[WALL OF TEXT ALERT]
Just a while ago I was reminded by a greek song of my time spent in Greece two years ago..
It was the school year 2006/2007 and I stayed 10 months with my relatives in a place not too far from Athens, attending the local german school (I'm a student at the german school of Milan here in Italy).
Unfortunately there were no courses of greek for foreigners reasonably close to where I lived or at a decent time of the day for me to go to, so I just relied on being fully immerged in the greek culture, since my relatives speak a mostly poor broken english and other than that, just greek.
Now I didn't think of this topic being so much about my time spent there, but rather about how I learned this language and the process of learning a foreign language itself.
What one hears most of the time, is that the best way to learn a new language is to practice as much and as often as possible, hear the radio in that language, watch TV in that language, if possible read even.
-Speak greek? Yes, when I could manage. In the beginning the most I could say was ask where the toilet was, but I eventually learned to communicate a bit, too, although I know my grammar is terrible.
-Hear greek? I certainly did a lot, even at the german school, where everybody of course knows german, but amongst them the students usually speak greek. I also thoroughly enjoyed watching greek cartoons, because they were the easiest to understand (thanks also to the pictures), especially Spongebob, since I had seen most episodes already in Italy.
-Read greek? Yeah, I tried it. I can read, I could read greek characters even before I learned to understand what I was reading, but.. well, you see, the greek language has an accent on all words that aren't monosyllabic.. if you mispronounce the accent you may be saying another word entirely. Capital letters are not accentuated, even if there should be an accent there. Since my reading material consisted to 95% of comic books, where everything is capitalized, I was pretty much screwed on that aspect.
As you see, I had plenty of occasion to do just the things one's supposed to do when learning a language.. yet.. in the first few months, from the 20th of August, which is when I arrived, until Christmas, which is when I left to return to Italy for 2 weeks, I made almost no progress at all. During the Christmas holidays I made absolutely no effort to better my skills either.
But when I returned...
It took me a few days to adapt back in, but suddenly all the pieces had come together and I was starting to not only understand better, but speak better, as well! Over the following months I made fast improvements and both my relatives and my new friends at school noticed and congratulated me for it.
A similar thing has happened with another language I've been learning for several years: japanese.
During my stay in Greece I decided I would set learning japanese on "standby" and concentrate on greek instead. This past year I got back into japanese, started reattending the courses and all, and, while it was difficult and took quite some time to readapt, I seem to be understanding japanese much better than I used to.
[/WALL OF TEXT ALERT]
Thinking back about these things made me realize that the best way of learning a foreign language is to do the aforementioned practice as often as possible, but also to take breaks every now and then. A week, a month, a year. Just give your brain some time to cool off and sort all the little puzzle pieces into a big picture you can understand.
Depending on how long your "vacation" was, the time for readapting will be longer. At first you'll think your language skills got "rustier", but after this readaptation time is gone, you'll be smoother than ever!
So, MoFoers, what's your experience with learning foreign languages?
Any hints to share?
Any weird geeky language you started learning just to be able to play videogames earlier than most people?
Or perhaps you have a different learning method?
Now, DISCUSS!
Well let's see...my chance at learning foreign languages dates back to my preschool years. The preschool I went to had a CDC[Child Development Center] program and all I remember us studying was Spanish. Mostly the numbers and maybe hello. Then came 8th grade where we had an introduction to foreign language class. We studied abit of Latin, Spanish, German and French. I remember liking Latin the most, but considering Latin is like...dead[other than in medicine and science and of course tongues] I decided to study Spanish in high school. The first two years I had a horrible teacher though. She just gave us handouts and gave us vocab. tests...mostly memorization material, which you'd think was good for a language but no...when it came to talking or listening to Spanish it was bad.
Sidetracking a bit here..between my 9th and 10th grade year I think it was, I decided I wanted to learn Japanese on my own. My school didn't have it so I bought books and borrowed CD roms from friends. I got pretty good I thought from studying that book alot, and I mean A LOT! The audio helped as well. So for independent study hearing and reading really helped me.
Back on school track: My last two years of high school we had a great Spanish teacher. She really stressed the importance of speaking and listening. Also reading was important. She would make us read aloud and listen to songs in Spanish and even watch shows in Spanish. I could understand Spanish and speak it very well by the time I graduated, but since I've been in college...
i've been taking German. Haha! My Spanish is nearly gone now[as far as speaking goes], but I can read it and probably understand it some if I heard it. For my German classes, we had to focus on mostly grammar and speaking. Vocab was big, but not as big as the grammar. So we practiced speaking to each other and did written exercises as well as watching videos and listening to native speakers. I love learning languages though....definitely something I love doing. And i'd highly encourage others to as well. So I guess for me...speaking was very very helpful. The listening and speaking is what really puts it together for me, I think.
