On April 21 2014 00:02 Corazon wrote: Any recommendations? I'd like to have French music in order to enjoy French more and expand my vocabulary :D thanks
I'm learning: French : got my B2 Spanish : got my B1 2 years ago (going on B2!) Portuguese (BR) : Could pass a B1 exam if I study properly for a few months, but there aren't any exams for Brazillian Portuguese here German : Could get A2 if I study for a few months
Please PM me and we'll chat via Skype or MSN, or if you just want to chat with someone from Malaysia, especially if you love music :D ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Conversationexchange.com is a great place to find people too. My sister and I found way better people from there than from sharedtalk.
I learn by listening to audiobooks such as Michel Thomas (not really useful for Chinese or Japanese) and Pimsleur. Both have their pros and cons but both of them complement each other really well. I recommend finishing Michel Thomas then listening to Pimsleur and go back again.
Michel Thomas
Pros: Builds a VERY STRONG foundation in your understanding of the structure and grammar of the language.
Cons: lacking badly in vocab
Pimsleur Pros: Builds fluency and aides remembering phrases and grammar effortlessly, listen to the native speak in imaginary scenarios. Complements Michel Thomas perfectly after you've listened to it.
Cons : It's targeted for married businessmen, doesn't explain the grammar rules in detail, just makes you repeat it, which is why I recommend listening to Michel Thomas first. Vocab is better than Michel Thomas but not better than Memrise or Anki but at least you get to hear the words in sentences. Russian one has phrases which are quite different than what a native would say, I don't know why
On April 21 2014 00:02 Corazon wrote: , I'm looking for some French music I can listen to. All of my foreign friends either listen to "English" music, like American/British Rock and Metal. I like listening to rock and decent pop songs (like for example, I listen to classic rock and I enjoy Maroon 5 and Jack Johnson. I also listen to a lot of Spanish artists such as Juanes, Mana, etc.). Any recommendations? I'd like to have French music in order to enjoy French more and expand my vocabulary :D thanks
Lyrics in the description
It's pretty hard to find good French music, and I'm not sure if it's a good way to learn things from. Personally I find listening to English songs not too helpful to improve my oral understanding
On April 21 2014 00:02 Corazon wrote: , I'm looking for some French music I can listen to. All of my foreign friends either listen to "English" music, like American/British Rock and Metal. I like listening to rock and decent pop songs (like for example, I listen to classic rock and I enjoy Maroon 5 and Jack Johnson. I also listen to a lot of Spanish artists such as Juanes, Mana, etc.). Any recommendations? I'd like to have French music in order to enjoy French more and expand my vocabulary :D thanks
It's pretty hard to find good French music, and I'm not sure if it's a good way to learn things from. Personally I find listening to English songs not too helpful to improve my oral understanding
I dont even know what most of the singers sing (in english)
I don't think songs are a good way to learn a language, unless you dedicate yourself to it. Lyrics in all languages are filled with very particular poetic twists and odd phrasings; it is also really hard (in my own opinion) to find good lyrics that don't end in dreamlike hallucinations. I feel that anglophones in particular are not very demanding at all in this aspect. Most legendary songs and bands have terrible lyrics that merely represent any musical interest and make little to no sense whatsoever. France in particular is very fond of witty stories and wordplays, which is why most French songs are perceived as terrible in their writings attemps - even though they stress that side of the song at the expense of the musical one. If only French people understood the lyrics of foreign songs they love, they would probably have a problem with those too.
If you want to improve your french, watch our movies and some series. Engrenages, widely acclaimed police drama (2005 I think). Les Revenants, a must-see if you're tired of so-called "psychological" zombie stories - here, dead people come back as if nothing had happened and haunt the life of a small village (2012). Anything from the French Nouvelle Vague ranges from good to excellent - don't bother with our current production. Truffaut's 400 coups, Godard's Pierrot le Fou, Rouch and Morin's beautiful Chronique d'un été are all influential masterpieces. Such movies typically contain a lot of talking, too.
But if you really want a song, here's Muchel Fugain's Une Belle Histoire :
I only know English but have started with French using the FSI courses. Thanks for making this OP, and the post above this one with the French movies and stuff looks really helpful too. It would be neat if TL had a subforum where non English was allowed.
