Study New Languages

About 6 years ago I set out to improve my Spanish language knowledge and skills. I had taken Spanish in High School, but what little I learned there had faded and my understanding of spoken Spanish was minimal (at best.) I set out with several approaches to learning and now in retrospect I see what I SHOULD have been doing. To start out, here is what I DID at the time. I started reading to pick up vocabulary. I forced myself through books that I was familiar with in English after completing some early dual language readers. I didn’t let myself stop and look up every single word I just forced myself to keep going and the ones that were more common I would look up. Here’s what I should have done.

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This site has some good 1st hand comparative difficulty of the more common Romance languages: French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. It seems as though there’s an ongoing debate over whether French or Spanish is an easier language to learn. I’ve seen and heard arguments each way. One argument is along the lines that Spanish has easier orthography (it’s easier to learn how to pronounce a word from it’s spelling and spell from hearing it.) But, the subjunctive tense is more challenging. French pronunciation is more complicated, but once you get past that the advanced stages get simpler.

Here’s what I think….

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Not too long ago I noticed some visits to this site for the search term New Language and got to looking at Googles Insights for Search to find out that every December there is a big spike in searches for the term New Language. The only thing I could figure out is that people are thinking about what their New Years Resolutions might be. The end of one year and beginning of another is a great time to analyze where we are in our lives and where we want to be. If learning a new language is one of those things you want to do, then make sure you set realistic expectations for yourself. There is no “magic formula” to learn a language overnight. It takes time and effort and that time and effort depends on the individual. If you’re thinking ahead to your summer travel plans, now is a good time to start getting into a “crash course” to have some basic travel phrases before summer vacations. Either way, good luck and please bookmark this site to come back as we’re adding more information here all the time!

I just found this fantastic listing of free language courses online. It covers the “big” languages as well as the less well known… from Abenaki to Xhosa. For many languages there are multiple entries.

I’m not quite sure what to think of this idea. I was checking out traffic logs and saw visits from a [new languages] search, so I did a google search for [new languages] and along the with sites I saw a sponsored ad for esata…. Here’s the ad text:

Esata – a new language
a personal international language
close to English close to the world
www.beginnersgame.com/esata

So, what is it? Well….

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One of the things about the internet is that it makes almost any language available to you. It’s possible to study some of the more obscure languages from any internet connected computer. But how should you choose a language to study? I think the first language you study should be one that will be most useful and the easiest to work into your day to day routine.

What does this mean?

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I don’t recall what I was searching for now… I think I was looking for information about foreign language content on joost.com. Anyway, I ran across this great PDF on using foreign language web content for language learning (Post title here is the same as the article title. It’s adapted from her Masters thesis which was available in full at http://www.ineedpractice.com/thesis.pdf, but now that domain seems to be unreachable. There are a few good links and comments on the several kinds of online media we now have access to. Radio, TV, newsprint available in many languages. The great thing about news is when you do have stories that get reported around the world you get a similar context to try and view the language you’re studying in relation to. Anyway, thought it might be of interest here.

Do you want to learn a language in countries where that language is spoken as a native language? You might want to consider browsing eurolanguages.com. They have a great listing of language courses in the countries that the languages are spoken. Currently they have listings for English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German and Polish courses but the site owner tells me that Russian will be added soon as well.

This is a great way for those that are interested in a true immersion experience.

My daily routine varies, but here’s how and when I usually try to work language learning into my schedule.  In the mornings one of my first tasks is to check email and update on overnight news.  While doing this I work through my vocabulary list in Mnemosyne.  Currently I’m getting about 140 or so cards each day and I’m try to add new cards at a slow enough pace so that doesn’t grow to over 200.  If I’m working at home I usually have the news on, so these days that means CNN en Español.  If I’m driving or walking during the day, usually I listen to my mp3 player (NexIA).  On there I’ve got a good deal of news programs in Spanish, Spanish language music and some of Family Radio’s Spanish language programs.

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This is certainly an unusual news story, but I stumbled across it this evening and though it was interesting and worth posting here.  Apparently after a brain injury, a Seattle area woman now speaks with what sounds like a foreign accent. On reading the article it sounds as though her speech changes at times. It’s not consistent. Sometimes she doesn’t speak, sometimes just jibberish and the rest of the time it sounds as though she has a European accent.

Interesting.