Czarownica

Besides, studying books isn't very fun.

What is this blasphemy  :amazed:

I have heard of this app, actually, but I don't have an iPhone, so I can't use it (I don't think it'd work on my ancient iPod Nano). It's a pity - it looks nice and I would love to try it. However, I can't find any information whether the lessons go beyond the basic level (I mean for Japanese), so I'm not sure whether it'd be all that useful.

My parents still have a nice dictionary collection - they bought all of those dictionaries before Internet was a big thing, though. They have French to Polish/Polish to French dictionary, Russian to Polish/Polish to Russian, English to Polish/Polish to English and Latin to Polish/Polish to Latin. The last one I found very useful last year, because in my Latin class we had to had dictionaries for translation exercises.

I only own one paper dictionary; it's a kanji dictionary. I don't use it too often, but I find it very interesting. Otherwise I'm perfectly happy using online dictionaries.

I already hate him :< Why can't I be a teenage prodigy*? So not fair. I can't even sit down and learn one language by myself properly... Sigh.

*probably because I'm not a teenager anymore

Nope, my language classes never had us make any pen pals. I've got into penpaling (is that a word? ) a few years ago, but I didn't like it very much... I mean, all those people were nice, but those conversations were really...fake? For the lack of better word. Unnatural.

Yes, I believe that learning another language in college should be mandatory.

In Poland it is, and I think it's great. Usually other than normal English, students are also taught vocabulary related to their field of study.

I study linguistics, so I'm learning two languages in college anyway  :angel:

Since we have a few people from India active on this forum, I'll use this opportunity to ask a question that's been on my mind for a while

India has a lot of official languages and even more languages that are not official, but are still commonly used. My question is, are these languages similar at all? I mean, if a person knows one of those languages, is it easier for them to learn other languages used in India?

English.  Then they should also have British, American, Canandian and Austrailian English.

That's still English The difference between those variations of English is not big enough to have them as separate languages.

I'm glad that Japanese has so many speakers... Maybe I won't be unemployed once I get my college degree!  :wacky: (yeah, sure, keep telling yourself that)

Recently, I found a program that offers a new approach to learning foreign languages.

Just listen to eight 30-minute lessons for 10 days and you should be able to carry on a basic conversation in almost any language.

Has anyone heard of this?

Eh, nothing like that ever works.

I mean, it can be helpful, I'm sure, but I wouldn't bet on being able to carry on a basic conversation after just eight lessons. Unless by "basic" they mean "very basic" or "identical to those lessons (if you memorize them)".

That doesn't mean I'm against those things, but I wouldn't really expect too much from them

I don't watch movies too often, but I remember that Love Actually had a really cute subplot about a British writer falling in love with his Portugese (I think? Maybe she was Spanish, but I think she was Portugese) assistant, even though she barely spoke any English and he didn't know Portugese at all.

It wasn't a very serious movie, but it was very cute.

It sounds very different from Polish. It has some letters we don't use (x and v), but it misses a lot of our letters, too (ó, ż, ź, ł, ę, ą). The grammar is definitely easier (of course, for native Polish speakers Polish grammar is not difficult anyway), most notably the fact that it's so close to having no cases; we have 7 cases in Polish.

Also, Polish is a gendered language, unlike English. The nouns all have their gender and also if I wanted to say "I've done something" in English, then it doesn't disclose my gender. In Polish, however, it'd be "Zrobiłam coś" and it does demonstrate that I'm a woman; a man would say "Zrobiłem coś".

There are probably many more things that I forgot to include

German was a mandatory subject for me in elementary and middle school. It's not uncommon in Polish schools; in pretty much every one of them either English or German is the first foreign language taught - in Polish schools there's one foreign language taught from the very beginning and another one is added in middle school.

I live in Western Poland, quite close to German border, so it's natural that we're taught German. I've been to Germany many times, for shorter and longer trips. That being said, I remember very little German now... I need to get back to it.

Aww, that's amazing Thank you! Hopefully it will be used often!

For me it's speaking, and also listening. I've always preferred reading and writing to listening and speaking... I'm just that kind of person. That's why it's more difficult for me to speak than to write. I'm rather shy and extremely afraid of messing up.

I'm not an American, so it might sound a bit mean coming from me, but God, they are. Not all of them, obviously, but there is a tendency.

They think everybody should speak English and they don't want to learn any other languages because they see no reason. While English is indeed the lingua franca, it doesn't excuse some ignorant behaviors.

