Anyone else successfully learn a new language? (OFFICIAL COLI LANGUAGE THREAD)

[hoodheronova]

Question, where are you from?? You're American? Also is the kreyol you're typing is just off the top?

Yea I'm basically american. One of my real close dudes is haitian tho, so they've been putting me on to a lot of the culture and language. Some is off the top, most is from the studying ive been doing. Why you ask?

 

[Fatboi1]

Yea I'm basically american. One of my real close dudes is haitian tho, so they've been putting me on to a lot of the culture and language. Some is off the top, most is from the studying ive been doing. Why you ask?

Oh ok. Do you have to look up words and other things when typing in Kreyol or do you just flow from the top?

 

[hoodheronova]

Oh ok. Do you have to look up words and other things when typing in Kreyol or do you just flow from the top?

i think about how my peoples would say something then i try to write it, but i got the dictionary on deck and google translate for phrases i dont know

 

[Fatboi1]

i think about how my peoples would say something then i try to write it, but i got the dictionary on deck and google translate for phrases i dont know

Ok. Try not to use google translate though as sometimes the translations be off. It's best to just get someone to translate for you especially phrases.

 

[Arris]

I feel now I'm at a solid basic level of conversational portuguese. IMO the best strategy is using multiple forms of learning. I took a traditional class here in DC for 6 months. I found some folks from Brasil online and started talking with them via skype on a weekly basis. They would help me with the portugues and I would help them with english. I would listen to music, read news, & watch movies in portuguese whenever I could. If I had just stuck to only Rosetta stone or pimsleur I dont' think I would be nearly as fluent.

The main difficulty I have now is getting my brain adjusted to hearing the language and understanding it at a normal pace in a real conversation. I can say any statement or ask any question with ease now but when the person responds, there are many times when I have to ask them to repeat it and slow down. It sounds like they are speaking 500mph to me but to them they feel like they are speaking at a normal pace. It's only because I'm not used to hearing the language all the time. I think that will improve with time and repetition.

Then you have to remember that different regions have different accents and slang just like here in the US. When I'm in Salvador and I'm speaking, a lot of the brasilians there clown me saying they understand me but I sound like I'm from Sao Paulo because of the way I pronounce words and some of the words I use are too formal. The teacher in the class that I took was from Sao Paulo so thats where I got most of my pronunciations from. Imagine someone who grew up in NYC and you drop them in the middle of Louisiana. It's still English but it's a different breed


this is really it. once you learn the proper grammatical structure of sentences, the rest is just learning vocabulary words and getting your brain adjusted to listening to the language and understanding it. That takes a lot of repetition.

You said you learned portugese at a college I don't have the time for that right now. People have told me Brazilian portugese is different from portugals and Brazilian is the type in trying to learn. Did he have a textbook he was teaching from in that class?

Also could you hook me up with some of the music you were listening to

 

[Arris]

national security and state dept jobs for american citizens who speak arabic or farsi are choice

My dad was tellin me this.

Im wondering do you even need a degree if you can prove your fluent. They might not start you off at the same pay but if you could learn the language in your free time over a couple years of say that would be a come up

 

[BigMan]

My dad was tellin me this.

Im wondering do you even need a degree if you can prove your fluent. They might not start you off at the same pay but if you could learn the language in your free time over a couple years of say that would be a come up

You definitely need a degree. Ive heard of native Arabic speakers having trouble getting jobs with the government

 

[Exit9NJturnpike]

Wh

Fluent in English, French and Arabic. But I learn all of these as a youngin' and haven't picked up a new language as an adult.

I can more or less read Spanish, Italian and Portuguese on some elementary level, but I can't communicate using them. If maybe I put in some more work I'd be able to but I'm too lazy and unmotivated to actually do it.

@Fatboi1

Good work breh. I thought it would be cool to learn Japanese (mainly to read manga/play games that aren't translated) but never tried because of laziness, thinking the language is hard to learn and not necessity to really learn it.







I assume yall learning Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or regional dialects?



Old Arabic, breh? You must be interested in religious texts or classical arab literature/poetry? Even if you pick up MSA instead you should be gucci.

