legov Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 My Dutch has improved a lot in the last year or so. Not many meeting in English these days and I rarely need to ask what is going on. (Been here 14 years though ) I think a lot of people in the world speak Dutch but not so many that it is super useful, it does not transfer to South Africa for eg, it has too many differences. I have learnt it as I have gone along so no lessons but that means I cannot write or read it that well so I am going to college after the summer to learn it proper. My mrs who is Dutch can speak English so well I would be surprised if anybody can actually tell anymore she is not English. (I don't allow Dutch TV in my house if I am there as I do not allow adverts on my TV at any time). She also is 100% fluent in German, pretty good at French also. It seems that most Dutch people "Can just do it" when it comes to language, most say that the TV helped a lot in the early years as most of the TV programs are English with subtitles. They don't overdub the speech like the Germans do as it's a pathetic thing to do IMO. What I don't understand is how she can translate on the fly so to speak, so a translator but a lot better and faster from ENG to NED or vica versa. So not translating word for word, but will add a bit to make it more efficient. Because the languages they speak are all very closely related to each other, which makes them easy to learn, assuming you already speak at least one of them. I doubt it has anything to do with an innate ability to handle multiple languages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted July 21, 2014 VT Supporter Share Posted July 21, 2014 Thread resurrection! Seriously now thinking about learning a new language.. Spanish. Firstly, how are people getting on who are learning a new language? I think Stevo was learning Spanish? Voiny, how you getting on with your German? Also, what methods you using? Nightschool? Visual learning like Rosetta Stone? Audio learning (Pimsleur)?yeah I'm learning Spanish. I love it. It's a bit slow as its a weekly class and I feel like I'm picking it up faster than some of the rest of them. But yeah its a cool language and doesn't seem too hard to learn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ginko Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Did you learn it in school? I did French and German at school but I didn't really ever become comfortable speaking it. I feel like I might do better if I went back and tried to learn one of them now, or perhaps Spanish which I did a semester or two of. In the eleven or twelve years it's been since I was at school, I do wonder why I had so much trouble with some of the things. Some of it seems so easy now. I doubt learning another language would be easy, but maybe easier than it was when I was a teenager. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted July 21, 2014 VT Supporter Share Posted July 21, 2014 I did French at school. I did think about learning that instead but I really have no desire to speak it. I'd just be learning it for the fact that I already have some understanding of the language and I don't want that. I actually want to speak Spanish. I met some Argentinians on holiday and managed a few sentences which they at least understood what I was saying. I was hammered as well so even better 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AVFC_Hitz Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 I can speak Turkish to a fairly middling standard. Although Turkish is not a language that's useful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voinjama Posted July 21, 2014 Author Share Posted July 21, 2014 How many countries speak Turkish? 3? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
useless Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Duolingo seems like a pretty good site for help with learning a new language, quite addictive too. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8pints Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 An early form of Turkish was Ottoman Turkish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted July 21, 2014 VT Supporter Share Posted July 21, 2014 Duolingo seems like a pretty good site for help with learning a new language, quite addictive too.very good for vocab 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyh29 Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 If I can communicate to a Spanish speaking person that I've missed my stop and need to go back to Nasca and he arranges for a bus coming the other way at 2am on a desert highway to pick me and my friends up and take us to Cusco , using nothing but hand gestures and order spare ribs and Chicken in a Chinese restaurant in Beijing using nothing but gestures and animal noises then I'm fairly confident that I don't need to speak any language so I aint going to bother learning one now Ok I did get sheep's legs and frog in the Chinese restaurant but it was close enough 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drat01 Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 ...... Ok I did get sheep's legs and frog in the Chinese restaurant but it was close enough You asked him for a woolly jumper didn't you? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czechlad Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 I speak Czech, English, and Spanish. I wish to learn German as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyh29 Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 ...... Ok I did get sheep's legs and frog in the Chinese restaurant but it was close enough You asked him for a woolly jumper didn't you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villaajax Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Did you learn it in school? I did French and German at school but I didn't really ever become comfortable speaking it. I feel like I might do better if I went back and tried to learn one of them now, or perhaps Spanish which I did a semester or two of. In the eleven or twelve years it's been since I was at school, I do wonder why I had so much trouble with some of the things. Some of it seems so easy now. I doubt learning another language would be easy, but maybe easier than it was when I was a teenager. At school we were forced to do French until year 9 when we could decide to switch to German or drop them both. Having no desire to learn either language I dropped them. French lessons were just an hour in the day for a few of us to talk about football... more so than in other lessons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xela Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 I really struggled with French in school... mind you, I struggled with everything! We used the old Tricolre books, were they the standard book for the curriculum? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted July 21, 2014 VT Supporter Share Posted July 21, 2014 I didn't struggle with French. In fact I was pretty good at it. Got an A at GCSE but what I found was there was no conversational speaking taught. After 5 years of learning French several times a week every week I couldn't hold a conversation in French. I could write about my holiday or my daily routine with perfect grammar. But I couldn't speak the language 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AVFCforever1991 Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 The best way to learn any language is to live in that country for a while, my brother did a ski season in France and picked it up pretty quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lapal_fan Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 I didn't struggle with French. In fact I was pretty good at it. Got an A at GCSE but what I found was there was no conversational speaking taught. After 5 years of learning French several times a week every week I couldn't hold a conversation in French. I could write about my holiday or my daily routine with perfect grammar. But I couldn't speak the language What a **** nerd. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoelVilla Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Thread resurrection! Seriously now thinking about learning a new language.. Spanish. Firstly, how are people getting on who are learning a new language? I think Stevo was learning Spanish? Voiny, how you getting on with your German? Also, what methods you using? Nightschool? Visual learning like Rosetta Stone? Audio learning (Pimsleur)? yeah I'm learning Spanish. I love it. It's a bit slow as its a weekly class and I feel like I'm picking it up faster than some of the rest of them. But yeah its a cool language and doesn't seem too hard to learn. I did a weekly class about two years ago and it was fun to learn Spanish. Worked pretty well for me in Madrid and when I was for a week in Torrevieja. Now its kind of lost though cause with language its important to repeat. Repeat and repeat over again. Some will probably comeback if I look in the books but I probably be best of doing the class again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villaajax Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Norwegian. Because Norwegian girls. /thread That's why I picked up a few bits in Hungarian... Turns out Dutch would have been a far better option anyway... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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