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Linguaholic

babelle

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Everything posted by babelle

  1. We can't learn a new language unless we find time to learn and practice that language. My day schedule is almost always full so I have to devote at least an hour in the evening. I also use the travel time to and from work to listen to the lessons in audio files. It's true that it will be a great help if you can find a learning buddy. In my case, my son is my learning buddy. He's learning along with me and I'm pressured to study in advance so I can answer his questions (and he just loves to fire questions).
  2. Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world but that is based on the number of people who speak it as a native language. English is the current lingua franca of the world and I don't think that would change in the coming decades. The ability to communicate well in English is a must if you want to open more career and business opportunities.
  3. I've never carried a dictionary around before the digital age and even more so now that there are a lot of good dictionary apps that you can use to learn pronunciation, too. Ever noticed how writing styles have also evolved and internet bloggers are using simpler words and shorter paragraphs in their blogs/articles to cater to internet readers? I hardly use the digital apps which are conveniently installed in my tablet/smartphone so I don't think I'd like to bring a dictionary, even pocket ones.
  4. The only way for you to sustain what you have learned is to use it on a daily basis and to continue to enrich your knowledge of the language. Basically, you have to live the language and you have to deliberately seek ways to use it. If you can't find a learning buddy or a native speaker to converse with, you can use the internet to join forums in your chosen language. You can also read short stories and books or listen to speeches in that language.
  5. Programming languages are called languages because humans use them to communicate with machines or computers. Like human languages, programming languages have syntax that governs how a program or statement should be written. Violation of syntax leads to confusion and error in both cases.
  6. Personally, I have not tried watching children's show for the purpose of learning a language because I find it really slow for my age given that there are many other options for learning. However, that style works for children and my little son got interested to learn Spanish because he used to watch Dora the Explorer.
  7. I've actually started learning Classical Latin, though not for fun. It was for a project that required me to collate Latin conversational phrases. I enjoyed the task and I started to study on my own. I was amazed at the many resources on the internet about Latin, and learning it is feasible so if there's an ancient language I'd like to be fluent at, this would be it.
  8. Learning the native accent is not as important as learning grammar and pronunciation, at least for most languages. Unless you're applying for a job that requires you to have a certain accent, it's better to focus on learning the fundamentals of the language than learning the accent at the same time. As it is, a lot of students are already complaining about complex grammar rules.
  9. Ahahaha, @Mary84 beat me to it but my favorite Spanish words are also Estrella (star) and sangre. These words are very special to me since Estrella is my mom's name and sangre is blood which could be romanticized as blood ties. My mother has Spanish-Chinese blood and she was a beautiful and regal lady unlike me LOL. I'll settle for les pierreries instead, which means the jewels, because I've come to associate the word with what my maternal grandmother has left me as my 'inheritance' - a box of pearls, stones, and jewels. They are inexpensive pieces, but they are priceless because my grandmother treasured them.
  10. That would actually differ from school to school and teacher to teacher so I can't speak for the others. My son attended a private preschool and the first sentences he 'learned' were about self-introductions and those were in English, not in the local language. The school emphasized pronunciation, reading, writing, shapes, vocabulary-building, and early math skills and these were again all in English. They also don't teach a particular sentence. Today's parents are under pressure to teach their children basic skills even before they enter school so I've taught my child some nursery rhymes early on.
  11. The definite article 'the' is also one of the challenges of learning German. It has different forms in the four cases - nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative case and each case has different forms for the singular masculine, feminine, neuter, and plural. If word order is not much of a problem in German, it's because you can easily identify who's doing what to whom because of the the cases and the articles associated with each case.
  12. I'll consider myself fluent in another language if I can converse confidently with a native speaker of that language in all areas of discussion that I would also be confident to talk about in my own native language. I am more or less fluent in English but I can only be confidently sure about it if I can understand without googling the idioms that native speakers use in their daily speech. Besides the accent, I believe that it's the use of idioms that separate a second language speaker from a native speaker.
  13. Each language has a unique way of naming numbers. If you can crack it, you will not have to memorize each number from 1 to 99 and beyond. In English, for instance, you only need to learn 1 to 19 and the tens digits starting from twenty if you want to learn to count up to a hundred. That is just 28 numbers but it will give you the power to count up to 100.