The thing about MSA is that it's used "officially" as in newspaper, medias..etc and as a means to arabic speakers (from different countries) to communicate with each other. On the other hand, it's pretty much never used in RL conversations and music or movies/series from different countries will have their own dialects instead of MSA. If you're going to Morocco you'll notice people speaking their dialects, berber or even french. MSA might be able to get you through but youd' have ore chance if you were able to understand Moroccoan (or Algerian) dialect or French.

What about countries like Iraq and Iran

 

[I.AM.PIFF]

Wh

What about countries like Iraq and Iran

Iran isn't an Arabic-speaking country (they speak Farsi) but they have some small Arab minorities there.

Iraq, you should be good with MSA but you can try and learn Iraqi dialects. You may have people speaking languages such as Kurdish & Assyrian tho

 

[///Vega+++]

english is not my first language
french is
sometime around 2005 I commited myself to improving my english
my diet consisted of a lot of CNN (Europe edition) watching, subbed movies and discussions on SOHH
working in computing I also had to read quite a lot of technical stuff in english

I think it's safe to say it paid off

 

[mbewane]

Being from California, I see this all the time. But it always trips me out when I see a parent, a grown ass adult, out and about around town, or at some kinda meeting with their kids schoolteachers or whatever....and they got their 5 or 6 year old kid translating for them.

Like, how do you let your 6 year old kid be better at english than you are? You two live in the same household. How is that possible? I realize the kid goes to school, but damn. If you live in a country that speaks a different language I cant understand how it could possible take more than 3 years for one to become fluent.

I get it...but thats a choice. I know lots of people that live here and only communicate with other people that speak spanish all day everyday.

I was doin some shyt at one of the hotels I work for, and the housekeeper comes in and is having a discussion with the hotel manager. They had to get one of the front desk clerks in the middle to translate otherwise they could absolutely not communicate with each other.

I gave the housekeeper a sheet of paper that said, "After the guest in room 203 checks out, please clean the room"

bytch looked at me confused as fukk. Had no idea what was written on that paper. I took spanish for 3 months of my life, but if someone gave me that phrase written in spanish I could absolutely understand it.

I just feel like we have a bunch of people in California, adults at that, they INSIST on living here, but REFUSE to learn how to speak english, for whatever reason.

The vast majority of people can and will the language only if it is needed. You're talking about housekeepers, but in Brussels I see hundreds of European highly educated people working for the EU/NATO etc and who have been there for YEARS and who will never learn french (even less so dutch). Why? Because in their expat world they don't need it : they work in English, go out with other expats from their country, and read the news from home. Except for people in this thread I guess and similar people, most people only learn languages out of necessity.

i'm going to give advice to those learning vocab in your language.

don't google translations from the language you are learning to english.
rather go to google images and type the word in spanish in the bar and then you can see an image and understand better instead of seeing the word in english

Google translate is one of the worst things, because a lot of it is based on translations of translations. So for example you might wnat to translate french into italian, but Google translate will always use english as a pivot language, which has a totally different structure, AND while not taking into account context. Wordreference is better.

Anyways, I speak French (mother tongue), English, Italian (lived there a year and a half), some Dutch and can understand some Spanish.

I think the only real way to learn a language is to live in the country, but obviously one can reach a good level by studying from abroad. Very underated is watching movies in the original version with subtitles in your languages, or vice-versa. If you have DVDs, just put the subtitles in the language you're learning. That's basically how I learned Dutch.

 

[mbewane]

english is not my first language
french is
sometime around 2005 I commited myself to improving my english
my diet consisted of a lot on CNN (Europe edition) watching, subbed movies and discussions on SOHH
working in computing I also had to read quite a lot of technical stuff in english

I think it's safe to say it paid off

Tu viens d'où?

 

[///Vega+++]

Tu viens d'où?

Cameroon
studied in France some years ago

 

[mbewane]

Cameroon
studied in France some years ago

Voisin lol

OK me Central African Republic and Belgium, currently in Paris

 

[intruder]

talk about how you did it

I had to learned English

I didn't become fluent until my mid 20s
It wasn't easy but living in the U.S. in an environment where they speak english helps a lot.