constructing the sentences myself.

As everyone else has said, it's a common problem. But what's one more confirmation? Haha.

Also, after not using the second language for a while, I've noticed my vocabulary slipping away the fastest. I keep forgetting words I know I've learned, but at least the grammar is mostly still in there. I just have to think about it longer....studying is probably a good idea.

[Curry]

Reading text is a lot easier than listening to just sound alone for sure. However, if there's accompanying video, I find them about the same difficulty? Context clues and all help me a ton and then I can kind of just make it up as I go. I also find speaking pretty easy but you know that could just be me

[Blackjazz]

Immersion is definitely key! Of course, moving to a country in which your target language is spoken would be best, but tv, music, and radio can work quite well as substitutes. My problem though is that every time I ask one of my French friends for recommendations on what to watch or listen to, they generally shrug their shoulders and say, "I dunno. I only ever watched/listened to American stuff." As for Spanish, I don't know what to watch other than telenovelas.

Listening to the radio works well too, of course, but it, uh, puts me to sleep because my brain either gets tired of focusing on it or ignores it and it's the rhythm that makes me tired (this is especially true for French narrators).

All that being said, I definitely read better than I can speak.

[Vafhudr]

@ Blackjazz - drop by the French thread. I'll give you recommendations. I get that question all the time - so many people coming out of French Immersion wondering what to do with that French they learned in high school.

I've encountered a considerable wall when I was learning ancient Greek and Latin in university. Not only is there next to nil modern speakers of those languages, but there is very little effort made in classical departments to actually go beyond mere incomplete reading comprehension. They are almost treated like math puzzles - which, as someone who is notoriously inept at mathematics I found to be a major problem. Worst, there is a massive jump between the stuff they teach you in the textbook (haha Wheelock and Athenazde) compared to what we actually have as text. Text are often complete gibberish because we basically learn the language without any feel for the tongue.

I found that major part of learning English is not just learning the language - vocab is not that hard, grammar is incomprehensible - you have to learn to sound English. Most of my English comes from reading and I betray my non-nativeness to it by using words that don't sound right, mostly by putting emphasis on the wrong spots.  A big part of learning a language is learning the language as the speakers understand it. I've had comment by French Immersion kids who are completely baffled once they go to Quebec because in Quebec the language is slang heavy and phonetically different from the sanitized, international French they read in school or from the dubbed movie they watch. Similary, Tacitus laughs at the Latin you are taught in Wheelock. Aeschylus laughs at your puny Intro Greek.

I've since then discovered options (Rather expensive, though - like, work a year to do that kind of expensive) that let you learn those languages as if they were alive and I definitely want to try that one day.

[Ana Nymus]

Finnish? Because of Lalli and the fact that Tolkien was inspired by Finnish to make Elvish. In other words, I'm a nerd.

Yes. Yes forever. You get cookies for this. *hands over cookies* You have summed up my feelings in twenty words.

[Solovei]

Oh, I realized I never actually posted anything here.

I learned Russian natively; My mother started informally teaching me English starting at age 5, and I took it when I started school at 7 all through when we moved to Canada 4 years later. When I got here, my conversational English was rather good, though it took me a few months to get used to reading/writing it all the time. The only foreign language that was offered here was French, which I a) had no interest in  and b) my parents didn't think it'd be a good idea to "confuse" me with yet another language.

Around 14-15 I started getting into anime and Japanese music and picked up a couple of words, but never studied it seriously. I did take 1 semester of Japanese in college from which I've forgotten mostly everything.

Currently I'm learning Swedish because of very nerdy reasons and also I like how it sounds and it seemed the easiest out of the Scandinavian languages to pick up.

[AuthorOfLight]

Yes. Yes forever. You get cookies for this. *hands over cookies* You have summed up my feelings in twenty words.

*noms on cookies* ^.^

[viola]

Why am I learning?
Short answer: I love languages and learning them. It's basically my hobby.

Long answer: I've always had this explainable desire to learn languages and I am very curious about linguistics, especially Germanic linguistics. Also most of the members of my family speak at least two languages (my grandpa speaks 5) so I grew up used to hearing a lot of different languages.

Things I am doing now:
I started learning Danish as a dare from my friend. When I first looked at it I thought it would be pretty easy because it looks similar to Icelandic, and it's grammar didn't seem too bad either. A year later I can read it pretty well and type out some sentences with occasional grammar errors. But then I got to the hard part: saying actual Danish words out loud. Duh duh duuuuuhhhh! Currently I have a penpal in Denmark (she actually introduced me to SSSS) who very patiently listens to me butcher Danish words in a strange garbled half English half Icelandic accent over skype calls.

Swedish I have kinda learned on and off for fun. I did the duolingo course, but most of my learning happened accidentally and comes from binge watching Swedish crime shows (also Äkta Människor which isn't a crime show but really amazing anyway). As a result, I know exactly what a terrified person should yell in Swedish when being held at gun point.

Norwegian I can mostly just read from knowing other things, but I am considering pursuing it further this summer also for fun (and nerdy reasons).

German is that language I have always wanted to learn but never got around to. I really like the way it sounds. I actually just signed up to take it as an elective at my university next year, so hopefully that goes well.

Aaaand Finnish. I have been considering it for the past month or so. My friend just started it though, so maybe I will join her.

[zetkaj]

Wow, some of you know so many languages, it's surreal! (and so, so cool)

My native language is Polish, so I kind of understand a bit from all slavic languages, especially written (can't read cyrillic, though; I always tell myself that I'll learn it, and then sort of...forget). I always feel like Polish is the most standing-out of the family though, with different diacritics and more -sh-like sounds (and the word 'herbata' for tea, instead of all-slavic 'Čaj'...). I really like the idea of interslavic language (even if it's just a project that'll never be working in real life). I'm no linguistic expert, but I often talk to people about differences in Slavic languages (that I know of) or even in dialects and weird words typical to some regions, it's just so interesting!

My parents made me learn English from kindergarten and I'm really happy about it. I also learned a lot from playing games in English and from watching subbed films, even if I tend to mix UK and US words because of it.

In most schools in Poland, you need to pick a second language when you're 13 or so, usually German or French; in my school I only had the former option. I don't really like the sound of German, nor is it a liked language here, so I didn't really pay attention (and now I regret it). All in all, I can read some, understand some if someone speaks slowly, but if I were to speak...ahem. Let's not.

Finnish I fell in love with a couple of years ago when I first heard this song. I also started following more artists on the web then, some of whom happened to be finnish. These long words seemed so impossible to learn though, I didn't really get to learning it until recently (I'm older! More ambitious! More confident! Yeah!). I like how it's absolutely different from all the indoeuropean languages, I like how it sounds, I'm kinda in love with it or something

I also used to learn Mandarin Chinese (didn't click with me, I only remember how to search through chinese dictionaries), Japanese (back when I was much more into anime and thought it was cool to sometimes use random japanese words...dark times... ... ..) and some random Italian that was required to properly read sheet music and understand music history.

I just realised that this post is a bit...off-topic...But well! My main reasons for learning (or trying) a language is just because 'why not?', or because I like the sound/looks of it. Then there's that cool thing about understanding a set of letters that would mean absolute gibberish for you otherwise (if you don't think it's some magic stuff, then I don't even know). And well, I have that attitude towards most things: why not learn it if you can? You never know what'll be of use in the future.
Also, lately I've been thinking of travelling to Scandinavian countries and I wish I could live here for some time (yeah, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are on my learning wishlist), so understanding at least on some level would be most best. And I wish I could ride a bike around the Baltic one day! but today I cycled 30km and was tired so there's a long way till I'm able to do that