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I started learning German in Aug. and I have progressed pretty far. I can understand some German music and basic German conversation. But not news casts or movies or books yet. I think I have finally decided what I want to be when I grow up, a long haired polyglot. It will not be easy, but I think I can do it.
When I am around Manhattan sometimes the German tourists will comment on my hair, because they don't think I can understand them. Most of what is said about my hair is positive and Germans are more tolerant of personal expression.
I am also interested in Spanish, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, and French,and curious but do not plan to learn Old English..
Of course you can only work on 1 language at a time and I am thinking I am 25 now so I should at least get German,Russian and Spanish done by the time I am 40 I should be good.
Chinese poses special problems due to it's writing system, but once you understand that you can understand other Chinese dialects and languages.
Hope you all have a nice day.
I just had to choose my options for the rest of my school life, wha i am taking and that lot.
I went for French and Drama, if that counts
Hi Kenneth,
That's a very impressive list of langauges. At school I learned French and semi-fluent in that and also did a years study of German. That comes in useful when to go to Wacken each summer.
My brother in law is Dutch so he's taught me some my visits over there and is similar to German. I've also visited places like Sweden and Finland and take the opportunity to learn those languages as well. Swedish is related to German and easier to understand but Finnish being Ugric family of languages. I've found Finnish hard to learn as well. But I ge by with usual of sayign hello, ordering a cup of coffee or a beer.
Cheers,
John.B
Finnish is meant to be an absolute pain to learn because of all the different cases. That's as much as I know about it and it's likely to stay like that!
I love learning languages too. I've studied Latin, French, and Portuguese in school and dabbled around with Spanish and Swedish. (Erik and Chris H are laughing now at these claims!) The only one I'm barely competent in is Latin. I'd like to learn Italian; for all practical purposes one might call it Modern Latin and not be far off the mark. The thing is getting to use each one you learn. I was pretty good at Portuguese ten years ago, but I never use it. I ordered a short Brazilian novel a while back, Iracema thinking I would try to read it but haven't tackled it yet just because I've forgotten so much of the vocabulary.
That's great what your'e doing, and I wish you luck. I think I'd have a problem with the Chinese too. It's tonal, and I think you have to know at least 40,000 pictograms to read it well.
To read a newspaper in Simplified Chinese takes only 5000 Chinese Kanji I think.
Even so Kanji unifies the CHinese language and all its dialects and KANJI is not phonetic.
That is the one hard thing about Chinese, it exists as several spoken languages and dialects and 2 written language.
Simplified Chinese is usually used for Mandarin and is usually easier to learn by Chinese school kids.
Traditional Chinese is usually used by Cantonese speakers is a more difficult.
Med lite övning kommer du lätt lära dig svenska, det skiljer sig inte allt för mycket från till exempel engelska eller tyska. :)
Jag tänker studera svenska, övning, övning och mer övning. Tackar!! Jag kan inte mycken tyska likefullt.
I've heard that Icelandic is the hardest to learn. Personally I'd be happy to learn Spanish. I had French in school but not fluent in it at all. Has anyone used Rosetta Stone?
They give you 4 pictures and tell you to guess which picture corresponds to the correct word. Meaning you may be able to pick it out of a book, but not speak it.
I know myself when I spoke German to native speakers today that reading a language is easier than Speaking. Rosetta Stone will do nothing for you if your goal is master your 2nd language like you have your first.
I first used Pimsleur German I II III and then I am now going the the FSI courses. The FSI courses were created by the government to train Diplomats to speak the language.
You can get several courses here free and legally.
http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/
Hey thanks for that. I myself have mused as to the really bad quality of Rosetta Stone. It seemed to have good reviews yet was completely impossible to use for learning Chinese. I'll look up that link.
I just found my entertainment for the next few months! =D
Thanks!
-James
There was a documentary over here last year about a guy (genius level intelligence) who learnt enough Icelandic in seven days to be interviewed on an Icelandic TV programme. They have a couple of sounds which most English speakers (and probably everyone else) have trouble with.
I met a group of Icelandic people at a minority language thing years back. They all assumed I was Icelandic, but from one of the other schools and spoke to me in Icelandic. The weird thing was that the sounds were so like those of my local Scottish Gaelic dialect that I felt I should be able to understand them. I suppose it's understandable, given that we only became Scottish a few hundred years ago after centuries of Danish and Norwegian rule and a history of trading with Iceland and the Faroe Islands that we'd have similar intonations.
I wish you good luck Kenneth. I found that very interesting.
I personally speak french (because I am), english (although speaking it correctly is still hard to me) and I've some basis in spanish.
Good bye
Vivien
I speak Russian, French and English, and plan to learn Mandarin as soon as I can get a hold of a good teacher, because that language is very hard to teach yourself.