On April 20 2014 20:05 Zetter wrote: I'm really a language enthusiast, there's already some languages I speak and a lot of languages I still want to learn. German is my native language, so I speak it more or less fluently. I've been studying English since I was 8 years old, I guess I can speak it fluently, too. 8 years ago I began studying Latin. I'm not great at conversation, but I can translate well. Ancient Greek is my favorite language, again no conversation, it's mostly about reading. At Japanese I'm at a pretty basic level, even though I started 2 years ago. I'll take a language course in September and be in Japan for 5 weeks, so I hope I'll get better. Hebrew is another language I've been studying. I can understand some modern Hebrew, even though ancient Hebrew is more of my field. There'll be a language course for modern Hebrew starting next week at my college, unfortunately it's badly scheduled so I can't take part. I'm at a basic level at Esperanto, too. I haven't really been studying it, I just began learning a few things. It's so easy that I'll probably be at a conversational level quickly once I start to focus on it.
What methods do you use? I'm more interested in reading/translating as well.
I studied German for 3 years in school and have used memrise for German as well as finding translations for little bits of text I stumble across here and there.
I wouldn't say I'm advanced or near fluent, probably intermediate though. I'm hoping to live in Germany or Austria for a year or two later this year after my Europe backpacking trip and am really making an effort to become as fluent as I can. My grammar needs some touch up and I could always learn new vocab, but I think I have a good understanding of the fundamentals. My listening skills need work as well. I can understand by reading much better than I can understand by hearing. I need people to slow down a bit to pick up what they're saying even though I understand the words. :/
I got kind of bored of memrise even though it was great for learning new words. Was considering trying Rosetta stone, but I've heard mixed things.
Hi all! I'm a Spanish native speaker and I have a decent level of English too, which I got mostly from reading IT related books and stuff on the internet. I am able to speak English and communicate well but sometimes I have a hard time at listening -.-
My plan is to visit Asia maybe next year and I'd like to at least be able to read the signs on the street and to make basic questions/answers. I haven't yet decided in which Asian language I should invest in tho (I doubt I'll have enough time to learn more than one). I'll probably go with Korean but Japanese is also tempting.
So if anyone is also learning those and want to learn together, send me a PM (or if you need a Spanish and/or English practice partner too!). I'm in front of the computer like 12h a day (!) so just ping me and I'd be glad to help
I'm a native Dutch speaker. I've been studying French since I was 10, English as soon as I could read, and German since I was 16.
My English level is C2 (I never grow tired of the faces of British people when I tell them I'm Belgian), French C1 and German B2. Planning to take up Mandarin and Malay in the near future.
On April 20 2014 17:53 Catch]22 wrote: I strongly disagree, if you want to learn Japanese (or Mandarin for that matter) go ahead and learn it. All languages take time to master, dont let that discourage you.
On April 20 2014 20:05 Zetter wrote: I'm really a language enthusiast, there's already some languages I speak and a lot of languages I still want to learn. German is my native language, so I speak it more or less fluently. I've been studying English since I was 8 years old, I guess I can speak it fluently, too. 8 years ago I began studying Latin. I'm not great at conversation, but I can translate well. Ancient Greek is my favorite language, again no conversation, it's mostly about reading. At Japanese I'm at a pretty basic level, even though I started 2 years ago. I'll take a language course in September and be in Japan for 5 weeks, so I hope I'll get better. Hebrew is another language I've been studying. I can understand some modern Hebrew, even though ancient Hebrew is more of my field. There'll be a language course for modern Hebrew starting next week at my college, unfortunately it's badly scheduled so I can't take part. I'm at a basic level at Esperanto, too. I haven't really been studying it, I just began learning a few things. It's so easy that I'll probably be at a conversational level quickly once I start to focus on it.
I still want to learn Korean. I've been exposed to Korean for more than five years on BW and SC2 streams and I'd like to understand at least something they're saying. I also want to visit Korea some day, so language skills should come in handy. I'd also like to learn at least some basic Swedish and Finnish. I've been to Sweden and Finland before, so I know a few phrases, but they're just such beautiful countries that I guess I'll visit them many more times in the future.
On April 20 2014 15:38 SC2Toastie wrote: Don't go for dutch; every dutchman speaks english well and there's very few languages you can learn that have less native speakers than dutch.
I like the idea, by the way! I'm trying to learn Italian and Arabic now, which is haaaarrdd man 0.0!
By the way, there's this program called 'Memrise', that promotes language learning, Might want to check it out! Edit, I should stop skimming threads too fast... -.-
While it's true that dutch has few native speakers, I think it's a good idea for OP to learn dutch instead of other languages, if he has dutch friends, especially since dutch is the most similar language to english. Learning Mandarin just because it has the most native speakers is not recommendable, if you never plan to go to China or have chinese friends.
nice to bump on this... thanks...
me too... to be able to speak multiple languages and dialects is one of my dreams currently knew 4
Cool topic. I wanted to learn Japanese for a while, but I'm finding less time for that these days. I could probably still learn it if I dedicated a specific chunk of time for it, but I'm not at that level of organizational fluency yet.
