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Native speakers close to home | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Roq71 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6605 days ago 63 posts - 72 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Haitian Creole | Message 1 of 2 17 December 2006 at 6:13pm | IP Logged |
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I am moving into advanced territory with my Spanish and it has a lot to do with the amount of practice I get with native speakers. I live in San Antonio, TX where around 50% of the population speaks Spanish, and large numbers of Mexican nationals visit every year. This has allowed me to practice nearly every day with native speakers. Unfortunately, now that I am starting French, I won't have the same advantage, and in fact, Francophones seem quite scare around these parts.
Would anyone care to share their experiences finding native speakers for their target language and/or discuss how your current residence affects language learning? Edited by Roq71 on 17 December 2006 at 6:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6901 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 2 of 2 18 December 2006 at 5:49am | IP Logged |
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I don't have any problems finding Dutch native speakers, given where I now live! I don't even need to leave the house to practice my Dutch as my partner's parents are among the few Dutch people who don't speak any English. ;P
While being immersed in the language has certainly boosted my vocabulary and improved my listening/speaking skills somewhat, I still feel that I haven't progressed much in the 3 months I've been living here. Daily conversations are pretty much restricted to the same topics and I haven't had the chance to use Dutch in the workplace yet. To be honest, I've never been very enthusiastic about learning Dutch so the lack of real progress is quite likely my own fault. I'm only learning it out of necessity rather than interest so learning Dutch feels like a chore, despite my better efforts. There are also some days when I can't even formulate basic sentences or even hate the sound of the language (usually when I'm feeling ill or stressed) but I suppose everyone has bad days. The one thing I really hate about my current situation is the fact that any attempt I make to either learn a new language (out of personal interest) or devote more time to maintaining my other languages is often met with disdain. My partner's parents were apparently disappointed that I didn't know more Dutch when I moved here (as if you can learn so much Dutch from living in *Taiwan* for a year, which I did prior to moving here!) and they can't understand how I can learn Mandarin and basic Japanese and yet not be fluent in Dutch already. Then again, they've never tried to learn a foreign language so what would they know? I've had to resist the urge to tell them that I may have a deep interest in languages and learning them but Dutch is a language I would never have bothered learning if I hadn't met my Dutch partner. Frankly, I'd rather be spending my time perfecting my Spanish, French and Mandarin and dabbling some more with Japanese than work on my Dutch but I don't think I will have that particular luxury for some time... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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