Learning to speak another language

Factual Questions
1

I am intersted in learning to speak another language besides English. I took a little Spanish in high school, but I really wasn’t interested in Spanish culture or anything so I didn’t enjoy it much. I was thinking that German or Deutsch would be interesting. How difficult are these languages and would it be necessary for me to take a college course for these? (I am currently in college so it wouldn’t be that big of a deal to do so.) Does anyone know of any good websites that have information about learning any languages?

I was thinking it would be difficult to do without some kind of audio as I barely even know how German or Deutsch should sound. Any advice would be appreciated.

2

Do you mean “German or Dutch,” or “German or German?”

Take a class in college. Learning a new language can be difficult and frustrating, but hundreds of millions – if not billions – of people learn to speak more than one language. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. You can, too, if you are motivated and have decent instruction. Learning by tapes or a website should be your last option.

3

As a rule of thumb, all languages are equally difficult in theory. What is important is how close they are to your native language. Dutch and German are very close to English, so they should be relatively easy. :slight_smile: Seriously, I think that especially the difficulty of German is absolutely overrated.

I would say that you should at least get in touch with a group speaking German, but if you are in college and have access to free professional courses, I would definitely use them.

4

Here’s the only still-active of the links I was using when I was trying to learn German to read the technical manuals for the machines in the chocolate factory I worked in.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=free+german+lesson

This google search reveals some pages that might help, including a BBC page:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/german/index.shtml

And, as pointed out above, “Deutsch” is the German-language word for “German”. Germany is “Deutschland”. Dutch is a similar-enough language (from what I can tell), mind you, but I think it’s only anglophones that call it anything but ‘Nederlands’ or ‘neerlandais’ or such.

5

If you are monolingual and just want to taste what learning another language is like, I recommend a look at Esperanto.

Espernato is quite regular (very few exceptions to the rules), phonetically-spelt, and will get you to a level where you can read things and experience a bit of bilinguality much more quickly than other languages (sorry about that rule of thumb, kellner :slight_smile: ). There are plenty of resources on the net for exploring it.

If you have reasons for learning a specific language (relatives or SO who speak it, usefulness in a career, etc), by all means go for it.

6

I’ve heard it said that Spanish is one of the easiest languages for native English speakers to learn. German is a bit more tricky, but I, too, would say that its difficulty is overstated.

German can be strange for English speakers because it, like many other languages (Latin and Slavic languages come to mind), has a system of cases, plus three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. This confuses a lot of English speakers. When learning a new language, do not try to make it conform to your native language. Do not try to think in your native language. Simply accept the rules for what they are. I find that overthinking grammar causes more problems than it solves.

But the only way to seriously learn is to start speaking. I find that books, for 95% of people, do very little for language acquisition at an absolute beginning level. You will learn much quicker, more naturally, and retain more by speaking. I cannot stress this enough. Do as kellner suggested: find a local language club or, if you have access to lessons, take them.

I studied German for three months, twice a week, and am able to communicate with native speakers well enough to be understood and well enough to understand. My German is crap, my grammar is awful, but after a short time I was able to communicate effectively enough. I think most English speakers should be able to reach that level of basic German in about the same time. It really isn’t THAT difficult if you go with the flow.

7

Arabic is hard but great for expressing anger/swearing/letting off steam. In fact nearly all of the dozen or so Arabic phrases I know are obscenities :wink:

Italian is a nice language and relatively easy to learn.

8

Apart from colleges, some countries have cultural centers offering courses in their languages (France has the “Alliance Française”, for instance, and I began learning arabic at the cultural center of the Egyptian embassy in France).
Another option would be to use tapes/books and a tutor (for instance a student native from the country you want to learn the language of who has a good grasp of grammar, for instance who studied to become the german equivalent of an ESL teacher). This arrangement allow for more flexibility and also means that you’ll be the only student and wil be able to practice a lot. Actually, that would be my prefered solution.
As you noted, not only it would be difficult, but even impossible to learn a language without audio. You would be unable to pronounce it.
As for German, I wouldn’t know, not knowing it. It has the reputation of being a relatively difficult language, because it has declensions (cases). Now, many languages have these cases, or other difficulties. I would nevertheless suppose it’s more difficult than spanish, which is an easy language to learn because it’s pronounced the way it’s written (contrarily to english of french, for instance).

