petesede

On 3/18/2016 at 0:43 AM, roger1003 said:

Have you had that idea that we should just use one language for everyone here on Earth? In my opinion, it would be best if we just use one language, so it's easier to understand each other. Progress for the whole world will accelerate at a rapid rate if this happens. Language has been a major determinant and a major barrier to progress. 

It will be english, and it won´t be very long.  There will always be local languages, but with the rise of the internet you see the amount of people who can speak english just skyrocket.   Partially it is due to much of the web being only in english, and the rest being poorly translated, but the other part is just that in many countries of the world, speaking english is a huge financial benefit, and because of the internet it is easy to learn from home now.   For example, where I am, working in a call center and speaking english is one of the best paying readily available jobs, working at the same company but speaking only spanish pays 1/5 and is competitive to get the jobs.

On 3/25/2016 at 5:09 PM, Trellum said:

The only way I've successfully  memorized new words from a book or magazine is by writing them down in a notebook.  I am actually doing that with new words (English) that I didn't really know before (Since I started playing ''Alice madness returns'' I'm finding more new words).  It might not work for everyone, but it does for me.  I review my list every time I add a new word. 

It is one of the reasons most schools teach language this way.  There has already been a lot of research done that shows that writing a word helps you learn it much faster than simply reading it over and over.  I remember taking French in HS and the teacher would have us write the word 10 times...  it felt so mechanical that I didn´t think it helped you learn, but probably the first time you write a word it does help you learn it more.   The other study I saw said that typing the word did not have the same benefit for some reason.

Off-topic, but the same article I was reading said that the mental association was similar to how you can remember somene´s name better, and that is to make sure you are focusing on their face while saying their name.  This is why many people repeat your name while shaking your hand the first time they meet you.

You just have to schedule stuff.   I have morning rituals, and  20 minutes of Duolingo is what I do immediately after breakfast while I am having my second cup of coffee.  Like everything else you might not want to do everyday, you just schedule it and don´t give yourself any wiggle room.   My worst habit that causes procrastination is that I bargain with myself, often kicking the can down the road til tomorrow.

I do not necessarily believe it is true.  Having lived in central america for 3 years now, I have yet to pick up a single swear word other than ´butt´.   Usually people just remember those words because they are more fun.  Another hypothesis is that swear words are often said alone, and with emphasis, so it is easier to hear the distinct word.  I remember first learning the word ´nunca´ which means never, because I witnessed a disagreement and the one person just kept saying that one word, very distinctly.  Swear words are often said the same way.

On 10/15/2015 at 3:36 AM, Tyrell said:

Google Translate has definitely gotten better through the years, but I wouldn't rely on it. It's a great tool if you're trying to translate a single word or two, but not when you're trying to translate an entire article. It just.. doesn't work. Maybe in a few years, who knows, but definitely not now. Sure, it'll translates maybe most of the article nicely, but the rest are a mess and you just end up with more work because you have to correct them all. So yeah no, I wouldn't rely or recommend it at all. 

Yeah, you really have to be careful about doing this.  Any type of complex sentence structure and it will get confused.   If you are translating something from a different language into your native language you can often get away with doing the translation and then proofreading it, but only if you know the topic of the article pretty well because you can pick up logic errors.  Google has a bad habit of making sentences negative ( adding ´no´ )  for some reason.   I do this a lot, translating stuff from spanish and english, and then correcting it, but my spanish is good enough that when I go back and look at the original spanish, there are glaring and sometime counter errors where google gives the exact opposite meaning to sentences.

Anything more than a simple sentence, and it almost is not worth using.

On 8/27/2013 at 4:47 PM, Ariel said:

I think it's a fun way to learn new words and helps with pronunciation. Although I don't think it's too helpful for sentence structure because a lot of songs are composed of sentence fragments and phrases.

 

I listened to a lot of J-Pop when I was learning Japanese and I am now able to translate the lyrics as a I listen to them.

 

I've been trying to listen to K-Pop to get used to the pronunciation of Korean words and I think it's helpful.

 

Has anyone used music to help them learn languages?

A good chunk of my vocabulary in Korean came from going to clubs for a night, dancing, and then buying the CDs and translating the lyrics of my favorite songs.  Even thought the lyrics are sometimes silly, you can still learn a few dozen words each song, and then when you go to the club again, you reeinforce that learning in a fun way.

sarang hay

On 4/6/2016 at 10:06 AM, Lingua Franca said:

I personally think that Latin didn't die off but evolved into the Romance languages that we all know today. It would be impossible for it to carry on being used in it's classical form as it was no longer evolving.

