Hedonologist

Well in the phase where I did want to learn it, it was because I wanted to understand anime in its native language, although I was never really that much into manga which is probably why I quit learning Japanese. I learned a few Kanji that helped me in Chinese though.

This is a thing that most Brits see as an 'Americanism'. A British comedy show actually made a sketch about this particular difference in speech.

Launch implies that you are putting effort/energy into it, whereas release simply implies that you are unleashing it. You launch a rocket, as it has no energy of it's own to begin with, but you release a wasp, as it already has the energy trying to escape. Even with regards to CD's it sounds like launching it means you will be promoting it (maybe because it's a first edition) whereas release means there are already people waiting for it to become available.

Pronunciation of Pinyin is an interesting one. The fact that the pinyin 'X' is pronounced like the English 'sh' is one that gets most people. It seems very strange how different some of the pinyin pronunciations are from the English. Probably the most unusual of all the transliterations.

I know there are quite a few Celtic languages out there so I was wondering what one are mutually intelligible with Gaeilge. Welsh and Cornish are their own branch so I'm assuming that there will be minimal intelligibility with those, what what about Gaelic as spoken in the Scottish highland and Manx Gaelic?

Has anyone come across this series by Professor Arguelles before? He goes through a number of different courses (Teach yourself, Assimil, Hugo, Berlitz etc) and compares them all, both older and modern versions. I think this is a very good place to look before you consider investing in self-teaching manual as there are so many inferior ones out there, as he explains. I just thought this would be of interest to many people here.

I am content learning on my own. I think I would only consider a tutor to iron out any bad habit I had picked up along the way once I got really advanced. I might also do it I was was preparing for a qualification. As it stands though I'll just continue to use books and Skype with natives.

I finally learned how to spell exacerbate today. Not that I use it very often. My most common typos is 'going' which I often spell as 'gogin' although I know how to spell it correctly, I just never end up doing so. Mentioning correctly, I often used to spell that with one 'R'

Mine was Dummy (as in pacifier) Clearly I was without it and wanted it at the time It certainly is one I haven't heard before for other children, but i am surprised it's not one of the most common after mum/dad.

I live in one of the few areas of England without a specific regional accent, so I assume I as close to standard English as you can get. I suppose if anything I have a mild London accent, but not as strong as a native Londoner.

I usually text as I would normally write with correct grammar/spelling etc, sometimes If I am short of space I will abbreviate some words. However I think using 'text speak' in it's proper place is perfectly acceptable. I do get very annoyed when I see it outside of a text message though.

No. No job I've ever applied for has required it, although I'm sure some employers may have looked more favourably upon others applications if they included language skills. I've only ever included Conversational Dutch/German on my CV so I doubt that has swayed their opinion of me significantly.

He is one of the most proficient polyglots of modern times, so it's not surprising that to reach this world class level you would have to put a lot of effort it, it just seems that 15-16 hours is almost inhuman. Myself I don't think I've ever gone beyond 4, and even that was with many breaks.

English and Welsh. Although you could count Gaelic and Cornish, as they have recognised status, but not official. Government publications are only in English and Welsh.

I'm certain at least a few of you must have come across this guy. Alexander Arguelles spent 15-16 hours per day studying various languages when he was at his peak many years ago. I suppose this is the only way one can become proficient in as many language as he is (a solid grounding in up to 57).

Whilst there are certainly times when this would be rude or inappropriate, I think that there is a creeping and somewhat modern aversion to corrections for the sake of sparing a person's feelings. The fact that people have mocked my grammar flaws in the past has motivated me to learn the correct way of writing something. If a person never becomes aware that something they are writing/saying is incorrect, then how are they supposed to correct themselves?

One good thing about picking up language through music is that it is much more natural, unlike the perfect grammar/pronunciation you hear on news broadcasts for example. Even without trying many people will learn off by heart the lyrics of many of their favourite songs so certainly something you should be doing a lot of, for listening comprehension.

I will try to learn a set of words by rote and then read a piece of text where they are used, if there are any words that haven't stuck I will relearn them and try to read the text again. I repeat this until I can read the passage with ease.

How long did it take everyone here to learn Cyrillic? It took me about 3 weeks in total, but that was with minimal effort and poor technique. I find Cyrillic to be the easiest foreign script to learn, even perhaps more so than Greek. It's a shame how off putting Cyrillic is to new potential Russian learners who seem to assume it would be extremely difficult.

I had to learn Spanish in school from age 11. Although as I knew this was coming I did do a bit of preparation before hand. The first language I attempted on my own was Japanese at the age of 12. Funnily enough of all the languages I have studies I have found the Spanish is probably my weakest.

Rather than spending too much time trying to remember rules about gender, learn them by rote, you will know them off by heart anyway when you're fluent so you may as well learn that way as well.

That's a very useful link. Indeed newspapers are a very good way of immersing yourself in a real life grammatically correct piece of written German. Whilst it might not get you all the colloquialisms it certainly is the best form of immersion for the standard written language

I would say the first 214 characters you should learn (apart from maybe some basic vocab) are the radicals. You will find recognition of characters much easier after you have learned the radicals. Which themselves are individual characters meaning you will already have an arsenal of 214 once you learn them all.

Sanskrit is not worth learning for practical purposes, but if you are specifically studying ancient Indian or Hindu scriptures then you will gain some benefit from it. Some languages like Manx Gaelic are both practically useless and have no academic value either. Having said that they may be cultural reasons why you might want to learn Manx or Cornish for example. I don't think there is a single language that is absolutely useless, but some that may not be useful for a specific individual.

I didn't notice any at first, and like others I can only find 3 when reading it again specifically looking for them. Two on the first line and 1 on the second, what are we missing here?