Do you know another language ?

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Even though my mom is native to Central America, my Spanish sucks.

However, depending on the degree requirements that still need completion at Portland State, I intend on enrolling in a Spanish class or an ASL class.

I don't know how much access you have to online resources, but maybe consider duolingo. They just recently added a Welsh for English speakers course, plus they have many other languages available if you want something else. There's no investment other than your time and bandwidth.

Myself, most of the "languages" I know aren't human/spoken ones. I consider myself fluent in musical notation, as well as various computer languages (C#, Javascript, HTML, CSS, SQL, among others).

I've got my high school French (Canadian), I know a little bit of Dutch (took lessons when I was quite young), a little bit of Japanese (got my hands on Pimsleur's Japanese tapes for the month that I was sick with mono), as well as random words and phrases from other languages picked up through various sources.

I remember just enough high school French to understand this without guessing any words.

The school I attended from kindergarten to third grade had us take French and Spanish. For reasons that I do not know, they eventually cut French from the curriculum and focused on Spanish exclusively. I recall being angry at this because I enjoyed French more than Spanish-I guess it was more of a challenge. I do not really recall much of what I learned aside from some colors.

The next two schools which I attended did not have language programs. In my current high school, I had to take Spanish in my freshman and sophomore years. This was...interesting. My freshman year Spanish teacher was very warm and cheerful, but, mid-way through the year, she got a grant to go study street art in Chile. We got a replacement who seemingly knew Spanish but did not really know how to pronounce the words (i.e. she said the "h" in "hola". Our regular teacher didn't get back from Chile until June and, by then, it was a little too late for me as our whole grade had gone through freshman year without really learning the basics of Spanish.

Our sophomore year Spanish teacher (who left after teaching our class to move to New York-go figure) was infamous at our school for being cruel, sarcastic, and a harsh grader. He enjoyed making snide comments about pretty much everything and was widely hated. Knowing that I was behind on my Spanish, I was able to convince him, somehow, to learn Spanish the rest of the year on Rosetta Stone (at my school, every student gets a laptop). The program was dull and did not really help foster a love of the language. I just did it to get the requirement over with.

I've taken a bit of Italian and German on Duolingo but have failed to make much progress. I know a few words and phrases in different languages, as well as snatches of various songs. I do like to listen to music in non-English languages, but sadly, I'm not sure if I'm much of a linguist.

I was once ridiculed in French class. The teacher was calling out animal names in English and asking for French translation. The teacher called out goldfish and I was the only one to raise my hand. I confidently answered Lapin rouge , lowered my hand and felt smug. Obviously this was met with laughter from the teacher then the whole class. I was then refered to as Lapin rouge for what felt like an eternity - I dropped French

Me too! Roughly 5 years, roughly intermediate. It's nice to see someone else in a similar position. It is my one sustained interest. I'm in a bit of a lull, though.

I'm glad about this thread, I've been meaning to ask about peoples' language learning approaches.

I'm getting quite sad with what a terribly unreliable language partner I am. I've tried a few partnerships for spontaneous communication practice, but I rarely have the energy or inclination to follow them through. Some of the people I've tried it with have been very patient but the lack of a big, driving common interest is a problem (even our mutual interest in each other's language doesn't seem to count for long). Organisation, energy and a highly unsociable nature are the main ones, though. It seems like a sort of curse-obsession for someone so little interested in talking to people.


What methods do people use? Especially once you've got fundamental ability. I'd like to do really regular speaking practice but I'm just incapable except in very short bursts. It isn't really working out. My spontaneous native language skill is very slow, and so despite my theoretical knowledge of the 2nd, casual communication is extremely hard.

I wish there were task-based games that required collaboration in a target language. Perhaps there are, but I haven't found any. That way you could get real, novel use of the language but with more of a structure. Not long ago, I saw a video of a stewardess being guided through the landing of an Airbus (in a simulator) over the radio by an experienced pilot (in Russian): setting headings and altitudes, being told where each instrument was relative to the others, being asked to read back data etc. I thought: a simplified version of this would be a brilliant way to supercharge functional, reactive use of a second language!

Do you have a daily or weekly routine for your practice? (My questions are directed at everyone reading, by the way, not only rwils)

I have studied both Irish and Japanese.

Irish is very beautiful. There is nothing about it at all that isn't pure poetry.

However, it has very complicated grammar rules and it's extremely difficult to memorize all the many plural forms. Yet it is far more accessible than Japanese.

Japanese is also very beautiful. Kanji, hiragana, and katakana all come together in a wonderfully artistic expression of characters.

However, you must memorize both On and Kun versions of each and every kanji, which totals up to an extremely intimidating mountain of over 2,000 modern day kanji times two. Then you have the problem that kanji have many different meanings, and you also have to learn kanji compounds.

I love Irish and Japanese, don't get me wrong. I just need a classroom environment with other people trying to learn the same language. I got very far on my own with both languages, but at some point I needed to realize that I just can't finish the job without help.

I guess I'm going to have to start studying English instead.