If I can be bothered, I might learn something like spanish in the future, and maybe Japanese, but those aren't necessarily what I'm aiming for.
German I want to avoid because I find it to be a pretty ugly language.
High!
Yes, I understand... ;-)
See you on www.khyberspace.de!
Yadgar
Ouch! That is a pretty nasty mud to sling, because much of it ends up on you.
Bill
No language is ugly. Have you ever heard native German speakers speak, it isn't that much harsher than English. I went too today one of the few remaining German Churches in NYC and the way the pastor spoke in German was pleasing to the ears. Considering that you live in Belgium, Dutch and Flemish are considered to be much harsher than German. I think a lot of why people think German is such a ugly language is because of the Nazi Stereotype.
I don't go to German churches much, but above is a cool church we saw in Germany. What is weird is that right after we took that photo, I saw a guy sitting in the driver's seat of a taxicab at a nearby cab stand who looked just like MLHH user "Yadgar". I am really terrible at recognizing people by their faces, but I am good with hair, and the guy had lots of both beard and mane. He really did look like Yadgar.
Even stranger was that when we climbed up to the top of the church steeple, the stairway was covered with graffiti. There must be a special place in Hell for people who would put graffiti on a centuries-old cathedral. That must be a cultural difference; few Americans would tag an ancient church.
When we were in Switzerland we also saw graffiti on their capitol in Berne. I can't imagine anyone tagging the Capitol in Washington.
Bill
Yuck.
Bill
That is not cool and I hope it is only Germans doing that instead of tourists making the United States look bad. The graffiti looks like that of the graffiti in apartment buildings here in the New York
I know religion isn't too popular with this generation of Europeans, but they should leave their ancient churches alone..
I've visited the colonge last year and it's very nice church.
I also think it's bad that people put their name on objects.
We've got a spreaking in netherland,
Alleen gekken en dwazen zetten hun namen op muren en glazen
translated it's somethink like this:
Only fools and idiots put their names on walls and windows.
High!
Yes, I remember you having mailed me some years ago that you had been to Cologne!
But the shaggy guy wasn't me... I don't have a taxi license, not even an ordinary car license!
See you on www.khyberspace.de!
Yadgar
And the great likelihood of that is why I did not go up to him to find out! I don't speak German, after all.
I also saw a longhair in Switzerland who looked just like a friend of mine in college, who I last saw 30 years before. I knew it wasn't my friend though, because the guy was only about 25!
Bill
Don't you have trouble dealing with french, dutch and flemish in your own country!
I'm looking forward to my annual trip through Belgium in August with the bumpy amd dimly lit motorways and the race track between Gent and Antwerp and it's lovely ring.
Cheers,
John.B
German language ugly? Ha! The Spanish language you're interested in learning may sound 'nice' to the ears but it sure is damn ugly. I'm Spanish myself and I'm not afraid to admit that the Spanish language is just an extremely screwed up version of Latin. Check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influences_on_the_Spanish_language
Wow, I didn't expect all these responses lol.
First, when I said I thought German was ugly, I didn't say it was the only language I found ugly. The best way to see if a language is "ugly" (and yes I realise this is of course subjective, and probably harsh) is to listen to people singing in it. Personally, I think both english, german and dutch are all part of the same group of germanic languages, and so are ugly. Yes, I called English ugly even though it's my mother tongue. I started learning Russian simultaneously with English, and have a good memory of, for example, both traditional folk and pop music of both cultures, and can say that Russian pop is probably worse than English pop, but the Russian traditional method of singing is far more attractive to my ears than English or American folk music ever was.
Having said that, even Russian, (which I think is only slightly "prettier" than English, knowing both as mother tongues) pales compared to French, which I personally find lovely. French songs (such as Joe Dassin or Edith Piaf) have always sounded much better to my ears, and needless to say that Italian opera is also much better than anything the English or Russian languages could offer.
However, when I label a language as "ugly", that doesn't make it undesirable. If I'm in the mood for some really heavy stuff, I'll listen to someone like E Nomine, which is a german band with great vocals. The harshness of the language also has its advantages.
But of course this is all my subjective opinion, and I'm not claiming to some sort of higher knowledge about this. Unlike something like economics or politics, reasoned discussion is almost impossible here, because it's all aesthetics. So uhm, sorry if I offended anyone with my opinions.
P.S. I realise Spanish isn't exactly pretty, but from a calculating perspective, far more people speak Spanish than German, so just like with the choice of learning Mandarin, it's a purely population-based one.
Hi Kenneth
It sounds like you have quite an ambitious language schedule ahead of you but thats cool.It has to be a blast knowing many languages as when you travel you can actually understand the locals.Unfortunately I haven't learned another language so I'm just stuck with English.One thing that was cool was the last time I made a trip to Montreal it was great hearing the French Canadiens speak.I though it was a pleasant language to listen to even though I didn't understand a word!LOL.Anyway good luck with learning and be safe in Manhattan as it was great there yesterday when I decided to drop in for a few hours.
