Language Learners

[kishnevi]

French grammar is complicated, but it has a logic to it. The rules for verb tenses and moods, while irksome to master, are really quite logical. English suffers from the lack of a subjunctive, which has withered away over time. It's the damned gender, worse in German, that is really a pain.

Every one who has never read Mark Twain's essay on learning German, should do so at once.  I know Ken has read it, since he was using a sig line that quoted from it.
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html

Hebrew is another language that is complicated at first sight, since it's based on a totally different grammar system, in a totally different alphabet, and the inclusion, exclusion of one letter can completely change the meaning of a word.  Or even worse, one vowel, since in classical Hebrew there's no indication of vowels. 

[North Star]

Though this can be very hard to compare, since everything really depends on how much time the American would put into studying Japanese. If they studied a lot, they can learn faster; otherwise, they'll be like me and still suck after 13 years, since I've spent many years in between not studying at all. 

Ken might be having in mind the myth that some people promote: that you can just absorb a language just by being in the environment. Sure, you can to a certain extent, but unless you are an exception, you won't learn the language by being passive. A baby will learn much more than you will in the first 3 years. Many people that teach English in Japan never actually learn the language after being there a few years if they don't have time to study it when they get home, for example.

Well sure, after three years. But that was not what I was talking about. And the baby's full-time job is to learn it's mother tongue. If you moved to Japan and did practically nothing else than study Japanese, you'd learn faster, too.

I'm glad everyone picked up on this point so I didn't have to explain. 
(and the other point I didn't mention was that you have all the time in the world to look up definitions for a written word, but speech isn't quite the same, since even if you're watching something and pause it, it can be hard to understand exactly how to spell what is being said if you don't know the word in the first place).

My point was directly related to your other point - since we spend most of our time studying languages in a way where we constantly check a dictionary, we grow accustomed to needing to check the dictionary whenever we hear a new word, or just aren't sure what the word meant. If we studied in a different way, our brains might be better at filling the occasional blanks and not letting them bother.

[Florestan]

While working on my (unfinished) PhD at the Technical University of Eindhoven, I took a course in Dutch. Now, the article in Dutch has two forms: het and de, but there is no logic about them, like one being male and other female; one must learn each noun with the corresponding article by heart. I asked one of the teachers: "If this is so, why don't you people simplify it and keep just one of them?" She replied quite vexed: "We won't change our language for the sake of foreigners!" To which I replied: "Oh, but it's not for my sake at all! In a few years I'll be away from The Netherlands. I was thinking of your poor kids who must learn those damned hets and des without knowing why one or another!" Her jaw dropped instantly and she changed the topic. 

[North Star]

While working on my (unfinished) PhD at the Technical University of Eindhoven, I took a course in Dutch. Now, the article in Dutch has two forms: het and de, but there is no logic about them, like one being male and other female; one must learn each noun with the corresponding article by heart. I asked one of the teachers: "If this is so, why don't you people simplify it and keep just one of them?" She replied quite vexed: "We won't change our language for the sake of foreigners!" To which I replied: "Oh, but it's not for my sake at all! In a few years I'll be away from The Netherlands. I was thinking of your poor kids who must learn those damned hets and des without knowing why one or another!" Her jaw dropped instantly and she changed the topic. 

That is a stupid feature to have in a language, for sure.

[Ken B]

That is a stupid feature to have in a language, for sure.

Woo hoo! English has CRAZY spelling but at least it (almost) does not have FRICKIN' GENDERS.

[North Star]

Woo hoo! English has CRAZY spelling but at least it (almost) does not have FRICKIN' GENDERS.

Finnish has the best spelling by far. apart from ng, everything is always pronounced exactly as written.

[ibanezmonster]

Woo hoo! English has CRAZY spelling

Sure does.

Finnish has the best spelling by far. apart from ng, everything is always pronounced exactly as written.

And Spanish and a few other Romance languages come quite close. The only things you can get wrong with Spanish are confusing if a word is spelled with an c or s in front of a vowel or if there is a silent h in front of a vowel. Oh yeah, and Korean pretty much spells words exactly how they are sounded out.

Something tells me there are no spelling bees for Spanish, Finnish or Korean speakers (probably add to that Portuguese, Italian and several other languages). 

[North Star]

No spelling bees indeed. I haven't really studied Spanish, let alone the others, but the spelling vs. pronunciation relationship doesn't seem quite as straightforward as with Finnish.

[Florestan]

Finnish has the best spelling by far. apart from ng, everything is always pronounced exactly as written.

Romanian too has a very phonetic spelling: except for x in some words, everything is always pronounced exactly as written. 

[Wanderer]

Romanian too has a very phonetic spelling: except for x in some words, everything is always pronounced exactly as written. 

Greek as well; with the rare exception of two specific diphthongs in some very isolated cases.

[ibanezmonster]

hmmm... I'm a bit curious how good other natively English speaking countries are at foreign languages... namely, the UK countries, Australia and Canada.

[Ken B]

hmmm... I'm a bit curious how good other natively English speaking countries are at foreign languages... namely, the UK countries, Australia and Canada.

1. Canada is best. This is not a claim of lingustic proficiency. It is true on any match-up of admirable or desirable traits, with any countries. 
2. All three are poor. Canada is officially bilingual; but isn't remotely in fact. Most educated Canadians have a little French. Australians of course barely speak English. 

[ibanezmonster]

1. Canada is best. This is not a claim of lingustic proficiency. It is true on any match-up of admirable or desirable traits, with any countries. 
2. All three are poor. Canada is officially bilingual; but isn't remotely in fact. Most educated Canadians have a little French. Australians of course barely speak English. 

