Not A Mormon wrote:
Do you know the class schedule of fulltime 'Mormon Method'. I'm not Mormon nor a missionary, but I'd like to investigate possibly enrolling in such a language immersion progra. Do you have the URL ?
Thanks.
Pick a country, and find a language school. You can do this relatively inexpensively in Costa Rica, Guatemala, etc. for Spanish.
To the original poster - Swahili, although I speak it well as a second language, has never served me much in the US.
Is this Sloman? Hmmm... Did you go to GAFB?
How are the M's that begin many nouns usually pronounced? It seems like I have heard both the "m" sounded out - like "M-bwa" - but also the "muh" sound - like mzungu (MAzugnu)? Does it vary like this? How can you tell when to do which?
Thanks.
I'm not near ghost's level of language but here's my order:
mother language:
other languages in order of knowledge(spoken):
French
English
Russian(some its really hard at times)
norsk
So i can speak about 5 languages the norwegian is hard and the russian also. The russian has a whole different alphabet Cyrillic, it is quite a change. Especially hard because the pronounce differences. So i am the proudest of those 2 languages, i learned them all by myself.
English was also only partially from school, we had 1-2 hours a week mostly. luckily unlike france they don't change he audio of the movies to another language. Very effective to learn a language.
So i think my general level of a language is above the average guy, but not ear the extremes. I said spoken i still write a lot of grammatical mistakes.luckily there's an auto correction on
the newest Firefox. And my typing slowly improves...
I always thought that the ability to speak more languages is a nice social feature. So christofe or ghost heat of for you with such a level you come close to the smartest man i have known in life(he's death now). He spoken an amazing 15 languages.Above that he was well payed and athletic something i and probably most people dream of reaching i guess.
I speak a foreign language in the United States ... it's called English. Our official language is now Spanish.
You know, recently I went to an ATM and it asked to press (1) for English or (2) for Spanish and I accidently hit (2). I couldn't get my card back for a little while. Every button I pushed gave me another menu on which I couldn't read a damn thing. I was getting worried I may lose my card in the machine so I just stopped pushing anything. It eventually released my card automatically due to my inactivity. Thank goodness nobody was behind me waiting for the ATM.
He's been mentioned on here before, but Ziad Fazah is the most impressive and varied polyglot I've ever read about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziad_Fazah
Ziad Youssef Fazah (born June 10, 1954 in Monrovia, Liberia) is reputed to be the world's most accomplished hyperpolyglot. It is said that he speaks, reads and understands 58 languages, most of which learned before the age of 20. His skills have been successfully tested on TV shows around the world by speakers of such languages as Mongolian, Czech, Korean and Hungarian. Raised in Lebanon, he has lived in Brazil since the 1970s.
The list of languages he speaks (from [1] Ziad Youssef Fazah: Maior Poliglota do Mundo):
Albanian, German, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azeri, Bengali, Burmese, Bulgarian, Cambodian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Wu, Sinhalese, Singapore Colloquial English, Korean, Danish, Dzongkha, Spanish, Finnish, French, Fijian, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Dutch, Hungarian, Indonesian, English, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Swahili, Lao, Malay, Malagasy, Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian, Papiamento, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Pashto, Kyrgyz, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Swedish, Tajik, Thai, Czech, Tibetan, Turkish, Urdu, Uzbek and Vietnamese.
yo hablo espanol wrote:
I speak a foreign language in the United States ... it's called English. Our official language is now Spanish.
You know, recently I went to an ATM and it asked to press (1) for English or (2) for Spanish and I accidently hit (2). I couldn't get my card back for a little while. Every button I pushed gave me another menu on which I couldn't read a damn thing. I was getting worried I may lose my card in the machine so I just stopped pushing anything. It eventually released my card automatically due to my inactivity. Thank goodness nobody was behind me waiting for the ATM.
So it's the country's fault that you have trouble working an ATM?
To answer your question:
I teach English as a Second Language, presently in Korea. Previously in Taiwan, Turkey, Latin America.