Well the only language I really know is, obviously, English. I've been studying French in school for about 5 years, and I haven't really had much trouble with it. I did go on vacation to Bulgaria for about 2 months, where I learned some words, and I learned how to read Cyrillic (which is pretty handy). I didn't really make much of an effort to learn much Bulgarian though, because most of the people I met with could speak English fine. I do find languages pretty interesting, though, and I know a bit of Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Armenian, Russian, and some other stuff, but I've never really had the initiative to properly learn any other language. =/
Well, I haven't really given languages much thought, but i'll see what I can remember right now ... which isn't much to begin with.
Spanish was my first language if I remember correctly. It wasn't until first grade where I had to learn English more extensively, as I first went to a Spanish kindergarten class with a little bit of an English lesson every know and then. As the years went by of more English teachings, I end up being much more fluent in English as I did to Spanish. The next thing I know, I seem to have trouble even speaking Spanish properly, or rather, it might have been that I still had a mentality and learning ability no more than a seven year old when I had to speak or read Spanish at all.
That was around Middle school years and wasn't until when I entered High school did my parents start noticing more frequently how badly my Spanish was at the time. I ended up taking 3 years of spanish class, which was almost filled with white kids, in my later years of High school. I felt somewhat out of place in there, but then again anybody wanting to pass those A-G college requirements needed to take a foreign language and Spanish was the only one at the poor, run down and overcrowded of I school I went to. So I guess I didn't feel quite as left out than I originally though.
I ended up passing the classes, but ironically not with the highest in the class. I am able to read and write it now, but it's still somewhat of a task to do. But my overall understanding of the language is much better than before, and possibly one of the few things I progressed in from those three years of classes. =o I can easily make out a conversation or tv or radio, but when it comes to actually speaking it, it's still a bit of a train wreck.
As for other languages, I do know only a smidge of Italian, but not nearly enough to really do much with it. =/
Our teacher taught us some Japanese back in 1st grade... I can count to ten, say good morning... and that's about all I remember >>
Took Spanish from 6th grade on through 12th grade... 11th and 12th I took "Honors /AP Spanish"... failed the AP test... and managed to test out of my Uni's foreign language requirement 
I know three different Aboriginal languages used here in my state, and back in grade 6 & 7 I was taught Japanese. Also took three courses of Japanese in highschool, and one of Greek.
Just don't ask me to remember any of it, I can't.
Also, bah weep granah weep ninni bong.
I think immersing yourself in the language and culture is a good idea, but you still need to have had / continue to have a grounding in the basics - sentence structure, grammar, conjugation of verbs etc. When I lived in Madrid, one of my flatmates was half British, half Cuban. She could speak really confidently, but she was the first to admit her grammar was rubbish, because she'd learnt Spanish mostly through chatting to her cousins and aunts and uncles in Cuba.
I learned Spanish in secondary school from 2nd year to sixth form, then studied a degree which was basically joint business & Spanish. I was really *not* a confident speaker, but my grammar was better and I could write it much better than she could. But after two years living in Madrid (including a 6 month work placement with people who spoke little or no English), I was much better at speaking it. Those two years cemented the language. It's been 5 years since I came back to Britain, but I can still understand Spanish radio, watch Spanish films such as "Alatriste" and get on very well if I do go back for a weekend break or on business. My friends from the work placement said I'd lost none of my vocab. The great thing with living there is that you pick up the colloquialisms local to the area. Mind you, I also found it's true that it's easier to be coarse in a foreign language!
French, on the other hand, I've only really learned in classroom situations (from first year secondary school to sixth form, with 2 years studying it while I was at uni in Spain - heavens, was that confusing!). I had a couple of French exchange trips, but that's about it. I'm well aware that I'm losing my French, mainly because I never had that immersion experience. I can read it - I have a few of the Bibliotheque Rose books (including Belle & Sebastien ), some French translations of things like Return of the Jedi and somewhere I have a version of the original French fairy tales such as Cinderella. If it's not too quick or colloquial, I can understand it spoken.
