cutiepie

When it comes to pronunciation of the language I'm trying to learn, one of the things I enjoy most is finding movies or television shows in that language, and then watching them with the closed captioning or subtitles. Once I know what the story is about, what's going on, I focus then on inflection and accent, the natural way to say the phrases, not just the vocabulary (although vocabulary is important!). Oftentimes, in trying to pronounce the words correctly and accented properly, that we speak with emotion in our voices in our mother tongue, so we would also speak with emotion in any other language we communicate in.

I know this post is a little old, but I was hoping we might get a progress update. I noticed one of the members mentioned spreading the word to the local college community. We don't have a university in our town, but I imagine that most colleges or universities would love to know about this site and find a friendly atmosphere where they can talk to a wide variety of people who are also interested in learning languages and having access to all kinds of learning tools and resources, both online and locally available. The nearest college to us is about an hour away. It's where I obtained my own degree. I would be happy to contact some of the local resources there (bookstores and bulletin boards in the student union) and put the word out.

Halito from Oklahoma! (That's Hello in Choctaw). Thanks for ni hao--I'd forgotten that one. I used to have a habit of running through my list each morning of hellos and how are yous. It used to drive my co-workers crazy because they never knew how to respond. (chuckle) But since I'm no longer in that office, I've gotten out of the habit. I need to write them all down, along with a few more, and start "practicing" on my kids--my daughter has been to Belize doing volunteer work, and she came back with a few Kreole phrases (yes, I was tempted to write Creole--but it really is Kreole). Besides knowing the actual words, I love working on the pronunciation and accent--making it sound as closely as possible to the way a native speaker would say it. I don't know why it gives me such a sense of satisfaction to learn another language. Isn't it amazing what our brains are capable of?

I don't usually use a YouTube channel for learning a language, although I might try them a little more often as they become available. But when it comes to an unfamiliar phrase, I like to check out the pronunciation from a native speaker on YouTube, if it's available. For instance, I recently met a man in our town who speaks Tagalog (Tuh-gah-low) and wanted to learn to greet him in this Filipino language, so I checked it out on YouTube. Shoot!--I was even saying the name of the language all wrong.

With cell phones, and new language apps being created all the time, do you think it's just a matter of time before we don't have to struggle when it comes to learning a new language? One company has already made great strides toward a universal translator: http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/16/tech/innovation/microsoft-skype-universal-translator/ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gs&hl=en I personally love learning a new language for myself, but I can see the UT's as the way things will eventually be done-- in this universe, anyway.

That's so true! That's one of the reasons I know so many phrases in Spanish, French, and Italian--they're all based on Latin and use the same alphabetic characters. So once you know one of the words, it's easier to figure out what the same word is in the other 2. Buenos Dias, Buon Giorno, Bonjour--all very similar base. Gutentag, on the other hand, sounds nothing like good morning in French. It does use our alphabetical characters, however. As opposed to the Cyrillic alphabet that the Slavic languages use, or the character/symbols that Asian languages use for writing. When it comes to other alphabets other than the one we use here, I just have to learn phrases by ear. I find that easy to do myself, so as long as my memory holds out, I'm good.

The most challenging part of learning a new language for me is getting conversational with it. I know a lot of phrases, and I pick up the accent and vocabulary very easily, but when it comes to putting it all together, that's where I get stuck. I also understand that a native speaker "slurs" the words, sort of like what we do in America when we say "gonna" instead of "going to". The trick is knowing what particular words or phrases to together like this. I think it takes getting immersed in the culture, the society and having to listen to the language being spoken exclusively before everything will "click" for me. Unfortunately, I've never traveled to another country to be able to immerse myself like that, and I don't live in an area of the U.S. where there is a large population of foreign speakers. So that's not a viable option for me. All I can do is practice, and hope that when I need to use the language, I am moderately acceptable. Does anyone else know of an alternate way of being able to put it all together and learn conversational speech? I'm open to any suggestions. It seems like that's my next step, and I'm a little stuck.

If you are an English-speaking person who wishes to learn another language, I have a recommendation to make: choose one of the 5 Romance languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese or Romanian. The primary reason for choosing one of these as a second language is that they "descended" from Latin, which means that the written language is going to have the same alphabetic characters, making it easier to understand and assimilate. Plus, once you learn one of these languages, the others having similar root verbs and vocabulary will make it easier to pick up any of the other four. And the accents are similar, which means you won't have to learn 5 separate ways to pronounce the words. There will be slight differences, of course, just as there are slight differences in accents spoken in the United States.

Wow! I did not know that, but actually, it makes sense. I know the characters are already there on my cell phone, because I have accidentally hit that button more times than I care to admit--and then I'm hollering at my daughter--"How do I get these crazy letters off my phone and back into English?????!!" When I have a little more time, I will definitely check into this.

Is there a way to say to a waitress: What do you recommend? If you're looking at the menu, this seems to be an excellent way of not only getting a good recommendation, but the correct pronunciation of a phrase. The only downside would be if your waitress likes to play practical jokes, but I'm pretty sure I know what escargot means....and I would point to an alternate dish.

Loosely translated, it looks like: money saved, two times gained. You can sort of see how that idea would be the same as a penny saved is a penny earned.

I am hoping to move to South America in the next couple of years to live. I've heard that teaching English is a way to make extra money to help support your lifestyle in a foreign country. How would I go about finding the market for this? Where would I start? What basics would I need? Does anyone here know anyone who teaches English in a foreign country to support themselves?

How do you get around this problem? I guess you would just have to study the language enough to where you wouldn't need the translator app. Can I ask another question as well--I noticed that in this post, you were able to type Japanese characters--how do you DO that? I don't have those characters on my keyboard. Thanks!

I will definitely look that up! The library that I go to has a website that has a link for learning several languages. It's pretty cool. It has lesson plans that start simple and progressively takes you toward conversational speech. I do think it's funny that they include "Pirate" as a language you can learn. Arrgh!

I also would like to know how hard it is to plan and produce a game like this. My son is really into beta testing, he loves all things gaming related. I keep telling him he would be really good at game ideas. And I think he's a fairly good (though self-taught) coder. Thanks for sharing any info.