In every 'new country' I make a serious effort to gain as much fluency in the new language as possible. With Mandarin, for example, a decent level of spoken/conversational Mandarin was achieved after about 6 months, with classes at the University to learn Mandarin for 2 hours a day in the morning. Without the classes it would have taken much longer. I spoke more Mandarin after 4-5 months in Taiwan, compared with teachers who had been there for years but elected not to take the course or study.
I usually try to teach in a new country every year or so.
Being in the country where the language is spoken is a big advantage.
When I first approach a new language, here are some of the things I do:
1. Expose myself to the new language as much as possible.
this means, for example, watching a lot of t.v. in the new language. My ear becomes familiar with the sounds, and you can guess quite a lot of words, because they are repeated so often.
2. Take a course in the new language. This is important, especially with professional teachers. This enables you to understand the basics and fundamentals.
3. Study a little every day, even if for only 30 minutes, rather than doing it once a week. A little a lot is better than a lot a litte.
'Experts' often claim that your ability to learn languages diminishes with age.
I would argue against that. Most of the languages I have learned were as an adult, with no previous knowledge. I think it is more a question of motivation and interest. If you are curious about the language and enjoy the culture, that will also help.
Ghost
coach:
In terms of language acquisition, I would argue that as you were already a native speaker of two languages (a Romance and a Germanic language) you already had a better sense of how languages work and what to expect. A monolingual adult with little knowledge in the area would be at a much greater disadvantage.
I will traslate (from Portuguese) the article about Prof. Ziad when I have more time. It makes interesting reading.
Ghost
I fully agree with that. I was exposed to two languages from birth. French from my mother and caregivers, and English from my father, who was British.
I still maintain that the 'Mormon method' of learning foreign languages (including very obscure/esoteric ones like 'Qiche' - and Mayan languages) is probably the best method on offer today. Their 24/7 two/three month courses lay the foundation for exponential improvement once the missionaries reach their foreign destination.
Any Mormons on this board wish to share your experiences?
Ghost
they say that one is completely fluent in a language when they dream in that language. ghost how many languages have you had dreams in?
...
I do wrote:
min int??
don't speak any maltese, but i'm guessing you asked "who are you?" close? i've always been interested in maltese, with it's phoenician semitic roots.
I don't recall most of my dreams, but I am able to 'think' in the foreign languages I know, and words and phrases emerge on an almost unconscious level.
It is an automatic process, especially when you are in the country where the language is spoken.
Ghost in Korea (a country which possesses the most logical/clear alphabet system in the world)
CoachB wrote:
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)
coach B, when were you at DLI? were you a russian student, then, or arabic? I was there in 1984, for arabic.
HyperWOOO wrote:
Anybody become fluent in another language with out going to another to help learn it?
Yes, I speak 8 languages. Never set foot in france, italy. Visited short time (weekends and stuff) Norway and Denmark
but never lived.
Selassie
obviously i am not near ghost's level so I my view doesn't carry the same weight BUT I will say that I think this varies by the individualI was dreaming in French and German long before I would consider myself fluent in those languagesi remember going to bed having a headached because I couldn't stop thinking in french - my whole day was spent concentrating on trying to decipher what people were saying and what I wanted to saywhen I went to bed my brain wouldn't shut down, everyone was speaking in french in my dreams and it felt frustrating! the mind is an amazing thing - my wife would be speaking in french and her words were spoken fast, funny I couldn't put words together that fast while I was awake
crazy like coco wrote:
they say that one is completely fluent in a language when they dream in that language. ghost how many languages have you had dreams in?
anEconomist wrote:
the mind is an amazing thing - my wife would be speaking in french and her words were spoken fast, funny I couldn't put words together that fast while I was awake
I have experienced the identical thing; I'm in my dreams and other people are speaking fast, flawless French...but then I realize that it's actually my brain putting those sentences together and I'm totally baffled as to how I struggle so much in real life. I specifically remember one of my dreams from after I returned to the states a couple weeks ago...I was in the store with some friends there (who didn't speak English) and in my dream we were conversing in French as usual, then one of them started speaking English and I was like "where did you learn to speak English?"
Thats happened to me also