i learned portuguese watching cartoon network. it shares roots with spanish, and i already know the shows basically word for word. after that i started karate with a brazilian sensei who spoke half portuguese and half spanish, and it was pretty much an easy learning experience. i now speak semi-fluent brazilian portuguese with an on and off accent, depending on what i'm trying to say. my advice to those that want to learn a language is to use it. both of my "extra" languages, english and portuguese, i learned by use, english by having half the stuff in my house in english and watching movies and playing games in english when little, and portuguese by living in the frontier with brazil where half the stuff in in portuguese and you pretty much have to learn it. i would only advice language "courses" if you're going to be doing something that absolutely needs the technical stuff, like writing or so, but i know, for example, a girl that knows a lot of english, and actually has a certificate stating that, but she doesn't even want to watch unsubtitled movies or stuff like that, and while she might know more technical things like the names of the tenses, i can still completely own her in regards to overall knowledge of the english language(and spanish too, funnily enough), to the point where she's constantly asking me to translate stuff for her.
+3 I started by using Pimsleur language on CD, and later implemented the "immersion technique" (..i.e...spending time in Brazil, immersing myself in Brazilian culture locally, etc.). I recently was given a copy of Rosetta Stone from another student of Capoeira, and it has worked really well (..and helped improve my spoken Portuguese). I recommend it to anyone looking to learn a new language. Fish of Doom... E ai rapaz. Quantos anos vc treinar Karate?
I learned to speak Indonesian by asking my wife to translate my favourite English songs into Indonesian, and then I would sing the lyrics all day long, actually understanding the words! Kinda like nursery rhymes, I guess. I also watched DVDs with Indonesian sub-titles, as well as asking my wife, her mother and grandmother to sit with me and talk only in Indonesian while I tried to pick it up. Talk about jumping head-first into the deep end... It got to the point where I was dreaming in Indonesian, coming up with words I'd never even heard of (or at least, couldn't remember being taught them), and when I asked my wife to translate, they meant exactly what I thought in my dreams!
tudo beleza, cara, e você? desculpa que não respondi ate agora, mas não tinha visto o teu post . faz mais ou menos ums sete anos que eu treino Karate
I seriously do not understand why people try to learn a new language by learning to read first. It makes the whole process 100x times harder. You learn 2nd, 3rd languages exactly the same way you learnt your first language; by mimicking. I was born in the UK, so obviously learnt English as my first language. When I was 12, I moved to France for 2 years and learnt French, I then lived in Italy and learnt Italian. I learnt both languages by going to school and being immersed in the language. I would hear people speaking in another language constantly, and you gradually pick it up. Its very slow at first, but once you learn comprehenision in another language, and the structure of scentences, you are set. You can learn 100s of words in a day. 13 years on, I forgot how to speak both French and Italian . Obviously, I can pick it back up in weeks, but I would struggle through basic conversations now. I currently speak Japanese and Korean, and a little Thai, and I learnt thoes, again, by being immersed. For Japanese, I bought language tapes, which are basically conversations that you listen to and mimick on demand of the instructor. This taught me basic conversations, and then when I got a job at a Japanese bank, I spent my entire work day speaking in Japanese. Note, I NEVER tried to read Japanese because I couldn't SPEAK it. Learning to read first is the best way to destroy your accent because you start to try and sound words out in an "English" way, rather than learning new sounds. Right now I speak fairly advanced Japanese. I have complete conversations with clients on the phone, and quite often go and meet clients at their office and speak in Japanese. I also bought Korean language tapes, hrs worth, and spent hrs a day just listening to them and repeating the steps. I got to a good beginer level, and then started speaking to my gf in Korean. She was shocked at how great my accent was. If your accent is spot on, by mimicking, then people always assume you are fluent, even if you can only say a few words . By the end of it, I was living in Korean BBQs, watching Korean movies and Drama, and hanging out in Korean bars. If I saw a Korean person on the train, I would approach them and speak to them. I have been learning Korean for over a year, and only as recently as 2 weeks ago have I started learning to read and write. Because i speak Korean at an advanced level, learning to read, and REMEMBERING how to read is 10000000x easier than trying to cram millions of random sounds into your brain at the start. The great thing about languages is that none use every single possible word on a daily basis. Learning 20% of a language is all you really need to get by. After that, when you can ask what a word means, and understand it being explained to you, you will be fluent in no time.
Tudo bem tambem! Nao problema amigo.....este lugar e' muito lento. LOL! Vc ainda morando na Argentina? I absolutely agree that immersion is the most efficient, but immersion is not always possible for the practitioner. The end result being that they have to use other means - which include reading - to learn an additional language. You were fortunate to be able to live in locations where learning a language was made easier for you.
I'm relearning French as it has got very rusty and trying to pick up Russian. The French is fine but I'm finding Russian really difficult to pick up. I have the Pimsleur intro tapes and I want to oral learn basically.
Just wanted to add that I got my hands on the rosetta stone software and it's very good. Thoroughly recommend it to anyone, its available online if you know where to look. Je suis un homme chanceux!
Something that I recently picked up on is learning a language in a formal manner (like college or high school) really doesn't prepare someone for conversations with those who speak the same as thier native tounge. The hispanics at work use a ton of slang and poor Spanish grammar. The program by Rosetta Stone is far better than what I learned during the college years as it allows the student to learn "functional" language early on and focus on proper grammer and reading comes later.
