Finding the courage to continue (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Finding the courage to continue
Tags: Learning Experience \| Loss of confidence
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

37 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6598 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 33 of 37

19 April 2013 at 2:45am | IP Logged

Monolingual doesn't refer to exposure but to one's actual level in the language. We keep speaking about monolingual Americans even though most of them took some Spanish (or French, Latin, German) in high school.
2 persons have voted this message useful

leosmith
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6551 days ago
2365 posts - 3804 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Tagalog

Message 34 of 37

19 April 2013 at 6:20pm | IP Logged

cacue23 wrote:

Ideally, people should be exposed to the language before moving to the country, since it increases the efficiency ten-fold, and I don't think I need to tell you guys why.

I think you do. Please cite the ten-fold.
1 person has voted this message useful

maydayayday
Pentaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5220 days ago
564 posts - 839 votes

Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish^B2, French^B2
Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese
Studies: Urdu

Message 35 of 37

20 April 2013 at 12:32am | IP Logged

Don't fret. Even in a simple language like Spanish I often sit in relaxed social situations with about 5% of a clue what's going on .... two years after picking up a book... Gosh when we cross the border into France... it gets worse!

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cacue23
Triglot
Groupie
Canada
Joined 4300 days ago
89 posts - 122 votes

Speaks: Shanghainese, Mandarin*, English
Studies: Cantonese

Message 36 of 37

04 May 2013 at 12:00pm | IP Logged

leosmith wrote:

cacue23 wrote:

Ideally, people should be exposed to the language before moving to the country, since it increases the efficiency ten-fold, and I don't think I need to tell you guys why.

I think you do. Please cite the ten-fold.

I don't remember where I saw this but here's the thing: if you don't understand a word of a conversation, it tends to fade into the background. If you never got exposed to a language before you move to the country, how do you know that, say, a desk is a desk? You can't even pick out the syllables that combine to mean "a desk" from a string of seemingly meaningless syllables. Of course you could ask the locals to clarify and they would point at a desk and tell you what it sounds like in that language, but wouldn't it be nice to just know what a desk sounds like and focus on meanings of whole sentences?
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montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4829 days ago
2371 posts - 3676 votes

Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

Message 37 of 37

05 May 2013 at 3:36pm | IP Logged

caitwn wrote:

Taiwan is a great place to be and the best place to learn Chinese while
also earning money. There is, however, one thing that makes it a little more difficult
for beginners to make fast progress.

Depending on where you are in Taiwan, people use varying amounts of Taiwanese (or even
Hakka in places) in their conversation.

Interesting. It had never occurred to me there was a Taiwanese language. Prompted by
your post, I have educated myself, at least to the extent of the relevant looking
entries in Wikipedia, which are quite interesting.

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