宇崎ちゃん

I have all my core language learning and work scheduled. During dead times I continue with language learning, which can be at any possible time. And while working I just put up music in the target language. So you can say I'm a bit addicted to language learning too, but it's not as extreme as it is for you Wanda.

Learning 10 languages in 2 years (2 months per language) might be enough for basic conversations in each language, but it won't make you fluent. But if time is an issue, you could follow my advice (I have a few jobs too, so I know how you feel). For example: If you commit to work by train and you need to wait 2 minutes on your train to arrive, use these 2 minutes for language learning. Then while travelling, continue your learning. It sounds too few to be true, but every second of language learning counts as progress. 2 minutes each day equals to 14 minutes a week, 1 hour a month, 12 hours a year, etc. But also utilise the 30 minutes a day (3.5 hours a week, 14 hours a month, 168 hours a year) before work.

To be honest @lushlala, I actually find this a really good question. I've never considered it before. But I think it depends on the language. Obviously, speaking Chinese is easier than writing it, but I noticed the same thing with Spanish. But languages like Japanese or German are easier to write than to speak for me. This is because while Chinese has lots of characters to memorise, the amount of possible sounds is rather limited. Spanish has many accents to consider while writing, something you notice less while speaking. Japanese and German on the other hand are quite speedy languages and reading is what I can do on my own speed.

Most countries do indeed, but not in all countries it's a must. Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands are countries where anyone can survive with just English (because almost everyone in these 4 countries can speak English, even though it's not the official language). But if you live in Germany, France or Spain, you'll immediately notice you will need to speak their language. Eventually, about a half of the people living permanently in the capital city of my country (Amsterdam, Netherlands) doesn't speak any Dutch at all (or just the very basics). I sometimes even see street names being translated to Chinese and Russian at random places. It's really interesting, I never know which language I can use best when I am in Amsterdam.

I would rather not do that. The number of languages you want to learn can generally increase and decrease over time, depending on your current mood. At least, that's in my case. Sometimes I'm in the mood to learn as many languages as possible and sometimes I think like I would never learn a new language any more. As for finding time for languages, I am experimenting with a nice trick lately: wake up at 5 AM. Sounds crazy, but it actually works really well. You simply wake up at 5 AM and immediately take a shower, breakfast, etc. Then at approximately 6 AM, you start learning the language on your own for max. 1 hour. Then after work (if scheduled) I talk with my language teacher over Skype for 30-45 minutes. At 18:30 I just review what I have learnt throughout the day and then I relax with music (and if possible, TV) in the language I'm learning. At 21:00 I go to sleep again. And throughout the day I always fill up empty spots of about 2 minutes each with flash cards, apps or other quick resources.

I expect lots of job opportunities for Arabic speakers all over Europe soon, since the EU is purposely importing people from many Arab countries in gigantic bulks to Europe, which they label as "Syrian refugees" (which by the way come from all over the 'Muslim world').

Of course it's possible to get at least B2 for 7 languages. I personally speak 5 languages and I'll be learning 4 more in the coming 2 years. After that I will either learn more languages, or improve what I already know. And of course: welcome.

I would rather like to see this site stay at its core purpose: meeting people with the same passion and talking with them. Besides, turning this site into an interactive language learning resource requires programming skills, which Linguaholic doesn't have.

A lot of languages tend to have one word with multiple meanings. You can think of "to see", which can mean "to look at somebody" or "to understand what you mean". Or regionally "rooting": it means "to cheer for" in the USA, but in Australia it means "to have sex with". German isn't anything different, "schwer" is indeed "difficult" and "heavy". And as with "to see" in English, the full context is really important. It's simply a fact you will never learn in apps like Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, Pimslur, etc.

I don't think "umzu" exists as one word, but I get the point there. It's similar to Dutch: "um Eier zu kaufen" → "om eieren te kopen" = "to buy eggs". But "damit" would rather be "therefore" or "with this" I thought? "Damit" translates to "daarmee": "Ik heb geld gekregen en heb daarmee eieren gekocht" → "Ich habe Geld bekommen und habe damit Eier gekauft" = "I got money, and bought eggs with it".

Ideally you pay a professional translator. Native speakers being your friends is nice, but they may not always know how to translate things correctly, especially if your translation project is meant for business. When I need a translation for something in a language I already know or am currently learning, I try to translate the text myself, eventually with some help of an online dictionary and an online translator for verification. When I'm done, I let my online teacher check it and he or she will fix the mistakes for me and explain all the necessary whys and hows. So that way I get the correct translations AND I improve myself in that language at the same time, which is really ace.

