djordje87

I think it is mixed opinion on this one. I am not a native speaker but I was teaching online with ITutor Group and I teach usually people from China or more precisely, Chinese people. They appreciate my effort because as they say, I know how it feels when you are learning from scratch and of course you never have that confidence in speaking as in your native language. I understand some of that argument but what they do not realize my approach is not about whether I am native or not. It is about my skills in teaching and my will to teach people in other words to have patience and not to be a smart ass.

This is not a problem if you speak her language or his language. Languages are not that hard to learn and most probably you will be able to speak in English to start with. After that you will both have to learn if you agree to that and if that is something you would like to do, I don't see why not, your children to learn both languages along with English of course. It is a unique opportunity that you can provide your children an easy learning of additional languages. That is a big plus.

It is easier to learn the things you repeat the most or you hear the most. usually people swear a lot and foreigners just hear and remember so it is more because of the repetition. I was actually asking some of my Maltese colleagues to repeat some other words and phrases and there were few good guys who taught me several useful phrases but I learned to swear as well. If yo come to Serbia you will learn that we have huge number of swear words and a bad habit to swear a lot. This guy is of Serbian descent and he is goofing around.

So I was right at some point. Thank you for the info. I thought that we mentioned on my first year of English studies something like this but I really couldn't remember and I didn't want to cheat so was hoping for a confirmation by somebody. People tend to think those two are very similar but as you said ...

I suppose it depends on many factors. One of them being the type of person you are. I have a friend who gets really pissed off if I say anything like that to her and on the other hand I have yet another friend who accept this jokes and even gives me the name. The person you are referring should have known that you are sensitive in that area and shouldn't have had call you any names at all in any language. The worst thing here is because it is not professional even if he or she was doing you a favour. I just hope that this person is not a teacher, because it would be a shame for the rest of us.

It is very good that you want to learn these and I have no idea if they even fall under the same group of languages. Even though they look alike I am not sure. I say this because they could interfere with one another. My vote goes for Chinese, though. It is practical and simple logic with this one. It is the most used language in the world and Chinese are going to rule the world in some time soon so it could be a good thing to learn it.

This happens when you are an adult starting form scratch. It is much easier if you are a child or a child adult like me. The first thing you need to know is that will to learn is the most important in this. If you don't have it your brain will react like this. It can be better if something depends on you learning the language but if you just doing it for the sake of it or just for some other and not important enough reason, you will not make too much of an improvement. My advice, set your mind to it.

This is correct. Old Serbian is one of those in the latter group. I believe old Greek as well. Some people do not understand that and therefore make the mistake of putting Latin and similar languages in the dead group. It is simply not developing any more. It is interesting to know that English as we know it is a blend that contains a lot of Latin words actually as well as Nordic, Anglo-Saxon and French.

First of all you need to be realistic and honest about it. I have several people that I know who claim that their English is perfect. Remember, we are talking about a person who's native tongue is Serbian like mine. I have a decent vocabulary and I am an English teacher ... Almost. I have some few more exams to take. He, on the other hand is not even close to be a teacher of anything but he claims that he is very fluent and I assure you he is not. His vocabulary is not vast and it is only good for the job he does. It is limited. He is not being honest and it is not letting him learn and develop his vocabulary. If you want to check yourself go outside of your speciality. Something that has nothing to do with something you like or your job.

I used to do it for English when I was a kid. I believe that this is a good way to learn a language and learn something more about it, about people using it and country those people live. It is especially suitable for the kids because most of them and even grown ups love music. This or that kind but still music. I am into this kind of learning and even when I held private classes with some kids I played them some good songs, oldies where good English was present, I mean the Beatles and similar acts.

We all have perfect memory or the mechanism to use perfect memory and to remember everything. We do not know how to use it but we have it. Actually we even use it. We remember everything we see in our life. The problem is to remember something. the memory is there but we cannot find it. I have read a book called Perfect Memory by Tony Buzan. He wrote about Mind Mapping techniques and I can tell you it is amazing. I am able to remember a 16 digit number in 3 minutes no sweat. It is not hard and everybody can do it you just need the system.

I use things that I like to get to know the language. Not only the words and phrases but from the point of culture and character of people speaking it. I usually watch movies or listen to music. Sometimes traditional music, instrumental only. It helps me to find the emotion of the people and their language. You know. When learning for example Hungarian it is good to know who was who. Attila the Hun was murdered by Ildico. A Hungarian beautiful girl killed him in sleep I believe. Not sure, actually but some research could help about this. A lot of nice history books really blend reader with culture of one people and their language.

This is kind of my dream actually. I have lived on Malta for 2 years and I have learned some of their language but since it is bilingual country with English being the other language, it was hard to learn something. The good thing about this was I was working there and it helped a lot that they spoke English. I would like to have a leisure year or two in France or Portugal, Spain, Italy. I really do not care. I like Greek language as well and Greece is wonderful. Maybe that would be the best because I already speak a bit of Greek.

I like words with hissing sounds like fuss, bus, surplus and many more. I haven't been thinking about this topic very much so I just started browsing some words that are nice to pronounce and I came up with these. I like some Hungarian words as well like csok (kiss), bicska ( a pocket knife), szerelem ( love) and some other but they pronounce everything so funny and it comes out very cool.

While I was on my studies (English studies) I was told by my teachers to stand in front of a mirror and practice by watching myself how I pronounce everything. They also told me to say whatever I see or feel. The point was to start thinking in English not only translating it in my head. It was never a full conversion but it was successful. The problem for a foreigner who is learning a new language is in details and form. Things like TH or W is very hard when you don't have it in your language. We have regular d sound that is not a voiced of voiceless dental fricative but it is alveolar. Also formation of sentences is different. Syntax that is. The position of adverbials is not the same and even the rules for subject, predicate and object are different.