LinguaFranka

Well anybody who recommends getting rid of Avril Lavigne CDs has got my vote for a start! Seriously, his method seems to recommend turning everything in your life into Japanese from books to TV and even your computer. It all seems a little impractical to me without some kind of grounding in Japanese language in the first place.

I'm from the UK and I feel that our education system fails in its attempts to teach second languages. In times gone by, pupils did a years Latin which gave them a good grounding in grammar efore they went on to learn French and maybe another language too (usually German or Spanish). Over the last 20 years or so, second language lessons became optional with the result that many pupils didn't bother taking them. The govt are trying to rectify this now but it has left the UK well behind when it comes to language skills.

Well heres one about speaking another language so it's quite apt for this forum I feel: "If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart." Nelson Mandela

Just be aware that reading books can be slightly confusing depending where the author is from. There are many UK words that are spelt and pronounced differently in the USA for instance "Aluminium" in the UK (pronounced Al-yew-min-ee-um), "Aluminum" in the USA (pronounced Al-oo-min-um). There are many other examples too, Google 'how to say tomato in England and the US! :grin:

One of the first words we learn with foreign languages is 'please' and 'thank you'. My question regards two languages - Italian and German - where if you reply 'grazie' or 'danke', the other person always replies 'prego' or 'bitte'. Do other languages have the same standard reply for when someone says thank you?

In Spanish, many words can sound the same but depending on how they are said can have completely different meanings. "pero" is the word for "but" and the same word with a double 'r' "perro" means dog! A person who tries to order the following in a Spanish restaurant "chicken but no sauce" can often end up asking for "chicken, dog, no sauce" which may cause a bit of a tense moment with the owner! (This actually happened with a friend of mine in Mallorca!)

Can only add to what everyone else has said really, Spanish is the language to learn for businesses looking to move into the new booming economies of Central and South America. the US also has it as a de-facto second language so anyone wanting to get by in the Americas will give themselves a massive advantage.

I like to get me head around the grammar of a language when learning it, especially it verbs and their tenses but German seems to be a bit of a minefield. The particular problem I have is finding a standard use of the past tense as German often uses the present tense plus a preposition - ie I am living in my house since = I have lived in my house. Are there any rules that someone could point me toward?

I've used it for individual words or very short sentences but anything more and I find it tends to lose the plot. For instance, if you are looking for 'colloquial' spoken,local translations then it doesn't do too well. The best example would be to copy and paste an article to translate to another language and the re-translate that back to your original. You'll find it to be virtually unreadable.

Hi, I'm from the UK and I will be looking for any tips on learning basic French/German and other European languages. I have started work at a UK airport dealing with customers and I feel that a bit of language familiarity will serve me well in my new job.