宇崎ちゃん

I prefer Aussie English over the other 2. It's easier to pronounce (because of their 'letter dropping culture' like I call that) and it sounds funnier in general.

I don't have children myself yet. But when I will have, I'll probably teach them English, Spanish and maybe Mandarin. Those are the 3 most widely spoken languages in the world, very useful if they decide to do business with the whole world. However, I won't force them to, knowing my family isn't really into language learning but perhaps I'm a combo breaker and everything will change in the future.

To solve that, you can try to do this:

I try to think in Japanese each time I think about it. If I don't, I either think in Dutch, Polish, English or German. It's mostly random, but sometimes I switch between these 4.5 languages (yes, that's FOUR AND A HALF!) depending on the person I think about or normally talk to. Like if I think about a conversation with my mum, I exclusively think in Polish because the language we talk to each other is always Polish. In contrast: if I think about what my instructor of my driving school (yes, I still don't have a drivers license yet!), I think exclusively in Dutch because we always speak Dutch with each other. Even when it comes to writing: if I think about a conversation on a forum, I always think in English because all forums I currently visit are in English. And so on. Japanese, German and Spanish are the languages I think in less often because I use Japanese against just a few people about which I never think of, Spanish is a language I just started to learn and German remains unused at the moment. So in order to think in a certain language, past experience with someone or something is important. And because of this, I often tend to think with music playing on the background of my thoughts. Like I think back what my instructor of my driving school said about how I drove on the motorway last week and at the same time think about Dschinghis Khan - Moskau (and each time I listen to it in the real world, I instantly get the motivation to program, I don't know why but it always works).

I agree with the other people here. 3 months is sufficient enough to become comfortable in your target language, but 15 minutes is far too few. Although I did become comfortable in Japanese, German and Spanish in a few weeks, but it doesn't mean I can speak Japanese or Spanish full-time. German is another story, but that's because German and Dutch are almost like dialects of each other, which I said multiple times on my blog (note: switch your language to German to see those posts, the last 2 posts even include a translation on mouse-over).

I asked this myself last year too, but the main key of learning languages is to actually use those. Including my native languages, I learnt all languages I speak today either by speaking those to native people over Skype and/or in real life, or by writing and speaking these languages in real world situations. All you need is someone who's patient, Turkish people tend to be very impatient for example. I currently learn my most recent language (Spanish) entirely without books. I only started this month, but I already make progress. My progresses started small, but I noticed very notable improvements during my Skype session last Friday. Things that took me forever to pronounce while reading the sentence, are now things I can pronounce without thinking about it.

I actually don't see any sense of it. Although most devices automatically change the time for me, there are still people who don't own as many new gadgets. My mum for example called me at 12:00 why I'm still at work, because she thought it was 13:00 because of that.

So yesterday we in Europe had 1 hour of extra sleep, because winter time has begun. For the people unfamiliar with this: in the majority of the western world, we have a summer time and a winter time. During the winter, we live according to our usual time. During the summer, we live according to our usual time + 1 hour. So in my case, we are GMT+1 during the winter and GMT+2 during the summer. However, this change does not apply to the Philippines (which is where my Japanese teacher currently lives). I'm used to the fact I have an online one-on-one Skype session on 17:00 on Mondays and Tuesdays, but now it changed to 16:00. This is because unlike in the Philippines, we do have this bi-annual jet lag in the Netherlands. So does this time change also affect your language learning/studies? And if not, what do you think of saving time in general?

I always wrote according to the British standard (switched to the Australian standard 2 years ago, since Australians have one easier rule), but I used to mix both standards while speaking. What I speak now is still unknown, I heard some people say Australian, some others say Irish, yet some other people say Scottish, even 1 person said Canadian, etc. The easier rule I was talking about is this: Americans always end ize/ise/yze/yse words with "ize" and "yze" (realize, paralyze), Australians use "ise" and "yse" instead (which I find much nicer to read for some reason) (realise, paralyse) and the British are OK both ways, depending on the word. Other than that, British and Australian English are pretty much equal when it comes to spelling.

The Netherlands is a small country, but the amount of ethnic groups here is very broad (especially in the big cities). Also remember that Dutch is also the official language of Belgium and Suriname, although accents differ. I'm a native speaker of both Polish and Dutch, I can say both languages are very different from each other. Polish people normally never get the Dutch accent and grammar right, while Dutch people normally never get the pronunciation of Polish words right. But by utilising both languages for a long time, either will improve over time.

I haven't been to Norway, no. Cars are only easier in smaller towns and villages here. If you live in a bigger city or need to visit a bigger city, it's better to use public transportation. Because parking your car in a big city can be a pain and it's very expensive too, let alone to driving in a big city at all. Especially Amsterdam is a nightmare for car owners, since bicycles clearly rule the traffic there and will never let you drive a metre further. But don't worry about bicycles or bikes, the Netherlands is a really flat place. There are no mountains (with an exception being in the province Limburg, but the tallest mountain there is still much smaller than you may be used to in Mexico or Norway). As for OV-chipkaart being expensive: no. Especially if you use it in buses and trams, it's a whole lot cheaper. The costs of travelling by trains pretty much equals the average costs of patrol, but keep in mind that cars here cost much more than just patrol (road tax, KM-tax, etc.).

