Anyone here learning or have learned a new language?

Sir Arthur Daley

Links234 wrote: »

I got a couple of manga from Japan recently, in the original Japanese just to see if I can manage to read them. よつばと！

Do you find it difficult to write it as it looks really intricate.

Mudmask

Decided last week to give French another go. I did lower level all through secondary school but I think without being forced to learn in a certain way I could manage it

Links234

WikiHow wrote: »

Do you find it difficult to write it as it looks really intricate.

Yup, mine often end up looking squigly, warped and lop-sided, and I don't really practice writing anywhere near enough. Learning to recognise and being able to read the kanji is way more important than being able to write it though, so I just focus on that.

But wanna know a little secret that a friend let me in on? A lot of Japanese people nowadays can't write that well either! Think about it, with technology, PCs, phones etc, there's very little call for actually writing something. Even writing your signature, lots of people will have their own little personalized stamp, so if they need to sign something, they'll use that. Interesting, huh?

That way I don't feel so bad about my writing being sloppy! :pac:

WilyCoyote

Mudmask wrote: »

Decided last week to give French another go. I did lower level all through secondary school but I think without being forced to learn in a certain way I could manage it

Bonne chance Masquer de Boue

yellowlabrador

WikiHow wrote: »

Do you find it difficult to write it as it looks really intricate.

this is one of the videos I used.The letters represent whole sounds of vowels and consonants.
I also learn to write a word as I memorise it. A lot of words are adaptations of englisgh words'

Sir Arthur Daley

Links234 wrote: »

Think about it, with technology, PCs, phones etc, there's very little call for actually writing something.

Would schools in Japan be using technology more than paper and pen in teaching kids do you know?

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

Oat23 wrote: »

I wanted to learn Japanese. I wasn't smart enough so I learned Korean instead.

That's difficult enough in itself, I have failed to learn it despite a year of living here!

I'm learning some Portuguese at the moment as I'm going to Brazil for the World Cup.

steddyeddy

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

That's difficult enough in itself, I have failed to learn it despite a year of living here!

I'm learning some Portuguese at the moment as I'm going to Brazil for the World Cup.

Gostosa will get you by with the women

WilyCoyote

steddyeddy wrote: »

Gostosa will get you by with the women

Pray tell, Senor Eddy?

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

I made sure to learn '남자 친구 있어요?' quickly here.

Links234

WikiHow wrote: »

Would schools in Japan be using technology more than paper and pen in teaching kids do you know?

That I wouldn't know really

yellowlabrador

WikiHow wrote: »

Would schools in Japan be using technology more than paper and pen in teaching kids do you know?

Not really. It's down to practice. My main problem is being lefthanded. There are apps and games that you can use with your phone. Also you can get a japanese keyboard app for free from google if you don't want to write yourself.
There is also google translate which will give you the spelling and how to pronounce it
It really is so much easier to learn a new language these days.
Just type 'language you want to learn' lessons into youtube.

steddyeddy

WilyCoyote wrote: »

Pray tell, Senor Eddy?

It sexy, tasty, what a body all in one. I wouldn't say it unless you're sure you have a good chance already. Vai fundo ( a Portuguese way of saying good luck literally meaning "go deeply").

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

Interestingly enough, a lot of Korean schoolchildren learn the Kanji or Hanja as they call them here, despite Korean having a perfectly functional alphabet and Hanja never being used in any everyday situation.

The Diabolical Monocle

osarusan wrote: »

yeah, there isn't much substance to that.

Regarding your second point, language acquisition as a child is massively different to deliberate learning as an adult (or even as a child).

Regarding your first point, a language being 'hard' is relative. It will be a lot easier for a native speaker of Italian to learn Spanish for example then it will be for a native speaker of Japanese. This is because of the similarities in vocabulary and grammar. Also, there is no need to learn a new script.