Mark
I took French and German in high school and can write in those languages sort of but can't speak them. I tried learning Spanish
as an adult and it gets harder the older you get. I can understand
a bit of German but in The far north of the country where the
wacken Festival is they have a bit of a twang or dialect and I get
lost trying to understand them.
Good luck
Kevin
High!
As far as long hair is concerned this is probably true - however, the tolerance wears thin when it comes to long beards! I think it's because in Germany, there exists no tradition of "frontier" lifestyle (the last real "frontier" here already disappeared in the Middle Ages!)...
I learned Persian (Farsi/Dari) some years ago, I also started learning Pashto, but gave up pretty soon as this language is really tongue-breaking!
See you on www.khyberspace.de!
Yadgar
I was based in Tehran, Iran for two years in the '70's and picked up some Persian while I was there. Not really a very useful a second language here ! HA!
Walter
I know Spanish reasonably well, which is very useful where I live, here in California. I can also get over 50% of French and Italian writing just because these languages have enough similarities to English or Spanish that I can figure them out. I cannot write, speak, or audibly understand any language other than English or Spanish though.
When in Italy I had reasonable success at times speaking Spanish when needs were great and no one spoke English.
When in Germany it took me almost two weeks to even get the phonemes. After that, at least I could correlate the signs on the rail stations with the announcements made on the trains. Until I got an ear for the phonemes, I could not even do that.
In tourist areas enough signs in Europe contained English that I could make sense of most of what was going on, except in France, however French in written form is close enough to English that I seldom felt I did not know what signs meant.
In New Brunswick they put signs in both English and French, and this means they have less space on each sign to say stuff. In Quebec they just use French so say more, and I liked that better simply because despite my poor ability at reading French, I nevertheless got more information.
In Mexico, of course all the signs are in Spanish and I read them just fine.
Bill
I'm also interested in languages, but haven't learned any to an advanced standard (at least, orally). I got AAA* in GCSE Latin, Spanish and French, respectively, and continued with Spanish through to A-Level but did poorly because, at the time, Spanish history and literature were the last things I had the motivation to study. I haven't touched any of those languages since school and, while I've almost entirely forgotten French and Latin, I can still read a Spanish newspaper and understand 90% of it.
I intend to resume Latin at some point as it's easily the most interesting language I've ever learned, but my main targets at the moment are Polish and Norwegian. Polish is an absolute bugger of a language, so with my university workload I haven't been able to put the proper amount of effort into learning that. Nor have I had the time to get beyond the basics of Norwegian; as soon as university is over with this will be my immediate focus.
Old Norse looks very interesting too, but if I were to tackle such a hard language, I'd probably go with Icelandic as it's close to Old Norse, but actually useful. And finally, Finnish could be on the cards if my dream of living there ever comes true.
I enjoy languages, though the amount of time I devote to practicing has dropped off to virtually nothing in the past few years. I took Spanish in high school, then Japanese in college. I spent about four months in Japan as an exchange student and at the end of my stay was about as proficient as I'll probably ever be in that language. Unfortunately I didn't keep up with my studies upon returning to the U.S. because my dream of teaching English in Japan was shattered by the realization that I just couldn't live that far away from my family for an extended period of time. I'm not overly-clingy to my parents by any means, but I enjoy interacting with my parents, grandparents, and sister on a weekly basis.
Ironically, an attempt to relearn Spanish a couple years ago screwed up what remained of my Japanese proficiency. Now if I try to use Japanese I tend to mix in Spanish! Oy... That, and I didn't keep up with Spanish enough to gain any real proficiency in THAT language.
If I commited to learning one or the other again I could probably do well, but it just never seems to take priority, and I don't live in an area where either is needed on a day to day basis. I like languages, but apparently not enough to put in the time it takes to learn one at my age.
All is not lost, though, since I learned a lot of other things in the process of attempting the two languages, especially Japanese. Those four months as an exchange student really helped me mature and gain self-confidence. That, and I learned to like a LOT of different food that I might have otherwise not even tried. Of course, I still think the Japanese are WAY too obsessed with mayonase. :-)
Mouse
I am learning Norwegian (Bokmaal) and will be learning German later this year.
I'm actually quite keen in starting to learn German, ever since I went to Germany on a Student Exchange last November :D
I know French quite well too, I love the language.
I know a few words in Italian! Haha
And I can speak (quite bad) Maltese; it's the language we speak here in Malta (Europe), but I hate it because it sounds harsh and originates from Arabic.
Sounds great that you progressed so much in German :)
I was thinking of actually studying German and working there as an adult.. we'll see how that goes.
Thanks for the interesting topic!
