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Linguaholic

bittersblue

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Everything posted by bittersblue

  1. Sort of? I don't know if it actually became easier because of the language but after learning a language for 3-4 years, I just knew what learning methods worked for me. I knew what sort of things I had to do to better memorize vocab, practice grammar, etc. I don't think me learning Spanish had any effect on my Chinese ability, but I do think that my Spanish classes just helped me figure out what learning methods worked best for me so every language I took after that became easier because I knew what to do to learn everything quickly.
  2. I think it depends on the language. Listening to music never helped me with Chinese. As everyone knows, Chinese is a tonal language but that kinda gets thrown out when singing (for obvious reasons). Therefore, listening to music doesn't particularly help me. There's so many homonyms in Chinese, if you remove the tone, it gets really hard to understand words sometimes (a lot of the time context helps, but again, it's harder in music for me). However, in Japanese or Hindi music, I have a much easier time picking out words that I know/words that I want to look up the meaning of. I still don't use them as learning tools really, but they help with immersion.
  3. I'm definitely like that. I have a lot of issues with anxiety as it is and when I'm learning a language, I feel like I need to be perfect before I can speak. I had a lot of trouble with this when I was studying abroad. It took me way too long to get comfortable speaking in Chinese (I kept worrying about people laughing at me). I didn't realize until my program was almost over that it didn't really matter. People were always nice when I said something they didn't understand and honestly, I had people be really nice and help me out with my grammar.
  4. I don't really think there's any way to judge whether a language sounds sophisticated or not. I do think there are different aspects of each language and I think judging one language/dialect as sophisticated and another language/dialect as not-sophisticated has some unfortunate implications (we actually learned quite a bit about this in my Sociolinguistics class). However, if we're asking "what language sounds pleasant to you" I'd have to go with Arabic and Japanese for me.
  5. All the time! Last year, I was taking Chinese and Japanese at the same time and my classes were 20 minutes apart. I've been learning Chinese for much longer so I didn't struggle too much with that but every time we had to read Kanji in Japanese, I would have to register for a second that I had to read these in Japanese and not Chinese. Also, once I accidentally spoke to my Japanese teacher in Chinese. That was definitely awkward. I'm also learning Hindi right now. Bengali is my native language and it's very, very similar to Hindi. A lot of times when I'm in class, I'll try to say a word in Hindi but it just comes out as Bengali. (Example: "Wall" in Hindi is "deevar" and in Bengali it's "deyal").
  6. At the end of the day, it boils down to your learning style. I tried out Rosetta Stone once and... well, it didn't really work too well for me. It's an innovative concept, but I'm the kind of person who needs to know the rules when learning a language. Because of that, Rosetta Stone's learning style just didn't work for me. I've had more success with cheap/free language learning apps than I had with the limited amount I spent with Rosetta Stone. It just didn't feel worth it to me.
  7. Repetition. Lots and lots and lots of repetition. I'll usually make flashcards and go through them until I can get them all (I'll sort them into piles too: words I'm having trouble with and words I know already. I'll go through the former pile a couple extra times). When memorizing Chinese characters, I tend to just get a blank piece of paper and write a character once, cover it up, and then try writing it off the top of my head. Then I compare the mistakes and just rinse and repeat until I have it (takes anywhere from 2-20 times depending on the complexity of the character (了 doesn't take as long as 赢). When learning to speak, I listen to audio (usually the stuff that comes with my textbook) and try to mimic it until it sounds right. It's harder to judge my own pronunciation though, but it definitely helps to just repeat repeat repeat.
  8. I've definitely been in similar situations. Normally, my thoughts are always in English, but if I'm feeling really, really sad or upset about something, I start to think in Bengali. I actually just noticed it a while ago. Also when I'm really frustrated with someone, I usually mutter something in Bengali, but I feel like that's not really the same thing at all.
  9. Hi Sora, that sounds like a really cool major! I'm learning Hindi right now and I'm fluent in Bengali too! I look forward to seeing you around the forward, hope to get to know ya!
  10. I'm definitely biased, I've been learning Chinese for a really long time so I've grown really fond of the script. It's really beautiful and even though I struggled with it when I started learning, I love that the characters have their own patterns and how each radical contributes its own meaning. In terms of languages I don't know, I really like the Arabic script. I really wanted to try and take a semester of Arabic in college but I don't think I'm going to end up having time for it I have considered learning Urdu (I'm already working on Hindi so I might as well) though!
  11. I lived in India as a kid but not long enough to fully pick up Hindi. Both my parents speak it so I just wanted to be able to speak it as well. I could already understand Hindi pretty easily, and reading was difficult but I still had a general idea of the script. I was already partway there, so I just wanted to go all the way and be able to read/write/speak it perfectly.
  12. I've traveled to Shanghai many, many times (my parents live there) and one thing I noticed is that you really have to make an effort to get people to talk to you in Chinese. At least in the area I would visit, there were a lot of foreigners, so almost everyone ends up picking up a little English. I would have a lot of situations where I would ask something in Chinese, only to receive an answer in English. It's easy to just give up and start talking in English but you just need to be persistent! Overall though, people are really nice about you speaking Chinese. I think they're genuinely happy that you're making an effort to learn their language.
  13. A quick backstory about me: I'm double majoring in both linguistics and genetics and have taken several languages in college. When I was looking for a research professor to work with for genetics, I was having a lot of trouble because of my lack of work experience and available time. I finally met with a professor who said that my unique combination of majors might be perfect for a job he had. In the end, I got the job, and I think a large part of that was because I had learned a fair share of languages--something my fellow STEM majors don't really tend to focus on. My job is largely just data curation (I go through publications and sort through information for a database) but we have a couple side projects where my languages come in handy. Sometimes I have to go through really old microbiological publications (often in French or Russian) and do my best to pick information out of there. Sometimes the publications are in Chinese and I need to sort through those. This isn't a full-time job but it's still really exciting to me that I can combine my science degree and my language minors (which is something I didn't think I'd be able to do)!
  14. Bengali: mitthe aar bodnaam I don't know if "bodnaam" has the exact same meaning as "slander" but I think they're both pretty close/have the same connotation.
  15. The name's Blue I'm excited to join this forum because I really love linguistics and languages! A little about myself: I'm a university student currently double majoring in Genetics and Linguistics with a minor in Chinese! I spent my middle school years learning French, Spanish, and Chinese and when I came to college I decided to focus entirely on Chinese. I've taken a semester of Japanese for fun too! I speak English and Bengali fluently and am currently learning Hindi (I can understand it, but I struggle with speaking/reading/writing).
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