Good way to learn another language?

[DK II]

Smuggle drugs into switzerland

In swiss prison you'll quickly pick up german, italian and brush up on your french

Plus with the swiss humanitarian rights and laws, its virtually a resort

Best advice so far. 

[Irongrip400]

Here's some listening understanding material for you:

Thanks bro, but I already have Triumph of the Will on DVD.   Thanks for the advice though.  To the people on this board who dont speak english as a first language, are there boards like getbig that I could pick up the slang in Italian/German?

[Roger Bacon]

Start at your local community college...Were you good at science?...Many Italian and spanish words are very much like phrases used in science...Mozart opera is also good for both..."Der Schauspiel Direktor", "Aduction from the Seraglio" and "The Magic Flute" are good for German..."The Marriage of Figaro" is good for Italian.

Once you get your head around listening to something from the 18^TH century, you will be shocked at how musical Mozart will sound to you...and the German/Italian phrases in the booklet that comes with the CDs you will recognize more and more

I believe you know more about everything than anyone on this forum! 

[LittleJ]

How many languages do you speak, killer?

How long did it take for you to learn Japanese?

[MikMaq]

How many languages do you speak, killer?

hey fuck nuts, how many languages did you learn as an american?

[A Professional]

How many languages do you speak, killer?

The peanut gallery chiming in with their 'expert opinions'. 

[A Professional]

Short of relocating, watch as much as you can with subtitles and do it both ways - German/Italian audio with English subtitles and then English audio with the foreign language subtitles. I am the 4 year mark here in Germany and short of just being patient, it was the thing that helped the most.

You have to give your neurons time to make the new connections, but you can push the process by hard work and exposure.

Oh - it helps if you're young! I started at 38 and it's been a struggle.

I also speak a little Italian and I can tell you, from the amount I learned, it is finger painting compared to German. German is where English came from originally, but it's so much more grammatically and syntactically complex it can be a real pain. I've even had my German teacher tell me that it will be impossible for any non German to learn the language to complete fluency (very inspirational that was).

Italian is grammatically much easier, and it's a much nicer language to speak than German. I'd start with that, and keep the old adage in mind...

"Speak Spanish to God, Italian to women and German to dogs".

Good post.
I'm not surprised about German--it's the language of philosophy for a reason.

[DK II]

hey fuck nuts, how many languages did you learn as an american?

I am not American.

I am fluent trilingual (German, Japanese and English) and speak fair french and italian, can understand polish/spanish passively and read chinese quite a bit.


How about you? 

[Bevo]

I am not American.

I am fluent trilingual (German, Japanese and English) and speak fair french and italian, can understand polish/spanish passively and read chinese quite a bit.


How about you? 

Was Japanese hard to learn?

[Bevo]

Move to a country that speaks the language you want to learn. Trust me, this is the best way to do it. When I was a little kid, I lived in Germany for about a year. I quickly became fluent in German. I was also exposed to French because my aunt was French and I went to a French speaking school in the afternoons.

On a side note, I hardly speak either German or French these days. Likely this is because I was the exposure ended when I moved back to the States. I suppose if I were to spend some time in either France or Germany in a situation where I had to speak the language, I would quickly pick it up again.

Tell that to the mexicans living in the US either they refuse to speak or don't speak English one bit

[DK II]

Was Japanese hard to learn?

Not for me, I enjoyed it.

But you have to put A LOT of time into it, I have been learning in university with courses every day, some additional 2-3h learning every day, plus Japanese girlfriend plus working with Japanese on a side job.

Took me about 4-5 years to be quite fluent, another 2-3 years to be able to read fluently. I started with 22 years old. Still have a slight accent that is probably going to stay, but I have had people on the telephone confuse me for a Japanese, so I guess I am doing good.

[DK II]

Tell that to the mexicans living in the US either they refuse to speak or don't speak English one bit

Or Turks, Arabs, Africans, Russians and lots of others in Europe.... 


I also know a lot of Gaijin living in Japan for 10+ years and they can't speak a bit.

[A Professional]

Tell that to the mexicans living in the US either they refuse to speak or don't speak English one bit

The Mexicans that were born here speak english fine. And many of them are bilingual, unlike the average monolingual American.

The poor uneducated Mexicans that the Republicans import for cheap labor barely speak spanish--much less english. So between having kids to take care of and working their asses off for minimum wage they don't have the luxury of intensive english courses.

[Bevo]

Not for me, I enjoyed it.

But you have to put A LOT of time into it, I have been learning in university with courses every day, some additional 2-3h learning every day, plus Japanese girlfriend plus working with Japanese on a side job.

Took me about 4-5 years to be quite fluent, another 2-3 years to be able to read fluently. I started with 22 years old. Still have a slight accent that is probably going to stay, but I have had people on the telephone confuse me for a Japanese, so I guess I am doing good.

Cool the characters and alphabets look hard. How would you compare japanese to something like German, or Spanish? Like difficultity level? I know they are drastically different and all.

[Bevo]

The Mexicans that were born here speak english fine. And many of them are bilingual, unlike the average monolingual American.

The poor uneducated Mexicans that the Republicans import for cheap labor barely speak spanish--much less english. So between having kids to take care of and working their asses off for minimum wage they don't have the luxury of intensive english courses.

