What IS the dirty little secret of multilingual people??

There are many reasons why some people learn languages faster than others, just like some people absorb math quickly, and other just throw the damn algebra book against the wall Surprised

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The last language I've learned is English, and I come from a country (Switzerland) where you need to learn 3 languages, because those are the 3 official ones in my country. I took 9 years of French, 7 of German, and Italian is my mother tongue. If you have this kind of background, it comes easier to pick up other language, because you are used to it.

The best way for me to learn a language, and this is just an opinion based on my experience, is to learn the language in the country where that languahe is spoken.

You can take many Italian classes in the US, you can memorize your grammar book, you can score straight A's in any Italian test, but if you don't practice daily with a native Italian (even better if more than one), you will soon forget about everything you've learned.

and on that note...
Ciao, Salut, Tchuess, See ya Surprised

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Luigi

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Ciao Luigi, benvenuto ad A2K.

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Ciao fba e grazie Smile

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On my recent trip to Mexico - I had all the background thought noise in Spanish in my head after the 3rd day. All this vocabulary base of words - I've been storing for the past few years, and new words from all the people around me. Laying in bed at night was crazy. I think if I had about one more week - there I might have really grasped the language.

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Ciao, Bonjour & Gruezi wohl, Luigi

Benvenuto, Bienvenu & Wilkommen!

I'm really impressed by your posting in English - apart from the one typo (which we all do!) it's perfect.

A la prossima, a la prochaine & bis naechten mal...

KP

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O Pete from the kitchen, our languages czar
With such an approach I am sure you'll go far
A triple-tongued post, well bedad, to be sure
It's really just like in a camera brochure

Smile

McT

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welcome luigi ! yes, i agree with you. speaking with and listening to people is the most important part of learning another language and also developing a feeling for it. took two years of spanish in high-school (some years ago in germany) and can't really remember much of it. in october we spent a week in lugano (ah, what a wonderful city and countryside !!!). i had bought a little italian phrasebook four years ago for a three-day stopover in rome before our cruise. before leaving for switzerland i dusted it off and leafed through it a bit - not much happpened; but after a couple of days in lugano the waitresses seemed to understand when i wanted a caffe latte(sp ?) and a chocolate for my wife (the waitresses where VERY polite and understanding !). lugano sure was a great experience - the fall-festival was on : singing, drinking, alphorns blowing, happy shouting and lots of polenta ! hbg

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McTag wrote:

O Pete from the kitchen, our languages czar
With such an approach I am sure you'll go far
A triple-tongued post, well bedad, to be sure
It's really just like in a camera brochure

Good one.

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Kail wrote:

I speak five (seven) languages. Swedish (natively), English (fluently), Spanish (some), French (some) and I'm also learning Esperanto. And like as Scandinavians, I also understand the other Scandinavian tongues which are Norwegian and Danish and I also speak some Norwegian.

I seem to have a knack for languages. I don't know why. Languages have always made a lot more sense to me than maths. I also think that a key to learning a language is "immersion". If you have to speak it, you will! There's no better way to learn Italian than to live in Italy.

I taught myself Danish and later found out after going to the Norwegian Seamen's church in Houston (Pasadena actually) Texas, that I understood Norwegian as well ... which I hadn't ever even heard before!

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I actually just picked up these two introductory Japanese books for literally free since I work at a library, but they had a tape with them and it's not there anymore. So some of this stuff about changing tone and not stressing anything, and six vowels in a row, and making every n a separate syllable (if it's pronounced at all) is sort of not catching on. I'll have to see if I can find files on the internet.

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You know, I had a similar experience. I picked up French when I was six. I was speaking Spanish even earlier. I added German in college for no more compelling reason than the fact that I had an opening in my schedule. Recently, I started studying Portuguese, and I'm reading novels in Portuguese to the point that I actually prefer Portuguese to Spanish.

And then I encountered Japanese. And I was stopped cold. And I encountered Chinese, and embarrassed myself once again. By virtue of a lot of hard work I have become able to converse in Chinese at a level above that of a complete moron. But Japanese still defeats me.

And the Japanese don't have any easier time of it when they try to learn English!

Perhaps it is simply that these two languages are too different from each other. But then, there are many genetically isolated languages in the world, and native English speakers don't seem to have quite so much difficulty with them. So I'm still at a loss. Why do I find Japanese so particularly difficult?

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French, Spanish, German, and English are all pretty similar, and Portugese is so similar to Spanish that the only way I can tell the difference is that I can't understand it. Genetics doesn't figure in, you're just used to learning a certain type of language and now you're being introduced to something difference and have to change the way you learn it. That's all, probably. I always wanted to learn languages that were extremely different - like Japanese and Russian and maybe go back and learn Hebrew again. I have this Japanese book, but it's missing a tape so I don't know how to pronounce it. :-P

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That surprises me, Terry. I don't speak either Japanese or any of the languages of China (Mandarin, Cantonese etc.) but I would have thought that for a person with a background in Indo-European languages Japanese would be easier. There is much less emphasis on pitch and the grammar seems more regular.

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I think you are probably correct. More precisely (in my case at least) I think it's because of the writing system. With Chinese and Japanese, learning to read is like learning a completely different language, and the written language has nothing to do with the spoken language, and it doesn't help at all with learning the spoken language. The way I finally learned Chinese was to forget about writing and reading entirely, and just concentrate on listening and speaking. It still feels odd to me that I can speak a language I can't read or write.

With all my other languages I was able to read a word, make a pretty good try at pronouncing it, often helped by hearing a native speaker repeat the sentence I saw written in front of me. Whatever parts of my brain are involved in lerarning a language, it seems that in my case a large number of those parts are involved visually, not auditorially (is that a word?). It must be a lot like how a blind person would learn a language.