The same can be said of spanish.  I think it will be a relatively short time until Spain-spanish is considered a different language than Latin American-spanish.   We are almost a a point where the differences between spain and central america version of spanish are bigger than the difference between them and portuguese.

for me, the few times I have gotten angry in the last few years was tempered because I had to laugh at how bad my Spanish got.  I would get into an argument and just could not express myself fast enough.. so would just end up saying estuipido  and storm off and laugh later.  I wish I was at the point where my subconcious could help me use better spanish when I am not thinking about it... but I am not there yet.

Both languages are pretty unique which makes learning them at the same time a bit easier.  I think it has more to do with your objective.  I think overall chinese is going to be more useful for the next decade because the chinese are very expantionist as far as their economy.  You can go to almost any small country in the world and you will see people from china there starting businesses or investing in the local economy, they are very similar to the USA in that regard.  Because of the problems with the Japan economy in the 1990s, they are still very reserved as far as spreading out.

spanish has some really funny words for foods that just kinda roll out.   chimichanga  and nacatamale along with checharones (fried pig skin)  are some of my favorites.

I also like the way ´english´ is prounced in arabic.. it is like ´ennngleeeeze´

I really do not think it is important to learn the language.  A lot of the work required to learn a language can be done from home.  But living in a different country can take it to a new level that you will have a hard time reaching without it.

Just be careful about which country you pick..  you definitely need to understand, especially for languages like spanish that it is almost like 20 different languages and much of what you learned from books or the internet will be VERY different depending on where you go.

For me it is Russian, Chinese and Arabic... not just because the languages are so different, but because the cultures are different also.  Arabic in particular must be fascinating if you can actually understand it because so much of the current news makes it seem like a mystery.

It depends on your current skill level.  My preferred method of learning is to watch movies that I know very well in english, but watch them in Spanish, that way I am hearing the spanish but already know what they are trying to say.   Telenovolas are good also because they do close ups of the faces, which helps you see the movement of the mouth which can help you distinguish words.  In my own case, my telephone skills are much worse than when I talk to someone in person for this reason.

I have read a few children´s books in spanish to help learn.  Not really young books because they often have silly words, but stuff like the 10-12 year old age has a really good vocabulary and the sentence structure is pretty simple so you don´t get lost in complex sentences.

You get a lot of stuff like   the horse drinks wine   or the horse eats rice..

but the point is the vocabulary, not necessarily you learning useful sentenes,  learn,  drinks, horse, wine,  rice. and also how drinks and eats are conjugated.  There is a lot you can learn from that stupid sentence.

I think they should be your primary tool when you are first learning a language, especially building basic vocabulary.

First off is that they are free, which is always a bonus.  There is just no reason to hire a teacher in the beginning if all you are going to be doing is memorizing lists of words,  the app can do it just the same as the teacher.

Second reason is scheduling.  You can go to sites like duolingo 24/7 and learn.. you can have marathon sessions when you want...  all of that goes out the window when trying to schedule a tutor.  I usually do duolingo at 5am in the morning while I drink my coffee.  

you will definitely need some immersion later on, but you should have a thousand world vocabulary and know how to conjugate verbs before that.

On 5/5/2015 at 10:18 AM, Trellum said:

I guess Duolingo it's more popular than other apps because it often feels as if you were playing a game instead of learning something.  It also helps it allows you to follow and be followed by other people... so you can compete to see who gets the most XP each week or month.  I mean, it can be very fun if you make bets to see who gets the most XP I bet a lot people do that. I know I would if I knew someone close to me learning dutch.

I will agree with this, it is set up like a game and the user interface is easy to use.  I know it shouldn´t matter, but many similar sites just look so blocky and cold.. duolingo is fun and inviting.  The other part that I really like is that they have done a good amount of time adding ´alternative answers´..  for someone who is already 50% in spanish, it bugs me on some sites where you give a correct answer, but not their correct answer.  In duolingo I do not have to worry if I use a synonym or leave out the yo in yo tengo.

That is an amazing site as far as the quantity of languages taught and the amount of incoming languages.  Has anyone actually tried it.  My concern is that with that quanitity, they will be cookie cutter classes and very shallow.

