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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| cablesurfer Newbie United States Joined 3411 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Studies: Romanian | Message 9 of 18 04 August 2015 at 2:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm sure English is probably difficult in it's own way but you guys are lucky in that you have all of these resources
available to learn from. Although, I suppose it's getting easier for all languages because of the internet. I have luckily and surprisingly found a few Romanian movies at my local library. Yeah, I plan on waiting before I dive into Czech. I was doing both Pimsleur Romanian and Pimsleur Czech at the same time and I thought it was too much. I pretty much know nothing about Czech, aside from the first few lessons of Pimsleur, but it just sounds like a really unique language to my monoglot ears. Plus CR is one country I would like to visit. Can you recommend any good Czech movies? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5019 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 10 of 18 05 August 2015 at 2:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, we are lucky in getting so many resources but not lucky because we don't usually get a choice of first (sometimes only) obligatory foreign language. Many people would be better off with regionally important languages than with English. I suppose that is not just the central european situation.
I'd say any language that happens to be national and have several million native speakers actually does have enough resources. However, the problem is often to get them. Fortunately, there is the internet. Pimsleur is probably not a bad start but I agree two Pimsleurs at once for someone monoglot so far, that might be a too large bite. Good movies. What are you interested in? We've got some really good comedies, fairy tales, some good dramas, thrillers, historical, sci-fi... For start, there are the Oscar awarded and nominated movies, out of which I like: Ostře sledované vlaky, Obecná škola, Vesničko má středisková. Other movies I really like: Na samotě u lesa, Rozpuštěný a vypuštěný, Tři oříšky pro Popelku, Saturnin, Je třeba zabít Sekala, Pelíšky, Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, Bathory,... I just looked at movie list and picked some of the movies I liked, there are many more and it is hard to give any recommendations, not knowing your taste. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5272 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 11 of 18 05 August 2015 at 3:25am | IP Logged | ||
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There are plenty of resources available for learning Romanian, cablesurfer. As a raw beginner, you should concentrate on just learning Romanian for now. A good course for Romanian in addition to memrise/anki/most frequent words would be good to add into the mix.
I have used DLI for two languages (I am an experienced learner and already knew one second language to a high level.)- Portuguese and Haitian Creole. DLI Romanian Basic Course is free and legal to download. The orthography is the old one but it is easy to adjust to the new orthography. Despite its age, DLI is simply the most thorough course I have ever seen for learning a language for an English-speaker. Also, have a look at my post on the The multi-track approach. You may find it helpful. Edited by iguanamon on 06 August 2015 at 10:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cablesurfer Newbie United States Joined 3411 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Studies: Romanian | Message 12 of 18 05 August 2015 at 9:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, so you didn't get to choose English as a language you wanted to learn. Yeah, that will leave a bad taste in your
mouth, especially with your teacher constantly berating you. Just out of curiosity, what does English sound like to a non-native speaker when you didn't know any of it and were hearing it and learning it? What did you mean earlier by chaotic? There is quite a lot of "ah" sounds in Romanian, like father in English, especially at the ends of words. As a native English speaker, this has been a bit difficult because it feels natural to have a lazy a-sound ("uh") at the ends of our words. I also hear a lot of "sh" like ship and "ts" like cats. It isn't as pretty as Italian but it still has a redeeming quality. I have a Korean barber, so many old, Korean guys hang out in this barber shop and it sounds like every other word ends in "-yeo." Maybe I should have been more clear. I was really only looking for some Czech movies that I hopefully could find on DVD in order to use the subtitles for learning. It would have been icing on the cake if the movies were actually good. : ) I just checked and unfortunately my local library doesn't have any Czech movies. But, thanks. I will save all of these names and start to look for them when I'm ready to start learning Czech. Edited by cablesurfer on 05 August 2015 at 10:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cablesurfer Newbie United States Joined 3411 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Studies: Romanian | Message 13 of 18 05 August 2015 at 9:21am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for the links. I'll check them out. How did you like learning Portuguese? Was it easy for you? That was another language I was considering learning. But, yeah, Romanian will be enough for me for a while. Edited by cablesurfer on 05 August 2015 at 9:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5019 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 14 of 18 05 August 2015 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Nope, most people don't choose English. I wouldn't have chosen it at all until much later. Many people would choose a different first foreign language (for example, most people living near the borders with Germany or Austria).
