Learning a new language!

Heyyo, this seems right up my alley! I can speak English natively and I've been learning Japanese for the past 6 years. I'm not fluent yet but I can at least hold conversations with native speakers and then I can play games/watch anime in Japanese and know pretty well what's going on in the story, even if it's visual novels. I did take spanish lessons from first grade until 9th grade when I switched over to Japanese. I've since lost most of what little spanish I could speak and so now I only know super basic phrases. as for tips with learning, the only tip I have is immersion. You can only get so far using just textbooks or even using just language classes but if you can't find ways to immerse yourself, it's gonna be way harder to get a solid grasp on actually speaking the language. Of course the best way to do this is by talking to native speakers but if that's not an option for you, the next best thing is using media that is in the language you're learning whether that be tv shows, movies, music, games, etc. I love seeing people learn new languages, it's such a good thing for your brain and it helps to further connect people from different places in the world so that people can learn about each other.

 

For me online courses don't do the job at all. I need to interact with someone else to remember the vocabulary properly. Science is different, I can learn it on my own. But language is harder to remember for me, I need some context. Strange Duolinguo phrases... yes, I think this hits home. I found German simple, because its grammar rules had few exceptions and its pronounciation is very straightforward. The grammar is a lot less twisted than English grammar with a dozen od tenses and conditionals and a ton of irregular verbs. Conjugation has been my only problem... but not one that inhibits communication. And with practice, you just learn by heart in which phrases which case (Nominativ, Genitiv etc) to use. I agree about the immersion: watching films or series, reading magazines, listening to music.

I know English, I think as well as a native. I also learnt German at school and apparently my level is advanced, but I'm not as fluent in it as in English, probably because I never had to use German. I also know French and Japanese at a basic level and I'm trying to pick up some Russian too, but on my own rather than taking classes. Russian is very similar to my native language, so it doesn't take much effort to understand a lot. French and Japanese - I attend classes. Of course I learn on my own too.

 

English is my second language. I don't use them often because I live in South Korea now, my home country. I just hope I don't end up forgetting how to form a proper sentence.

I tried learning Chinese in high school and I failed because it was so hard to memorize Chinese characters. I sometimes wish I could read Japanese, but I don't want to be bothered with rote learning again haha I really can't memorize stuff.

 

just to add to this, in the CEFR, the levels are, from lowest to highest: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2. it’s a framework used for non-native languages so native speakers of a language would most likely fall outside of it or test at multiple levels at once. It’s also most useful when applied to adult learners because the way the levels are defined, a young child would never be able to reach C2 because it implies (among other things) that a learner can understand complicated, highly specialised texts without any problems, which a child obviously won’t be able to, not even in their native language. It’s also based on indo-european languages and can be more difficult to apply to other languages because the learning process is structured differently. Generally, for studying or working or whatever abroad, in the language you’re learning, B2 is the minimum level required, just to give you an indication of what the levels more or less mean in practice.

 

Ahhh languages,,, my true love.

For a long time, English and Afrikaans were South Africa's two official languages and in schools you learnt either English first language and Afrikaans second (at and English school) or vice versa if you attended and Afrikaans school. I was lucky to learn both before starting school as my dad is Afrikaans speaking and my mom - English (she speaks Afrikaans as a second but not very well) From grade 5 to 7, I also learnt isiXhosa and I was really good at it.
In high school I took French. Loved it. Went on to university to major in French and do post-grad French.

Since 1996 ( or 1997- I forget) we now have 11 official languages. Most South Africans are trilingual and you will find that Xhosa speakers can also speak Zulu for example.

It took a while for me to click with French because I was older when I started. Afrikaans just "happened" as a kid. When I got to university I also took Latin and German. Both of which I have forgotten a lot.
I also spent just over 6 years living in South Korea where I picked up basic Korean. Nothing fancy. I can read and write better than I speak it so often I have no idea what I am even reading LOL.