I've also heard a lot of really weird and misguided opinions about languages from Americans: that English is the most difficult language in the world (is that an attempt to make themselves look smarter or what? I really don't understand this one), that it's impossible for a non-Asian person to become fluent in an Asian language, that Polish is so complicated that it takes Polish kids six years before they can use correct grammar (!!!)...

I know that there are people holding these kinds of opinions everywhere, but I think that USA in particular has really bad way of teaching people about languages. Many Americans I've encountered seem to think that knowing a foreign language is just knowing enough phrases and vocabulary. I think the problem is not exactly with people themselves, but with bad education system that is very USA-centric and kind of presents other countries as less important.

Conservative Americans are getting angry because immigrants speak their language in public and want their children to have access to education in their own language if possible. They dislike the bilingual road signs and other things like that. For me, this is a sign of being extremely close-minded.

"Rough" is definitely a good word in this case. German is not very soft or subtle  :wacky: I don't think it's aggressive, though, and I think it can be quite beautiful sometimes.

I don't like Spanish. It's weird, because I used to love Italian (now I don't really love it, but I don't hate it either) and I like French, but I dislike Spanish.

Fortunately, there's a lot of other languages I can learn

Thanks for this recommendation! I've never heard of this site before, but now I got an account here and I'm looking around.

As a flashcard making site it's neat, although I already have one I use (or rather, one that I ignore hoping that I'll magically learn all those words without looking at them...Sigh.), but I'm curious about this thing where you can join the classes.  I guess it's mostly for American students? I don't feel like giving this app the name of my school, but even if I did I'm pretty sure it wouldn't find anything.

So, can I just join a random class or is it rather rude?

For me, getting started is absolutely the hardest part. I never know where to start. With Asian languages or Russian or other languages with different writing system it's important to learn the writing system first, but what then? I have no idea. Most of the time I get stuck at first chapters in textbooks, because I just can't get into it... I see a random string of letters instead of words, so it's very hard to learn the vocabulary. I think it's better to start with grammar.

Have you ever been to this site or is it speculation? Because I'm an Easter European girl and also I don't recall ever seeing this or seeing people complain about this on Interpals forums.

Some more good language exchange sites:

http://en.coeffee.com/

http://www.lingoglobe.com/

http://www.busuu.com (warning: this one can send quite a lot of e-mails sometimes, so it might be a good idea to register with an e-mail that's not your primary address)

Well, I guess the internet gives great opportunites to find people with the same interests. In my opinion it's just hard to find some of those who lives nearby but that might depend on where you live.

Exactly And you don't really have to find people who live nearby if you're fine with talking via Skype or other, similar service.

A good site for finding people speaking different languages is www.interpals.net. It has a great, detailed search system.

If you're a girl you risk some Middle Eastern guys wanting to date you, though.

I don't know if it's all that unusual, but I've learned basic English from video games when I was a little girl. Mostly vocabulary, not grammar, though, but when I finally got to go to an actual English class a few years afterwards, I knew quite a lot of words.

I wish it worked with Japanese as well...

I went to college to get a degree in a certain subject and I had six languages to choose from. After evaluating all of them, I decided that I like Japanese most.

I'm still not sure if it was a good choice. Many (possibly too many) people are learning Japanese right now and I hope to be able to get a language-related job after I graduate... Maybe I really should've chosen another language.

It's not hard. I mean, it's not easy either, but I don't think Japanese is more difficult that some other languages. Or maybe it's not hard because I enjoy learning (even though I am fed up sometimes).

As for why do I keep studying it... Well, I don't want to drop out of college, do I?

I'm going to start learning (well, in theory I've already started, but I haven't done much) either Thai or Korean, but I have hard time finding good resources (especially for Thai) and staying motivated :<

After that, I'd love to go back to German, I used to study it in elementary and middle school, but I can barely remember anything now.

So, what kanji textbooks you use/used?

At my university, we used Basic Kanji Book I and II and I really loved it. It has stroke order, all readings, example compounds, reading and writing exercises, everything. Well, it doesn't have answers for exercises, so it might be bad for self-study, but other than that it was perfect.  Now we'll start Kanji in Context, which is nice, but we've done quite a few kanji they have there already.

I agree, duolingo is really cute. I signed up for their German course, but I haven't used this site for a while now, other languages came first... I should really get back there. Or they should make a Japanese, Korean or Thai course