Trellum

Well, I really like the Pimsleur method.  I've bought several Pimsleur audio courses, and so far they have worked great.  I've managed to learn to pronounce some really tricky words, sadly I haven't had the chance to complete the course (I'm very busy with work), but once I move to the Netherlands I'll be using the Pimsleur dutch course. 

The pimsleur method is really great, because you learn the language in a very active way!  I LOVE their audio courses!  If you decide to go for this, you can be sure you will be learning the language in a very effective and fun way!  I actually enjoyed using the dutch course, but as I said... I no longer have a lot time for that  

Have you ever used any of the Pimsleur language courses?  I bought the course for learning dutch, I must say I'm quite impressed!  I was a bit disappointed tho, because I was taught a word that according to my boyfriend is bever used in colloquial dutch!  I felt kinda down, because I thought they really reasearched that kind of things...  I know my boyfriend is right tho, because he's a native dutch speaker who has lived almost his whole life in the Netherlands.

I just wanted to know if any of you had experienced this before?  I really like the Pimsleur method, and I want to believe this was just a very isolated event!  I want to complete this course, because this method makes language learning really fun; it seems to be extremely effective as well.

Wow, this guy is truly amazing!  He's indeed a prodigy!  Learning a single language is hard enough, I can't even imagine how this guy managed to learn 20 different languages!  He's just 17, imagine what kind of things he is going to accomplish later?  This kind of people are the kind of people that should be considered celebrities and a true example to follow.  It's great he rather spend his time doing something so useful and enriching.

I never took a class or a full course in order to learn english, but I did have a couple of pen pals I ''met'' over the internet.  I must admit that helped me a lot to learn english, for me it was such a thrill to write e-mails to them everyday! 

I learnt so many new words, and that's how I started to get really familiar with the language.  My e-mails must have looked so funny tho,  I know they were full of mistakes, but I think all that practice helped me to improve a lot!  I'm still trying to improve my english, because I know my english is far from perfect. 

I only speak english and spanish fluently.  I understand some hebrew tho (colloquial), and I can also read most hebrew texts, as long as they have nikkuds.  Otherwise no, I can't read it     Most religious texts have nikkud, which makes reading hebrew really easy!  Sadly nikkud is rarely seen on colloquial hebrew, because all the hebrew speakers from Israel are used to read without vowels! 

I know someone who could speak 4 languages really well   A very good friend of mine named ''Jakob''.  He could speak english, yiddish, hebrew and some hungarian (his family came from that place). 

I've never been a big fan of dictionaries in general, I never used one when I was learning english, but I think the online dictionaries have everything I need.  I still own several paperback ones, but I rarely use them.  If I need to consult a word I simply use the internet  

I still prefer physical books over ebooks   Specially the ones I use to learn dutch    Too bad i don't feel the same way about dictionaries.  By the way, I don't trust google translate at all!  At least not for serious translations.

I believe in early estimulation, I studied NLP when I was younger, so I know babies are very sensitive to any kind of stimuli. I read an article about how you could start stimulating your unborn baby, by playing games... like for example reading something for him/her and touching your belly everyday; at the same hour.  You can expect a response from the baby, as long as you're 7 months pregnant or so.

Here is a very interesting article on that: http://makewayforbaby.com/babies/prenatal-stimulation.html

I posted that link so you guys see I'm not crazy or making this up  !  According to another article I read, unborn babies can start recognizing languages when they're still inside the mother. That's why they seem to pick the language so fast

I first started learning english when I was just 16 years old, I learnt english on my own.  I didn't intend to learn the language, it just happened.  It's really hard to explain!  I used Yahoo! chat for learning english, as well as having pen pals from all around the world.  That way I learnt to write the language, but I was very shy to speak it in public!

That shyness disappeared once I started working as an au pair in Norway.  It helped me even more meeting my then boyfriend, because me and him would speak english all the time!  Since he only spoke norwegian, english, arabic and kurdish, but not spanish!

Right now I'm trying to learn dutch because I intend to move there next year, hopely.  I would like to start a new life there with my boyfriend.  For that I need to be proficient in Dutch.