I think the important thing to learn first is the vocabulary. Building a solid base will ensure that when the grammar rules come, and they will, you have a good word base so it won't be too much dictionary work (which is unavoidable but can be tedious in the beginning). This is what my French lecturer used to tell us in first year. Build vocabulary! LOL. She was brilliant.

 

Fluently I speak French, English and Spanish.

At a conversational level I speak Italian and German

I also understand fully Portuguese and Galician but don't actually speak them (it's just for the fact that I know similar languages and lived in Galicia for a year, years ago.)

I would love to make more progress in German and also learn Sign language as well as Mandarin and/or Russian.

 

I think it has to do with learning them not at the same time. More than three at the same time seems difficult. Even the French classes outside of school proved difficult to keep up with for me (I already had English and German at school).

 

^ yep! i read somewhere that you should start learning a new language when you know the language you’re currently learning well enough to be able to read books and understand the plot (don’t need to know every detail) and/or can get the general gist of tv/films in that language. if you start learning another one before that you’re at risk of mixing the two up (especially if they’re in the sameness language group). the older you are, the longer it takes to master a new language as well. being raised bilingually or with even more languages also makes it significantly easier to learn new languages later on (but i suppose that’s something that’s too late to change now )

 

I suspect that it does help limiting the number of languages under active study.

There was a period when I was actively studying both French and German. Thinking back, surprisingly I had no trouble juggling the two. Even the last year of study, when German was the hour after French (and, for one semester, even in the same classroom!) But I'm not sure how well 3 languages would have worked.

And past this... Learning does take time. But its worth reflecting that there are different levels of mastery. After 1st year college French, I probably "knew" French well enough that I could stumble around France. (I remember a girl in high school German went to Germany. I'm thinking it was near the end of the first year, and it could not have been any later than the end of the second year--I was in the program for only two years, which gave the equivalent of one year of college German. She returned, and said she was surprised at how far her limited German took her.) Someone who completed third year college French might have known enough to comfortably live in France as an exchange student.

 

This seems like a reasonable guideline.

In my case, I had, at best, maybe the equivalent of 1 year college level difference between French and German. But it was apparently enough. Also the two languages are different, which probably helped.

 

I studied three non-English languages simultaneously at school - my marks didn't suffer in any of the languages and I think it probably helped having a solid conceptual grasp of grammar across different (all European, admittedly) languages.

One thing that helped studying multiple at a time was a fairly rigorous study routine - I would exclusively study for one language one day and rotate through them throughout the week so that I was neither getting confused between the rules, nor becoming lazy by moving onto studying another when one got difficult. I also lucked out in that I never covered similar topics at the same time - I began each language at a different time, though strangely the first foreign language I learnt also ended up being my worst by the end of school.

I think now I'm financially responsible for myself and have a lot more uni work I don't think I could pick up a new one with the same ease.

 

A few years ago I worked in a warehouse with many Hispanics mainly from Mexico and central America. They taught me much more than anything I ever learned in the classroom.

 

I know English, American Sign Language (ASL) and Spanish. English is my primary language. Nothing really exciting there.

I know ASL because a close friend of mine has a deaf father. So, I learned ASL from her so that I could talk to him. Btw, funny side story, his Sign Name is the letter "R" moving from the shoulder to the waist, to signify a sash, because his name is Rich. It's a pun. The sash is like he's fancy because he's "wealthy." Since he's RICH. XD I just thought it would be a cool story to tell, because I think Sign is such a cool language to learn! It's all about facial expressions and body language. Even the same sign done in two different scenarios don't mean the same thing based on the way you're expressing it. It's just a cool thing to learn and I highly recommend it.

I know Spanish because my High School forced me to learn it, although I wanted to take Latin or Japanese because I thought those languages would be more fun to learn. But, alas, I could not. Then, in college, I still had to take it and I actually got good at speaking it! I'm still not as fluent as I am in English or ASL, but it's always a good language to learn, since it's the second most spoken language in the world.

And that's it. I know three languages: one fluently, one semi-fluently and one kinda fluently but not really.