I've been learning about European culture a lot and I saw this Rick Steve's Europe tv episode (he travels all over Europe and shows you the touristy stuff and some nice cultural tidbits) and he was talking to a lady over a meal, and she mentioned all the languages she knows. She said most of the people in the area know French, German, English, ... (something else, Spanish maybe?) and sometimes one or two foreign languages, that is, she categorized all of these languages as non-foreign. That was awesome!
As an American living in the United States, I was thinking that Spanish seems to be more of a non-foreign language for us, in terms of the people around us that we could talk to, so that's leading me toward wanting to learn Spanish first. Once I have my non-foreign languages down (English, Spanish, maybe French?) THEN I can go learn Japanese.
I have been using memory palaces to store vocabulary and their definition as mnemonic imagery. Actually I haven't started the actual storing part yet, but I have begun to make large memory palaces so I can easily learn any language quickly when I decide to start. For more palaces, I highly recommend using the homes you can buy in Skyrim, fully furnished. It's easy to memorize each piece of furniture, and once you have a rule for each type of furniture (e.g. "each shelf will have three images or loci: one on the left, one in the middle and one on the right side of the shelf") it's easy to go through the stations and keep them ready for new vocab. I like to count them so I know how many loci I have in that palace, so if it's full of words and you're walking through recalling all the images/definitions, you don't miss any.
Another thing I recommend is this guy's youtube channel. His passion in life is languages, and his major method is intense study beginning with memorizing conversational phrases in a beginner's book. He then goes to a public place and looks for people who he thinks might know the language he wants to practice. E.g. if he's learning Russian he goes to a Russian corner store and talks to the workers there, etc. For this reason, he also will learn a few questions and answers to get him into those first few conversations. Stuff like "How are you learning the language? I'm teaching myself. Why are you learning it? I like [insert language here] and I think it's fun to talk to native speakers." etc.
I think those two methods are probably the best for rapid language learning. It's easy to recall words you've learned using the palaces. Conversational fluency builds by talking to strangers. Combine that with reading in the target language and chatting on voice chat or text chatrooms in the target language via the internet, and you've really got something.
On April 21 2014 00:02 Corazon wrote: , I'm looking for some French music I can listen to. All of my foreign friends either listen to "English" music, like American/British Rock and Metal. I like listening to rock and decent pop songs (like for example, I listen to classic rock and I enjoy Maroon 5 and Jack Johnson. I also listen to a lot of Spanish artists such as Juanes, Mana, etc.). Any recommendations? I'd like to have French music in order to enjoy French more and expand my vocabulary :D thanks
Lyrics in the description
It's pretty hard to find good French music, and I'm not sure if it's a good way to learn things from. Personally I find listening to English songs not too helpful to improve my oral understanding
I second, it's hard to find good french music nowadays, with good lyrics. (I say that but I don't listen to the radio since i am 13 or so : D)
You can still try a few singers like corneille, maybe "grand corps malade", could try Hocus Pocus (hiphop with great lyrics, check the 73 touches album http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlgeScZooxU) and whatnot, pop music. You also have the Fatal Picards, Louise Attack. More Metal style could be Pleymo, but it might not be the best music to learn french from.
But if you really want to improve your voc, the better way is to listen to french varieté the likes of George Brassens, Charles Aznavour, Charles Trenet, Jacques Dutronc, etc... these last ones are old, from the 1940 to 1970 easily, but great lyrics if you want to learn proper french (it is like learning UK english compared to american, sorry for the comparison)
On April 21 2014 03:17 Mothra wrote: I only know English but have started with French using the FSI courses. Thanks for making this OP, and the post above this one with the French movies and stuff looks really helpful too. It would be neat if TL had a subforum where non English was allowed.
