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POLL: Swedish vs German vs Spanish vs Por | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 9 of 14 18 October 2012 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd say avoid Portuguese for now. Practically guaranteed to be a bad experience as of now, but perhaps one day you'll be fascinated enough that you won't care about these things:)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chrys Newbie Canada Joined 4260 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English | Message 10 of 14 19 October 2012 at 10:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree. Easy pronouinciation should not be the only reason to learn a language. If I try hard, I guess, I can learn to pronounce words that have slighty different sounds from my native language. Maybe I should look into what language will be most *useful*? And what'd be most *fun*?
Useful: 1. French-> because it's official language in Canada; can help with jobs in French-dominnant province (Quebec), government etc. 2. German -> because I'd love to work in Germany for couple of years! Fun 1. Spanish -> It's probably a lot of fun (I could go to Mexico to learn it, and even learn Salsa-dancing side by side, that'd be a lot of fun). But Spanish is probably not very useful for my profession. I mean, Spain's economy is not as great as Germany's economy. Germany probably has better engineering jobs. South American countries that speak Spanish also don't have very great economies. That's it. It'd be nice if I could combine a language that was very useful. For eg: if there was an immersion school that taught German and also some social activity like salsa dancing or playing keyboard, piano. Then it'd become a lot of fun! Actually, my wife loves to dance. So, it'd be great if I could go to a language school where I can learn language and wife could learn language + dance. This way, if both of us learn the same language, we'd be able to practice more. But she won't go to a language school with me unless it was fun. So, I guess I might have to learn Spanish. It's not very useful for my profession (Information Technology Management) but it's probably more fun. So, higher chances of learning, practicing and retaining it. Edited by chrys on 19 October 2012 at 10:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4941 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 11 of 14 19 October 2012 at 10:38pm | IP Logged | ||
You'd be surprised. Multinational tech firms have big presences in Latin American countries. The telecom industry is very well represented in Spain. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 19 October 2012 at 10:39pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 12 of 14 20 October 2012 at 1:01pm | IP Logged | ||
Great that you now believe more in yourself (your abilities for pronunciation), why not believe even more and realize that you don't need an immersion school to succeed? Have you seen this thread? I'll quote the beginning: I learned the hard way that willpower is a very limited resource. If I rely on nothing but raw willpower, I can devote maybe 20 hours to studying a language, to exercise, or to any other activity. Sometimes, I'm sad to say, it's more like 2 hours. See, you're not a bad learner just because you didn't succeed the first time you tried. I also gave up early the first time I tried to learn Finnish. Edited by Serpent on 20 October 2012 at 1:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chrys Newbie Canada Joined 4260 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English | Message 13 of 14 21 October 2012 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks!
Has anyone seen
How to learn any language in 3 months ? It's by Tim Ferriss. The guy who wrote 4 hour work week. Also, he wrote a series of blog posts about this. Eg:
He doesn't claim that you'd become a master in the language, but you'll accomplish conversational fluency. EDIT: I used TinyURL to shorten the URL's because they were not appearing properly in the post. The links are from FourHourWorkWeek.com site. Edited by chrys on 21 October 2012 at 5:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FM_Moltke Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie Germany Joined 6430 days ago 54 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, German, French Studies: Polish, Latin | Message 14 of 14 30 October 2012 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you are truly Canadian, then I would advise you to dust off your schoolbooks and revise your French to an acceptable level before beginning a third language. Although I am in the same position, and speak better German and French, I regret not having used the idler days more fruitfully when French was figuratively being shoved down our throats in school.
Other foreign languages are usually resorted to because they offer a dose of exoticism, but the appeal of the exotic is a superficial phenomenon, and will abandon you as soon as the constraints of energy and will gather mobilise against you. If you can't learn the familiar, might as well admit that this is not your niche. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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