Norm A

I once read somewhere that there are some tools that can help you learn a new language in just 90 days. I wonder if that is true. How long does it really take to learn a new language? I know we all learn at different rates, but I would love to hear everyone's stories of how long it took them to learn which language.

That's amazing. I've never really tried to learn more than one new language at a time. I always thought that it would be too taxing to focus on two or more languages at the same time. I admire you for all the effort that you are putting into improving yourself and your life. My goals are the same as always: Learn one new language every year. And keep improving on the ones that I've already learned and perfecting my accent.

I agree with fcuco that memorizing stuff might just be the hardest part of learning a new language. I can learn something today and really feel that I've made so much progress, only to find out tomorrow that I've forgotten everything. The way that I try to address this problem is by using 6x5 cards and writing what I learned on them and then reviewing them throughout the day and just before my next lesson. It helps me to retain a lot of the stuff that I've learned.

I think for me it's the accent. All the other aspects of learning a new language come easy to me, but when it comes to the accent, I actually get a lot of native speakers telling me that I sound 'funny' or that they can tell from a mile away that I am not a native speaker. That really puts me off. When I learn a language I want to become fluent in it and speak it in a perfect accent.

Your motivation for learning a particular language will play a great big part in how fast and how well you learn it. Think about why you want to learn a foreign language. I agree with 111kg that your main motivation will come from whether you have an intention of immersing yourself in their culture or not.There is no point learning a new language just so you can sit in the knowledge and not communicate with anyone else.

We have eleven official languages in my country and I'm fluent in six of them and semi-fluent in the rest. We get a lot of novels written in each of these languages and I love reading as much as I can because I think that it helps with my overall language learning. The truth is, though, that it never quite 'feels' the same when I read a book that is not in English. I think I've just been too conditioned to read in English that any other language just feels off for me.

I think it doesn't matter how you learn the language or from who. What matters is that after you have a grasp on the basics you try to expose yourself to movies, audios or people who speak that language in the desired accent so that you can start to pick up on the proper pronunciation and accent.

I'm the kind of person that just wants to be forever learning. The one thing I really love about this life experience that we are living is that the learning never has to end. I've been studying languages one after the other for the past 10 years and as soon as I'm done with my current one, Afrikaans, I'm moving on to Latin. It was going to be French, but this forum changed my mind.

Not that I'm an expert or anything, but Arabic looks really nice to me. I really know nothing about most of the other scripts in the survey but I've seen a little snippet of Arabic and some Chinese and some Latin. Arabic has an elegance to it that makes me want to learn it.

Your motivation for learning a particular language will play a great big part in how fast and how well you learn it. Think about why you want to learn a foreign language. I agree with 111kg that your main motivation will come from whether you have an intention of immersing yourself in their culture or not.There is no point learning a new language just so you can sit in the knowledge and not communicate with anyone else.