On April 20 2014 20:05 Zetter wrote: I'm really a language enthusiast, there's already some languages I speak and a lot of languages I still want to learn. German is my native language, so I speak it more or less fluently. I've been studying English since I was 8 years old, I guess I can speak it fluently, too. 8 years ago I began studying Latin. I'm not great at conversation, but I can translate well. Ancient Greek is my favorite language, again no conversation, it's mostly about reading. At Japanese I'm at a pretty basic level, even though I started 2 years ago. I'll take a language course in September and be in Japan for 5 weeks, so I hope I'll get better. Hebrew is another language I've been studying. I can understand some modern Hebrew, even though ancient Hebrew is more of my field. There'll be a language course for modern Hebrew starting next week at my college, unfortunately it's badly scheduled so I can't take part. I'm at a basic level at Esperanto, too. I haven't really been studying it, I just began learning a few things. It's so easy that I'll probably be at a conversational level quickly once I start to focus on it.
What methods do you use? I'm more interested in reading/translating as well.
I try to take part in language courses if possible. Finding a good teacher has for me always been the most important part of learning a language. Fortunately there are many opportunities at my college to learn (ancient) languages and in Germany there's also the Volkshochschulen where often times courses on foreign languages will be offered. In general the most important part about translating is grammar, especially in ancient Greek and Hebrew, because words are extremely warped through grammar you'll not be able to recognize them. In both of those languages I began learning with a regular textbook recommended by my teachers and only learned basic vocabulary (around 500 different words and important phrases). Afterwards we just began translating texts with a scientific dictionary and a grammar book, while we kept learning grammar. For a good translation you'll need to look up the words anyways even if you know them just to catch any nuances that may be indicated in the text. But all of that is mostly for being able to translate texts of Plato, Aristotle or any other authors that wrote extremely hard to understand texts.
If you're more interested in reading regular texts fluently, then depending on the language vocabulary will be of more importance. In German for example a lot of verbs and nouns are irregular, so learning these irregular forms is the most important part for being able to read, while you only need a basic grasp of grammar and don't really need to know how all of it works and is applied in different situations. In that case I'd recommend to focus on always learning the stem forms while expanding your vocabulary (An example similar to english: gehen - ging - gegangen: go - went - gone. Learning grammar won't help you for those forms ) I'm no expert at French, but as far as I heard it's relatively similar to German in that regard. But all languages are different, so there's nothing general I can say about which way is best to learn French.
I've needed a boost in my language learning. I've lived in Korea for nearly 10 months now and can't really speak it much. Seeing that "3 month fluent challenge" site really showed me how little I've actually tried.
At the moment, to learn Korean I use talktomeinkorean.com and memrise. Some people prefer anki so you don't have to keep inputting the same stuff if you make a mistake but memrise is more involving for me, what with the typing in Korean, quick learnings of vocabulary and not having to sort through a bunch of flash decks.
I used lang-8 a little bit but I never wrote anything, just corrected a bunch of English writings. I shall get on that for realsies, learn grammar and sentence structure from TTMIK, vocabulary from memrise and get speaking practice using the italki.com.
I should also make an effort to get some real speaking practice. I taught 36 hours at a nearby university and the students were pretty eager and could speak fairly decently.
If i tried i could probably become pretty fucking fluent...just gotta do it baby.
I also used memrise for Japanese. I learnt all the katakana, the kanji radicals and learnt maybe 100 kanji but I kinda gave up after having to remember all the different ways of saying them using both the Japanese way as well as the Chinese way.
On April 21 2014 21:53 ToT)OjKa( wrote: At the moment, to learn Korean I use talktomeinkorean.com and memrise. Some people prefer anki so you don't have to keep inputting the same stuff if you make a mistake but memrise is more involving for me, what with the typing in Korean, quick learnings of vocabulary and not having to sort through a bunch of flash decks.
Anki vs memrise: Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
As you said - in memrise a typing mistake fucks you over. In Anki you can just say "Yeah worked!". On the other hand in Anki you can say "I know the word" even though you made a small mistake - which is bad
Biggest problem in memrise are "bad" examples/words. i.e. when the course doesn't specify if it's the formal/informal version. Or for family relation if it's from the male/female point of view. And - as a German - it's sometimes easier to put in the German translation into Anki, because we have a better word compared to English.
My biggest problem with Anki on the other hand is that you have to put in the stuff on your own. Which leads to mistakes, or to situations where I would be down to learn new vocab, but was too lazy to enter new words. Premade decks had the problem with duplicates and overall I had troubles finding good ones.
I personally feel a combination of both is the best way to learn for me. Easy words are better in memrise and the perfection of words also works better in memrise (less forgiving). Words that I have trouble with I copy into Anki, since I get them 10-15 times a session. I also like using Anki for grammar.
On April 21 2014 03:17 Mothra wrote: I only know English but have started with French using the FSI courses. Thanks for making this OP, and the post above this one with the French movies and stuff looks really helpful too. It would be neat if TL had a subforum where non English was allowed.
