FOREIGN LANGUAE

Why make such a childish error then?

HyperWOOO wrote:

Tehre aint nutin rung wit my english

I've been blessed to work in many international environments and my synopsis is this:

French and Japanese will get you very far. French for the language of science and Japanese for Asian business. I would also suggest some fluency in Spanish and Chinese can't hurt.

I speak both Japanese and some French and they have served me well. My French could be better and it cost me one very good job - Toyota F1 Team. My Spanish is coming along.

Go get em'.

If you are not a mormon they will not let you enroll.

The best program in the U.S. for learning languages in a total immersion situation is at Middlebury College in Vermont. It is expensive, but it is the next best thing to being in the foreign country. You have to sign a contract for the semester or summer to only speak the language you are learning 24/7. If you don't you are told to leave the program.

Ghost in Korea

Languages: Fluent - English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese

Conversational: Mandarin (Chinese) and Turkish

Some basic phrases in: Tagalog and Arabic (Lebanese variety)

Currently learning: Korean (in Korea where I teach)

christophe_moulton@yahoo.ca

oooooh, F1! nice.

first language: english. i can get by in spanish. i took one half semester of japanese, which basically just means that i can pronouce words properly and recognize some japanese characters. :) i'm learning Turkish now. languages are cooool.

i speak english and french, i am still struggling with german

science and math were always easy for me - i completed my phd in finance in 3 years at an ivy league school and my research has been published in many top journals BUT

i suck at languages... it took me years and years to get french to the point where I would call myself fluenct (it took me living in france for quite some time), now I'm in a german speaking part of the world and I swear every person in my class is better at it then I am

I don't think i will learn any others just because they frustrate me to no end

i really admire those who can pick them up so fast - my wife included

Does ASL count? (american sign language) if so, I speak 3 languages. My ebonics is pretty dern good too.

I'd be surprised if there's a more accomplished polyglot on this board than ghost.

Ghost, you're familiar with Ziad Fazah?

Yeah I would agree, Ghost wins!

For some reason I had the impression you went to a top Cali school...anyways, I know you may not wanna disclose a lot, but what are you doing now that permits you to keep doing research (assuming you're not teaching)?

As far as languages, I also have been learning French forever (a lot on my own). I guess I somewhat reluctantly call myself fluent now (at the insistence of several French people I talked with this summer--probably a case of being "relatively more" fluent though). I think French is a very good language to learn as it's spoken as a first language places on pretty much every continent. And behind English it's the next biggest "lingua franca," being the other "langue officielle et langue de travail" of the UN. I still have some difficulties with oral comprehension, particularly with fast colloquial speech, so I'm trying to work on that with watching TV series' in French also using French subtitles.

I've wanted to learn an Asian language for a long time--I think Japanese is a great choice, but in order to achieve written/reading fluency you need to memorize a ton of characters. I've been self-teaching myself Korean, which I think is much easier and could become more and more useful given the political and economic states of the two Koreas. I'm probably going to try starting a third year course in the language this fall, as long as my schedule permits.

Thats awesome!

Once again, unless you live and practice the language in the country of choice, supplemented by an official course at the local University (typically for 2-4 hours a day) - you will not make any significant progress in any language.

Research simply shows that you need tons of exposure to the target language you are learning, but some of it has to be meaningful exposure, and that is why I always start learning a new language with plenty of simple 'baby phrases' in addition to taking a formal course which outlines the grammar rules, sentence structure and other essentials. Kids first learn by listening and talking and they do not write for many years. For adults, the time factor is the limitation, but we should also copy some of the ways children (young ones) learn languages - plenty of similar phrases repeated many, many times, and meaningful gestures and mimes don't hurt either, because they are memorable.

I have known people to live in Japan/China/Korea/Mexico for years and not learn the languages of those countries. So, in that respect, learning is also enhanced by motivation and desire. If you are not interested you will not learn.

I am learning and Korean now, in Korea, and am impressed by the Korean characters - each character represents a specific sound, and there are only 24 basic letters (characters) to learn in Korean. So it is easy, at least, to learn the Korean letters within a short time, unlike Chinese or Japanese characters which take years to learn.

I appreciate the comments, but do not consider myself a genius. I just have a lot of motivation to learn foreign languages, and am generally interested and intrigued by foreign cultures and languages. Those last two factors make it much easier to learn foreign languages.

