Chris_A

Generally speaking, talking and listening are the best ways to perfect your pronunciation. Talking, because you use the words over and over and eventually they will be second-nature. And listening and repeating, because that is the best way to learn a language in general, not only good pronunciation of certain words.

Very good info for sure. Totally new to me as well, and I`m definitely going to go online and research as much as I can about this list. You learn something new every day on this forum it seems.

I have never heard about this program, but it sounds very useful. Is it free or do you have to buy it? I have been looking for a good language learning tool for a while now, and if it can help me learn other things as well, I might give it a shot.

I think you have to do both. And it also depends on the document that you are trying to translate. For official documents, I think it is better to translate word for word, while, when translating articles or such writing, it is better to translate the meaning.

I think both of them are really bad. Such translation engines translate the words, but cannot really keep sentence structure together. The result is a garbled mess that native speakers will surely not understand. These are good only to quickly translate certain words that you don`t know, but you should fit the words together to create an understandable sentence.

I think speaking a language out loud when learning, is a really good way to learn a language. As is speaking with other people who know the language and native speakers. Delaying speaking is not a good idea, in my opinion.

Pronunciation is by far one of the most important things that you should master when learning a new language. Apart from the fact that words could have different meanings when not pronounced correctly, not pronouncing words correctly is also a giveaway that you are not really fluent in a certain language and should practice more. Only through practice can you master pronunciation.

I surely did. I had to read a ton in German, back in High School. I also read a lot in Romanian as well. Funny thing is, even though Hungarian is my native tongue, I hardly read anything in Hungarian.

Wow, this is a really good idea and lots of respect to you for even attempting to create something like this. I will definitely check it out. If you can really learn it in 1 hours, it will be cool to add another language to those I already know.

I don`t really have a problem with that. If I can speak a certain language fairly well and can strike up a conversation, I will go for it. Most often, that is the way to perfection, because if you talk to a native and you make mistakes, he or she will correct you and you learn from the experience. Learning through practice.

It is perfectly OK to mispronounce a language you are trying to learn, or to mix words up. Just think about the fact that you are still learning the language, you don`t have to be perfect right from the start. And also, if you speak to a native and he sees that you are trying to speak his language the best you can, most of the time, they will be really friendly towards you anyway and surely they won`t get offended or laugh at you because of this.

Wow, looks like a lot of people prefer learning from home. That is interesting, as I thought most people would much rather go to courses where they can have a face to face teacher. But learning from home is perfectly doable, you just have to stay motivated and disciplined.

I think the biggest problem, when first starting out learning a new language, is getting used to it. To its feel, the different pronunciations, and most importantly, the grammar. That is even doubly true when starting to learn a language that is not from your usual language family. Like, say, learning Italian as a German native. Totally different language groups.

I plan to finally master Italian in 2016 and then move on to Spanish. It has been good going so far, and I`m finally able to order a pizza at a local Italian restaurant.

While handwriting is really cool to use, and I still use it every day, I think the future is in typing. I mean, nowadays, we got everything from smartphones to easily accessible laptops or desktop computers right at our fingertips. Who would need handwriting anymore? I think in a few decades, kids won`t even know what handwriting was.

I would be willing to spend a lot of money to learn a new language, if I would get my hands on a really good teacher, that could teach me a language professionally. That would beat any overpriced crash courses and online handbooks for sure.

In school, we had regular English, French and Latin classes, in addition to our native language classes. It might be, because I went to a humanistics based High School. But still, those are 3 languages we had to study along with our native language.

I think French is one of the most sophisticated languages out there. It just oozes with class and culture. And also, a French person speaking English, for example, with a French accent is really fascinating to listen to. I never mastered French, as it is just not up my alley, but I still have a lot of respect for it.

I don`t really get confused between the languages that I know, but I tend to mix and match them together, in certain situations. Like, using English words when speaking Romanian, or using words from other languages when I can`t really remember how to express a certain word in the language that I am speaking in the moment.

British English accents surely have a certain charm to them. But as for attractive, I always loved Scottish accents. There is just something to them.

A really stupid reason for learning a new language, would be, being forced to do it by different reasons. You will fail for sure, if you attempt to learn something that you don`t like, but are supposed to do, because someone expects that from you. But that is the only stupid reason to learn a language, in my opinion. Other then that, if you really like a language, go ahead and learn it.

I think, no language that you start learning should make you feel sorry for attempting to learn it. Even if you only got to the point to ask for a beer at a local pub, it is still something that maybe other people don`t know how to say in a certain language. I, personally, have no regrets trying to learn a language but failing. I still got off with a few useful sentences that I could use when visiting a certain country.

I don`t think neighboring countries make it easier to learn a language. But if there are minorities in your local community, that speak different languages, that definitely helps. Romania is a tri-lingual country, having German and Hungarian speaking people everywhere, as well as, naturally, Romanian speaking people. So that made me learning these three languages much easier.

I don`t think you can ever consider yourself to be done learning a certain language. No matter how hard you study, if you are not a native, you cannot really master a language. And by that, I mean, mastering all the nuances of expression, accent, being able to read and write perfectly, mastering sentence structure and so on. These things are really hard even for native speakers. And, yeah, maybe you could completely master a language eventually, but that would take at least a decade of study.

It is definitely really hard to recognize each and every word in a given language. You have so many factors to count in, like local accents and dialogues, old expression not used anymore these days and words from an older version of the language that you know. I think you really have to be an expert in any given language to know and recognize each and every word.