Personal Quest to Learn Over 20 Languages — Page 2

Being completely immersed in a different language is an interesting experience. I was only in Quebec for a few days, since we went through to New Brunswick and are touring the Maritime provinces now, but I can tell it's going to be quite difficult. I wish I had had more time to do some hardcore studying with regards to French (we left about a month after we began serious discussion about going to Quebec).

J'apprend le français rapidement, mais c'est un beaucoup de travail. :P

Twister, comment est ton français?

Si tu veux pratiquer, je suis ici chaque soir. :)

My French is coming along. I can understand roughly twice as much as I could when I first got to Québec. I'm working through 1984 in French (without translating anything I read in my head), and so far, by supplementing what I actually understand with what I remember from reading it in English, I can understand most of it.

Très bien! J'ai besoin le pratique aussi maintenant, mais je pourrai aider tu dans le futur, après j'apprend davantage de français. As-tu essayé utiliser Duolingo.com pour apprendre le français et autres langues?

Duolingo is a good site because it gets you to review lessons every once in a while (it isn't mandatory, however, so you aren't stuck reviewing when you don't have to. It's just helpful that it keeps track, based on what you get wrong and how long it's been since you've used certain vocabulary). It has a different approach than many sites in that, aside from sometimes having a grammar lesson for a unit, it doesn't specifically teach you before testing you. You're able to hover over the words during each lesson (unless you choose to take a test to challenge a unit) and see possible definitions for the word. New words are highlighted for you, and there is audio along with writing, etc. If you aren't already using it, I recommend you check it out. :)

A note on French punctuation:

In French, it is mandatory to put a space before a question mark, exclamation mark, colon, semicolon, parenthesis, etc. For example:

1. C'est vrai !

2. Pourquoi ?

3. Utilise l'infinitif après le mot « veux », comme ça :

« Je veux utiliser ton crayon. »

I point out this particular rule because it isn't readily apparent when you're reading and learning French, and if you want to do it right, which I'm sure you do, it's good to know (I imagine many native French speakers neglect that rule, but as all published work seems to follow the spacing rules, it's obviously more correct).

EDIT: An oddly specific grammar note by me...

RicOlie_2 said:

I doubt I'll get far, since I don't have enough specific goals, but I also want to learn the following languages:

French (I can have a simple conversation and read a bit.)

Spanish

Latin (I know some basic vocabulary as well as the conjugations of two verb families and I can decline all five declensions.)

Hebrew

Greek

Arabic (I know the alphabet, but that's it.)

German

 To add to and update this list:

I can understand roughly 90% of what I read in French, though only about 50% of what I hear. Writing is more challenging, with speaking being even more so. I recite an ever-expanding list of French words and their English translations every night. It currently runs at about 900 words. This has greatly boosted my reading level, and I think it's been worth it, despite it taking close to 25 minutes.

I've begun learning Brazilian Portuguese, as a couple of my friends at school come from there, and I figured that this was probably the best time to learn, since I can hear native speakers speaking it everyday.

I'm also working on learning the International Phonetic Alphabet. In doing so, I discovered that the letters D and T are pronounced slightly differently in the Romance languages than in English: in English, most speakers use the tip of their tongue, but in the Romance languages, they use the blade of their tongue (i.e. they flatten out the tip a wee bit and press it to the top of their mouth). With this discovery, I'm finally able to pronounce French words like "mordre" and "perdre" as one syllable, rather than two. :)

I've been trying to improve my knowledge of the spoken language by reading up on various English dialects. I can hear the difference between modern and traditional RP, which I'm pretty happy with, but matching the names of most dialects with the speech is a bit tricky.

To add to my language learning list:

Old English

Middle English

possibly Old and Middle French

Italian

BTW, Twister, I don't know if you've found Duolingo yet, but it's a pretty good learning site. It doesn't teach pronunciation terribly well, but it's fantastic for practice and learning words.

