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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Ubik Senior Member United States ubykh.wordpress.com/ Joined 5318 days ago 147 posts - 176 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish | Message 33 of 47 19 November 2010 at 5:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thats a very beautiful story Solfrid. What a kind soul. One can only hope he was treated
as kindly as he treated your mother. On a side note, Ive got disposable cameras that Ive never had developed and Im sure old stories and feelings will wash over me then as well. Who knows when Ill ever get around to developing them 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 34 of 47 19 November 2010 at 6:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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Here are my languages in the order (I think) that I began to learn them. I apologize in advance for this huge post.
ENGLISH: Native language. I have lived in the United States my whole life so far. (Hopefully that will change soon.) GREEK: I was exposed to Greek a lot when I was young because my family is Greek and many relatives, especially older ones, didn't speak English well, if at all. I always remember knowing some Greek words and phrases and being able to understand a lot. Frequent trips to Greece as a child also helped with exposure, and when I was seven one of my cousins there taught me the alphabet and some more words and phrases. Later, when I was twelve, I started taking weekly lessons with my grandmother and found that although somewhat difficult, everything always seemed to just make sense and was natural, and the pronunciation posed no difficulty whatsoever, having heard it since babyhood. I really had no help in this besides having had exposure to it when I was little. SPANISH: I went to a bilingual elementary school for four years between the ages of five and nine, where I learned the language fluently. I subsequently forgot most of it for a few years afterwards until I took it again in school, and then it quickly came rushing back to me. Again, besides some words in common between English and Spanish I had no outside help, but this was compensated for because I was in an immersion environment... MANDARIN: Mandarin was the first language I ever tried to teach myself. I knew I was interested in languages and had a list of several I wanted to learn, and one day when I was twelve I found a copy of "Teach Yourself Beginner's Chinese" which one of my friends had given to me on my bookshelf. I started reading and was instantly hooked. It was so fun to learn the words and the grammar. I continued with Chinese for a couple months, but ended up dropping it after getting frustrated when I learned that I had been pronouncing many of the sounds and tones wrong, not having the accompanying audio. I intend to get back to Mandarin one day and finish my first-ever independent language project! Like my other languages up to this point, I had no help from other languages to give me a head-start. Everything was completely new to me. FRENCH: French is the first foreign language which I have self-studied to fluency. I always had wanted to learn it as I liked the sound of the language, and many people in my family knew it, including my grandmother, who was a French teacher. I started learning it on my own when I was thirteen and managed to learn enough in about eight months to skip into a third year class at my high school the next year. I took two years in high school before dropping it this year because I don’t like the teacher. As I was learning French, it all seemed to make sense because so much of the vocabulary and grammar was similar or the same as in Spanish, which I already spoke. PORTUGUESE: I don’t actually remember if I started with French or Portuguese first, but I switched back and forth for a while but ended up settling on French to begin with and then added in Portuguese later on, also when I was thirteen. I loved the sound of the language and because of Spanish (and French) it was really simple for me to learn and ended up taking a rather meandering, unstructured approach that wasn’t great for truly learning the language. However, once I applied myself more, I soon was able to reach a good level of proficiency in Portuguese, which at the time was my favorite Romance language. ESPERANTO: Between the summer of my eighth and ninth grade years at school (2008) I discovered Esperanto. It was very easy for me both because of its simple and logical structure and because it was based on mainly Romance languages with some Germanic words thrown in, which made most words familiar to me. I instantly fell in love with it and obsessively learned it for about a month before oddly forgetting about it and largely losing motivation for it until this past January. I then started to restudy the language steadily and reached an approximate level of basic fluency by May of this year. However, over the summer I again forgot about it again and it fell into disrepair. Strangely, I now want to revive it again, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it because I have these intermittent love-and-hate periods where I learn it obsessively and then forget, learn obsessively and then forget… GERMAN: Besides my native English, German was my first Germanic language and I instantly adored it. Unlike many I know, I liked the sound of German and its structure was fascinating to me. As I learned it I had a sense of learning what my own native language used to be like long ago which was a very exciting feeling of exploration and discovery. I started in November 2008, when I was fourteen. Two years later I think I can claim basic fluency in the language and am still studying it (including now at school) and do not regret it one bit. I still adore German. ITALIAN: I started Italian about a month after I fell in love with German. I had always liked Italian and it was exciting to find that I could understand most of what I encountered in it already from Spanish, French, and Portuguese. It almost seemed too easy and six months later, when I had hoped to be at basic fluency, I found myself stuck in a rut in my motivation and wondered why I wanted to learn Italian at all. I was able to regain some motivation and continue studying Italian until August of this year, when I decided