Lingua Franca

I honestly think that this is a good approach. Children's books are designed to be simple that even well ... a child can understand. The fact that the language used in children's books is simple and to the point can only help learn a new language.

I agree that's how come they often recruit people to go and teach in other countries in their native language. I think it's very important to come into contact with native speakers, it can make a very big difference in the way you learn the language.

It's a good way to refresh on a language but it is limited. I do think that it could help a person get a better appreciation of a language but shouldn't be limited to this sort of material.

I think it really comes down to the language. When it's pet names it's fine but when it comes to peoples names, the first name might not work with the child's surname. So I think it can be tricky.

I think if they are just doing it for the money might not end up doing very well. If there isn't a genuine interest in the language the person will only learn the bare minimum, but I guess it's better then nothing.

@lushlala I remember when that happened, it really did create a stir. I still don't understand how no one thought of looking at his credentials in order to be in such an important position. Fortunately he was found out in time.

The earlier you start learning a language the easier you can do this. It's not to say that you will never be able to do this in later life but kids brains are like sponges and if they learn a language at an early age and use it constantly they can switch between languages effortlessly in later life.

My handwriting is the same in all the languages that I write in. It doesn't change. I can see why you might feel that it does but i don't think it's the writing style but rather the amount of time you spend writing, if you had to take the same amount of time writing in English it probably would look the same.

i do like listening to music from all over the world, I can't really in truthfulness point at just one country and say that I like the music from that country. I have been quit pleasantly surprised by the music i have heard. When listening to music from other countries I'm not too concerned with whether I understand what they are saying or not. I prefer to just listen to the melody.

I consider myself bilingual. I speak both Portuguese and English all the time and have reached the right amount of fluency that most people think I'm monolingual. When ever I'm speaking one language and switch to the other most people get surprised. I think it's all a question of tie before anyone can do that.

That was one of the problems they had in the past, I don't know if they have gotten together and straightened things out. There is still slang that is different region to region, that i know.

I think that it's normal, our minds are in a state it doesn't want to be in. So our brains start sending so many signals it makes it difficult to think straight.

I would still add to this that kids brains are in a phase of development and are like sponges. They don't have that much clutter to go through before being able to remember something. The advantage you have as being a grown up is experience so it can be easy to associate a word to something if you know a similar word.

Yes, I have. Languages aren't completely isolated and develop along side one another. What does change a lot is pronunciation, but if you don't have anything to distract you and you know in which context the language is being used, you can derive a certain amount of understanding of what you are seeing.

I don't know how much sign language has evolved but there was a time that the differences between languages weren't just restricted to countries but would even extend to the schools they were taught in.

It seems to me that you already have two languages that you are interested in. Both Italian and French are good choices and just because you learn one doesn't mean that in the near future you can't learn the other. Seeing as you speak Spanish I would probably start with Italian, due to it's closer phonetics.

I have considered it but I ended up not doing so. This was many years back were I would have to pay for classes but didn't have to go to them. Right at the end of the course all I had to do was go to the exam and I would get a certificate. I found that in my case at least it wasn't worth while.

I wouldn't say that they are easier but they are probably the first words we come in contact with a new language. I know how to great in Greek but before I knew how to greet in Greek, I already knew a swear word. So if I go to Greece I can greet and swear. lol

It all depends on the language that I am learning, all languages have a certain amount of difficulty depending on how close or how far it is from any of the languages you might know. So if I'm learning an Asian language I find that the writing and vocabulary is difficult, on the other hand when I learned Dutch I found it difficult phonetically.

It's very important to document the language, I don't on the other hand think it's a good idea to force people to speak it unless the people really want too. There are still some historic scripts that have been found that no one can decipher. If they had kept a "Rosetta Stone" in the past we could learn from past knowledge.

I honestly think that if you really want to be completely proficient in a language you have to hear it spoken by people that use it as their native language. It's all good and well listening to the language in audio books or looking at movies in that language but these two things have been scripted. When people speak nothing is scripted so it sounds more natural.

I think if you look at a movie and you are able to keep up with it and not have to always look down at the subtitles, it could be a good indicator that you have a decent amount of vocabulary. Besides this I don't know of a lot of tools out there that could really measure the extent of your vocabulary.

I don't know how you could learn how to speak a language by listening to music. normally songs use a good dose of artistic license and don't sound the same as the spoken language. There are a whole lot of videos on YouTube that show people singing a song just to find out later that they were miss pronouncing the words and in fact the song had a completely different meaning to what they thought it meant.

I personally think that Latin didn't die off but evolved into the Romance languages that we all know today. It would be impossible for it to carry on being used in it's classical form as it was no longer evolving.

i think that it depends on the language, because you are learning Chinese I don't doubt that speaking the language is much easier then learning all those characters.