As to the OP, I learned korean also and agree with you, you absolutely must put a few hours into learning the alphabet.  It is actually very east to do in just a few hours once you realize that the words are set up in syllables rather than actual words and then the whole deal with how you arrange the letters within the syllable.

I see 

k
xk

used the most where I live in Nicaragua.  Really the main thing the younger people do is just remove vowels, which is almost universal in cell phone chat now.

On 1/19/2016, 7:19:17, Zosimus said:

First of all, it is not true that es is for permanent factors and está is for temporary ones.  This is an over simplification.  For example, if you want to say that Mexico is in North America, you might think that you should use es, because Mexico's location is permanent (short of an act of God).  However, está is the correct word.

 

You can use está to locate something in physical space (here, there, on the moon, etc.) and es to locate it in time so if you want to say that the party is next week or was yesterday you would use a form of ser not a form of estar.

 

Now admittedly sometimes this rule of "temporary vs. permanent" may work out, but there are plenty of exceptions.  You would say "Maria es abogada" even though she can change careers if she wants.  Similarly, you might say "El coche es rojo" even though you can paint it a different color if you choose. 

Everything has exceptions, but for beginners it is best to learn the general rules, and then figure out the exception to the rules later.  For most stuff except professions, the temporary vs permanent rule applies.  And when I explain that exception, I usually say that back when the language was being formed, people generally didn´t change their profession, and even children knew what their profession was going to be for the rest of their life.  Career switching is only a recent phenomenom and the language hasn´t caught up.

In my opinion it is just about ´exceptions´.   I am a very math-type person and was up to like calculus in college.   But when it comes to learning languages, the fact that there are so many exceptions to every rule that it annoys me.  I like to see patterns, then be able to predict the future because of what I have seen.  For instance, verb endings in spanish.. are all over the place and there are more exceptions then there are cases where stuff follows the rules.   I think that is the real issue.. some people just like to learn by learning others like to learn by developing patterns to be predictive.  It is funny because I had latin in college, and it was one of the easiest languages for me to learn because the grammar is very strict and almost ´math-like´    There was no ´ I before E except after C´ stuff.   I mean crack open a spanish book and see how many ´irregular verbs´ there are compared to regular verbs.  For usage, it is probably 50-50

On 2/2/2016, 6:56:44, kristbernard said:

I am sorry to say, but it is very difficult, near impossible, even, to learn a language without the help of a teacher. I'm speaking from experience. I've been learning Russian for 3 months now during my free time at Preply.com (  http://preply.com/en/russian-by-skype  ) by Skype. I decided to hire a tutor because I had a really hard time trying to learn by myself. I tried them all: apps, communities, books. Nothing really helped me. So I suggest you hire a professional to help you.

Wow,   please take your marketing somewhere else.

There are a ton of good websites like duolingo and memrise which will give you a really good start with vocabulary and some grammar.  You absolutely do not need to have a ´teacher´ stand in front of you saying words when there are websites that do it on your own schedule, and for free.   I frequently binge when I have time, and will do a few hours on those websites.... try scheduling that with your tutor.

You need to do some basic vocabulary building before you can just listen to people and learn.    I think it is easiest to learn vocabulary through lessons, and then pick up grammar from just listening to people.. but if you don´t know the vocabulary, you will only rarely be able to figure out any words.

it is why stuff like flashcards are such a good idea early on.

going to jump back into my own thread to defend duolingo a bit.    I think it is just a preference, but for me I would rather learn vocabulary as lessons and pick up as much grammar as possible passively by doing the vocabulary lessons.  Learning conjugation is not fun, but learning new words is.  Duolingo is definitely for beginners and is very light, but it is also pretty fast at building a basic vocabulary and doing a lot of repetition of conjugating present tense.

go to the local taco bell and make them feel silly

But really, one thing I like to do, and this sounds a little bad..  but when I first started understanding korean ( being a typical white guy)  you would be amazed at how much people say in front of you if they think there is no chance you understand them.   It was hilarious being in a club with two girls, talking to them only in english, but then listening to what they were saying to each other in korean.  

But the real reason is just traveling.  Any oversease vaction is a ton more fun if you speak the local language, you get access and treated with more respect if you can communicate with the locals who doesn´t speak english.   It makes a vacation much more of a cultural exchange rather than just ´here, buy our local crafting stuff... that is culture´..    A true cultural exchange is when you can understand their views on education, politics, family and how they view your own country.