OmniHead

My five languages would be; 1. English, because whoever does not understand and speak English is kind of lost, and dropped out in our globalized word. 2. Spanish, because without it, I wouldn't understand people where I live 3. Italian, because I like how it sounds and is so similar to Spanish, yet I think pretty easy to learn 4. French, because of the romantic cliché 5. German, which is the language I'm currently studying, because I like German culture. Many people say that, after English, one should learn Chinese due to the fast-growing China's economy, but most Chinese people involved in the business world knows already English, hence Chinese is not appealing to me as a personal choice or for business matters.

You may indeed get yourself enrolled in a grammar course, but it is also possible to find numerous grammar guides and exercises, many of which are totally free and available through reputable colleges, just like these; http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~rsimmon/chingram/ http://www.brown.edu/about/administration/international-affairs/year-of-china/sites/brown.edu.about.administration.international-affairs.year-of-china/files/uploads/Grammar%20Guide.pdf http://faculty.vassar.edu/brvannor/ClassicalChineseEveryone.pdf http://tulane.edu/liberal-arts/asian-studies/chinese-resources.cfm

I'm of your same opinion but... in the practice I need to focus on American English because I deal with American people all the time, and my own activities are American-oriented, whether for personal, business or job purposes. So that, while I enjoy listening to a British native speaker, American English the language I have to focus on.

I have never been into language exchange, but certainly it might be a nice experience, particularly for those exchanges made at a college level, in which students go abroad to live with a native family to learn from them. Exchanges in which host families are also benefit from the experience.

When visiting a site with small fonts, press the control key in your keyword at the same time you press the plus "+" symbol in the numeric keypad or wherever else this symbol is. Do this repetitively until you are comfortable with the size of the font, and revert by pressing control and symbol minus "-" as many times as required to go back to normal or smaller. This is the zoom option, usually available also from the browser's menu.

Good point, specially because if she wouldn't make the remark of her Mexican roots, nobody would ever know and nobody would figure out it because of her physical features. About nationalities, I believe that was the point of Esperanto, not just break down language frontiers but also nationalities. Nationality is like many other social labels, a tag that should be abolished.

These lists of irregular verbs are really useful and much appreciated, because many times even native English speakers need to look at these to make sure they are right. Some verbs have both regular and irregular forms, and some other are irregular or not based on location. As in example, learned, dreamed or lended for the USA-based version, or learnt, dreamt, or lent for the UK one.

While I started learning through school teachings, then courses, and always with the aid of books and homework books, at this stage of life I have found that listening to languages makes easier to learn them, while doing online research for rules of grammar and spell.

Personally I dislike Skype and how it handles system resources regardless how potent and modern your computer is, so systematically I refuse to get involved in any practice, deal, offer, or requirement that involves the use of this software. There are sites offering live learning by using video conference websites, which many times offer more dynamic teaching and practice that those using Skype or similar instant messaging software.

Most schools are not longer teaching cursive writing, and since you are discouraged to use cursive writing when filling out forms by hand, sadly this resource is being lost. I learned cursive writing before anything else, and while i don't use it on a daily basis, I try to keep it up by writing a journal in cursive writing, which is by the way, a good option to add an extra layer to security when it comes to potential prying eyes. Same way people is forgetting (or was not taught) cursive writing, most of them find difficult read whatever comes in cursive

Actually there is a search engine that is different, and tries to provide real life translations; http://www.linguee.com Excerpt from the site:

I grew up learning rules first, and I believe learning them is still valid. Immersing in languages is a good idea and might be more helpful and a more closer approach for live speaking/writing a different language than ours. However I believe that it depends on the sources make such immersion a good way of learning. If you get immersed in wrong pronunciation, rules or sentence structure, this will not only affect your learning but they way you used such language. With grammar and spelling rules, there is never mistake

I was reading a lot about bilingual/multilingual children when a friend of mine was expecting her twins. I found that children that are born to a couple of different nationalities and speaking different languages (as she and her hubby) do not need to be taught as most of us were taught. It wouldn't be about "learn to conjuagate this verb nor tell the baby the translation for each item, but simply children will pick what they listen to, and if the parent speak the two, three or more languages on a regular basis and refer to an item with the different ways to call it for each language, children will learn them naturally.

I must agree with Trellum, but while Lupita Nyong'o was born in Mexico, I would't regard her as Mexican as she has never showed off any link with the country she was born until after being a nominee. This is much like Salma Hayek, who is more renowned from being of a Mexican origin despite she tends to forget it, but this is only my personal opinion. I wouldn't regard Jackie Chan Chinese since he opted to abandon Hong Kong to became a 100% American-like citizen. As for Latinos certainly is an inaccurate to call everybody with Hispanic background a "latino" because while most of us, Spanish speaking people, have a common Hispanic root after the Spanish conquest of our countries. However, I tend to visualize Hispanics as those born in Spain and Latins to be those who were born in Latin America... although Iberian is a better approach when it comes to call people born in Spain. And yes! Italians, French and Portuguese share a common Latin link with us... does Greeks too?