I used to visit Antwerp quite often, but between 2011 and 2012 I only drove through Antwerp by bus, since I lived in a different province and required me to go through Belgium in order to go to school. Reading it, I see you're from Latin America? I thought you were from Spain. But I remember going from my hometown to Germany by train, which took me about 3 hours to arrive. Going back was a different story, since the Germans still use paper train tickets, while we use smart cards for all public transportation systems, so I ended up buying wrong tickets 3 times in a row (and being kicked out of their trains 3 times in a row). But showing them my OV-chipkaart (the smart card I was talking about) did make them look confused, so that was the fun part of the story. But that's because our public transport systems is so much easier: check in before department, check out on arrival. Direction doesn't matter. While in Germany, it literally took me 40 minutes, 1 foreign student from Africa and 1 German who didn't speak English to figure out how to buy a train ticket at the ticket machine. Ridiculous!

Are you OK with a time machine too? http://web.archive.org/web/20150327154711/http://www.linguaholic.com/

The American sound for "ij" would be close to "iy". If you know the sound for "ei", it's the exact same sound as "ij", which leads to some confusion to even native speakers: Leider → Leader. Lijder → Someone who suffers. Both sound exactly the same, but both have a completely different meaning.

I don't have experience with teaching, but it might be because I have a form of autism and therefore, I need to receive information as clearly as possible in order to understand it. This helps me to come with an as straight forward as possible explanation too, I think.

No, Breda. Breda is located really nicely: - It's a big city. - It's close to Rotterdam (second biggest Dutch city) at north. - It's close to Antwerp (second biggest Belgian city) at south, - Access to other big cities at east. - Access to a holiday province at west.

Also, but not just that. Typing in English on forums doesn't help me acquiring Japanese or Spanish neither, but there are nearly no Japanese forums to write on (and when they are, they're dead). Spanish forums on the other hand are more likely to exist, but I don't know where to look for them.

Then I assume you live in Leiden. I have subdivided your quote into points, so it'll make my response clearer: 1. I also learn most outdoors, but on my mobile phone. Both online and offline apps work well and I can even learn in a standing position (like when I stand in a queue in a supermarket for example), which is not possible if you have a book, pen and paper. 2. This is what I even learnt on one of my formal universities: put Skype to "busy", so nobody can interrupt you. Make a separate Google Chrome user just for learning, so you won't sneakily go to social media in the mean time. Email clients OFF! etc. I don't have any social media apps installed on any device, but I still get lots of emails on my phone. In Android 5.0, it was a matter of turning off notifications using the volume buttons. But in Android 6.0, they removed that feature for some vague reason, it really was very beneficial back on 5.0. I'm not trying to make you switch, I only wanted to show you the available options.

Languages can't be replaced by just a single language that easily. As Carly already said, languages are often connected to a specific culture. A very notable example would be Arabic, which is very closely connected to the Islam. If all Arabs would stop using Arabic, it may also affect their Islamic culture. Other examples would be Russian and Japanese. Japanese is designed to have different politeness levels based on the situation, since Japanese people differ their politeness from person to person. Russian at the other hand has no political correctness, yes means yes, no means no. Simple as that! That's because Russians (and Slavic people in general) will tell you exactly what they think. Always. So in a nutshell: it will definitely be hard to have 1 universal language.

So that's how they were called? Didn't even know that. 楽々 (raku raku) = easy 中々 (naka naka) = quite 数々 (kazu kazu) = many 全然 (zen zen) = never クンクン (kun kun) = sniff どんどん (don don) = drumming 多々 (ta ta) = very much コロコロ (koro koro) = a popular Japanese comic book

Learning 5 languages or more is fine, but at the same time is impossible. Your brain is made to focus on only 1 thing at a time, learning 5 languages at once is 5 things at the same time, no matter how your counter-argument may look like. Back when I used Duolingo, I started off with German and Spanish at the same time. Shortly after, I added Italian, French, Portuguese, Turkish, etc. to it and tried to learn all of those every day. Results: I learnt absolutely nothing and only got frustrated in the end. I can't even remember how to say "this is an apple" in Italian, French, Portuguese and Turkish (read: I never could remember), that's one of the first things you learn on Duolingo.

I'm currently piloting it on Windows only. Once it proves to be useful to lots of people, I'll surely make a Mac and Android version (and maybe a Linux version). But in the mean time you can try running it through CrossOver or Wine, it's just a simple C# application, so it doesn't use any 3rd party libraries.

So I've been doing both myself and you a favour by developing a new tool: Alpha! It's a game-like application for Windows, based on a Nintendo DS homebrew application (Project JDS) that taught me my first 2 foreign alphabets: Hiragana and Katakana. However, that was in 2008. Even now I am unable to find similar applications for whatever platform to learn all sorts of alphabets. So fast forward to 2015, I decided to make my own application. At the moment, Alpha only contains Hiragana, Katakana, Cyrillic (Russian letters) and Arabic, more will follow in the coming weeks. Make sure you read the README file to find tips on how to learn your new alphabets fast.\ FEATURES: - Huge characters. - Clear confirmation whether you're right or wrong. - Decide what you want to learn and how many characters at once. - Audio feedback when your answer is correct. - Cheat sheets for all alphabets. - Optional timer option. - Optional amount of letters per session. TODO: - Flip alphabets. - Bug fixes. - Room for suggestions. Download (FREE!): http://drive.cw-games.org/srv/public.php?service=files&t=809b978f4acdf0a6c0551dcc6173067d

Yes it is.

I never used Rosetta Stone myself, but I heard from others it's just a hype and nothing more. I know a few people who used it to learn another language, but none of them (how serious they were) have actually learnt anything (besides a few basics, but they still feel like they can't speak, write, read and understand the language they were learning). I looked up a review after that, in which it said it's all immersion based (which is good), but in such a way that it's not realistic. Like it's basically the same person in the same pose for different languages, Photoshopped to different locations (like the Eiffel Tower for the French course and the Piza Tower for the Italian course). And everything feels like an American TV advert on each photo. But that's just what I read in that review, I never used it, so I don't have a more legit argument to provide.