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My biggest problem seems to be understanding the syntax of foreign language. Syntax is word order, word order is grammar and grammar has a bad rap.
Ewwwww grammar … I don’t wanna learn grammar, I just wanna learn to speak the language.
Sorry, but unless you absorb the grammar, there is no syntax. And...I guess...just curious as to what's the best way to "attack" learning a new language? Don’t “attack” it, embrace it!
Recently I was reading short excerpts from a book "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue" which explained that in German, Dutch and similar languages..there are no words such as "did", "do", or "does". They also do not use suffixes such as "-ing", and their nouns (?) are masculine, feminine, or neutral oriented??? They do all kinds of things that would never occur to English speakers. They put endings on adjectives according to those three confounded genders, the articles of nouns change depending on the case the preposition takes, they put letters at the end of some nouns for reasons known only to them, and the idioms don’t seem to follow any rules at all.
At first it will seem like someone has thrown a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle into the air and you have to form sentences by snatching words as they fall, arranging them within fractions of a second according to a million rules. Don’t fight it. There are no magic tricks. If there were, I would have found them in my twelve years in Germany. I used to fantasize that they announced they’d done away with the three genders and all those endings. I swear it would cut the work in half. They never made that announcement. *Sigh*
Memorize, memorize, memorize. Speak, speak, speak. Practice, practice, practice. Write, write, write. Yes, write vocabulary words ten, twenty, fifty times. It does help.
Oh yeah … have you seen yet what they do to verbs?
Yep, that says it all.... Spent 4 years studying French in high school and I learned more French in the 3 months I spent in Paris. When you have to use the language, you do learn it a lot quicker. I even like that some Parisiennes refuse to talk to you unless you attempt French (people think it's rude but it improved my language skills). It also helps if you have a native speaker as your guide. The locals can teach you a lot about the slang phrases you never learn in the textbooks (e.g. I never knew how often they say "C'est pas grave" until I traveled to France).
Pretty much everything that everyone suggested are great answers. There is no easy way to learn a language. People have various ways to tackle a language, so hence, they're all different.
Books, magazines, index cards, CDs, music, immersion, interaction, internet, Youtube, etc. can only take you so far... (I find reading and repetition helpful on my experience. Varies for other people.)
Although, some people have managed to learn really well without even doing any immersion in the foreign country of their choice. How those people do it is by thinking and speaking that language most of their time from sun up to sun down. They were able to learn the language quicker just by doing that. It's an extra challenge above normal learning but it has been done.
I agree with eatfastnoodle...
practice, practice, practice... lots of persistence... and then some more practice...
Also, be patient. Don't be considered with Joe Shmoe picking it up in a year. Some may pick up languages easier... but for most of us... practice...
Take every year in stride.
Don't be discouraged. Becoming proficient in a language may take several years.
Take it from someone who nearly failed out of Spanish and felt like a language idiot in school.
Even after I got serious in languages, I felt like crying and hopeless many times. Just remember to keep at it. Learning a language to some colleges may just be a course requirement. But to make it mean anything, you have to make it a pledge.
Also...
1. if you can afford channels from foreign tv stations on satellite...
2. Or watch lots of German movies...
3. Find native speakers...
4. Boxcar Overkill mentions study abroad...
#3 is the best. If you are serious, traveling abroad for one or two years is the best. You would be surprised on how many schools offer international programs which ....
* help provide tuition...
* have credits transfer (I had many credits transfer)
If you stay in a different country for a few years, the experience can be more rewarding than you can imagine. The years I spent were the best years in my life. Good Luck, and I know that you can do it. Learning a language is rewarding. However, my opinion is... experiencing and becoming intimate with the culture behind the language, is worth a hundred times that.
Last edited by Thomas_Thumb; 04-18-2009 at 12:20 AM..
of course the best way to learn is to live in the country where the language is spoken as the main language. but not everybody has the chance or afford to do that.
i speak indonesian/malay, english, and some chinese dialects. right now i'm trying to learn mandarin. there isnt really any simple way to master a language besides practicing it. find a native speaker who you could practice with. there is a website that you may find useful to find a language exchange partner: mylanguageexchange.com, i found some native speakers there and have helping each other to learn languages.
Don't try to find a "better" way to learn a language. All the supposedly "better" ways you see in the media are lies. There is only one way to learn a new language: persistence, persistence, persistence, persistence And practice, practice, practice, practice.
Syntax is important, but it's far from being the hardest part. You'll know that classes/books are sufficient enough with regard to syntax. But to actually master a language, you need to
1. Build up a decent sized vocabulary, without that, everything else is moot.
2. Read more, listen more, write more and speak to native speakers more.
3. Keep doing it every day, every week and year after year.
When it comes to language learning, there is simply no substitute for boring repetitive practice.
And you need to adjust your expectations, for an adult, unless you're some language geniuses, it's highly highly unlikely you're gonna be able to be as good as native speakers. It's just not a attainable goal for the vast majority of people. So don't expect TOO much.
Says it all.
Above all, you need to go there. I took German for years and thought I was ok until I actually went there to live. What a shock. But with practive and persistence, it comes.
The very best way to learn a new language is to study it at a university and then total immersion.
Check out your local university to see if they offer a beginners course. Having classmates and learning with a team can be a lot more fun than sitting at home going over Rosetta Stone (boring as hell)
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