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Anyone here learned a new language in their 20s or later? (pg. 3)
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| zyklon-jay |
| quote: | Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On
Not to mention wet nurse. |
:haha: .
download a DVD series called French in action acton. It's boring as but I know it has helped a few people with the basics. |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
| quote: | Originally posted by zyklon-jay
action acton |
By day, a mild-mannered physicist... |
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| Acton |
..... by night, a drunken fool.
I'll look into that though, Jay :) |
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| Joss Weatherby |
| quote: | Originally posted by zyklon-jay
I'm surprised that you would let someone that likes Italians to feed, clothe, and shelter you. |
You fail to understand the concept that a parent might have more than one sibling or that it might not even be the sibling of the same parent that you are referring to. ;) |
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| zyklon-jay |
| you have multiple sources to leech off of...gotcha. |
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| Joss Weatherby |
| quote: | Originally posted by zyklon-jay
you have multiple sources to leech off of...gotcha. |
Jay you'd like this aunt, she is a straight up Nazi! :D |
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| Vector A |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
Yes. I started to study Japanese a few months after I turned 20 - it was well worth it, and I did way better than quite a few younger classmates. |
Do you speak it fluently now?
| quote: | | Now, what language would you like to study? |
I dunno. I might want to learn French if not for the fact that its orthography seems even crappier than English's (and that is really saying something). Why can't all languages have an orthography as easy and logical as Spanish's?
:mad:
Maybe I will man up and try anyway. |
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| Vector A |
Meh. The more I think about this, the more discouraged I get. I think I'll stay a typical lazy American monoglot.
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by Vector A
Do you speak it fluently now? |
Pretty much, yeah, otherwise I don't think I'd ever have landed a job teaching the language :p
It's getting a bit rusty now because I've not been using it, but I could get around Japan just fine, for example.
Oh, and have you ever heard me speaking English? I know there's a flaw here and there, but I used to speak a broken American English until my late teens.
| quote: | Originally posted by Vector A
I dunno. I might want to learn French if not for the fact that its orthography seems even crappier than English's (and that is really saying something). Why can't all languages have an orthography as easy and logical as Spanish's? |
Languages change all the time - Spanish orthography just happens to be less conservative. As for French, reading is much easier than writing (unlike English, which is quite complicated both ways).
If that's your problem, here are some major languages you may want to learn:- German: The orthography is quite straightforward, and it's a major European language.
- Spanish: Same as above... except I'm sure there will be more opportunities to practise your Spanish in the US.
- Russian: The spelling is also quite simple, with very few exceptions. Besides, I'm sure you'll have plenty of time to practise your Russian reading Dostoevsky while you wallow in self-pity. The amount of emo literature in Russian is only comparable to what you find in Germany.
- Japanese: Yes, really. The pronunciation is quite simple, and the writing isn't as complicated as you imagine. If anything, now I wish we used ideograms the way they do.
- Hindustani: I don't know if it's easy or not, but it's related to most European languages (including ours), so it shouldn't be too exotic (just a bit). Besides, watching Bollywood films should cheer you up.
Man the up, Brian, and do it!
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| Vector A |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
As for French, reading is much easier than writing (unlike English, which is quite complicated both ways). |
Well, yeah, that is my problem. I want to be able to write down things I hear in order to look them up later, and it seems like in French (just from briefly looking into it) that would be next to impossible before already knowing a lot of the language and being able to judge by the context which one of the dozens of homophones was being used. With Spanish I don't even know most of the language and yet I could transcribe speech fairly well because the pronunciation maps so straightforwardly to spelling. |
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| Vector A |
Jesus, this brief episode of thinking about learning a language has been rather depressing. lol. Time to move on to some new "interests" of roughly two weeks' duration.
:clown: |
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