jbepp

I personally ate shortcuts. They look bad and make things harder to understand. I feel like people who shortcuts tend to be lazy. I speak three languages and with all three I try to avoid shortcuts when texting.

I am usually pretty relaxed before an exam. I generally do well and the only part that really hits me hard is speaking. I used to be the type who stressed a lot but I've changed over the last few years.

I think four is the perfect number of languages. Your native language and three that you consider important. I've been bilingual for a long time and about a year ago I decided to star learning french. After I'm done with French I'll probably try to learn Japanese. Out of those I'll try to master French and Spanish.

You could try watching movies. I love watching movies so it never feels like studying and it actually feels good when you realize that you can understand most of what they're saying. If you want my recommendation, I feel like any movie by Woody Allen is a good listening practice.

I usually play video games in English, but sometimes I feel like practicing my French and change it to French. French dubs tend to be pretty good so I've never regretted playing the French version of a video game.

I first heard about Influent a week ago while talking to some online friends. It's seems cool and I'll definitely give it a try once it gets a public release. I'm very picky when it comes to backing things in Kickstarter so I'm gonna wait.

My favorite short story is definitely Jim by Roberto Bolaño. It's mysterious and the way he narrates it makes it a really pleasant read.

I think it really depends on how different are the languages. For example, I feel like from French to Spanish and vice versa not much is lost in translation. Both languages share many words and even some grammar rules. On the other hand, translating from French or Spanish to English you can lose quite a bit in translation.

I guess I'm not the only one who feels that some words are slang and should remain being slang. It's happening to English with new slang words and the same thing is happening to Spanish with anglicisms. French is the only language that seems rather conservative.

My native language is Spanish, but I tend to dream quite often in English. I guess it's not a surprise because I spend almost 80% of the time talking, reading and writing in English. I've never dreamed in French though.

I share your feeling.

Usually, natives don't know how they learned their language. They learned by assimilation and even if they do know some grammar rules, they will not be able to tell you all of them. On the other hand, a non-native teacher knows how hard can be learning the language and he would also be able to identify easily the grammar rules that were hard for him and therefore should be hard for you to learn.

I'd say it's really depends on the person. For example, someone from Japan would be able to learn Chinese easily because they share the writing system, so it would only be a matter of grammar and pronunciation. On the other hand, for people like us, learning Japanese and Chinese is extremely difficult because it would mean that we would have to learn almost 2000 new symbols, each with 2 or even 3 pronunciations.

Besides English, probably French.

While it's true that Spanish is most widely spoken that French, I feel like French gathers more interests from scientists and important people. Just taking a look at the 2014 Nobel Prize winners, you can see that the Nobel Prize in literature and economic sciences were won by French people.

It definitely depends on the languages. I learned English trough assimilation, and after I understood most of the language, I started to study grammar. Now that I'm learning French, I try to use the same methods that worked for me when I was learning English. It's also really useful because many English words come from France or vice versa, and it really makes things easier.

This used to happen to me all the time when I was in high school. I am a native Spanish speaker, so the use of accents always made things difficult for me, especially when a accent can change the meaning of the word completely. Whenever I felt like the word was off, I'd just write variations of the word and "feel" which one was the correct one.

I am learning French and movies are definitely a huge help. It's also really entertaining because you start learning a lot about French culture and even some idioms that textbook don't teach you. I love French culture, so watching french movies and reading french literature feels like cheating because I'm learning doing what I like and it doesn't feel like learning at all 

It's hard for me to choose one favorite language, but I'd say that both Spanish and French are extremely beautiful and rich when used correctly. Spanish is my native language, but every time I read a good poem or a good book, I realize just how beautiful it can be. About French, it's pretty much the same thing, except the accent which I sometimes hate and other times love.

Duolingo is a great app for learning new vocab and that's basically how I use it. I would not recommend Duolingo for someone who is just starting with the language because it doesn't have too many grammar lessons and the listening and speaking parts are weak. Still, it's a great app, and it's free, so everyone should give it a try.

(What is French for "the app," anyway?)

The French for application is "application" and is usually shortened to "appli" to refer to smartphone apps.

I've heard of the Michel Thomas method, but unfortunately I've never had the chance to try it. From what I've read on Amazon and different language learning sites the method seems really interesting. I think it focuses more on grammar, which is awesome because grammar is always the most boring part of learning a new language (in my opinion).

I have tried a few other immersion (French in action) and assimilation (Assimil) methods for learning French and I can say that they definitely work.

My native language is Spanish and I'm learning French. From what I've seen, both languages share many words and even some idioms could be translated literally between the two languages and the meaning would remain intact. So I'd say yes, knowing at least one romance language makes the others easier to learn.

French and Spanish share SOME grammar rules, but for the most part you're gonna have to memorize a new set of rules. And someone who speaks Spanish would never understand what French people say simply because the French accent is quite hard to get used to.

Thanks!

I didn't know about this and it will really help me understand the language better.

Continue studying German and try to read a few basic books in German; and become better at writing in English.

I usually don't mind it because I really don't care about what others think about me.

Shakespeare's book are so damn hard to read. The grammar, the words he uses, the form of the text, etc.

Aside from that, I've had to read a few philosophy books in English and they weren't easy at all.

When I find a word I don't know I just look it up on Google and then try to create a phrase with it. This method works well most of the time for me.