From the perspective of a Chinese speaker, Japanese will be less difficult to learn, ad they already know the meanings of the vast majority of kanji, even if they don't know the pronunciation.

A language being hard or not so hard to learn is relative to the linguistic capital of the person learning it.

mmm yes there is substance to that.

No language in use is objectively 'hard' or 'difficult'.
Otherwise it would simply die out.

If it had say 20 noun genders they'd quickly get cut down to 2 or 3, and thus eventually become a different language.
If words were 100 syllables long same thing....it actually would be 'difficult' relative to an average humans ability and so wouldn't survive but would rather evolve into something new and easier.
Thats why any surviving language today is capable of being learned by the kids of that country.

You dont have overly complex structures at a level one can describe as difficult, otherwise mommy would be correcting timmy for his use of the 15th tonality in the 4th gender with the 20th personal pronoun.
It has to be easy enough for everyone from scholars to uneducated peasants. Otherwise it wouldn't be alive, the peasants from one village would get it wrong if it was objectively difficult, leaving mistakes and mis-communication, so killing the language.

A young... or yung ...Chinese kid doesn't think 'fck this Chinese is difficult'.
People would be walking around planning how to order a sandwich in their native language if it was difficult.

Any given language can't be at a level that the native learner/average citizen would describe it as 'difficult' in a functioning society.
An English, Somali, Jamaican, Peruvian adopted child born in any country you can choose with any native language will speak that language as its not beyond a childs ability. i.e in objective terms of human capacity to operate to verbal structure and rules- every language is easy enough.

"language acquisition as a child is massively different to deliberate learning as an adult"
Did you even read what I said. Effectively I (quoting Izzard) said young children have an easier time than adults as they don't have embarrassment or other emotions to deal with. They dont mind or fear people laughing and jeering at their errors cause they dont even know what jeering is yet. Whereas adult learners do, and fear saying something stupid ...and so dont risk saying it, making learning more difficult.

sopretty

The Diabolical Monocle wrote: »

But no language in use is objectively 'hard' or 'difficult'.
Otherwise it would simply die out.

If it had say 20 noun genders they'd quickly get cut down to 2 or 3, and thus eventually become a different language.
If words were 100 syllables long same thing....it actually would be 'difficult' and so wouldn't survive but would evolve.
Thats why any surviving language today is capable of being learned by the kids of that country.
It has to be easy enough for everyone from scholars to uneducated peasants. Otherwise it wouldn't be alive, the peasants from one village would get it wrong if it was objectively difficult, leaving mistakes and mis-communication, so killing the language.

A young... or yung ...Chinese kid doesn't think 'fck this Chinese is difficult'.

There are certain languages which are difficult to pick up, unless they're your native tongue, or you have been introduced to them at a young age.
I would use Japanese as an example. Japanese people for e.g. also found Italian hard to grasp. While I progressed through classes within a week, they'd be still in beginners 3 months later. For the simple reason that they had a heck of a lot more to grasp than I had! I was using a similar alphabet, similar grammatical structure etc. They were looking at gibberish (our alphabet) and trying to learn our sounds and words. (We were all learning Italian btw).
I already had a good few latin languages under my belt, so it was a case of tightening up grammatical rules and broadening my vocab. For the Japanese students, it was a much longer journey.

orangesoda

I am learning Latin so I can sing along to Latin hymns at mass

also a drop of the auld Old Norse

The Diabolical Monocle

sopretty wrote: »

There are certain languages which are difficult to pick up, unless they're your native tongue, or you have been introduced to them at a young age.
I would use Japanese as an example. Japanese people for e.g. also found Italian hard to grasp. While I progressed through classes within a week, they'd be still in beginners 3 months later. For the simple reason that they had a heck of a lot more to grasp than I had! I was using a similar alphabet, similar grammatical structure etc. They were looking at gibberish (our alphabet) and trying to learn our sounds and words. (We were all learning Italian btw).
I already had a good few latin languages under my belt, so it was a case of tightening up grammatical rules and broadening my vocab. For the Japanese students, it was a much longer journey.

