Learning another language

[Dick Whitman]

Like all of us, I took a few years of a foreign language in high school. I have retained none of it (French) and, truth be told, didn't take it very seriously. In today's economy and considering the changing demographics of the United States, I am seriously thinking about learning either Spanish or Chinese. Probably Spanish, as it is the most useful, but Chinese might be good to get out in front of. Plus, supply and demand would make it a pretty valuable skill.

Anyway, wondering if we have any bilinguals here and how you went about it? Particularly people who took it on later in life. Once upon a time, when I covered baseball for a few seasons, I was determined to learn Spanish. But just as I had made up my mind, I left that beat, never to return.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

Ivate a la mierda!

 

[JonnyD]

At your (presumed) age, it's going to take a ridiculous amount of work just to become conversational, let alone business levels, in a language you've had no real exposure to.

You're going to have to do a ton of rather monotonous vocabulary memorization. Tons.

Besides that, find as many native sources of material as you can, try to make it the background of your life. When you are on the internet, have a radio station or TV program in that language on in the background. Try to change the language settings on some programs you are familiar with to that language. If you can find a native speaker to practice with, do that as often as you can.

 

[YankeeFan]

Like all of us, I took a few years of a foreign language in high school. I have retained none of it (French) and, truth be told, didn't take it very seriously. In today's economy and considering the changing demographics of the United States, I am seriously thinking about learning either Spanish or Chinese. Probably Spanish, as it is the most useful, but Chinese might be good to get out in front of. Plus, supply and demand would make it a pretty valuable skill.

Anyway, wondering if we have any bilinguals here and how you went about it? Particularly people who took it on later in life. Once upon a time, when I covered baseball for a few seasons, I was determined to learn Spanish. But just as I had made up my mind, I left that beat, never to return.

Spanish would be a lot easier, but if you're determined, I would aim for something else.

Lots of people speak Spanish. It's not going to really make you stand out.

I'd aim for Chinese (Mandarin), Arabic, or Russian. Trade with speakers of these languages continues to increase and there's a lack of US speakers. Your business opportunities will be greater as a speaker of any of them.

You'll have to take it very seriously. You'll need to take classes & hear the language spoken.

You need to get the pronunciation and tone down early, otherwise you'll screw it all up.

And you'll want to get yourself around native speakers. A vacation or time spent in an immigrant community will help

But, you'll also need a long term plan to use it, otherwise you'll lose it.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

Don't forget the hot sauce chollo!

 

[Dick Whitman]

Like all of us, I took a few years of a foreign language in high school. I have retained none of it (French) and, truth be told, didn't take it very seriously. In today's economy and considering the changing demographics of the United States, I am seriously thinking about learning either Spanish or Chinese. Probably Spanish, as it is the most useful, but Chinese might be good to get out in front of. Plus, supply and demand would make it a pretty valuable skill.

Anyway, wondering if we have any bilinguals here and how you went about it? Particularly people who took it on later in life. Once upon a time, when I covered baseball for a few seasons, I was determined to learn Spanish. But just as I had made up my mind, I left that beat, never to return.

Spanish would be a lot easier, but if you're determined, I would aim for something else.

Lots of people speak Spanish. It's not going to really make you stand out.

I'd aim for Chinese (Mandarin), Arabic, or Russian. Trade with speakers of these languages continues to increase and there's a lack of US speakers. Your business opportunities will be greater as a speaker of any of them.

YF, that was what I was thinking. I like the challenge of learning one of those as well as the doors they could open to even have a basic conversational grasp of them. My only issue with Chinese or Arabic is the different dialects. It seems like Mandarin is most useful as far as Chinese goes, but Arabic seems to be even more fragmented. Hence the frequent difficulty finding translators and so forth.

 

[YankeeFan]

My girlfriend grew up in Taiwan speaking Mandarin.

The way I would put it are that mandarin & Cantonese are languages. But their are many dialects.

She can't really speak the local Taiwanese dialect anymore.

But, I think with the internet and national media in China, there is a version of Mandarin that is universal and that would be understood by almost everyone.

And, while there are many regional dialects/versions of Arabic, I would imagine that things like Al-Jazeera means the same thing for Arabic.

You're not going to be looking to translate the note books of some Al-Queda operative writing in a local dialect.

You're going to be looking to conduct business. That will be conducted in the main language.

Everyone has to be able to speak/understand/write the main language so they can do business with each other.

 

[Iron_chet]

Unless you will be in a situation where you can routinely use the language later any training you do in it will be lost.

I am not sure on the usefulness of learning Arabic as most Arabs in business also speak English, I would think too that the opportunity to use it would be limited.

I can see Mandarin however again, same issue, what settings will you be able to use it.

I used to do a lot of business in Latin America so was looking to improve my Spanish language skills. I did a 2 week immersion course in Costa Rica that was fantastic. I learned a lot and was able to practice all the time, not real expensive either. I would think with Spanish being the 4th most spoken language in the world and the US becoming more Hispanic that this would be your best bet. There will always be lots of opportunities to practice as well.

Saludos,

I_c

 

[slappy4428]

Lonnie Ritter: Kids today are amazing. I played winter ball down in Venezuala, they had kids half his age, every one of them speaking Spanish. That's a hard language.
Lou Collins: They speak Spanish in Venezuala.
Lonnie Ritter: I know! That's my point!