9

German isn’t too bad to learn - having already gone through some Spanish in high school, you should have an understanding of things like the progression of tenses, gender and so on. German pronounciation rules are very straightforward. Almost all languages have things like cases and declensions, just some have simplified them over the years.

Your budget is the only limit. The cheapest thing to do is buy a book/tape/cd and work from there, maybe with German for Dummies or Idiots or whatever. Beyond that maybe there is a community college or adult education course that might be interesting.

I have seen some places where they offer a weekend immersion in a new language. You go to some hotel for a weekend and they only yabber in French or whatever, the theory being you will pick up enough to travel - how much, where is, thank you and so on.

10

In my experience (I studied it for 5 years), German is a very difficult language to learn to speak well. Never mind how closely related to English it is - that is not a good guide to how easy you will find it. For what it’s worth, Dutch is a significantly easier language to learn (although in practice, that depends on availability of resources).

The reason German is so hard to learn to speak well (although quite easy to learn to speak badly), is that if you don’t correctly identify (i.e. guess) whether a noun is masculine, feminine or neuter, then the adjective endings and the form of the article will all be wrong. Very noticeably wrong, more so than in French or Spanish. In addition, you don’t readily learn by hearing - you hear “der Maschine”, but that doesn’t mean that “Maschine” is masculine (“der”); actually it is feminine (“die”) but here in the dative case. In French, once you hear “la machine”, you know it’s feminine, end of story, same in Spanish (la máquina). Plurals are also more difficult in German than any other language I can think of.

The end result is that you can study it for years, and still not be confident of being able to speak it correctly.

11

Spanish major here, conversant in French, currently using all my electives on Chinese. I gotta say - don’t even bother trying to teach yourself. If you have a solid background in foreign languages, and you really will remain motivated, it’s a great idea. But most people don’t have the motivation to undertake such a long term project on their own, and it doesn’t sound like you have the language background. Keep in mind, learning a foreign language is a process that will take years, and years, and years if you want to do it well. Hell, it’ll take a few years even to do it badly. You need contact with native or fluent speakers to develop fluency yourself since that doesn’t come from written exercises, and audio tapes are nice but they can’t correct you when you misspeak and don’t notice it (which you won’t, since being foreign you won’t be able to hear the subtleties of the foreign sounds.)

Sign up for an introductory course. German and Dutch are both apparently fairly easy (although no language is easy to learn well) though I haven’t tried either myself. Something reasonably similar to English is easier on a first time out, though.

And, as a long term piece of advice, don’t forget that learning enough to do well on the tests is not sufficient to really learn it. It’s easy to study your vocabulary enough to remember it for a few weeks and then forget it entirely. I’m spending a lot of time this summer relearning Chinese characters that I only learned well enough to earn a good grade - and that’s frustrating. Same goes for grammatical rules - you’ll forget them if you don’t learn them really, really well, and keep practicing them later.

12

If you don’t end up taking the college classes (though that would probably be the easiest and cheapest way for you to do it), check out the Goethe Institute . Organization that promotes German culture around the world. If you’re in a city they probably have an office.

Never used them myself so I can’t say how good they are, but I’ve heard they’re excellent.

13

I second this. Lessons are only the first step.

You must surround yourself with speakers of the new language. You must surround yourself with books and media in the new language. Read/listen to it every day, if even for ten minutes. This will keep it fresh in your mind. Ten minutes a day for six days has much more effect than an hour on the first day and then nothing for the next five.

I found that practicing via instant messaging was an important second step, after you’ve had enough lessons to get the basics. IMing gives you time to compose your message before you send it, yet it is much more conversational than email. Great practice.

At the same time I spent as much time as I could among speakers of my new language. My speech was halting, the result of great effort, but every day I learned something thanks to the practice.

The next hurdle was the telephone call. There were no visual or text clues. My friend had to slow right down so I could understand him. But that too got easier with time and effort.