When I read the title, I literally thought of a TV show that taught you English (live?) on TV. On a more serious note, I actually find learning from English language TV very ineffective. Subtitles distract me all the time, I can't hear the audio and I can't see the visuals while reading the subtitles. Besides that, learning from subtitles is more translation-based language learning. The main problem of translation-based language learning is this: You see a word in a foreign language. You read this word. You translate it to a language you know (English or native). You translate it back to the foreign language. Now you finally know what it means. In other words, you're spending too much time figuring out what something means before you know it. Besides, native speakers think in sentences, not in individual words. The alternative way of learning would be association with objects (pictures for example): You see a word in a foreign language. You automatically think of the object as a visual thing. You know what it means. And this will become natural over time. Sometimes when I see a bicycle, I think "あ、自転車！" (Japanese), instead of "oh, a bicycle", "o, een fiets" or "o, rower" (English, Dutch or Polish respectively).

I used to find speaking hard, added to the fact that I have Autism, meaning that verbal communication is much harder for me than for the vast majority of the world. But I actually got used to it, making speaking a much easier task for me now.

Typing Chinese and Japanese is easy on even western keyboards (I do this all the time). There's a keyboard IME that converts everything to Chinese or Japanese characters as you type. And on Windows 10 I found the same thing for Russian: Russian Mnemonic Keyboard. The real challenge is to type Arabic, Hebrew or Korean with a western keyboard. Heh, I incidentally posted this in the wrong topic 2 hours ago. Shame I just realised it.

They told me it was an Android-specific problem and I should workaround the problem through an iOS device. I don't have an iOS device myself, but fortunately my mum has an iPad, so I'll try to register my account on that one when I get the chance.

Who is "we all" in this sense? I think in English much more often than I do in Polish or Dutch combined, despite the fact English is not my 'mother language' and will never be. This isn't because I prefer English over my 2 native languages, this is simply because I use English much more often. And you simply get accustomed to what you use most and when it comes to languages, it's to English. I actually feel like my Polish and Dutch skills are slowly getting worse because of this, even though I still use both languages every single day (Dutch at work in the morning and Polish with family), but for the rest of the time (parts of mornings, and entire afternoons and evenings) I use English and my current target language (Japanese at the moment). So long story short: I disagree.

How is this incorrect? "I can communicate with my cat" → Correct. "I can communicate my cat" → O_o

Beside the fact the Japanese language has something called "Chinese reading" for their Kanji (Chinese characters), I have a very, very, very little experience with Chinese. I know the basic grammar structure, some basic sentences, the fact it has 4 tones + 1 neutral 'tone' and I had around 4 or 5 Skype sessions in Chinese last year. Oh, and I can type Chinese, but that's it for now. 我想要学中文。　（Wǒ xiǎng yào xué zhōngwén.） - I want to learn Chinese. (Not even sure this is correct lol.) Edit: adding in that Korean and Japanese don't have any tones in their languages, while still being classified as "east-Asian". And both of these languages have a much less scary character sets (since both have one or more alphabets unlike Chinese).

I felt like I wasn't interested enough in Spanish. I realised once again that my favourite languages are mostly east-Asian. Other than that, I found too many words similar to English and that made me skip them from my "to learn" vocabulary flash cards (not putting any effort in remembering those words). But it's not like I gave up on it entirely, what I initialise must be finalised at some point ey? So I thought to postpone Spanish rather than quitting it entirely. As my current schedule looks like: January - June 2016: Mandarin Chinese. July - December 2016: Russian. January - June 2017: European Spanish. July - December 2017: European French. And for 2018, I'll decide whether I want to learn new languages or improve my 'old' languages (old as of 2018 of course).

Huh? So speakers don't exist?

Think of a mix of L and R for the east-Asian languages. In the case of Japanese, I always use a 'pure' R sound and I still get understood.

Changed it a bit: 6 months for each language instead of 12 weeks. I don't think 12 weeks has been a realistic idea. The downside would be that Spanish and French got postponed to 2017. The upside would be that I can actually focus on fluency in each language.

Unless you would consider the further future when manual writing becomes a dead skill and everyone will be like "manual writing? what is that?". But even as a lover of digital things and technology, I would never agree to kill manual writing entirely. That's what makes my current tablet such a nice thing: I can manually write on it with a special kind of pen, without wasting any dead trees (paper). It's still very handy for meetings, I have too little time to type my notes, so I just fire up OneNote, take out my Surface Pen and write things down in that app. And if I feel like, I can even print it out and it'll look just like it was written on paper.

This actually differs per flight company. Here in the Netherlands, tickets to Spain and Poland are very cheap. But tickets to Italy or Moldavia are more expensive. This is because you can just take a flight to Poland through Wizzair. They have very crappy planes, but they're really cheap. Same if you go to Spain, but this time it's Transavia. Their planes are of better quality though. But this is notable for international flights too: certain places in the USA is just a mere 20-300 euro ticket (single tickets), while other places in the same country cost more than 600 euros for a single ticket. It's probably due to the fact that only KLM and some other expensive companies fly to these expensive places, while you can just take a flight with TUI to the cheap ones.

Huh, I wasn't complaining, I was just sharing my opinion. But I don't want this topic to become a Democrat vs Republican-kind of debate, so it's better to just keep it as an opinion and leave things like they are.