Mereloshn

I would base your decision on which person in your life communicates with you the most if this is why you want to learn those languages. Is it your French speaking colleague, your Italian speaking friend, or the Spanish speaking co-worker who will be gone very soon. Just saying if I were you I would not choose to learn Spanish just because a lot of other people speak it. Base your decision on which of those people is in your life the most or which language you are the most passionate about. It sounds like you will have the most opportunity to use French.

I gave up learning French months ago because I found it overly challenging and not very practical since I have no French speaking people in my life, so little opportunity to use it. I chose to study other languages instead. This week I took some time to think about what my language priorities are and whether I should continue learning Spanish or put it off for now and learn Italian instead. It was a very difficult decision for me as it has been with other people here too. The pros to choosing Spanish were that I'm already more than 1/4 of the way to finishing my Spanish study and it's the second most commonly spoken language in the country. But I don't exactly have Spanish speaking people in my life right now so why bother if I'm only planning to use it theoretically? I tried to study more Spanish this week and realized my priorities have changed and I've lost the passion for Spanish as a result. So I put Spanish on hold and will save it for a time when I actually need it. I made the decision to learn Italian instead even though I have to start from the very beginning. I happen to have more passion and more use for it given my language priorities. I'm in a relationship with someone who speaks Italian and I would like to be able to talk with her in Italian, there are a lot of great movies and music that use extensive Italian dialogue including some of my favorite films, I'm fascinated by Italian for being so directly related by Latin, I've always wanted to visit Rome someday and I have a thing for lesser known languages and my curiosity gravitates more towards them rather than widely known languages and in the USA Spanish is by far a more known language than Italian. Everyone will have reasons to start learning a language or quit learning a language based on what their language goals are. I know what mine are which is why I settled on Italian instead of Spanish or French. The fact that the closest person to me speaks Italian is a real world motive to learn the language and that alone is good enough for me. I think it's good I've studied them all because it helps me learn which one I like the best to help with my decision.

I do this as a way to practice. I actually have days where I speak very little English and speak in Yiddish as a I go about my routine. This includes talking to my dog in Yiddish and teaching him Yiddish commands while I'm home alone doing things and commenting on them to him while speaking it and also talking to my dad in Yiddish who knows the language. I'm at the point where I can have conversations in the language and even had the opportunity to do it today at a grocery store when I spoke to a Yiddish speaking man there. I can proudly say "Ikh ken tsvay sphrakhn un es iz do yiddish in meyn shtub itst". - "I know two languages and there is yiddish in my home now".

Yeah there are differences in vocabulary pronouncing between Spanish and Latin American speakers. There are also regional differences in dialect in different areas of Latin America in specific words and how they pronounce things. The differences are not extreme though.

I was very surprised to learn that one of the most popular Spanish words, Hasta, is actually an Arabic word Hatta and in both Spanish and Arabic they mean the same thing. Until. As in "Hasta manana" literally meaning "Until tomorrow" and also a very popular way to say "See you tomorrow". 4000 Arabic words in Spanish sounds like a large amount of Arabic influence. I'm pretty sure only Vulgar Latin has more words in Spanish than that.

No I have never studied Italian before, and as of now I've actually learned as much Yiddish as I can learn with the resources I have. Short of going to a college class, I'm done. I am interested in continuing to learn Spanish but I would also love to learn Italian and with you and some other new Italian speaking people here I think I can do well in studying Italian by learning from real speakers. I will probably use some language apps on the side but learning from a person is better.

I have read that Spanish incorporates some Arabic words or phrases into the language. Does anyone know what these Arabic words are and how are they used for modern Spanish?

Vulgar Latin would be very interesting to learn since it was that which evolved and branched off into the Romance languages, which are all modern versions of Vulgar Latin.

I have a good one. Te amo con todo mi corazon- I love you with all my heart A Puerto Rican ex girlfriend of mine (who spoke Caribbean Spanish as her first language) taught me that and wrote it to me in the first letter she ever sent me.

I can definitely help you with your English and I would like to be in your online Italian course. I'm currently wrapping up a Yiddish course at an online Yiddish academy and once it's over I would be very interested in your Italian course. Learning from a real language speaker is much more effective for me than learning from computerized apps.

Not including English, which I use as my first language, my language bucket list is... 1. Yiddish. Currently this is my strongest second language, I'm mastering it faster than I've ever learned any other language and I want to be 100% fully fluent in it. 2. Spanish. I know the basics and would like to be fully fluent for practical reasons. 3. French. I would like to be an upper intermediate speaker. 4. Italian. I would love to become an advanced speaker of this fascinating language. 5. Hebrew (Modern). Learning to become an intermediate or casual speaker would be nice.

Well if English is your main language, there are several languages that have had a profound influence on English. The English language borrows a lot of words from Latin, French, Italian, and Old German so those will all be familiar to you if you study them.

Welcome Valeria. It's very nice to have you here. I am definitely interested in learning Italian and am considering putting Spanish on hold to do it and use this site to help me learn it so I'm glad you're here.

I am interested in learning Italian because I have an Italian girlfriend and would like to impress her by speaking her mother tongue. I'm also just very intrigued by Italian in general for its similarities to Latin.

In my early childhood I learned English and French at the same time, both in school and at home. I didn't use the French much so most of it didn't stay with me. Also in my childhood when I was between the ages of 7 and 9 I attended Hebrew school for three years where I learned to read, write, and speak in ancient Hebrew. I never really used it so I forgot most of it when I became older. Then when I was a teenager I studied Spanish for a total of four years in high school and college but again didn't find much opportunity to use it and therefore lost my fluency. Now I wish I had retained all of those languages now that language is my primary academic interest and I can clearly see the benefits of being multilingual. I did take them all seriously at the time I was learning them when I was younger but it's a use it or lose it skill so I regret I didn't pursue more opportunities to use all those languages.

