Hexahedron

I would say that any language not actively learned and spoken nowadays is the language that is most difficult to learn. I think languages like Hebrew and Latin (to a lesser extent) would be the most difficult because few people speak/learn it, meaning that there are fewer learning resources and opportunities to use them.

I agree with school. I guess most of us just loved the experience; being in a room with people all working towards the same goal (learning _ language). I also think we all were lucky enough to have good teachers because otherwise learning anything can be dull and dreary.

I say that learning the language of the place you will visit would just enhance your experience, I don't think it is necessary. For example, when visiting France (Paris), since it is the capital it is probable that anyone you meet will be able to communicate in English, although if you knew French it would just make your trip more enjoyable. However, if you went to some more rural areas, knowing French would be more valuable and would help you out immensely.

I concur with Baburra. 'Although' and 'even though' have the same meaning and can easily and consistently be used in place of each other. And once again I agree with Baburra that 'although' is somewhat more formal than 'even though'. In your example sentence either one would be fine, but I feel a comma is necessary, I'll re-write the sentence below: 'I recommend her to change the language course, although her child is complaining.'

@DancingLady: That does make a lot of sense. I have felt that I am a visual learner (at least in languages), but I never realized that my gut feeling spelling is a visual thing as well. Thank you so much!

Yes, totally! I had studied French for a good while (3-4 years!), but I never once felt confident while speaking it. During 3 of those 4 years, I had this teacher who just focused too much on memorizing. I hate memorizing and I just studied enough before exams to pass. It was horrible. That experience kind of ruined the language for me.

Good idea! This would be a major help for anyone learning any language! Even more so for languages like French, which has a difficult and specific accent. It would also be a helpful and valuable resource for anyone learning any language. It would be really, really, great if you are able to do this OP! Hopefully we'll see this implemented this soon.

Yes, I can see where you are coming from. Arabic is really difficult to learn if you aren't brought up in a country which speaks it. Reading Arabic is pretty tough, speaking is a little bit more, and writing is extremely difficult (like above poster mentioned). I would just tell you to use a browser extension which increases the font size and slowly reduce it till you get used to it.

I also face this problem regularly OP! I can totally feel where you are coming from! I also face this difficulty when correcting people, but when in the case of friends (like your's), I normally go straight and tell them clearly.

What a great method! This teaching exercise engages the student, and clearly shows to him/her how and in which circumstances the word can be used! Props to you OP! I hope you won't mind if I use this too!

I agree completely! Most native speakers learn the language naturally from hearing others (as per above poster), while on the other hand, non-native speakers will have also gone through the same process as you of learning the language, and so, would also easily know which parts of the language are especially confusing/difficult for the learner.

I have always noticed something when writing in English: when I write a difficult word (or any word for that matter), if I spell it correctly I feel some sort of innate satisfaction/approval kind of feeling, confirming that I wrote it right. While, on the other hand, when I write a word wrong, I get a feeling too, but this one tells me I spelt it wrong. Due to this, when I'm unsure about the spelling of any word, I just write it in as many variations as I can, and every time, one of them felt 'right' and it turned out to be so. Have any of you ever felt something like this? Or am I just weird?

Nice to see this wonderful forum getting bigger and better! I would also recommend a twitter account for this forum, the bigger the social media presence the better for anything nowadays. Hope we reach a hundred like soon.

It would be really interesting to learn a constructed language, especially one of Tolkien's. I would recommend reading this website if you want to know some more about constructed languages: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngbeyond/rings/language.html

Google Translate is kind of decent when translating to/from some major languages. Translating whole sentence though on it is really spotty, like everyone above has mentioned, the syntax and some specific expressions are lost when translating with Google Translate. However, I have little trick when using it which makes it more accurate: Google Translate is pretty good for translating single words, which is useful when you are learning a language and only need to double-check a few words.

I feel that a teacher is very important when learning any language. I think so because a teacher can give you the most complete knowledge; a teacher will be able to teach you personally in the way you learn best, a teacher can change the syllabus specifically to meet your strengths and weaknesses and a teacher will also be able to rectify any errors you are making as soon as possible. Therefore, I feel that language learning is done best with a teacher. What do you feel about this?

That would be so awesome! But I am more than a bit skeptical if they will be successful with this ambitious task. Voice recognition is already quite average, coupled with foreign languages and accents, I doubt it will work as advertised. Anyways, we'll get to know in a year or two hopefully.

I concur with the above posters. I would recommend the Dictionary.com app. It is quite interesting and easy to use, so you can spend any free time you get just taking a look. It also has this nice 'Word of the Day' feature, which brings out quite a few interesting words most people don't know.

I feel that English is still the most valuable language to have in your arsenal. English is necessary for many jobs. It is also the most widely spoken language, so you will have higher chances of meeting someone who also speaks it. Furthermore, English is almost compulsory if you want to use the internet for anything at all.

Hi everyone! My native language is Bengali, but I find English more natural. I am currently learning German.

My favorite language is German; it is so easy to pronounce, simple to spell words and just sounds do unique and kind of down-to-earth (at least to me ). I like French the least by far. Maybe it's just because I was taught badly, but I found it very difficult and confusing: spelling, grammar, syntax, it all seemed very alien to me.