I'd really love to try and learn German, but when I think of how long I've studied French and how I still can't understand heavily colloquial things, it is rather disheartening. I think I'll have to rely on the subtitles in "Kommissar Rex" for the duration!
DW
Aw, man, I love languages and geography. That's why I love my coin collection so much!
I took four years of French from 8th-11th grade. I got good grades in it, but didn't feel like I was really that good at it. =/ A combination of me probably not studying it hard enough, extreme difficulty with orals, and the overall process just not agreeing with me.
My uni requires one to take their courses to meet their language requirement. If were still going there, I would've taken Latin to fill that.
I took a year of chinese. That language is crazy when it comes to prepositions and time phrases. Halfo f the time you have to rely on context to get the meaning.
i'm fully aware that i utterly suck at learning other languages, so even after a month in canada with very little english being spoken about me i still didn't pick up anything. my french consists of hand gestures and whatever french word i can think of that's connected to the subject. >>; 'food good! hungry! love pizza! *pointpoint, make eating gestures*'
i wish i had been taught more and well, better back when i was at school. a better grounding in grammer and basics like what gender various things are supposed to be would've been great. no wonder i failed with an E grade in my GCSEs, they asked us questions on postoffices for the oral part.. whyy? we never covered those in class. ;-;
don't ask about the evening japanise classes i took a few years ago. all i remember from it is how to badly ask someone what their phone number is and how to give and take a business card. :p
so yeah, i admire those who can learn and speak other languages then their own.
My first language was and is English. Being half-Hispanic, I was inexorably drawn to studying Spanish as well. I was fortunate enough to travel to the US for an academic program in 2001 that exposed me to Latin. That same program allowed me to learn ancient Attic Greek in 2002. Erstwhile, my interest in Latin and Spanish allowed me to study French and Italian independently and get familiar enough with both to get by in, say, War and Peace without relying on subtitled translations. Upon coming back to the United States for university, I picked up Latin and ancient Greek once again (similar but not quite the same as modern Greek) and study both for my Classics major.
Latin is quite enjoyable, although people's habit of pronouncing Latin these days with Italian grammatical rules (such as in Catholic mass or the main theme of SSBB) is grating on the ears. Ancient Greek is for an elite class of masochists who have forsaken themselves for intense devotion to wild conjugations and countless declension variations. As one of my professors said, "In Greek, there are no rules...only tendencies."
I took Spanish throughout grammar and high school. I have enough of a command of it that I can get a basic idea of what people are saying, ("He's going to do something with that cat and his pants at some point in time.")
I did take a year of Japanese my freshman year in college. That was over six years ago and looking back it was a pretty dumb decision, as I was pretty busy and couldn't dedicate the requisite amount of time necessary to really study the language. Plus what am I gonna do with Japanese? Anyway, bad decision or no, I"m pretty sure I now know more Japanese than my teacher knew English. She was very polite and all, but had just a basic command over English. What's more was she had no command over the classroom, and there were some very immature students there. Cheating was pretty rampant, but you should expect that if you leave the room for twenty minutes in the middle of the final exam.
I also took German during the year I lived in Switzerland. But I was in third grade, so all I remember is a song about a hat having three corners and another one about "Hausaufgaben machen," which I think means, "Making your housework go away."
I also took German during the year I lived in Switzerland. But I was in third grade, so all I remember is a song about a hat having three corners and another one about "Hausaufgaben machen," which I think means, "Making your housework go away."
One of my friends is half-German and will occasionally come out with that three-cornered hat song. Wish I could remember how it went.
DW
I also took German during the year I lived in Switzerland. But I was in third grade, so all I remember is a song about a hat having three corners and another one about "Hausaufgaben machen," which I think means, "Making your housework go away."
One of my friends is half-German and will occasionally come out with that three-cornered hat song. Wish I could remember how it went.
DW
Mein Hut, der hat drei Ecken
Click on the "Lied anhòren" button to hear it being sung! 8D
I managed to somehow get a grade C at GCSE French and not understand a single sentence of the language! and being British all we do is slowly shout for long enough and use hand gestures at the foreign person till they understand.
Learned French at school for 7 years. I can't remember a lot of the words, but I know the grammatical structure of the language (tenses, sentence structure etc.) and a few of the key verbs, so if I just re-learned the words, I think I could speak French somewhat fluently.
For me it is just that: As long as I know the structure and grammar, I can just put the correct words in and I'm sorted. Of course different people learn in different ways.