My current focus is Yiddish and the order of words changes if a moment in time is emphasized in a sentence by beginning the sentence which can make it take longer for my brain to process and understand when people speak Yiddish so I can mentally translate and reply to them or understand the full context of sentences when they talk. A very simple sentence like "I should buy something today" where haynt in Yiddish means today would be "Ikh zol koyfn epes haynt" which is constructed just like in English, but if the word for today is emphasized by saying "Today I should buy something" you don't say "Haynt Ikh zol koyfn epes". Instead, you emphasize the moment in time by saying "Haynt zol Ikh koyfn epes", which sounds like a question because zol means should and Ikh means I, which can confuse and disrupt my immediate translation when I listen to people speak Yiddish. Similarly, if I say in Yiddish "Ikh ken redn un farshtayn a sakh yiddish itst" which means "I can speak and understand a lot of yiddish now" where itst means now, Ikh means I, and ken means can. If I emphasize now as the moment in time and say "Now I can speak and understand a lot of yiddish" the rule is I have to say "Itst ken Ikh redn un farshtayn a sakh yiddish" which sounds like a question to someone who is used to English sentence construction. This does not cause me problems when I am translating Yiddish while reading it but it can and has caused me issues when I need to instantly translate speech while listening to someone talk using multiple sentences in the language.

The two types of Hebrew are ancient Hebrew, sometimes referred to as Biblical Hebrew, and Modern Hebrew which is spoken commonly today in Israel. Ashkenazi and Sephardic are two different ethnic groups of Jewish people. Sephardic Jews are Middle Eastern Jews and true Semitic people who speak Hebrew. Ashkenazi Jews are white European Jews of Germanic or Eastern European heritage and they speak Yiddish, which is a combination of Medieval German and ancient Hebrew.

So that's what your username is. I actually based my username on the term "mame loshn" which is a Yiddish slang term used to describe the Yiddish language. It literally means "mother tongue" so I took that phrase and replaced mame with the French word for mother (mere) and used that to create my username, a hybrid of French/Yiddish term.

Those are all really fascinating usages for The. Even more amazing that Romanian has no word for The. Some quick examples of what I use for Yiddish Di froy- the woman Der bruder- the brother Dos fleysh- the meat Der bruder est dem fleysh- the brother eats the meat When you don't know which nouns have to be used or when they need to be changed, it's like a puzzle.

Probably the single biggest difficulty I've faced in learning my chosen second language is mastering the rules of the word "The" which is complicated. It's not impossible to learn, but it's tricky when you're not used to it. In Yiddish, Dos, Der, Di, and Dem all mean "The" and there are rules for which nouns they signify. Usually Di is used for plural nouns or feminine nouns but the rest are used interchangeably. Dos is often used for neutral nouns and Der for masculine nouns but this is not always the case, they both have designated nouns to signify and they are replaced with Dem if a noun uses a verb to take action against another noun. This is even more complicated than Spanish and French which has separate gender categories for "The" based on the noun they signify. Are there other languages that have multiple words and complicated rules for the use of "The"? I would be interested in learning about how it works in other languages I have never studied.

In Yiddish Yo means yes and Neyn means no. Zikher means definitely, Avade means certainly, Nisht means not, Mistome means probably, and Efsher means maybe.

I like the word "Etlekher" which means "Several" in Yiddish and often use it when talking about languages (sphrakhn in Yiddish) because I have studied and learned about several languages at this point and I love the word "Vosotros" which means "You" in plural form in Spanish as spoken in Spaniard Spanish. I actually prefer vosotros over ustedes, the Latin American Spanish word for You in plural.

Right now I'm teaching myself my target languages without the use of a classroom and I'm specializing in learning to actually speak the languages by listening to other people speak them. I studied Spanish in a classroom for four years in school and never became fluent in it because I didn't like the teachers and the way it was taught. They mostly just had us memorize many random words all the time without teaching us to formulate them into sentences. I've been relearning Spanish using the internet and have taught myself more about how to speak it than I ever learned in school. I would like to have an opportunity to take some language classes again to refine my skills but I know now that what I teach myself outside of classrooms is even more important than basing all of my language learning on a class. It's what I learn outside of class with people who actually speak my chosen languages that will really advance me.

Using the language at every possible opportunity is how I retain what I learn. Every time I learn new words I incorporate them into my speech when I talk and say things I would normally say in English in my second language. This includes talking to my dog in Yiddish to practice and talking to my dad in Yiddish because he can speak the language semi fluently. If I had no opportunity to speak it, I would probably forget it and I am also training myself to think in my second language to help with memorization and sentence construction. For me it's definitely a matter of replacing constant speaking in English with speaking Yiddish to get more accustomed to it. The other people in this thread were right when they said you have to use the language constantly to retain it.

I'm very dedicated to learning the languages I'm studying. I dedicate several hours a day to studying the language and learning more of it and I practice and use it every chance I get. My goal is to be 100% fully fluent in my two current target languages so I've been working really hard lately to build my language skills. It's my main academic interest now and I'm determined to learn as much as I can. I obviously can't study it all day every day because I have work and other obligations during the day but when I have more free time at night I give myself several hours to learn every night and have been daily for months now. I would say my dedication level is high.