Czarownica

There are sites like interpals.net where you can meet people from all over the world and talk with them on Skype, for example. I haven't had much luck with those sites, but then again, I haven't been trying to hard. It's also a good way of meeting new people.

Hi Your surname (I assume that the second part of your username is your surname) sounds very Polish, I'd say!

Welcome to linguaholic Hope you'll have fun!

One of my Japanese teachers is not really a fan of this approach, she thinks that her students watch too much anime sometimes and they should focus on actual studying instead But yeah, watching TV shows in the language you're learning is very beneficial to you most of the time, anime's no exception.

Well, German was offered in my high school, but since I live in Poland it's actually very useful I don't think it would be nearly as useful in the United States. That being said, German is spoken not only in Germany, but also in Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Lichtenstein, so it's not as rarely used as one might think

Oh, you're from Thailand? I sure need to finally get to start learning Thai for real.

Welcome to the forums!

To be fluent in Japanese one has to know roughly ~2000 kanji. How many do you know so far and how fast you're learning?

In the 2 years I've been studying Japanese I've learnt a bit more than 500 kanji. The beginnings were hard (I had no idea how to learn kanji properly), but right now I'm doing it way faster. Which is good, because 500 kanji in 2 years is not the most impressive score. I hope to learn the remaining ~1500 kanji in max three years. Will it work? We'll see...

How about you?

In Polish there are two words that look kinda similar: "przynajmniej" and "bynajmniej". They mean completely different things, though. "Przynajmniej" is "at least", "bynajmniej" is "not in the least, far from it".

Many people use "bynajmniej" when they mean "przynajmniej". I guess it's because "bynajmniej" sounds more sophisticated.

I've learnt a lot of English from video games when I was a child  I remember Roller Coaster Tycoon being really helpful. It's easy to figure out sentences like "Roller Coaster 1 has broken down" if you see that a roller coaster stopped working at the same time the sentence is displayed, for example

I give up on a lot of things - I'm impatient and easily discouraged. That being said, I'm also naive and I hope that I'll go back to those languages again some day. The only language I'm pretty sure I gave up for good is French - pronunciation is too hard and I'm bored with European languages at the moment; and if I want to go back to European languages, I still have German and Italian to learn...

Polish  :angel:

No, seriously, I think that if I could choose an universal language then why not Polish? I like it very much  :grin:

I think the odds of that ever happening are pretty small, though

Well, it depends what you like I must say I like embarassingly cutesy j-pop so I can recommend you some of that The most popular pop group in Japan is probably AKB48. They definitely sing in Japanese, not English There's also S/mileage, Morning Musume and ClariS.

Bonus, the song I'm currently obsessed with - a bit different from all that girl band stuff:

Since it's the Study English subforum, do you mean English exams? I'm not really nervous before my English exams. I'm pretty good at English, I'd say, and I've never really had any problems with English exams I panic a little bit before oral exams, because I'm better at writing than at speaking, but usually I calm down the moment I enter the classroom.

With other exams it's not so easy :< Usually I have a long OH MY GOD I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING I WANT TO DIE moment. Especially if it's an oral exam.

Nah. I love Polish and I'm pretty sure I'd never learn it if I were, say, American or something. Its grammar is really difficult and it's not the most useful language one could choose. So I'm quite happy that my native language is Polish  :wacky:

I don't really have a full time job, but in my part time job I sometimes translate stuff from Polish into English, so yeah, I guess that was one of the requirements.

And to get my intership I also had to know English... Too bad that it was an unpaid intership anyway

I hope to get a job related to Japanese once I graduate college.

Whoops! So sorry! There have been so many new posts every day for a while now and I'm a bit behind on everything. Mods/admins, feel free to close this. Sorry!

My university's Facebook page has just posted this link:

http://greatlanguagegame.com/

You listen to a short audio clip in some language and then you have to choose which language it was. Pretty fun The first language I got was Polish, so it wasn't too difficult But then it got a bit more tough

Well, I'm not an immigrant, but I still think in English pretty often. I think it's because I read/write in English a lot. Most of the time I think in Polish, obviously. I hope that one day I'll also think in Japanese and maybe in some more languages too! 

I study ethnolinguistics at university. I like the "ethno" part more than the "linguistics" part, though

At my university every linguistics/ethnolinguistics student has to study two languages; one is supposed to be either German or English and we're supposed to already have an advanced knowledge of it, the other we start from the very beginning.

English is my first love and it will always be close to my heart  :angel: That being said, I'm glad that I decided to study other languages as well and not only focus on English. No point in limiting yourself, really.

I'd say that it pays off to study languages that have a lot of speakers and which are used in countries that are growing in population and power. Chinese and Hindi (and maybe also other Indian languages) seem like great choices, if you ask me, especially Chinese.

ee cummings

Harper Lee

Who do you like?

I love cummings too And I really wish Harper Lee wrote some more books. I loved "To Kill a Mockingbird", it's a masterpiece.

My top favorite American author is probably Kurt Vonnegut, for his humor and satirical works.

Ooh, Vonnegut is on my top 3 favorite authors' list, no doubt

One author that I love and who wasn't mentioned yet is Joseph Heller.

I don't. I can't afford something like that. Travelling to Japan is terribly expensive.

I sometimes visit Germany, but I've never been there longer than 3 weeks or so, and it isn't all that helpful in learning German for me Usually I'm only there for 1-3 days or so.

I think the only people who actually want something like that are Americans who get pissy when they don't understand something

Not many linguists would support something like that and it would be extremely difficult to implement. Besides, it would mean the eventual death of all the other languages if it was successful. That would be pretty terrible and I hope it will never happen.

I definitely wouldn't accept that. It's impossible to function in the modern world without English, so they need to learn English, no excuses. I'd also want them to study one more language in their childhood, but well, I'm not a mother yet and hopefully I still have a lot of time to think about that

The earlier, the better! I personally think that a child should at least talk and read in their own language to start learning another one properly, but some people start ever earlier. I don't think trying to teach a toddler another language will get you anywhere, but children as young as 2 or 3 can start learning another language and be successful.

In general, young people are better at learning languages - that doesn't mean that it's impossible when we're older, though