to put my studies of Italian (along with French and Portuguese) on hold, although now I’m anxious to get back into it and work on it some more. ROMANIAN: Romanian is now my favorite Romance language, but before March of 2009 I had never even heard it spoken and knew very little about it. A new girl moved to my town from Canada. I learned that she was originally from Romania but had lived in Canada since she was very young. We soon became friends and I developed in interest in learning her native language (although she was bilingual in English). She was very happy to help and excited that someone not only knew that Romanian was a language, but actually had an interest in learning it. I studied for a few months and loved it, but for a reason I can’t remember I decided to stop at the end of the school year (May 2009). In August of this year I picked it up again, only to learn that my friend had mysteriously and unexpectedly moved back to Romania over the summer without telling me. I’m now studying the language again and am in email correspondence with her, in Romanian of course, and am hoping to visit her in Timişoara next summer. I’m finding Romanian to be quite easy as it’s another Romance language, but also interesting because of its more conservative grammar and similarities to Slavic languages. JAPANESE: Ever since studying Japan in the first grade when I was six, I have had an interest in Japan, its culture, and its language. After my failed attempt at Chinese two years earlier, I was hesitant to begin study of another East Asian language. My high school offered a Japanese class though, so I signed up for level one. Over the summer (2009) I studied some basic grammar and vocabulary and a couple hundred kanji. I ended up not taking the Japanese class at school last year but continued studying on my own, and this year I’m taking Japanese 3, which is quite easy. I love Japanese and it’s just an amazing language, but aside from the many English “katakana-loanwords,” as I call them, I’ve had no outside help from other languages. Ironically I actually dislike all those silly English words like コイン (koin = coin), コンピューター (konpyūtā = computer), and チーズケーキ (chīzukēki = cheesecake) and wish the Japanese would create new words for these concepts or preserve the old words they used to use. RUSSIAN: Russian is another one of the languages which I just love. Although it’s my first Slavic language and as such I am learning many of the things for the first time, I have some help from loanwords from English, French, and German, and some words that are strangely similar to Greek. I know that Russian will, however, greatly facilitate the acquisition of my next Slavic language, which will probably be Czech. I started Russian right after I stopped studying Romanian and studied for that whole summer, but then I strangely dropped Russian too, thinking I would not have time with school. I was finally able to return to Russian, after much impatience, in July of this year and have immensely enjoyed studying this language so far. SWEDISH: The story of my Swedish (as is my Dutch) is amusing. I logged onto Livemocha one day last September to see what new courses they were offering, purely out of curiosity. I ended up unexpectedly signing up for both a Swedish and a Dutch course and truly liking the language, decided to keep Swedish even though I was not planning to begin it nearly so soon. I’ve been studying for almost a year and two months now and while I feel that this should have been enough time to achieve basic fluency given similarities to German and English, I still cannot claim that level. I am still enjoying my studies though, which is what matters. :) DUTCH: I started Dutch for the first time at the same time and under the same circumstances as the Swedish above. Because of the overwhelming similarity of Dutch to the German I was studying, I dropped Dutch in favor of Swedish so that it wouldn’t interfere as much with German, which was a much higher priority for me. I liked Dutch though, and as soon as I found out that we would be stopping in the Amsterdam airport this summer on the way to Africa, if only for a few hours each way, I took it as an excuse to start studying some more Dutch. It came extremely easily, being so close to English, German, and Swedish. It was actually this simplicity that caused me to get bored with it later in the summer and dropped it in favor of Persian, which was new and exciting. I’m still studying Dutch vocabulary in Anki though and hope to actually put in a steady effort for this language soon, perhaps beginning sometime next year. SWAHILI: Swahili is really the only African language I have ever had an interest in learning. At the end of January of this year, I created a schedule which laid out a sequence for my next languages, with Swahili following Russian and Arabic. Only days later I learned that my family would be going to Tanzania this July, bumping Swahili up to my top priority on my hit list and causing me to begin study of the language in mid-February. Besides many loanwords from English and a few from Portuguese and German, I was mostly on my own for Swahili in terms of similarity. I am having such fun learning this language though, and part of that is that it’s so new and shiny. I know that there are LOTS of Arabic words in Swahili, so I’m looking forward to reaping those benefits when I decide to start on Arabic—actually, I am already noticing words I know from Swahili in my Persian. PERSIAN: When I decided to stop my study of French, Portuguese, Italian, and Dutch this August, that freed up time in my schedule for a new language. I had told myself that Arabic would be next up, but I heard that it was really time-consuming and with my packed schedule that’s not something I have a lot of now. I ended up going with Persian, which I also wanted to learn and was from the same part of the world and also has lots of Arabic influence, like Swahili. I’ve studied only for about three months but I have gained a real appreciation for Persian and very much like it. As it is Indo-European, I have found several words that are similar to other languages: برادر (barâdar = brother), مادر (mâdar = mother),پدر (pedar = father), etc. However, it is Indo-Iranian, a branch of I-E which I have otherwise not yet touched, so much of it is still new and exciting. To sum this up, here is the path that I’ve taken for the Romance and Germanic families: Romance: Spanish --> French --> Portuguese --> Italian --> Romanian Germanic: English --> German --> Swedish --> Dutch I apologize for the monstrous post. I think it turned out to be more like a language autobiography than anything else... Edited by ellasevia on 19 November 2010 at 6:51am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ubik Senior Member United States ubykh.wordpress.com/ Joined 5318 days ago 147 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish | Message 35 of 47 19 November 2010 at 7:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, ellasevia, Keine Sorge (für dein lang Post)! Youre 16 (?) and can speak that many languages? It makes me