Ghost in Korea

christophe_moulton@yahoo.ca

Ki beszel magyarul? Akarok tanulni mert budapestre megyek elni.

Ghost,

Out of all the languages you are studying or have learned, which one was/is your favorite

and which one would you have considered the easiest to learn? Hardest?

"Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC (now officially the European Union, or EU), the European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of improving efficiency in communications between Government departments.

European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessary difficult; for example: cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be administered by a committee staff at top level by participating nations.

In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's' instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k' sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.

There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it was anounsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'. This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty persent shorter in print.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o' kould be dropd from words kontaining 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of the uvermnt vud finali hav kum tru."

That crazy, English is such a %$^$ed up language!

All the Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese) are easy to learn and pronounce, with Portuguese pronunciation a bit trickier.

German was easy, because I learned it in school, and then made exponential progress when I went to Germany for two homestays. Homestays are the key to really improving your foreign language skills.

Turkish was suprisingly easy to learn and pick up (in Turkey) despite the differenct word order from English.

Tagalog (Filipino) is very easy on the tongue, and easy to converse in at an elementary level. But advanced Tagalog is quite complex as the grammar rules contain quite a few exceptions, and there are different forms of speaking depending on the status of the person you are speaking to.

Arabic - I find the Levantine/Lebanese variety of Arabic more user friendly compared with the Maghreb/Algeria-Morocco kind.

Chinese Mandarin was initially very difficult, but once you become accustomed to the 'tones' speaking simple Mandarin is not that hard, because the verbs always stay the same - they do not get conjugated! It is easy to make simple sentences in Mandarin, but unless you pronounce those words correctly most Chinese/Taiwanese might have trouble understanding you initially. I learned most of my Mandarin by watching Chinese/Taiwanese videos. My ear just became used to the sound. I used this method for about 1 year, and was able to converse in Mandarin with most Chinese/Taiwanese without much trouble after that.

As far as learning Chinese characters - I decided not to do so, because the time investment would take many years. So I optec for 'pinyin' writing system which is the romanized version.

Korean - is hard, but I am still at the beginning stage. I think it will become more easy after 6 months.

Ghost in Korea

christophe_moulton@yahoo.ca

Languages: Fluent: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese

Conversational: Mandarin (Chinese) and Turkish

Some basic ability in: Tagalog and Arabic

Presently learning and studying: Korean

Future languages of interest: Japanese and Russian

Ghost

Do you have any knowledge of the Monterey institute of foreign languages? I was at the Defense Language Institute just up the hill from there and would often walk down when they were showing Russian movies.

BTW. DLI is a fine way to go for learning a language. You will owe Uncle Sam at least 4 years however. If you choose Arabic, you will be kept very busy and become well versed in the ways of waterboarding. (I didn't go the interrogator route, rather signal intercept)

Fascinating stuff about the Defence Language Institute.

How long did it take you to reach relative fluency in spoken and/or written Arabic? And what was a typical day at the DLI? Was it total immersion?

How do they teach Arabic there? The problem I have with Arabic is that the classic variety they teach in University has little application in the 'street' when you try to practice with Arabs, whether in the Magreb countries (Algeria/Morocco/Tunisia) or the countries around Lebanon/Jordan/Syria. I would guess the classic variety of Arabic might be more similar to the Arabic spoken in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, U.A.E., and Bahrein, but in any event, many Arab learners get discouraged when learning Arabic because of this difference between theory and practical applications.

I was initially enrolled at the University of Jordan in Amman, Jordan, but found the methodology not to my liking. I found learning Arabic in Egypt more pleasant (Cairo and Alexandria) but Egyptian 'street Arabic' was quite different from what I learned in the class. In the end, for those reasons, and others, I did not persist with Arabic. But if I try again, I will head for the University of Damascus in Syria, which I gather has a good method for foreigners.

Ghost in Korea

your memory is good - you caught me, without revealing too much i just said ivy league, technically not ivy league but known as the ivy league of the west so, in a quick statement

anyway, all i can really say is that i work for an international organization that has a research department

i've always enjoyed your posts and like knowing there is a math phd (student if i recall) to keep people in line on here on numbers stuff

[quote]karteIite wrote:

For some reason I had the impression you went to a top Cali school...anyways, I know you may not wanna disclose a lot, but what are you doing now that permits you to keep doing research (assuming you're not teaching)?

quote]