Thats called relativity.

There are no objectively 'difficult' languages.
Name a country where all the kids are still figuring out their native language.

Can any given current language be objectively 'difficult' if every single child in an entire country can speak it.

sopretty

The Diabolical Monocle wrote: »

Thats called relativity.

There are no objectively 'difficult' languages.
Name a country where all the kids are still figuring out their native language.

Can ant given current language be objectively 'difficult' if every single child in an entire country can speak it.

I think the intended meaning was 'difficult to learn for us', rather than 'difficult to learn altogether'.

The Diabolical Monocle

sopretty wrote: »

I think the intended meaning was 'difficult to learn for us', rather than 'difficult to learn altogether'.

No, Im the one being quoted. I know what I intended. Go back and read what I said.

sopretty

The Diabolical Monocle wrote: »

No, Im the one being quoted. Go back and read what I said.

I will in me hole. How is that for language!

feargale

I have dabbled in a number of languages and while I can speak some reasonably well I'm not good at understanding when people speak back to me, except re Irish where I can follow news bulletins well. I've heard that if you don't start learning a language by age eleven you will never master it aurally. That could explain it, plus my limited exposure to various languages.

The Diabolical Monocle

sopretty wrote: »

I will in me hole. How is that for language!

Mmmmm ... evasive.

Music4life

Surprised no ones mentioned our own Benny Lewis yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x2_kWRB8-A

osarusan

Links234 wrote: »

No idea, probably a good few years, and even then I don't know if I'll gain fluency. I'm going to look into taking the Japanese Language Proficiency Test or JLPT at some point, but the kanji I know isn't even at the N5 level yet. Really I'm just kinda aiming to be able to have decent conversational Japanese, and if I can get better than that, awesome. But I'm just gonna keep plugging on.

I got a couple of manga from Japan recently, in the original Japanese just to see if I can manage to read them. よつばと！ Being a pretty simple one to start with... It's for kids really! I can just about read and understand the first couple of pages though. :pac:

No idea if you know about these already, but:

Here's an app which breaks down the kanji for you:
https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/jlpt-study-1-5-level-kanji/id330922255?mt=8

Here's a decent site:
http://nihongoichiban.com/

you can take mock JPLT tests here if you are interested:
https://www.jlpt.jp/e/samples/forlearners.html

As you say, there are loads of resources out there.

BraziliaNZ

Trying to learn Portuguese now as I'll be spending nearly 2 months there soon. It's the weirdest sounding language I think, sounds like a Russian trying to speak pigeon Spanish. Can't wait to try it out!

osarusan

The Diabolical Monocle wrote: »

mmm yes there is substance to that.

No language in use is objectively 'hard' or 'difficult'.
Otherwise it would simply die out.

If it had say 20 noun genders they'd quickly get cut down to 2 or 3, and thus eventually become a different language.
If words were 100 syllables long same thing....it actually would be 'difficult' relative to an average humans ability and so wouldn't survive but would rather evolve into something new and easier.
Thats why any surviving language today is capable of being learned by the kids of that country.

You dont have overly complex structures at a level one can describe as difficult, otherwise mommy would be correcting timmy for his use of the 15th tonality in the 4th gender with the 20th personal pronoun.
It has to be easy enough for everyone from scholars to uneducated peasants. Otherwise it wouldn't be alive, the peasants from one village would get it wrong if it was objectively difficult, leaving mistakes and mis-communication, so killing the language.

A young... or yung ...Chinese kid doesn't think 'fck this Chinese is difficult'.
People would be walking around planning how to order a sandwich in their native language if it was difficult.

Any given language can't be at a level that the native learner/average citizen would describe it as 'difficult' in a functioning society.
An English, Somali, Jamaican, Peruvian adopted child born in any country you can choose with any native language will speak that language as its not beyond a childs ability. i.e in objective terms of human capacity to operate to verbal structure and rules- every language is easy enough.

