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Lately I've found myself quite interested in learning a third language. More specifically Japanese. I've been interested in Japanese culture from a rather young age. As well as being surrounded by friends & communities who base themselves around the Japanese language and culture for quite some time now.
So I thought what the heck. Might be fun to challenge myself and do something productive aside from work (As I'm not in college at the moment)
The first thing that struck me really is how much the actual learning aspect is based on you as a person. Your intelligence, memory, motivation & reasons all affect how you go on about when learning a new language. What takes one person 5 years to learn might take another person 15 years to learn. This is something I feel greatly affects language. I've seen immigrants in my own country develop their language skills. From speaking broken Norwegian with bad pronounciation to speaking perfect sounding & fluent Norwegian. However, this is not the case for everyone. I know some people who have lived here for 10-20 years. They still ask me how to spell this & that and how to pronounce this word and that word.
What does this have to do with me learning a third language?
The same thing applies to me. How fast I can learn a new language depends on my overrall qualifications in the above ares as I mentioned. (At least that's my opinion)
I'm currently at the absolute beginner stage in Japanese. Though I can start very brief convorsations and ask some daily questions. I'm also learning Kanji (Written Japanese basically) I think it's fun though & especially when I know others who do the same.
My question to you folks here on TL is if you have some experience of your own that you'd like to share. Have you learned or are in the process of learning a third language? Alternatively if you're from an English speaking country how did you go on about learning a second language? Did you do anything special to make yourself remember words & phrases?
Share what you like!
 
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United States744 Posts
What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Two? One?
+ Show Spoiler +Trilingual, bilingual, American
I'm in the process of learning my second language and I'm going to start a third next semester, while continuing the second. Entirely different from what you're talking about, but if I remember I'll post back.
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The benefits of living in a multilingual country 
I can already speak 3 languages (Dutch - French - English) and am in the process of learning a 4th (Korean). I intend on learning/hope to learn Russian one day too, since it's such an awesome sounding language.
The most important thing about learning languages in my opinion is to be active with them. You have to force yourself in uncomfortable situations, talk with natives/people of higher levels and force yourself to not be ashamed if you make any mistakes, which you will.
Start reading foreign books as soon as you can as well, they're a tremendous help.
Good luck with Japanese. I like Japanese as well although I find Korean to have more pleasing sounds.
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Japan11286 Posts
I personally don't think it has much to do with intelligence as it has with actually putting the effort into it. That and having the motivation and reason to learn (and practice). I wanted to learn Russian one time but I had no motivation/reason to continue beyond learning cyrillic and a handful of words. I had motivation/reason to learn Korean but I didn't put any effort so it failed.
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Kanji fun? Just wait till the real grind begins
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In Malaysia it's common for people to speak 4 languages or more. (though at different levels of profieciency, ie not excellent at all of them). In addition to that, I have learnt several European languages and passed some exams a few years ago.
Learning languages is easy if you are really interested and passionate about it
Just live the languages. Talk to people, watch movies, set your phone user interface to japanese etc,
I have never taken notes or memorised from a list. It would have been useful back then without the internet but I can look anything up now. I only went for formal classes for my French, where I did take some notes, but I eventually stopped because I found out that they weren't useful for me, because the translator for french is just too good: http://www.wordreference.com . If a source like that didn't exist I'd have to do it of course.
Given how Japanese has a high "language distance" from western languages (you'l have to learn a new writing system, and less similar vocabulary aside from the odd words like ice cream and sandwich etc, and a different grammatical system.), it'll take a longer time for your to learn it, and of course you'll actually need to practise your writing since the lazy man's techniques I used were for languages written in latin alphabets.
GL ^^
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On May 04 2016 14:09 JieXian wrote:
Just live the languages. Talk to people, watch movies, set your phone user interface to japanese etc.
This sums it up pretty much for me at least For me the language is Russian and it really was challenging to learn sitting in classes. Then I went to Belarus (most people speak Russian there) for one year, started reading Russian books, incorporated Russian language aspects to my thesis, made more and more Russian friends and dated briefly a Russian girl. So now everyday I will learn something new about the language.
One fun way to learn words and phrases is to find Japanese songs you like and listen to them while reading their lyrics at the same time! Have fun!
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A friend of mine took Spanish and Japanese at the same time. He was always complaining about mixing up the two in the beginning, but was able to pull it off in the end.
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I can say from personal experience with Japanese as my 3rd language, it is fun and not too hard to get to an intermediate level but extremely difficult to become fluent and literate.
In broad strokes, Japanese is very logical and the beauty of it comes out in the nuances and subtleties, which make it much more precise and thinly sliced than English. But what makes it difficult to master is there are lots of exceptions to any rule. Japanese also share a lot of unwritten but common understandings of how to use their own language, particularly in how sensitive people can be about social rituals and formalities.
This goes double for kanji, where the Japanese are very unforgiving about errors. But maybe that won't matter if you plan to use the computer or smartphone to communicate.
