Lately, since I was able to drop Spanish a couple years ago in school, I've been wanting to pick up a different language like Swedish or German or some european language so I can say that I'm bilingual :D and to keep my brain sharp

I haven't really learned a new language by myself before though so I just wanted to ask the community and people that have learned languages like Korean how they did it, and how long it took them and if they had help, parents spoke that language, had a friend that spoke the language, learned it by themselves, uesd a program to help, etc...

Tufas

Austria2259 Posts

January 02 2012 16:14 GMT

Well in europe there is this little thing called public education (like me, I spent 8 years at a (well whatever you would name it, 10-18 yo) natural science school and I learned english and spanish (a 4th language[ 4th ? Well yes, because I speak german too] if I would have gone to the humanistic/language school I wanted to go to). If you can, in europe most universities offer a basic language course in almost any language - I do not mean german philology or slavic studies , just a language course. From there on you can go on your own, once you have the proper pronounciation. Oh well unless you have to pay to study, then dont .. you can always move here, free to study.

And the public education rant was a joke of course.
Well it wasnt, but just think it was.

Where are you from anyway, that might help those who want to help.

Br3ezy

United States720 Posts

January 02 2012 16:15 GMT

On January 03 2012 01:14 Tufas wrote:
Well in europe there is this little thing called public education (like me, I spent 8 years at a (well whatever you would name it, 10-18 yo) natural science school and I learned english and spanish (a 4th language[ 4th ? Well yes, because I speak german too] if I would have gone to the humanistic/language school I wanted to go to). If you can, in europe most universities offer a basic language course in almost any language - I do not mean german philology or slavic studies , just a language course. From there on you can go on your own, once you have the proper pronounciation. Oh well unless you have to pay to study, then dont .. you can always move here, free to study.

And the public education rant was a joke of course.
Well it wasnt, but just think it was.

Where are you from anyway, that might help those who want to help.

ya. I live in the USA though

Ringall

Finland177 Posts

January 02 2012 16:25 GMT

My suggestions on how to learn a new language :

1) learn the basics from study books/programs
-> look at Rosetta Stone language program. I have tried it, and it feels really nice. Might teach you a lot.
2) do you have a smartphone? Swap it's language to what you are learning ---> it becomes a part of your everyday life
3) start watching movies / TV shows / etc on that language. First with English subs if possible, then without.

And I say pick German if you are looking into something "European". It will be immeasurably useful if you ever come to europe. You will honestly survive more or less anywhere with English/German combo. Also, German is one of the more pleasant european languages.

( I would stay study finnish, as it is a really lovely language, but that might not really help you with anything in the long run :D )

AmericanUmlaut

Germany2581 Posts

January 02 2012 16:25 GMT

You learn foreign languages the same way you learn anything else hard. You get passionate and invest a huge amount of time practicing until you get good.

I find structured university classes more useful than anything you can do on your own, though reading books is really good practice for European languages -- you can't just sit down and read Japanese because of the unfamiliar writing system, but you can read German books by just looking up all the words in a dictionary once you've learned a bit of basic grammar. If you really want to become bilingual, you should plan on spending some time in a country that speaks the language you're interested in.

As for me: I learned Japanese by spending two years studying it at university, then a year studying in Kyoto, followed by four more years of university study and a six-month stint in Chiba writing my thesis. I learned German by spending one year taking German classes at university and then living here for six years.

NonFactor

Sweden698 Posts

January 02 2012 16:39 GMT

The big 3 languages in Europe are German, French and Spanish. I'd pick one of those. (Spanish is probably out eh?)

Swedish is also useful if you plan to live in the Nordic countries. If you speak Swedish you can communicate with them Norwegians just fine. You can also attempt to talk to Danish people but this takes experience. Reading Danish on the other hand is actually doable. Then theres always some Finns that actually know Swedish. (All of them study it, but most of them just don't care about it and never learn more then a few words.) I speak Finnish and Swedish so I have a very easy time getting jobs up here, since it basically means I can communicate with everyone. Our countries are very ''mixed'' with each other when it comes to business.

I'm also studying Japanese and plan on moving to China in order to study Mandarin so I'm also quite passionate about foreign languages aswell. ^^

But like AmericanUmlaut said, it will take a lot of time and dedication. Learning a new language after childhood is probably one of the hardest things you will do in your life. And the truth stands:

Language is best learned in the country where they speak it.

And there's numerous reasons for that. I plan to live both in Japan and China in order to learn their languages. I'd seriously recommend doing the same.

Good luck!

cosine

313 Posts

January 02 2012 18:21 GMT

If you're a student, your school has language courses. Take one. If you're not a student, sign up for a language course at your local community college. It's remarkably cheap to take a single course.

You can of course learn a language on your own, but it's significantly harder. I recommend at least taking one course in the language your thinking about to get the basics, then decide for yourself if you're comfortable going forward on your own.

There are plenty of resources for learning a language at any bookstores or libraries; look into them.

FourFace

701 Posts

January 02 2012 18:22 GMT

On January 03 2012 01:39 NonFactor wrote:
The big 3 languages in Europe are German, French and Spanish. I'd pick one of those. (Spanish is probably out eh?)

Good luck!

That's insane .. Romanian is the biggest language. You only need Romanian a little bit of Korean in Europe.
Trolling aside. You want to surround yourself with that language, wear it like an astronaut helmet and take it off only when you go to the bathroom to wash your face. I speak 4 languages fluently and I think the astronaut helmet analogy gives you an accurate depiction of what you need to do.

Romania Rules .. Fools drool

Qaz

84 Posts

January 02 2012 18:35 GMT

After you get a basic understanding of phrasing/vocabulary with books/rosetta etc. , Tv is your best friend.

Tobberoth

Sweden6375 Posts

January 02 2012 19:16 GMT

#10

Depends on the language. Rosetta works for european languages but is crap for asian languages.

If you're dedicated to learning the language on your own, I'd say get textbooks. By that, I mean GOOD textbooks, it's a big difference. What you want is a textbook with a butt-ton of natural example sentences. Dialogs etc are fine, but make sure it's realistic conversations and not dumped down shit. Then, get Anki at http://ankisrs.net/ , it's a spaced repetition software which lets you create decks of "flashcards" which are then spaced automatically to work your memory in an optimal way. Enter everything you want to remember in it, vocab, grammar, example sentences.. the more, the better. While doing this every day, listen to the language a lot. If you want to learn, for example, german, find some german tv shows, german radio or whatever. It doesn't matter if you can't understand, the point is to get a feeling for the language which will help with pronunciation and hearing later on.

The main point to learning a language is learning vocabulary. Grammar and all of that is important, but it's useless to know tons of grammatic rules without the vocabulary to use it. It's also WAY letter to learn grammar from example sentences where you understand all the words. It's also in general best to learn grammar by reading a lot of texts/sentences using it, instead of trying to learn every little nuance from a book of grammatic rules.

Good luck, have fun! Personally I learned Japanese and I still use it every day.

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