Guess down here in tx we have a serious problem with the increase of mexicans and central Americans... Same in southern CA...

[Bevo]

Or Turks, Arabs, Africans, Russians and lots of others in Europe.... 


I also know a lot of Gaijin living in Japan for 10+ years and they can't speak a bit.

Don't talk about ironneck that way... 

Haha fair enough and very true, if I was in another country I would for sure learn that language and their culture. It's always good to know more than one language after all

[A Professional]

Don't talk about ironneck that way... 

Haha fair enough and very true, if I was in another country I would for sure learn that language and their culture. It's always good to know more than one language after all

Someone that learns English, Spanish, and Chinese will be understood practically everywhere in the world.

[Crossbow]

Smuggle drugs into switzerland

In swiss prison you'll quickly pick up german, italian and brush up on your french

Plus with the swiss humanitarian rights and laws, its virtually a resort

you need to be fast though, as they keep on relaxing the drug laws in Switzerland. You might end up with a punchy fine instead of prison.

One of the best ways to learning languages is learning them like kids who expand the numbers of words they know with age.

http://www.kikaplus.net/clients/kika/kikaplus/

has programs in German for 3 year, 6 year and 10 year olds,

http://www.junior.rai.it/dl/junior/junior.htm

is the equivalent in Italian.

 - but be warned they teach things like science, respect for different cultures and the virtues of helping the weaker and less fortunate - not exactly the Republican agenda...

[mantronik]

Listen to the songs in that language as well for pronounciation purposes and read the lyrics along with the song (karaoke style) as in songs some words are emphasized more then others so you pick up on the pronounciation and spelling of those words faster. Find out what the song is about and learn piece by piece meanings and pronounciations in an easier more pleasant way.
Start with the slower songs (ballads) where the music is not drowning out the voice so you can actually hear the pronounciation and words 1 at a time.
Didn't it happen to you that you could sing a song when you were small because of the melody you could remember easier what word was next even though you had no idea what you were singing?
I know when I was in school and studying I sometimes wished some material was on a song so I could remember it faster.
I can listen to Italian rock and sing a long some sentences but have no clue what I'm saying. Eros Ramazzotti and Laura Pausini are my favorites.
Would love to be able to speak Italian someday. Beautiful language.

[DK II]

Cool the characters and alphabets look hard. How would you compare japanese to something like German, or Spanish? Like difficultity level? I know they are drastically different and all.

For a speaker of a western language, Japanese is probably the hardest language to learn.
Completely different grammar, writing system, almost no similarity in vocabulary. Pronunciation is different as well.

[jakesonyou]

Even though this topic is not bodybuilding related at all, it is a positive topic so I will share some input.

I know 4 languages, that includes my native tongue.

The best way to learn a language is one of two.

-  Move to another country and get a girlfriend/boyfriend who speaks the native language. This is the fastest and most enjoyable way to learn a language.  Plus you really have to learn the language or else you will starve!

-  Take language in school.  Unfortunately the best time to learn is when your young.  The younger the better.  As you get older is becomes much harder.  This is why I would recommend the above.

hope this helps 

[mantronik]

@DKII: Domo Arigato Gozai Mash'ta 

[Primemuscle]

I also speak a little Italian and I can tell you, from the amount I learned, it is finger painting compared to German. German is where English came from originally, but it's so much more grammatically and syntactically complex it can be a real pain. I've even had my German teacher tell me that it will be impossible for any non German to learn the language to complete fluency (very inspirational that was).

My son moved to Germany with his first assignment in the army about 24 years ago. He met and later married a German woman. Within a year of being there, he was fluent in German (so much for what your German teacher said). However, the fact that he was eighteen when he moved there probably helped, as did the fact that he excels in math. I don't know what the connection is, but I've always heard folks who have good math skills and folks who are musical learn foreign languages more easily.

[Primemuscle]

I am not American.

I am fluent trilingual (German, Japanese and English) and speak fair french and italian, can understand polish/spanish passively and read chinese quite a bit.


How about you? 

My daughter-in-law is German. She is fluent in English, Russian and some French and. I think Europeans tend to know and speak more languages than most Americans do.

[galain]

My son moved to Germany with his first assignment in the army about 24 years ago. He met and later married a German woman. Within a year of being there, he was fluent in German (so much for what your German teacher said). However, the fact that he was eighteen when he moved there probably helped, as did the fact that he excels in math. I don't know what the connection is, but I've always heard folks who have good math skills and folks who are musical learn foreign languages more easily.

I've met a lot of Germans since being here who seem to be quite proud of the fact that German grammar is very complex and hard for English speakers to learn. My teacher was often like this - which wasn't exactly encouraging. She wasn't so loud though when the Hungarians in the class started to compare their grammar with what we were learning!

Age helps. The later brain plasticity research is suggesting that our brain's language centre actually closes around the age of 18-21 and that other areas of the brain will begin to connect neurons to do the same job in its place - but they won't be neuron bundles in the language centre. Which means in theory that learning a language in adulthood to native level fluency (if you've had no exposure to it before) is probably going to be very very difficult, no matter what that language is, and that for the average person who tries it, you're at best going to be working with a facsimile of the real thing - a fully developed, neuronally connected dedicated language region in the brain.