And spending so much time in school for spelling and reading English doesn't exactly help create time for study of other languages... not that that would be the whole reason why, but it's an aspect that doesn't help at all.

[Geo Dude]

Good luck with it! What other Romance languages --- if any --- are you familiar with? It might help tremendously concerning vocabulary; the grammar, though, is in a class of its own. 

I took two years of Latin in high school and a year or so of Spanish in grade school (and Spanish is a fairly common spoken language 'round these parts), but I'd be lying if I said that I'm "familiar" with either; my only language is English.  On the other hand, the (very limited) experience with Spanish has helped with things like familiarity with the concept of gendered nouns.  It doesn't help when I see a similar word and tend to shift into Spanish pronunciation, though.

Florestan is correct, French grammar is what the Brits might call "fiddly," and presents challenges.  Just take it slow and don't expect too much too fast.  Or take it real fast (go there and go the 'total immersion' route which is more effective anyway than a gazillion classroom or study hours).  Movies and plays are a good idea to begin with but at some point soon - just a suggest - switch to viewing with French subtitles, so you can read what is being said, best way to link the two in your brain and become more self-reliant, even if you don't know all the words!

The issue--at this point at least--isn't French grammar itself, per se, it's that DuoLingo takes a largely hands-off approach to grammar.  This is great for getting straight into sentence building and vocabulary, and keeping people from getting discouraged too easily by "boring" lessons, but it doesn't work for those like me who lack a natural intuition for grammar when it comes to more advanced material.  I could try to plow through and hope to develop an intuition while getting to the "better stuff", but I made that same mistake with mathematics in the past, and it didn't end well.  So, I'll focus on the grammar books.

As for the recorded plays:  Yes, my ideal would be to watch it once with English sub-titles, then watch it with French sub-titles and keep an English translation in book form for occasional reference.  Unfortunately, finding any plays with foreign language subtitles that I can order/stream has been difficult.

Every one who has never read Mark Twain's essay on learning German, should do so at once.  I know Ken has read it, since he was using a sig line that quoted from it.
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html

Brilliant!

[Christo]

That is a stupid feature to have in a language, for sure.

Of course, it is. As is the often highly artificial distinction between 'male' and 'female' forms in Indo-European languages to your 'Uralic' ears. Isn't it? 

[North Star]

Of course, it is. As is the often highly artificial distinction between 'male' and 'female' forms in Indo-European languages to your 'Uralic' ears. Isn't it? 

[The Six]

Is there anything more comforting and satisfying than a clean poop where you don't need to wipe? It's nice and smooth, like nature intended. The Japanese, in all their wisdom, have a word for this - 快便 kaiben, defined as "pleasantly smooth defecation." We should all strive for more kaiben.

[Jo498]

But almost every civilized language has genders, even the romance languages (but confusingly only two).
Contrary to Twain, the gender assignments are not totally arbitrary. E.g. it is perfectly regular that Mädchen (girl) is grammatical neutral because all diminutives are neutral (like in Ancient Greek, I think, whereas in Latin and most romance languages they tend to keep the original gender, I guess), so there is a perfectly simple (and to my knowledge exceptionless) rule. And the diminutives are easy to spot by the "-chen" or "-lein" suffixes.

What's even better is that while mismatching the gender of an article and the noun will usually mark you as a foreigner it will only rarely contribute to serious misunderstandings. Although if you say "die Mädchen" and the context is not obvious this would mean "the girls" (plural), not the girl. (The case is confusing because a diminutive form became the standard, "Maid" exists and is properly feminine but rather archaic and restricted to fairy tales, Wagner ("Rüste dein Ross, reisige Maid") etc.

In any case, it might suck to learn to proper genders but the big exception here is English, not German. And of course English nouns *do* have genders, it only shows less frequently, but e.g. when you use personal or possesive pronouns, and most things have their "natural" genders. That ships and nation states are usually feminine can be confusing (in German the former usually are, but not the latter).

[Jo498]

Native language: German

Foreign languages:

English fluent, I have given presentations and published papers in English, although I have an accent, of course and still make some mistakes. I can read stuff like e.g. Dickens or Poe without problems.

In school I also learned Latin, Ancient Greek and for one year: Russian. I never got very far with the latter, I can still decipher the kyrillic but even this is more deciphering than reading.
In Latin, I can read grammatically easy stuff, like e.g. St Thomas Aquinas fairly fluently but I'd struggle a lot with poetry and also forgot lots of vocab. Even worse in Greek (mainly because lack of vocab, straightforward prose like e.g. Herodotus should not be too hard otherwise) but even there I can still spot check the original in a bilingual edition and I understand some words and simple headlines in modern Greek.

I learned Spanish for about two or three years in my mid-twenties and could read newspapers and do small talk, but I have not really practiced since and never spent time in a hispanic country, so I'd probably struggle even with reading beyond simplified beginner's texts and can't really speak more than basic stuff. I can read a little French and Italian, too, but never studied these languages and cannot speak more than the most basic things (I had to some years ago when a hotel receptionist refused to speak anything but French). I always plan to get some better knowledge of at least one of them because it would not be so much trouble but I probably should rather refresh Spanish first.

I'd still like to learn Russian (or another slavic language) someday but not sure if I'll ever find the time and energy for it. The grammar is just damned hard...

[arkiv]

Native language: Spanish

Learning: Portuguese and German

Would you recommend some German videos on tube?