Yes, Spanish has some words with triphthongs, including personal names such as Cuauhtémoc (last Aztec emperor) or Guaicaipuro (An Indian native Venezuelan leader); also in the name of places such as Cuautitlán or Cuautepec, as well as in verb conjugation for "vosotros", second-person singular pronoun still in use in both Spain and Argentina, as in example "vosotros actuais" (you act) Here is an interesting reading about different vowel combinations (in Spanish) http://www.wikilengua.org/index.php/Lista_de_combinaciones_de_vocales#Tres_vocales And this list offer 103 examples of triphthongs, http://www.ejemplode.com/12-clases_de_espanol/48-ejemplo_de_triptongo.html

Yes! Now that you mention, this can be the souce of the problem my friend has. Himself, as learner of a second language, found people criticizing and teasing him when he thought to participate in a community where that second language (don't remember if Irish or Scottish) was the main language in use to communicate one another. This happened in the very early days he came online long, long years ago. Later he quit online communities focusing on his business development and then after, having people wanting to get him teaching them his own native language, but finding he refuses to do it.

So true @lushlala, and the worst is having people accepting English as they come without realizing of wrong pronunciation and outdated spoken sentences structure, but doing nothing to get themselves updated by listening carefully to native English speakers doing it the right way. As you say, many people may not travel outside their countries, and sometimes not even outside their cities. Yet they could pay attention to movies and other English resources that media airs to figure our something has to be wrong with the English they learned. And when I say "outdated structures" I refer to simply things that make a noticeable difference however, when talking to native speakers or correctly taught people. I remember myself coming with the school-learned greeting "how do you do?" which may still be in used and is understandable, but not commonly used versus "how are you doing."

Yes, in Spanish hyphen only goes if a consonant and vowel are adjacent, and when the syllable includes a diphthong (two consecutive vowels) or a triphthong (3 consecutive vowels, hyphen must fall after them. An example of a word containing a diphthong would be, "we would wait" which translate as "nosotros esperaríamos" If the word "esperaríamos" has to be separated by an hyphen at the diphthong syllabe, correct way to do is this; espera- ríamos or esperaría-mos

A friend of mine is not only reluctant about teaching his language to others, but also refuses to make corrections when someone is speaking on writing the wrong way. I never understood why of this, however, and with the pass of the years, I thing to have the clue about; he doesn't want to hurt people's feelings making them see they are wrong when it comes to corrections, and doesn't want to take responsibility when someone who he could taught would be evaluated and found non proficient in that language. I do not only agree with this, but I found it to be a completely wrong approach. On the one hand, you can teach your language, but proficiency at the end depends on the learner. Many people want to be taught a new language, but they don't take seriously and with a few newly acquired words are okay, while others ask, get additional resources and do their best to earn such proficiency at the end. On the other hand, by not correcting someone, he does more harm than good because the person talking to him or emailing him may believe to be doing it right, when not, and keep going through life dragging the error because a native speaker never made them aware of it. Moreover, all of us who are learning languages sincerely appreciate when native speakers correct us, and there is not harm or hard feelings, I won't get mad if someone corrects me, but will thank as many of your for sure will also do, hence some of the reasons we all are here

Yes @czarina84, is the first meaning what "jineateando" means about in Desperado, and indeed, I meant stunt riding, somewhat similar to what we see at the American rodeo, but mainly using a rope to perform ability tricks that here are called "suertes." These are some of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tydrVD-DO0Y

Once a Spanish speaking nation, today Philippines is a country in which Filipino and English are official languages. Not sure if India is another of those countries with two official languages too, one of them English, of course.

In Mexico we use the word/verb jineatando (jinetear) to refer to someone who is riding a horse but performing a sort of abilities while riding, which are more commonly seen in charro events. On the other hand "jineteando" is also a sort of slang word that refers to the action performed when an individual is using money from someone else to pay for his/her expenses, in the context that the money doesn't belong to this person, but to someone else, even though using without approval of the legitimate money owner, and delaying the time it should be returned to this latter.

In my experience, I have seen pictorial used very often when it comes to teaching a foreign language, regardless what language this could be. In fact my sister was taught English with the aid of pictorials since she was attending kindergarten, and my best friend is learn Russian today using them as support learning material.

Language teachers play an important role in your life because many times they are your first contact with a new language, and they may be influential not just in learning, but in the correct learning and pronunciation you will get from them. This is why I dislike the idea that the learning of a second language in Spanish-speaking countries is commonly provided by a Spanish speaking teacher that may master such language, but may not give the accurate pronunciation, and getting recorded course is even worst because companies tend to use teachers with regional Spanish accents talking an English that doesn't sound like the English Americans or British use.

As a Spanish native speaker too, I totally agree with Trellum about Duolingo. Personally if found Spanishdict to be a better option over it. In fact I would go farther saying that WordReference, Reverso and SpanishCentral are many times better than Duolingo. Another resource I use whether for English, Spanish or else is linguee.com, which can return the translation for a phrase you are familiar with in your own language, but in the different possible ways it is found on real online examples.