 

[YankeeFan]

Just a side note: My nephew and niece are being raised to be bilingual. Brother speaks to them in English, sister-in-law speaks to them in Polish. I'm very envious of them.

YF, those are great points about dialect, but one quick question. As I understand it, the reason Mandarin is so hard to learn is because you can have one word, spelled the same in any use, that is pronounced in a hundred different ways with a hundred different meanings. Not dialect, but just in normal use. Is that true?

I can't really answer your question about Mandarin. My girlfriend laughs at me when I try to pronounce simple words or phrases in language. I can't even pronounce her four letter last name to her liking.

I think you're basically right, but I don't want to mislead you or come across as some expert that I'm not.

I also have little to no proficiency for language.

(I did find that I could ask and answer simple questions while in Spain, thanks to a grade school education, but in places like Russia, where the alphabet is different and the pronunciation is so different, I really struggled.)

Kids do learn languages much more easily. My cousin was just in town visiting. he's American but has lived the last 20 years or so in Sweden. Hiss 9-year-old daughter was with him and she speaks perfect English. But, she never really had to "learn" it. He had always spoken English to her.

 

[YankeeFan]

Speaking of Sweden, I believe that's one country that broadcasts many of its television shows in English with Swedish subtitles, so people will get to know it in a speakable way. Maybe that's a good avenue.

We were watching Scooby Doo cartoons yesterday morning. She had seen them all before, dubbed into Swedish.

I was joking with her about how they translated zoinks!

My cousin said that once he immersed himself in it, Swedish was not that difficult to learn.

 

[bydesign77]

Immersion is the key. When I was at DCA nearly half of the staff was either Spanish or Ethiopian speakers. Just being around them, I picked up some stuff. I think had I really been trying to learn, I would have picked up more.

 

[HC]

Two things I've found helpful in learning a language:

1) Buy a simple book in that language and read it with a big ass dictionary, a good one that includes words used in common expression, etc. I read a novelization of "Dead Poet's Society" in German and the first Lemony Snicket in French. I would pencil in translations of the words I didn't know and then later, while commuting maybe, would re-read the parts I'd already translated.

2) Watch movies in the original language with subtitles. You'll get a good feel for the sound of the language and learn to start recognizing spoken words. In fact, I realized that French was sticking while watching "Cyrano de Bergerac" and caught myself reading a subtitle and thinking "but that's not really what he said".

 

[Stitch]

Has anyone use Rosetta Stone?

 

[JonnyD]

I did. It's effective for vocabulary, but it involves very repetitive work and it won't help much with pronunciation.

 

[qtlaw]

I'm not bilingual but the biggest key to learning and retaining it is using it daily. You're going to need to use it nearly every day otherwise you'll lose it fast.

I remember when I studied Mandarin in college, not the easiest language, but it was so fun and we had conversational labs 3 times a week I think, maybe every day. It was a wonderful experience, I could read signs with my mom in Chinatown. But once I stopped taking it? Gone. in a hearbeat. One of my biggest regrets.

If you're going to do it, I wish you all the best.

 

[BTExpress]

Has anyone use Rosetta Stone?

I do. The good: there is no English seen or spoken. You associate foreign words and phrases with pictures.

The bad: Doing it this way means you learn no grammar. I agree grammar tables can be tedious, but it's good to know what rule governs a noun or verb changing the way it does.

The good: Gives you continuous positive reinforcement when you associate the right phrase with the picture shown.

The bad: It's too easy. Oftentimes you will know which phrase to use simply because it begins "The man . . . " whereas the other two photos do not have a single man in them. You can understand nothing else in the sentence but still pick the right one simply by knowing what the subject is.

There are pronunciation exercises (you can adjust the flexibility of what it will accept as "correct" in your pronunciation. But some languages just have difficult consonant combinations.

To say "He's standing by the doors" in Russian you would say "On stoyeet v dveryakh". Impossible, I say. Easy, says wife.

 

[Brooklyn Bridge]

I would say that any of the Romance Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese, would be the easiest to learn. There are a lot of similarities and English has borrowed a lot of words and phrases that you would recognize.

Chinese is a tonal language and would be very difficult to learn at an older age.
I would imagine Arabic is harder because of the different alphabet.

I have started to take up some French and I just got a bunch of elementary-level books (numbers, counting, seasons) and went from there. I read websites in French and watch as much as I can in French.

Checkout meetup.com. I found a local French group there that meets twice a month where the whole evening is in French. You get to meet some interesting people as well...There are people from Quebec, Ivory Coast, France and obviously some Americans.

 

[bydesign77]

There was a cheaper version of RS at sams the other day. Picked up Italian. Doing ok right now.

 

[NoOneLikesUs]

I used to listen to the Pimsleur audio series in the car driving back and forth to work. Wasn't really dedicated to learning just one language, so I would mess around with various programs just for ****s and giggles. I did various portions of Dutch, Croatian, Russian, Arabic as well as French and Spanish for refreshers. Basically I would listen to the programs until I got bored with them, but I have to say I feel confident that I retained 80 percent of what I learned (and that was years ago). As far as pronunciation is concerned, I garnered a few compliments from those native speakers who I have tried to talk to.

If you're dedicated, you might want to give Pimsleur a try. If anything, it trains you to think about learning a language in a different way. Perhaps a more natural state, but whatever it is it's probably the best verbal program I've heard. Grammar will have to be learned elsewhere though.

Also try livemocha.com. It's a free program and there's a lot of interaction with native speakers.