Right now, I speak English, Spanish, Italian, and Creole (Haiti). I've always wanted to learn French. In the future, I'd also like to learn Japanese. They are expensive but if you want to learn a language and can't get a private tutor or attend a school, you could try Pimsleur language learning programs. They're great. In fact, I taught myself Italian using it. You won't be writing prose poetry but I've fooled native Italians with my natural-sounding accent. Back to French.. what a tough language! The accent is very tough to acquire if you're not used to it. But speaking it, I feel lofty and refined. It just sounds so pretty. :rofl :ashamed001
Japanese is on a whole different level than the European romance languages.. it is nearly impossible to learn without a tutor or teacher sadly since there are so many nuances that are things you need people to talk to to pick up. Makes my head spin for sure.. but it's a great language.
lol.. I am glad to hear that. I know people who have tried and that like.. always turns ugly. Good luck if you ever get around to trying it.
Without revealing too much, there is a possibility I might be receiving a post in Japan and moving there next year. No sure thing yet.. but better then no chance at all.
I'm Israeli, my parents emigrated to Israel from Ukraine. I studied mostly in French, in fact, I have much more fluency in French than in English. I find that French however, is not an easy language for most people to start learning later in life. I'm also fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, German, Greek, Spanish, Italian, and about 90% fluent in English.
The main difficulty in learning a language is the difference in grammar and syntax between the mother language and the acquired one. For instance, it is harder for an English to learn Japanese than German, but inversely, it is quite hard for a Japanese to learn English or French. Japanese is not harder than French per se.
I'm very impressed!:: Not to open up a can of worms but many Americans rather you learn English than they learn your language as well as English. I'm 24 and still have plenty of time to learn more languages. Still, I would've loved to learn them since young. There's this battle going throughout school districts in the country. Some people want kids to learn more than one language in early grades. Others feel "This is America. We speak English." Learning more than one language as a child has only heightened language skills in all the languages learned. A 4 year-old doesn't see it as difficult because to him/her, they don't know anything else and this is just how it is. An adult, already with an alphabet and accent in mind, would have a harder time.
Je suis trop vieux pour apprendre une nouvelle langue à moins que je n'aie juste à. Par exemple si j'ai été piégé quelque part et ai dû apprendre. J'utilise la traduction en ligne libre si besoin il y a mais cela ne passe pas toujours correctement donc je ne saurai jamais probablement que j'ai dit. Mes égards à ceux de vous qui êtes multilingues.
I'll echo the comment about children learning so much easier. It is also a problem here in North America that proper grammar is really not taught all that well any more. It is covered but to the point where most people forget as they reach adulthood. I watched that show "Are you smarter than a 5th Grader" which while not the best example of human intelligence around it is just flabbergasting how many of these people get the most basic questions wrong, and grammar is one of the 'hardest' one it seems. Just to cover myself, there are ALWAYS exceptions... like most of the company here!
Yeah, it is not overly effective to be honest though it is decent as a compliment to a language program.
