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Learning a language for 6 weeks

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
195 messages over 25 pages: 1 2 3 46 7 ... 5 ... 24 25 Next >>
Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
Senior Member
Germany
learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6265 days ago

2608 posts - 4866 votes 
Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

 
 Message 33 of 195
07 April 2007 at 4:37am | IP Logged 
Sprachprofi: Indonesian, Swedish, Swahili, Portuguese, Russian, other
Patuco: Swedish, Swahili
Julie: Swedish, Portuguese, Dutch, other
Frisco: Turkish, Romanian, German
Jeff_lindgvist: Esperanto, Portuguese, other
Raincrowlee: Esperanto
Talairan: Swahili, Portuguese
Leosmith? (might participate)
Farley: Turkish
lady_skywalker: Persian
andee: Japanese
Journeyer? (might participate)
reineke: Japanese, Spanish
leosmith: Esperanto, French, Russian
Malcolm?
luke: German - materials?
Lastminute: Haitian Creole
burntgorilla: Swedish
Andy Liu: Esperanto

I am thinking to start a week from now (Saturday the 14th) so that everybody has the time to decide on a language, look for materials, order any if necessary, and develop a study plan.

Keeping an online language-learning journal would be great - if somebody later wants to learn as much as you did in just 6 weeks, they could just copy exactly what you did and hope for the best. However, since this requires additional time, it's not required.

Luke, try the lessons for German I wrote for a painless introduction. Then you might like to do the free course offered by Deutsche Welle, it's dialog-based and very extensive. The beginner level is called "Deutsch - warum nicht". There is also an intermediate level as well as a course in business German. The Exeter University's online German course is also very good, but not quite as extensive.
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aru-aru
Triglot
Senior Member
Latvia
Joined 6252 days ago

244 posts - 331 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, Russian

 
 Message 34 of 195
07 April 2007 at 6:20am | IP Logged 
Hey, this sounds like fun! I might go for swedish or dutch. Need to take a look at what our local library says to this, though.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6392 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 35 of 195
07 April 2007 at 7:31am | IP Logged 
I'm thinking about trying Esperanto... Ardaschir said that after each new language learning langs gets easier, so why not give a try.. I might drop the experiment as these are also going to be my last weeks in high school.

Although I see quite a lot of people are trying Esperanto.. Perhaps I'll take Icelandic, Greek, Indonesian, Turkish, Old Church Slavonic (the only one I'll tell my parents about if I do take it), Lithuanian or Welsh... are there any courses like this excellent one for any of the langs in my list?

Update: I've realized the best possible choice for me is probably Yiddish. As I speak some German this is most likely not going to be too hard, and it will probably help me to get better grades on German at school. It would be also interesting to see what learning a new writing system is like, since I learnt the cyrillic and latin ones at about 4 or 5 and don't remember much about learning them :)

Edited by Serpent on 07 April 2007 at 7:47am

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MeshGearFox
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6490 days ago

316 posts - 344 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Russian

 
 Message 36 of 195
07 April 2007 at 1:24pm | IP Logged 
Hah! I was tempted to start the same thing myself, inspired by NaNoWriMo. In fact, I think I made a post about it in March. My idea is that the arbitrary time limit would make people work more efficiently for some reason.

Well, I think I might start something new like Afrikaans or Icelandic. Or maybe... Indonesian? I might even try something really adventurous like Greelandic, except there aren't any resources on that anywhere appparently.

Just to weigh some of my options here, Icelandic has gender, and depending on how arbitrary it is, I might go for something genderless like Afrikaans. Then again, Afrikaans might be a little bit too easy and I don't want to get bored. Finnish, Basque, and Inuit or Greenlandic are all interesting from a 'I need to play around with something that's not indo-european' sense, but, as I said, only Finnish would have good resources.

Anyway, I'll see what other people are doing. For the time being, though, probably either Icelandic, Afrikaans, Basque, or Finnish.

Just curious, if anyome who HAS studied Icelandic is reading this, is the gender totally arbitrary, or, like in German, are there sets of prefixes and endings that tend to point you in the right direction?
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lady_skywalker
Triglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
aspiringpolyglotblog
Joined 6685 days ago

909 posts - 942 votes 
Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin
Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian

 
 Message 37 of 195
07 April 2007 at 4:33pm | IP Logged 
Out of curiosity....how on Earth will our progress in our chosen language be judged? Are there any specific goals we need to achieve or is that entirely up to each person?

I'm still interested in this little game, although I can't guarantee I'll be able to do much in those 6 weeks.
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Asiafever
Diglot
Newbie
Germany
Joined 6248 days ago

38 posts - 35 votes
Speaks: French*, English
Studies: German, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 38 of 195
07 April 2007 at 4:38pm | IP Logged 
Count me in!

I am currently studying Mandarin but I always wanted to learn Japanese too. I wanted to finish Mandarin first because of what's written on this website about learning multiple languages at the same time but I think I will be in!

So, I'm going to learn Japanese from scratch using Pimsleur and possible other materials but most likely not. Hope my Mandarin won't be affected but both languages are completely different in many aspects so it don't think I will.
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Evanstar
Triglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 6247 days ago

24 posts - 24 votes
Speaks: English*, Catalan, Spanish
Studies: French, Russian, Swedish, Finnish, Latin, Swahili, Italian

 
 Message 39 of 195
07 April 2007 at 8:34pm | IP Logged 
I'll bite - my choice is latin :)
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reineke
Senior Member
United States
https://learnalangua
Joined 6242 days ago

851 posts - 1008 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 40 of 195
07 April 2007 at 8:59pm | IP Logged 
I second lady_skywalker's concern. In addition our choices may be related to something we already know. Should we just report our thoughts and disclose prior knowledge? Should we form pairs? I have no prior knowledge of Japanese but I do speak Italian and French and I have studied Latin for a few years. Consequently my other choice, Spanish, would have very different results. I know, it's all fun and games, but some attempt at usefulness we should make. I'm talking like Yoda now.


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