21–30 of 44 posts
I can also speak basic Japanese (started learning in college and continued on my own), but while I learned the syllabaries I only know a very few characters, so I can't write it.
Between the two, that's one whole language at a basic level.
I'm spanisch native speaker. Began learning german at age of 5 for 17 years, english at 12 for 8 years, french at 15 for 3 years (barely remember something). Sadly my written englisch is not as good as it should (altough I have no problem reading it or with conversational englisch. My father doesnt speak englisch, so when technicians from the US came to repair his machines (CNC) I was the translator). And with german…
Over the years, I've taken stabs at German, Latin, Chinese, Spanish and Lojban. Same story each time---a few weeks of initial enthusiasm, and then I got bored and never returned to Language X. I don't know what kept me glued to Japanese. With Esperanto, I was about to move on when I discovered there were actually people in my town who spoke it and met every week. It added unexpected depth to what I had been approaching as a novelty language.
Can any of you talented polyglots recommend techniques for learning lots of vocabulary quickly?
Hur är läget? Alles klar? Todos bien?
Quite frankly the only languages you really need in the western world (aside from English) are French and Spanish (and possibly Portugese). Germans and Scandinavians mostly speak perfect English and for the most part don't tolerate my broken attempt at their language. (although they very much appreciate it)
French and Spanish are probably the most valuable because they tend to be less inclined to master English and both have very large native speaker bases. Other useful languages would be Mandarin, Russian and Arabic.
I read Latin and Greek, want to know more French, and am intrigued by Sanskrit and Japanese. I wanted to read more Latin and have more fun reading, and I decided that looking words up in a dictionary was an easy step to circumvent, so I made a website nodictionaries.com --- if you read Latin, check out http://nodictionaries.com/vergil/aeneid-1/1-7 if you want to read twice as fast.
German - I'm moving to Berlin in a few weeks and want to cram as much language learning into that time as possible. Can any of you talented polyglots recommend techniques for learning lots of vocabulary quickly?
For speaking/understanding speech I've heard great things about Pimsleur. Once you have the rudiments of the language listen to podcasts all the time.
Learn the grammar. You are unlikely to pick up more than the utter basics by osmosis. Good luck!
German - I'm moving to Berlin in a few weeks and want to cram as much language learning into that time as possible. Can any of you talented polyglots recommend techniques for learning lots of vocabulary quickly?
The quickest dirty hack is using Anki or another spaced repitition sytem program. If you download Anki you can get at the shared decks and there rea some very nice ones for German vocabulary. For speaking/understanding speech I've heard great things about Pimsleur. Once you have the rudiments of the language listen to podcasts all the time. Learn the grammar. You are unlikely to pick up more than the utter basics by…
I'm just started learning German as well (also moved to Berlin quite recently), and I can recommend this online course for getting down with the basics of grammar, counting etc: http://deutschkurse.dw-world.de/KursPlattform/WebObjects/Kur...
I'm spanisch native speaker. Began learning german at age of 5 for 17 years, english at 12 for 8 years, french at 15 for 3 years (barely remember something). Sadly my written englisch is not as good as it should (altough I have no problem reading it or with conversational englisch. My father doesnt speak englisch, so when technicians from the US came to repair his machines (CNC) I was the translator). And with german…
FYI, it's spelled Spanish/English :)