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If I want to learn a 3rd language I prefer french or spain. If you speak spain, you can visit all countries in south america or french at continent africa.
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I never really learned a 3rd language because of sheer laziness. On one hand, it would be kinda cool to be able to communicate with people natively in some interesting place, on the other, there are just so many options and it takes so much work ... it just doesn't feel rewarding enough. I can thus speak Czech and English fluently (well, the second one is up to everyone of you to judge ) and then have a varied basic knowledge of some languages (mainly German, Spanish and some Slavic languages, as they are easy for me) to get around in the respective countries, but I can't really have a deep conversation with a local.
I learned German for 4 years in high school, but if you don't "live" the language, as it has been said, it's by far not enough. There was a time I was hitchiking a lot through Germany and could talk a little about my or their life or hobbies, but not really about science or politics and this skills have faded quickly. With Spanish, it's completely opposite, I don't have any education apart of a self-learning book my wife gave me and which I casually browse from time to time (without any real gain from it), but I spend a lot of time in South America, so I somehow miraculously became able to understand a lot of things. I can't really talk much coherently and getting what people are talking about among themselves is hard, but I was for example able to get most of what the park rangers told us about the jungle in Peru, which definitely enriched my experience a lot.
Not sure what the point of this rant is, but I would say, that you should view languages as a tool and learning them as an investment and think about, what you want to get out of it. If you are deeply interested in one culture, then it's probably a good decision to properly learn the language. If you want to travel broadly, you are better off getting the basics of many languages. For me, the most rewarding has been always the "second step" ... learning just formalities and food names doesn't really do that much, but learning just enough for some basic interaction with locals was always really good for getting much more from the travel.
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Like others have pointed out - immersing yourself in the language is the best method. Tackle it from angles : converse, listen to music, watch movies/dramas, try using it as much as possible. It kinda depends on the level of proficiency you intend to achieve. Japanese is "fairly" easy when it comes to speaking and listening but real PITA about reading and writing. If you want fully learn the language prepare for the real grind because attaining fluency in japanese will be A LOT of work and you will have to work efficiently.
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I'm in the same position as you are, I'm fluent in German and English, and passable in French and Spanish. Now I'm not sure what to focus on. Spanish is spoken by more people and it's a fair bit easier (because I'm 'fluent' in Latin), but French would be more useful when I move to BC.
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Motivation and effort are pretty important, but immersion is absolutely key. It's essential to be living the language you want to master and have a practical hand in nurturing its growth. You aren't going to learn a language from glancing over a ______ for Dummies, you have to live with a language to have it embedded in your brain properly. Get your hands on all the Japanese media you can get, start playing video games that have a Japanese language option and turn them on, hell, maybe go on exchange or visit. If there's a Japanese speaking club or group in Norway, find it and go as often as you can, the best way to learn a language is to speak it actively.
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ANKI!
If you like it, try AnkiDroid too. Extremely useful when you are on a train, any long waiting line, or just chilling around. With Anki on your smartphone you end up making good use of what would be wasted time.
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Japanese is a really interesting language, I've been in the process of learning it as a second language for quite a while now but I don't really know how it compares to learning other languages. I've also been pretty much doing it independently, relying primarily on online resources. I'm not very consistent in my studying which slows things down a lot so it'll be a long time from now before I can read fluently.
One thing that's been a challenge for me is finding decent online sources to learn from, although I've found some pretty decent ones it's taken me a very long time to find them. What I've primarily been enjoying about learning Japanese is how completely differently it's structured compared to English and actually I quite like kanji even given all the difficulties involved with learning them.
There was a book early on that I read:
www.adlibris.com/images/2679579/remembering-the-kanji.jpg
and it details a method (and guides you along on how to use it with many examples) that I found quite helpful. The method basically revolves around turning kanji's into stories to help you connect the logograph to the meaning. Also, when you write the kanji stroke by stroke it makes remembering them much much easier I've found.
Anyways, I hope learning Japanese goes well for you and good luck~
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Motivation was the most important aspect for me; i wanted to learn a third language to get closer to my father; so what i did was a 4 month intensive program living in the native country; full immersion: mornings for 4 hourse where studying in school grammar, writing, speaking and listening; lunch listening to tv while eating; afternoon practical activity, film, trip; at night unless i went out break, and back to english or italian for me which are both my native languages; after 4 months getting a job and speaking daily in that language, reading the newspaper, having discussions in that language;
After 10 months i spoke fluently and without effort; my accent was native;
Then i moved away; this was 4 years ago; right now i am back on vacation and its taking its time to come back, aldo in some moments it feels like 4 years aGo.
I recall that the front lobe of my brain was very active while i studied; whenever i felt demotivated, my intention and motivation would keep me going; also learning a language from scratch, that you have never learned in your young years,was very mind opening; you start to think in new ways that affect yousk in things that have nothing to do with the language.new ideas, new concenpts, new roles and activities
Edit: also i was living with native speakers
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EPT
