Re: Non-English languages
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Kenneth Porter wrote: ...snip... > > To those of you who've successfully learned 2nd and 3rd languages as an > adult, what do you recommend for accomplishing that? Kenneth, I started learning Japanese when I was 30. (I feel so old saying it like that) ... anyways, I started with a "teach yourself Japanese" book and a computer program to help. after that I took courses after work at my local community college. *THEN* I moved to Japan and really started to learn :p Anyways, I've learned a number of programming languages since I was young. I applied the same techniques to learning Japanese (specifically with reading/writing (or typing as the case may be)) and made sure I had good reference materials handy. also, I got involved with the Japanese communities on iVisit which helped a lot too. alan -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFEQ06tE2gsBSKjZHQRAutxAJ0SrBAWtgkt5fNVQdYG4VGGAMaXuACg4XrN 1kPOs6ScAZ3Gieb/sG323R8= =Twyl -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Non-English languages (was: xxxl spam)
On Thu, 2006-04-13 at 23:38, John Rudd wrote: > And, reiterating Kenneth's question: Anyone have advice for an almost > middle-aged person who wants to go about expanding his natural language > capabilities? There was an article in Newsweek a few weeks back about language immersion vacations. Here's the related msnbc sto: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11481528/ -Roger
Re: Non-English languages (was: xxxl spam)
[2006-04-14 06:46:51] Kenneth Porter, KP> To those of you who've successfully learned 2nd and 3rd languages as an KP> adult, what do you recommend for accomplishing that? As soon as you finish the basic/intermediate courses, find a penpal, or more than one, as soon as you can. With the Internet it's quite easy. A friend of mine picks out foreign people willing to learn Italian and they help each other this way. There are websites set up for this, if I'm not mistaken. Practising really helps. Cordialità / Best regards / Gxis la Manuel Giorgini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Programmatore INTERLOGICA e-business solutions - http://www.interlogica.net Via Fusinato, 27 - IT 30171 Mestre VE - Italia - Unione Europea Tel +39 041 099 30 00 (6 linee r.a.) - Fax +39 041 504 11 72
Re: Non-English languages (was: xxxl spam)
On Freitag, 14. April 2006 06:46 Kenneth Porter wrote: > To those of you who've successfully learned 2nd and 3rd languages as > an adult, what do you recommend for accomplishing that? There are books called "Assimil", because you just assimilate the language with them, learning in a very natural way by speaking full sentences from the beginning. It looks very complicated first, but is really quite easy then. I've managed to learn greek in a very short time with it, and now I'm struggling with french (which is quite hard though). http://www.assimil.com/ mfg zmi -- // Michael Monnerie, Ing.BSc- http://it-management.at // Tel: 0660/4156531 .network.your.ideas. // PGP Key: "lynx -source http://zmi.at/zmi3.asc | gpg --import" // Fingerprint: 44A3 C1EC B71E C71A B4C2 9AA6 C818 847C 55CB A4EE // Keyserver: www.keyserver.net Key-ID: 0x55CBA4EE pgpKoEMvVF1dI.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Non-English languages (was: xxxl spam)
[2006-04-14 08:38:46] John Rudd, I wish to start by greeting the list; I am a recent addition and I have been lurking for the past two weeks. You guys already make enough traffic. :-) JR> And, reiterating Kenneth's question: Anyone have advice for an almost JR> middle-aged person who wants to go about expanding his natural language JR> capabilities? I am an Esperanto speaker. There are many reasons to give it a try. These are pretty much universally accepted: For one, it's quite simple to learn, for those who already know an indo-european language; after a couple months you'll be able to sustain a decent conversation. It also helps recognizing and understanding other languages. There have been experiments on this. There are also social and personal reasons. I won't enter into this, though. If you are really interested you'll find them out by yourself. I will only say that I found the language really intriguing, very expressing, and fun. A few pointers, http://www.esperanto.se/dok/praguemanifesto.html http://www.lernu.net Cordialità / Best regards / Gxis la Manuel Giorgini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Programmatore INTERLOGICA e-business solutions - http://www.interlogica.net Via Fusinato, 27 - IT 30171 Mestre VE - Italia - Unione Europea Tel +39 041 099 30 00 (6 linee r.a.) - Fax +39 041 504 11 72
Re: Non-English languages (was: xxxl spam)
On Thu, 2006-04-13 at 23:38, John Rudd wrote: > And, reiterating Kenneth's question: Anyone have advice for an almost > middle-aged person who wants to go about expanding his natural language > capabilities? There was an article in Newsweek a few weeks back about language immersion vacations. Here's the related msnbc story: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11481528/ -Roger
Re: Non-English languages
Kenneth Porter wrote: >the classes dragged so incredibly slowly that I learned just a little >vocabulary and the most basic of grammar, and still led the class. I >usually finished my physics homework in that class while waiting for >everyone to catch up. > >As a programmer I envy my professional peers who can speak Japanese and >other non-European languages. My interest in programming languages extends >to natural languages, and I find their differences fascinating. > >To those of you who've successfully learned 2nd and 3rd languages as an >adult, what do you recommend for accomplishing that? > > > Same here. I took a couple years of high school Spanish in California and Comic books. Or "bande dessinee" as it's called in French. The story lines are often simple, and the pictures give a lot of context to what is being talked about. -Philip
Re: Non-English languages (was: xxxl spam)
On Apr 13, 2006, at 9:46 PM, Kenneth Porter wrote: On Thursday, April 13, 2006 10:32 PM -0600 "Paul R. Ganci" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Unfortunately I am still a linguistic idiot and only speak English ... a Buffalo, NY version at that! My grand parents came over from Italy in 1920 and promptly stopped speaking Italian around my parents. It forced my parents to learn English at the cost of never learning Italian. There is plently of room to accomodate two languages but neither the US education system or home life is set up to do it. Same here. I took a couple years of high school Spanish in California and the classes dragged so incredibly slowly that I learned just a little vocabulary and the most basic of grammar, and still led the class. I usually finished my physics homework in that class while waiting for everyone to catch up. As a programmer I envy my professional peers who can speak Japanese and other non-European languages. My interest in programming languages extends to natural languages, and I find their differences fascinating. To those of you who've successfully learned 2nd and 3rd languages as an adult, what do you recommend for accomplishing that? I wish I had stuck with German in HS. And I wish I had taken the time to learn Latin and/or Greek back when I had all of that free time on my hands in HS. These days, it seems like everyone* ought to know (in addition to English) Spanish, and then a choice of French, Chinese, or Japanese. (* in the US, I don't mean globally; globally, I'd probably say that we should all know 3 out of those 5, but that's just me making wild-a*s-suggestions for a world that doesn't care about my opinion ;-) ) And, reiterating Kenneth's question: Anyone have advice for an almost middle-aged person who wants to go about expanding his natural language capabilities? (Hmm.. that's probably a dumb question for me.. I think all of those are taught at the university where I work... and can take free classes; could add Italian, Latin, and Greek too...; still for everyone who doesn't work for a University, but who has a similar thought, it's a good question to ponder)
