zcrooks322

For someone new learning english, I think the illogical grammar rules are the most difficult thing. English spelling is extremely counter-intuitive! Why is it that words like “through”, “trough”, and “though” sound so different? It seems like for virtually every “rule” a prescriptivist writes down to try and model English spelling, exceptions can be found.

Always had a large interest in German history- it is vibrant and exciting. The language also does just sound downright cool to me. I like the guttural, throaty while speaking it. It is a language of culture.

Hello! I feel pretty confident that most people here have seen the video of the young polyglot speaking 20 different languages. (Here is a link in case you need to refresh your memory: ) Needless to say, he makes me quite jealous! I grow suspicious, however, that this skill isn't as rare as what it appears to be. I would like to think that anybody, with a great deal of hard work, would be able to attain the same skills as shown in the video. I know there are a lot of people out here that have this skill. Could you please enlighten me as to how I could go about being able to quicken my language learning process? I think I would be up to the challenge because of my background and my drive to learn languages. Thank you so much for all of your help!

German genders seem to be more or less randomly assigned to nouns. Sure, there are some patterns you can latch on to, -ung words all seem to be feminine. Words like Kind and Ding are neuter because they could represent different things. But it's largely a stab in the dark. Of course it's a good idea to learn the gender along with the noun but you would have to be a robot to get it right all of the time and most people will find their knowledge of nouns soon outstrips their confidence in gender. Extremely common terms like das Auto and der Tisch are branded on your brain through sheer repetition but I reckon even seasoned non-native German speakers find themselves frequently guessing. I always believed that guessing is infinitely preferable to grinding to a halt. So what would be a good percentage strike rate to aim for?

I don't have any background in the Italian language nor its older and/or dialectal forms. So I hope, someone can help me with a very specific problem ^^ How much differs the modern Italian language from the Italian during the Renaissance? To be more precise, the Italian spoken in Florence around 1500. Or a bit more hypothetical: Assuming Leonardo da Vinci met someone from our modern time, would he be able to understand him? And vice versa?

I think it is more that when you have been speaking one language for pretty much your entire life, those word and grammatical concepts become completely engrained in your mind. Everything you do is automatically associated with that language, and so you have a hard time mentally thinking about everyday life in another language, which is necessary to learning any new language.

Just a question I was wondering: in the Middle East when meeting someone for the first time, do you automatically assume they will know Modern Standard Arabic? Arabic too me is slightly more confusing than many other languages purely on the basis of there being so many different dialects, many of which can almost count as languages in their own right! I assume conversations need to begin with asking which dialect to converse in. Toughts?

Hello all, I'm Zach. Currently I am a second-year University undergrad. I hae studied French and Italian in school to some degree, and am looking to take up Arabic. I have come to this forum to improve myself both in French and Italian, as well as to continually explore new language-learning opportunities. See you all around!