On April 20 2014 20:05 Zetter wrote: I'm really a language enthusiast, there's already some languages I speak and a lot of languages I still want to learn. German is my native language, so I speak it more or less fluently. I've been studying English since I was 8 years old, I guess I can speak it fluently, too. 8 years ago I began studying Latin. I'm not great at conversation, but I can translate well. Ancient Greek is my favorite language, again no conversation, it's mostly about reading. At Japanese I'm at a pretty basic level, even though I started 2 years ago. I'll take a language course in September and be in Japan for 5 weeks, so I hope I'll get better. Hebrew is another language I've been studying. I can understand some modern Hebrew, even though ancient Hebrew is more of my field. There'll be a language course for modern Hebrew starting next week at my college, unfortunately it's badly scheduled so I can't take part. I'm at a basic level at Esperanto, too. I haven't really been studying it, I just began learning a few things. It's so easy that I'll probably be at a conversational level quickly once I start to focus on it.
What methods do you use? I'm more interested in reading/translating as well.
I try to take part in language courses if possible. Finding a good teacher has for me always been the most important part of learning a language. Fortunately there are many opportunities at my college to learn (ancient) languages and in Germany there's also the Volkshochschulen where often times courses on foreign languages will be offered. In general the most important part about translating is grammar, especially in ancient Greek and Hebrew, because words are extremely warped through grammar you'll not be able to recognize them. In both of those languages I began learning with a regular textbook recommended by my teachers and only learned basic vocabulary (around 500 different words and important phrases). Afterwards we just began translating texts with a scientific dictionary and a grammar book, while we kept learning grammar. For a good translation you'll need to look up the words anyways even if you know them just to catch any nuances that may be indicated in the text. But all of that is mostly for being able to translate texts of Plato, Aristotle or any other authors that wrote extremely hard to understand texts.
If you're more interested in reading regular texts fluently, then depending on the language vocabulary will be of more importance. In German for example a lot of verbs and nouns are irregular, so learning these irregular forms is the most important part for being able to read, while you only need a basic grasp of grammar and don't really need to know how all of it works and is applied in different situations. In that case I'd recommend to focus on always learning the stem forms while expanding your vocabulary (An example similar to english: gehen - ging - gegangen: go - went - gone. Learning grammar won't help you for those forms ) I'm no expert at French, but as far as I heard it's relatively similar to German in that regard. But all languages are different, so there's nothing general I can say about which way is best to learn French.
Thanks for the tips. Ancient Greek is another language I'm interested in but thought French would be easier to begin with.
I did a search and Mademoiselle chante le blues - Patricia Kaas doesn't count
On April 21 2014 00:02 Corazon wrote: , I'm looking for some French music I can listen to. All of my foreign friends either listen to "English" music, like American/British Rock and Metal. I like listening to rock and decent pop songs (like for example, I listen to classic rock and I enjoy Maroon 5 and Jack Johnson. I also listen to a lot of Spanish artists such as Juanes, Mana, etc.). Any recommendations? I'd like to have French music in order to enjoy French more and expand my vocabulary :D thanks
Like the others said, listening to music is fine but you learn more from having friends and just force yourself to think and speak french and try to get them to not speak to you in English, and watching movies and TV shows, since that's closer to how people speak.
Random movies I like are : Intouchables, Un Prophète, and less serious ones like Le petit nicholas, nos jours heureux. Alternatively, I'm sure there's a list of French movies on IMDB.
That aside, I find that enjoying music in a language is a good motivation to learn the language. I have trouble finding french songs I like too, most of the famous ones are DIVA types and it gets corny after a while. One I really is Tété for great live vocals and his great live guitar skills and his creative alternative non cheesy, non conventional, non boring pop-folk
And even more "hardcore" folk (not in the metal way), with clearly pronounced lyrics. + Show Spoiler +
On April 21 2014 19:17 Zetter wrote: I'm no expert at French, but as far as I heard it's relatively similar to German in that regard. But all languages are different, so there's nothing general I can say about which way is best to learn French.
Haha nawww man German is a pain in the ass to learn as a English speaker, as compared to the French and Romance languages, because of less overlapping vocabulary and more complex grammar. You would understand the pain were it not your mother tongue
On April 20 2014 17:53 Catch]22 wrote: I strongly disagree, if you want to learn Japanese (or Mandarin for that matter) go ahead and learn it. All languages take time to master, dont let that discourage you.
EPT
(in english)