wish I didnt wait so damn long to start realizing my passions. Id probably be where you are today if I had taken control of my life sooner (jetzt ich bin dreißig Jahre alt). I may have posted here earlier about what path I *want(ed)* to take, but I cant remember and Im not even sure if itd be the same even months from now. Right now Im intermediate in German and losing some of my wanderlust believe it or not. Im losing interest in Spanish and Latin (not because I dont love them -- I do, but because Im doing so well in German, I dont want to do anything else but!) Which makes me wonder if when someone has wanderlust, if they arent really settled in, or feel really comfortable, or feeling very confident in whatever language theyre studying currently... Ive always loved and felt comfortable with German, but its only recently that Ive started to feel very confident in it. Before then, I was all over the map with what languages I wanted. Anyway...sorry for the kinda OT post... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kthorg Bilingual Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5229 days ago 50 posts - 62 votes Speaks: English*, Norwegian*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 36 of 47 25 November 2010 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've lived for most of my life but my parents only spoke to me in Norwegian when I was little so I didn't speak anything else until I started American school (at about five years old.)
Now my English is slightly better than my Norwegian because I live here and only speak Norwegian with my mother, I do though, spend at least a month in Trondheim every year so my Norwegian is not lacking. Last December (so at age twelve) my dad gave me his old Pimsleur Spanish course because I was taking the class in school ( I quickly passed their level), but after I finished I decided to keep on going with my Spanish, it's more or less fluent by now. In December I'll be starting French because my dad is Quebecois and from the work I've done with Spanish I've gotten pressures from my family to try French out. I think I've mostly done it because my family travels a lot and most of my relatives speak two or three languages. Not very impressive compared to what others have on here :D 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 37 of 47 26 November 2010 at 3:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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Korean 18
Japanese 18 My knowledge in Korean makes Japanese a lot easier to understand aside from kanji, since I haven't bothered with hanja in Korean since many Koreans have told me its useless. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7017 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 38 of 47 26 November 2010 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's an amazing accomplishment! You must give us further details. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6661 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 39 of 47 27 November 2010 at 2:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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My native language is English, and my first "foreign" language was French. My first French lessons were in an elementary school where French was required. There were enough cognates that my English helped my French to some degree.
I transferred to another school where no languages other than English were taught, and my French went dormant until high school. After a few weeks, much of my French came back to me. French was the easiest class on my schedule, and I added Spanish the next year. Spanish resembled French enough that it was also very easy. When you lean your first "foreign" language, you learn how to learn languages. When I went on to college, I tried Russian. Russian was so different from French and Spanish that there wasn't much to help me. I became a French major. Fast forward eight years, and I'm in graduate school. One of our instructors announced that anyone who wanted to go on for a doctorate would need reading ability in both French and German. I wasn't sure if I wanted a doctorate, but I thought it was wonderful that I had an excuse for learning in German. As a graduate asistant, I was able to get a nice discount on German classes and textbooks. The pace of the German classes was leisurely compared to that of my old Russian class, and German was easy. I knew how to learn French and Spanish, and the vocabulary had plenty of cognates. The area where I live has lots of Italian-Americans, and a local fraternal organization offered evening Italian classes. Such classes are often much more casual than academic. With French and Spanish under my belt, Italian was easy. Since then, I've tried Portuguese. My problem is that I find myself speaking and thinking in Spanish and Italian whenever I try to use Portuguese. I am going to make an early New Year's resolution for 2011 and say that it will be the year when I become reasonably fluent in Portuguese. In this case, I mean that I'm not just speaking Spanish or Italian with a few Portuguese modifications here and there. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kthorg Bilingual Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5229 days ago 50 posts - 62 votes Speaks: English*, Norwegian*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 40 of 47 30 November 2010 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
haha that was an accident (obviously) I meant to say I've lived in the US for most of my life. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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