  14. It's a difficult question but this all boils down to your motivation or what you want to accomplish with language learning. Opportunity-wise, learning Arabic might open up a whole new horizon for you as there probably would be less English speakers who can speak Arabic and that could put you in a unique, favorable position. Arabic is not easy, of course. When you learn a language that doesn't use the Latin alphabet, that makes it doubly difficult. But that shouldn't discourage you if your mind is fixed on your goal. Just look at the pot at the end of the rainbow and if that is really worth it, then go for it.
  15. That is the effect of globalization. I suppose countries with weaker economies will tend to focus on strengthening their citizen's proficiency in learning international languages such as English. In my country, English is taught alongside our native language because we need to be globally competitive in order to sustain our economy. A language need not die if the country's leaders only know how to value their nation's heritage and self-identity.
  16. Love stories like that have mixed endings. Sometimes, the difficulty doesn't just lie on the language part but on cultural differences. On the other hand, some unions grow and last for a lifetime. Hard to tell but I will likely take the risk if the guy is worth it. Come on, there are crash language courses, right? It shouldn't be an issue.
  17. Same thing here. Just when you think you have learned what there is to learn about a language, then you hear a native speaker talk in a manner that's completely foreign to you. I was lucky to have a college teacher who was a native Spanish speaker so I was able to imbibe the Spanish 'air' but I don't have that privilege with the French language. I've studied liaisons intensively but I am lost, yes, completely lost when listening to a native French speaker. Yes, French is beautiful.
  18. I'm currently attending a class on the German language becauses I need a certification for German proficiency. I actually prefer to study on my own because I want to have more control on my learning pace. However, I also appreciate the value of being a part of a class because it puts pressure on you to speak the language and also allows you the opportunity to speak and practice the language with the teacher and other learners. So for my German class, I go with the flow at class and then learn some more at home.
  19. Memorization, in my opinion, is part of the learning process. Memorizing stuff like nouns, verbs, and adjectives takes days or months off the learning time and allows me to focus more on understanding grammar and sentence structure. There's no way around it I suppose but there are memory helpers and tricks. Some use mnemonics (not me though). What I do is memorize around 20 words a day by visualizing. For instance, I visualize a verb and the action it indicates and allow the scene to repeatedly play in my mind.
  20. Some offline tools I've used are flashcards, comic books, dictionary, videos, TV shows and books. I used these tools alongside internet lessons. Spanish learners are a lucky bunch, there are tons of Spanish learning materials on the internet compared to other languages. At least, that was my experience.
  21. I've learned the basics of French and Spanish in 6 months and I've been studying both for more than a year but I really can't say that I'm fluent in either language. Each language has its nuances and until I'm fully immersed in a language, I can't claim to be fluent. I took up Spanish in college more than a decade ago and though I've won conversational Spanish contests in school, I lost a lot of my vocabulary because I have no one to talk to in Spanish for years. Thankfully, the internet has been such a vast and great resource for language learners. I don't have to go to Spain or France to hear native speakers of both languages because I can use the internet for that purpose.
  22. I'm reading Spanish and French short stories as part of my learning path in both languages. You can find a lot of them on the internet and they are even categorized according to one's proficiency. I started reading them after going through the basics of each language and I was really encouraged because I realized that I can actually understand the stories.
  23. There are indeed many compound words in Spanish as well as in other languages. Here are some compound words in Spanish: abrelata (can opener), cortapapel (paper cutter), calientaplatos (dish warmer), paraguas (umbrella), abrecartas (letter opener). In French, compound words are usually joined by a hypen: gratte-ciel (skyscraper), marque-pague (bookmark).
  24. Having clear and specific goals motivate me to study a language or any other course for that matter. For example, I'm learning German because I am eyeing a lucrative job in Germany. The faster I can learn, the quicker I can start to apply for that job. On the other hand, I'm also learning French but there's no rush on this one because I want to enjoy this beautiful and lyrical language.
  25. I won't count English in this case as a foreign language because it's been, thankfully, shoved down our throat since first grade. The only time I learned a foreign language was in college when Spanish was still part of the curriculum. I fell in love with the language and took its study seriously. We were required to complete 4 Spanish subjects and spent 3 hours a week to comply with course requirements. I even bought myself a Spanish dictionary. Back in the day, internet was not in full bloom and there weren't too many free resources. I've used my knowledge of Spanish to learn a few more romance languages.
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