Learning a 2nd language

Finding it crazy hard. Who else knows, or is learning, a second language?? (or 3rd or 4th or 8th?)

[tommysize1]

ive been thinking about it.
gonna wait untill i move out again though.
its like £500 for a rosetta stone.

i guess its easier if your in a group, rather than learning alone.

i cant decide on a language either. the only place i reallywant to visit someday is tokyo. but japanese looks impossible plus how much chance would i get to practice?! not much i bet. so im gonna go for a european language.

maybe spanish cos the girls are so hot!
maybe french cos its cheap & easy to go there
maybe german cos people say its not too hard.... and i know a german person!

what language are you learning? and why?

lol I'm trying to learn Japanese. Although at the moment I'm trying to learn how you'd learn japanese first!!!

It's common for folk to say English is one of the hardest languages to learn. It doesn't seem like it, in fact it looks like every other language is hard, but I was sitting on the bus thinking how you'd explain english stuff....and it was confusing! I think it works the other way, that once you learn English, the other languages are gonna be completely alien to you.

I also wanted to learn spanish some time ago, and have a huge bunch of books under my bed, but it's hard to me to know what to learn and how to go about it. Yes I lack discipline.

However, what's interesting about Japanese is that there's 3 sorts of alphabets. 2 have roughly 46 characters(that can further be combined) and are phonetic kind of characters. The 3rd alphabet is more about symbols, which changes pronounciation depending on context, and there's 200 basic characters to learn, and something like 9000 in grand total! They also learn polite or honorific japanese and casual or informal japanese for different situations of speaking, so that's pretty interesting too.

Of course, you don't need to read the japanese to speak it, and there's plenty of *romanized* text to help you say phrases (romanized japanese is just Japanese written out in like english text, rather than in the japanese characters).

lol I'm thinking of trying to learn the 2 shorter alphabets(Hiragana and Katakana) and the sound of Japanese before figuring out where I can get a hold of the bigger alphabet(Kanji) and how I'll learn that one.

The reason why I wanna learn a language?? I'm fascinated with being able to do it. Why japanese?? It's a challenge that's too juicy to not try.

[tommysize1]

all i can really say is join a group.

i took up piano lessons just after my 24th birthday.
id tried to learn before but either couldn't be arsed or just thought being able to play 'smoke on the water' was good enough.
taking lessons really gave me a reason to practice and i was doing quite well.
managed to play something with 2 hands doing different things within 2 months!

but i dont own a car (just an awesome motorbike) and wasnt up for riding down pitch black, bumpy as ****, mud covered roads in icy conditions so agreed with my teacher to resume our lessons on the 14th of feb! lol

well its been a few months now and i haven't properly practiced at all.
so what im trying to say is....its better to learn with somebody else...or have a teacher.
otherwise its too easy to give up.

GOODLUCK!!!!

I speak French, German and Latin all whilst I was at school. the older you are as with most things the more difficult it is.I'm also fluent in rubbish I get plenty or practise.
I really admire you taking on Japanese most be one of the most difficult to learn. If you wanted an easy language to lean try German is quite easy as many of their words a similar to English.

[roobaby]

People either have a knack for learning languages or not. I speak quite a few, some more fluently than others. Never learnt Japanese but have a smattering of Arabic of sorts. I can read Latin, not sure I have ever had the need to speak it but it does help you figure out English. But honestly, you only learn the language after you have to speak it every day. What always gets me is that people say I speak German/ Italian/ Portugese/ French/ Spanish with an Australian accent! Haven't they heard the song Whatsa matter you, gotta no respect.................shadduppa ya face?! English with an Italian accent! I rest my case!

Learning my 3rd, Spanish.

Just go to google and search for "pimsleur 'language' torrent".
For example ; pimsleur spanish torrent.

Pimsleur is the best method to learn how to speak/understand a language, but not for writing it.

Well i',m not bad at french but that was forced upon me.

I started learning Greek, which was fun, i had one of those cds that you just repeat. Really helped me when i went to Athens.

[sukisue]

i tried to learn me mums language took a 6 month course was hopeless so i cant pmsl it was german no a bit of french an some swear word for the gambia an a little bit of german that i can remeber so im not at all good at languages i can swear a lot pmsl

The only thing you need to know in German is :- Zwei weltkriege und eine welttasse............two world wars and one world cup.