fluffyducky

I think the best way is to talk to a good friend who knows that language. They'll be more helpful than any teacher could be.

Personally, I really dislike audiobooks because I tend to 'zone out' and suddenly I have no idea what the person is reading and it's a huge pain to rewind the audio. Physical paper for me please!

Yes, yes you can! A simple example is to look at any stand up comedian or actor, they'll definitely put on accents for certain characters, like the 'muurican and the British Queens English person and Mr Sum Ting Wong the chinese man.

Online tutorials or real life tutorials will only be effective if the student is willing to learn. If there's no effort put in, there's also no chance of learning the language easily and well.

Personally I think online tutorials are better because you can go at your own pace and it's more stress free.

I don't think that will actually happen because Chinese is way too hard to learn easily, Spanish is a reasonably easy language to pick up. It's not like Chinese is 100% needed unless you want a job in China, and they have enough of their own people to do that.

Ooh, this is probably related to how a child learns languages very well if they are taught in the environment where only that language is spoken. I guess as an adult it also helps a lot? For me, it sorta worked, because after I watched a lot of Chinese dramas I got better at Chinese, and I got a starting vocabulary (and interest) in learning Japanese. I apparently speak quite well, according to some of my native speaker friends, but I'm still quite hopeless at writing, so I guess it doesn't help in that department!

I agree with Nyandroid, it's easy to learn a few phrases like "where is the toilet", "hello", "goodbye" and "thank you", but learning more nouns and complex grammer can get to be tough, and people can give up easily or just not use the language so it gets rusty and they forget what little they learned. In the end they're back to square one, so if there's no motivation it's going to be hard for them.

I love the smell of books, and looking through dictionary pages and reading random ones used to be a hobby of mine, so I really prefer dictionaries to online stuff.

Also, what about those kids who don't have internet access or great technology easily available? A dictionary can be shared among the classroom or school easily without worrying about breaking things.

I have never dreamed in anything other than my primary language (not counting swearwords and exclamations), and I "think" in my primary language. Never heard of any such thing happening either, but it would be really interesting to see what other people say.

I do this a lot for my older relatives who grew up only speaking our mother tongue and who only know limited English, when we go to nice places to eat or the shops and they don't know how to say certain words, I translate for them.

Pros: Easy communication!

Cons: Older languages that are cool die :C

The next step would be when aliens come and we need an intergalactic language, like how in fictional worlds somehow all the amorphous blob aliens from Omicron Persi 8 somehow speak the same language as humans.

I actually picked up Esperanto a few years back because of some internet fanclub thing, but noone else I know in normal life uses it. It's a pretty nifty language because it's actually very easy to pick up and it's similar to a lot of European languages so you can sorta understand all the other languages as well!

I think my children would pick it up by listening to me and my spouse speaking the languages we know, at least to the ability to listen and understand, at the minimum level. If they show interest, then maybe I'll teach them more! It really depends on the kids.

I probably have a preference for English, but I honestly use slang that mishmashes all the languages that everyone uses in my home country, we just use all the phrases that are the most apt for every situation. SO I think I probably have no preference, but the base language is still English.

I care quite a lot, I don't want to sound too posh or too uncultured either, I just want to sound like a normal person. It kind of depends on who I'm speaking to at as well, if I'm talking to some bros I don't give a rat's ass, but if I'm talking to professors or business associates I speak in a more crisp way.

Interesting article, but I believe the internet has simply sped up globalization, generally colonization just spreads the language of the conquerers and if young people grow up in an environment they'll learn whatever the dominant language in that culture is. I don't agree that the internet is the one big thing killing languages, languages like latin died way before the internet was created.

Ah, this reminds me of the old days where I "saved" my adventure by sticking my fingers inbetween the pages, and you had to read the books a few times taking different paths to get all the endings.

I kinda prefer the physical copies though, the feel of the book is nice, and there were no pictures so you had to imagine all the exciting stuff that was happening!

For some reason, I prefer the 'insult their parents' route, like yo mamma jokes and the famous monty python "your father was a hamster and your mother smelled of elderberries" line. And things like "you're so dense you would suck a black hole in"

I really like the Monty Python films, for weird quotes.

"Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries."

Black Knight "Tis but a scratch."

King Arthur " A scratch?! Your arm's off!"

And other nonsense like the song "always look on the bright side of life".

I can understand Japanese pretty decently, but I can barely string together proper sentences if I have to speak it.

I can understand Bahasa Melayu well, but I can't speak it for nuts.

The same goes for Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka and Teochew, I know what people are saying but I struggle to form coherent sentences because to me they all fall under the "chinese dialects that I know" category and I spout nonsense that is a mix of all the dialects so nobody can understand me. 8'D

I usually text with proper full words and grammar, it's not like there's an unresonable character limit or anything for texts, so why not make full use of the space given?

However, I do use stuff like LOL, brb, nvm, and asap which I kinda pronounce as the individual letters rather than the whole word? When I see other use txt spk n typ lik dis 2 u it's okay though, I'm not really bothered by it if it's an informal text, but if an employer or someone who should be writing full sentences does it it irks me.

I have dyslexia too, and I get mixed up a lot with the hiragana! I find katakana easier because there aren't so many that look similar with a little bit of difference, and they're more square looking. So I'm basically the opposite of you, and I keep having to check a chart, which is very sad for me :C

I don't write anything on my body, even as a kid I tended to write stuff on post-its or scraps of paper. Now with all the laptops and smartphones, I just punch the note into whatever is the closest device I can get my hands on.

"For all intensive purposes" and "could care less" drive me crazy. The first one is a mispronunciation that somehow became a typo complete rubbish phrase, I can maybe understand the mispronunciation but not the spelling change, that just doesn't make sense! Unless you're talking about something that is meant to used rigorously. The second one just means that you could actually care less, in other words you actually care about whatever it is that you are trying to say you do not care about. Arrrgh.

Grammar matters to me personally, I get a little irritated, especially if the person speaking is supposed to be a native speaker of that language. Students or people who can't speak the language that well, who apolige for it, don't bother me at all though, and they love it when I correct them so they get better!