Shawn
Great topic!
I have been learning French for the past two years and have a nearly functional level of the language, along with taking 4 years of Spanish in high school, most of which I have forgotten, although I do plan at some point, once I master French to some degree, to return to Spanish and fill in the, sizable, holes.
-Austin
Seit 2001 oder 2002 hab' ich Deutsch gelernt, aber das erste Jahr brachte ich mir selbst die Sprache. ;)
I took some Spanish in high school, but I've forgotten much of it. Funny enough, though, as I was flying to Madrid last October, I seemed to remember a lot, and could understand much of what was being said by the time we landed. Also, of course, I've been studying Portuguese on and off, though no one in Lisbon could understand me. LOL
I'd love to sit down and really take a shot at Swedish sometime, but right now my schedule is quite full.
Very interesting topic, Kenneth. =)
-James
I grew up speaking Cantonese (Southern Chinese) at home with my parents. In high school, I took 3 years of French. In college, I took 2.5 years of Mandarin ("Official" Chinese), and also learned how to read Spanish and Portuguese. Learning another language opens up a whole new world of different humor, thought patterns, customs, and societal values. It helps us to understand other people and their points of view. Learning other languages is time well-spent! Good luck to you. You will never regret the effort that you put into learning other languages.
My third grade teacher gave us VERY basic French vocabulary every day and some grammar. We learned how to say, "I need to use the restroom" and that kind of thing. Then, in 7th grade we had 9 weeks of French and 9 weeks of Spanish. In high school I took 4 years of German. In college I took two terms of German and 4 of Spanish.
Teach Yourself Swedish,
Teach Yourself Swedish,
Teach Yourself Swedish,
Teach Yourself Swedish,
Eeep! Miss a tag, and lose a bunch of your post! We need preview here.
Teach Yourself Swedish,
Teach Yourself Swedish,
Teach Yourself Swedish,
I studied French in high school (i.e. secondary school) and college. I reached the point at which I could understand people conversing. then I graduated and, in the middle american south, pre-internet, pre-satellite tv, and other technology day, forgot most of it because I was isolated. I think French is probably the most beautiful language there is. When I lived in Korea, (south korea to be precise) I studied Korean and found it difficult because it uses Hangul, a non-Roman alphabet. I also wish I were multi-lingual and envy people who live in locations such as Europe where this is easier to accomplish.
I actually have two Masters degrees in different languages... Here's my list:
Finnish (native), Swedish, Spanish, English, French, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, Latin, Classical Greek and some German, Chinese, Estonian, Hungarian, Catalan, Galician... About 15 years ago I even went to a course in Seneca (a native American language)!
I've also studied general linguistics and phonetics...
I'm fluent in Scottish Gaelic and English, I can get by in Welsh, French, German and Spanish, although I'm better with the written languages than spoken. I shared a house with a Barcelonin girl for a few months, so I picked up the basics of Catalan too. In Welsh, I still have trouble with the "ll" at the end of a word. I studied a bit of Japanese when I was in school, but have forgotten most of that. Because I was learning Welsh and German at the same time, I sometimes get them confused and come out with a Welsh word when I want a German one. You'd think after more than ten years I'd have sorted them out, but no.
I can read a bit of Greek and if you gave me a Russian text, I could read it out, but I wouldn't have a clue what it meant! When I have time to fit it in, I'd like to learn Norwegian, but that'll have to wait for now.
I think it gets easier the more languages you learn, because you can relate the grammar of each to what you've learnt in the others. That's especially true with the Celtic and Romance languages, where, in many cases, the sentence structure is very similar and you can sometimes just substitute the vocabulary of the other language. However that's not always the case. I get really confused with Irish Gaelic, perhaps because it's so similar to Scottish Gaelic, but they have all sorts of eclipses and slightly different endings. I can read it and, depending on the dialect, understand the spoken language, but I think I'd struggle to learn it.
If you don't use it, you lose it! So true with the French and Spanish that I never spoke fluently and now don't read so well either. When in doubt, http://www.babelfish.com/, "ain't," the Internet grand?
>Re: anyone here into langauges?
Yes. Pascal, Fortran, Cobol, Basic, C++, Assembly.
I'm a german who was growing up at the french boarder. We spoke a dialect at home which can be understood in Luxemburg and in parts of France where german is the mother language. In my elementary school, I learned french and the official german. Later on in high school , I started to learn english and latin . When I was at university I studied as a hobby indonesian. Today I'm working in a company with global activities and english is the unevitable commercial language. Without english we would have a real problem in Europe to understand each other.
I was a longhair in my youth and my hair was wavy blond and was
down my butt.It was not an easy life with such hair in those days but my parents were quiete tolerant.
If you love long hair, keep it as you have no resposiblities and duties and enjoy the freedom you have.
Frank