Gosh, my French was terrible at the beginning of this year. :P Because I'm obsessive compulsive about such things, I'm going to fix my errors:

RicOlie_2 said:

J'apprend le français rapidement, mais c'est un beaucoup de travail. :P

RicOlie_2 said:

Si tu veux pratiquer, je suis ici là chaque soir. :)

RicOlie_2 said:

Très bien ! J'ai aussi besoin le de la pratique aussi maintenant, mais je pourrai  t'aider tu dans le futur, après j'apprend davantage plus de français. As-tu essayé d'utiliser Duolingo.com pour apprendre le français et d'autres langues ?

You haven't been spending much time on OT.com, Twister, but if you do, I'd love to converse more in this thread, as I have similar goals to you.

I have made much progress in learning French, and though I don't consider myself fully bilingual, I know enough that I am comfortable reading novels in French, and I can understand nearly everything I listen to.

I've also advanced a bit in my Portuguese learning, though not very far, and have just begun Spanish.

I've also learned the IPA, which has aided me greatly in my pronunciation.

EDIT: I've kind of taken over this thread. :P I was hoping Twister would respond more, given that this is her thread.

twister111 said:

RicOlie_2 said:

You haven't been spending much time on OT.com, Twister, but if you do, I'd love to converse more in this thread, as I have similar goals to you.

Desole. Je regrette mon absence ici. J'ai ete tres occupe. Je vais essayer repondre plus bientot.

 C'est correct. :) I know of some websites that may help you with several of the languages you're learning, (eventually even Klingon, which is set to be included on one of those sites).

Votre français est très bon, mais il y a des petites erreurs (je ne compte pas le manque d'accents, qui est sûrement la faute de votre clavier). « Occupé » devrait être « occupée », car vous êtes une femme, et donc vous devez utiliser la forme feminine des adjectifs (pour décrire vous-même). De plus, « essayer répondre » devrait être « essayer de répondre », comme seulement certaines verbes peuvent être immédiatement suivies d'un infinitif.

I can't promise that my own French is entirely free from error, but I can assure you that my spelling and conjugation is better than that of most francophones my age. ;)

"Tu" is indeed the second person singular, but in French, the plural, "vous" is used unless you are familiar with the person. Since I don't really know Twister, it's somewhat impolite to use "tu", unless she prefers that I do. Someone significantly older than myself could use the "tu" form without being considered impolite, and teenagers/children can also use it with anyone their age or younger (at least in Québec).

Is the distinction strictly singular/plural in Italian?

Interesting, and good to know that the "tu" form is used over Internet forums. Not having interacted on a French forum, I assumed one would use "vous" automatically. I also didn't know that it was normal for younger adults to use "tu" right of the bat, since, not being an adult myself, I usually use "vous" with adults and expect them to use "tu".

The situation is further complicated by the tutoiment/vouvoiment varying with dialect. In Québec, for instance, "tu" is used more frequently with teachers than in France, and I've never heard a teacher address a student with "vous."

I'm sorry to hear that. Well, whenever you get back on track with your language goals, let me know.

This won't help you with Japanese, but there are a couple sites I recommend, which you may or may not have come across:

Forvo.com has the pronunciation of words in many languages by native speakers (with their location listed so you can compare dialects, if you want, or make sure you're being consistent).

Duolingo, which I've mentioned before in this thread, and elaborated on, has the following courses from English (languages you have on your list are in bold):

Spanish
French
German
Italian
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Dutch
Irish
Swedish
Danish
Turkish
Norwegian (Bokmål)
Esperanto
Ukranian

The following language courses are in various stages of creation:

Hungarian
Russian
Vietnamese
Romanian
Polish
Hebrew
Klingon

You can take a placement test, so unlike some language-learning sites, you don't have to start from the beginning.

And if you haven't, I strongly suggest learning the IPA if you want to improve your pronunciation. I learned it over the course of a year, in between French lessons, and it really helped my French pronunciation, since I learned things my non-native ear wouldn't have otherwise picked up.