"language acquisition as a child is massively different to deliberate learning as an adult"
Did you even read what I said. Effectively I (quoting Izzard) said young children have an easier time than adults as they don't have embarrassment or other emotions to deal with. They dont mind or fear people laughing and jeering at their errors cause they dont even know what jeering is yet. Whereas adult learners do, and fear saying something stupid ...and so dont risk saying it, making learning more difficult.

you misunderstand my point. Languages will be less or more difficult to learn depending on the existing lingusitic capital of the learner.

The fact that every language can be acquired perfectly be a native speaker of that language has no relevance to a learner of that language.

If Izzard's argument (from your paraphrasing) is that "kids can learn languages, so how hard can they be to learn? It's just that adults are afraid of making mistakes whereas kids are not" then there isn't much substance to that.

The logical conclusion of the argument is that any adult who was as unafraid as a child of making mistakes would develop a level of proficiency equivalent to a native speaker, and that is clearly nonsense.

BraziliaNZ

osarusan wrote: »

you misunderstand my point. Languages will be less or more difficult to learn depending on the existing lingusitic capital of the learner.

The fact that every language can be acquired perfectly be a native speaker of that language has no relevance to a learner of that language.

If Izzard's argument (from your paraphrasing) is that "kids can learn languages, so how hard can they be to learn? It's just that adults are afraid of making mistakes whereas kids are not" then there isn't much substance to that.

The logical conclusion of the argument is that any adult who was as unafraid as a child of making mistakes would develop a level of proficiency equivalent to a native speaker, and that is clearly nonsense.

I actually think some people have ears for languages and some dont. I went to a Gaelscoil for primary school, most of us were fluent "As Gaeilge" but there were a few kids who just never got to grips with it at all really even by the time we were in 6th class, but it was my first language since I was about 6 I'd say, I used to dream in Irish and we got in big trouble if we were caught speaking English in the yard.
It's a bit like music, some people just have no tone or can't grasp melodies and sounds. I would say those kids would have to have been immersed in it 24/7 for years and years to pick it up properly I think, as their home language was Bearla.

martinedwards

I speak enough Spanish and French to not starve there, but not enough to have a real conversation.

my latest language was Morse code for ham radio.

still very much alive and as well as the dots and dashes there is a grammar structure that is very intuitive and based in English, with a lot of abbreviations and codes, although its a bit like Ulster Scots in that you need to read it out loud to hear what it actually means!

for instance

QSO means radio contact. QSB means fading signal strength, and the signal report is RST ( for readability out of 5, signal strength out of 9 and tone out of 9) some spellings are mutated to shorten them in morse, ....with .-- .. - .... becomes wid .-- .. -.. and .- -. -.. becomes es . ... for ..-. --- .-. becomes fer ..-. . .-.

so a typical start to a contact...... lets have me, MI0OIM talking to the Dynamo Kiev radio club EN0U (like I did last night).....

EN0U de MI0OIM tu fer QSO ur rst 579 qsb to 539 op martin qth nr Belfast. hr wx is cold es rain wid temp 7C hw? EN0U de MI0OIM

which translated into English.....

en0u from mi0oim thank you for the contact. your signal is very easy to understand, pretty strong and the sound is crisp and sharp. my name is Martin and I'm near Belfast. Here the weather is cold and rainy with the temperature 5 degrees. how do you read me? en0u from mi0oim

martinedwards

BraziliaNZ wrote: »

I actually think some people have ears for languages and some dont.

agreed

the ISS is multinational so everyone has to learn Russian and English.

I remember years ago there was an ad campaign here for a UK astronaut and one of the criteria was that applicants had to be reasonably fluent in SOME language other than their own. the thinking being that if you can learn one new language, then you'll likely pick up another one......