Chaotic: Extremely irregular. Unlike French, Czech, German, Spanish and so on, English doesn't give you the luxury of knowing to pronounce nearly 100% of words once you learn the rules. Even now, years later, with vocabulary equal to that of native speakers, I cannot still be totally sure about some of the new words I encounter while reading. Many learners at the lower levels constatly get discouraged by the enormous difference between the writen and spoken form of the language. In French/German/Spanish/Czech, you spend a few hours doing pronunciation drills and you are more or less good to go, the rest will improve with practice over time. And the grammar. Too many exceptions. Some of the parts of the grammar look more like a pile of exceptions bordered with a few pieces of rules. Just normal past tense can become a beginner learner's nightmare because quite all the common verbs happen to be irregular. Than there are things like the phrasal verbs, which are just a ton of new vocabulary, synonymes for already existing words. Yes, there are some "rules" to their creation but many exceptions as well and you cannot just freely create them without having learnt them first. I don't know what does it sound like to people without any emotional tie to it. When I started, it sounded just ugly. Like people who cannot pronounce a single vowel properly. Now, it sounds normal, like Czech. Just an extremely useful tool, no beauty needed. Really, English is much more difficult than many other european languages for many groups of learners. Unfortunately, Europe foolishly gives it precedence over more important continental languages. But that would be bordering the forum rules to not discuss politics, if I went further. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cablesurfer Newbie United States Joined 3411 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Studies: Romanian | Message 15 of 18 05 August 2015 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||
Haha! I can see that. As I get more and more into Romanian and start to compare it to English, I have been noticing that there seem to be many irregularities in English, especially with pronunciation. Romanian seems to be a what-you-see-is-what-you-get type of language as far as pronunciation goes. I haven't gotten that far into grammar yet. With so many rules and exceptions in English, did you ever wonder if English speakers could actually speak English? I've certainly thought that about Romanians. "Eleven verb conjugations?! How do these people even know how to speak their own language?" Besides, say Windows and OSX, is there a lot of reading material in Czech - like software manuals or manuals for hardware like a new kitchen appliance (not necessarily books, magazines, newspapers)? What do you think some of the problem areas in Czech are for when foreigners attempt to the learn the language, besides pronunciation? Do you encounter many foreigners trying to speak Czech where you live? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5019 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 16 of 18 06 August 2015 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sure I wondered. The answer is simple. Many English speakers don't know English that much. JUst like many natives of other languages aren't that awesome at the language, struggle with putting together an email that would make sense and not be full of grammar mistakes.
Hmm. Of course there are manuals for everything, how else could those things be sold here? Why "not necessarily books, magazines, newspapers"? You don't like those? I am not sure whether you are asking like that because you find those things too advanced for a beginner or because you don't expect us to have any culture. :-D Foreigners who plan to stay often learn. I've met very successful learners whose native language was Russian, Ukrainian (those two are no wonder though), Spanish, French, Arabic, Vietnamese (those are an importan minority here),... But most anglophones and most francophones don't learn. Pronunciation is a struggle but other than that, it is just another european language. Yes, you are likely to keep doing declension mistakes but that is not a big deal usually. Quite hard are the differences between verb aspects. Some of the syntactical issues are hard for natives a swell (punctuation in sentences is much more strict than in English) Actually, you would do better to ask Czech learners than me. I don't meet that many learners (I mostly meet either people who actually speak Czech really well and live here or those who learn two or three words to have a good laugh). There is quite a lot of learners on the new htlal forum right now. But more importantly now: how is you Romanian? How do you find the language? :-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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