With Esperanto, noticeably easier than most languages, it was probably a year from my first lesson to that telepnone call. But that was four years ago and I’m still adding vocabulary, and getting confused by things.

If I was taking my French courses steadily, I guess that the lessons alone would be a year, and probably another year for IMing and conversational practice, before I got to the point where I was comfortable on the phone. And that’s only for simple basic day-to-day verb tenses, etc, with a lot of exposure to French during public and high school. I don’t expect I’d ever have the fluency or accent of a native speaker.

If you’re taking German or French, and are starting from ground zero with no previous exposure to the language, I’d say it’s at least a five-year journey to basic real-world skills, if you really put effort into it.

14

Few things in life will exercise your brain box more than learning a language. It is a really time-consuming activity and very dependent on finding the right teacher and then really giving it the time it needs.

Good Luck!

(Waddya mean you are not interested in Spanish culture?)

15

Spanish major here, who just spent about 5 weeks in Querétaro, Mexico.

The only way to actually get use out of a foreign language is the use it with native speakers. I am of the philosophy that you will never become fluent without living in a culture that speaks the language. And personally, i was right. For me, i needed to be surrounded by native speakers 24/7 without hearing English (other than songs on the radio) to get my mind into the mode of thinking in the language. I can actually write it better now, because i CAN think in the language.

I’ve only had 4 semesters of the language, and about 4 classes taught in it, and i know i’ll never be up to par with speaking it fluently (enough to make a career out of my degree at this time… praise cheeses i have other skills :)) UNLESS I move to either Latin America or Spain (i would like to live in Spain).

Just note that speaking a foreign language daily is something that is a lot of work. I remember being tired and flustered trying to explain a concept. Although i did pretty well at having pretty indepth conversations with one of the teachers in the town i was living in. However, i am what would be called “Advanced High Speaking” meaning i can discuss a topic more than just describing it – i can argue my point in the language well enough to get the point across.

Even though i can speak it fairly well, i still switch genders, use false cognates, and have to think of which verb to use (it’s easier now because some are used a lot, such as the imperfect mood of tener). You REALLY have to be motivated and like a language enough. It’s not just culture that is important to like, you HAVE to like the language.

I’m not sure what you mean Spanish culture, do you mean Spanish Spanish culture, or one of the various Latin American cultures? There’s quite a variety of them to choose from. I like Spanish culture, but adore Mexican culture (because this is what i’ve been taught in my courses).

Oh and another thing, All languages DO have their complexities. One is never harder than the other (meaning there’s no scale in difficulty in general), and they all can express complex concepts equally well (some just lack specific terms), just as being more conservative doesn’t make one language older than another.

However, what is important is how close the grammar is to your own language. What makes Spanish easy for me is it uses word order rather than case to distinguish parts of the sentence (and this is what can confuse people learning German). Conversely, because English doesn’t have gender, or subjunctive verb forms (we do have a subjunctive, we just use groupings of words and helping verbs to express it), it is a tricky point for me sometimes (although the philosophy of subjunctives is pretty straightforward to me.
Oh and you have to get over the fear of making mistakes, native speakers are often just happy for you to be using their language.

16

Some random thoughts:

[ol]
[li]If you have kids or know kids or want to improve the life experience of kids, teach them a language while they’re young. I started learning French when I was 8. I loved it, and I’m convinced it helped me become smarter.[/li][li]Speak vs. Listen vs. read: Speaking is the hardest. One usually needs to live in a country of that language for some time if one wants to gain spoken fluency. Listening is nearly as difficult. Reading is the easiest, but of course audio tapes won’t teach you that![/li][li]Most audiotape/videotape/quick courses teach you enough to get by in a tourist visit. No more.[/li][li]So, what’s your goal? Learn for the sake of learning? Take at least a semester of a course that does reading, speaking, and listening. Most courses like that delve into culture as well.[/li][li]I think that German is quite close to English. That might be an advantage, or it just might confuse you more! There are some hard differences.[/li][li]On the other hand, if you can pronounce English you can do German pretty well. Same is not true for French, and French people are put off by badly pronounced French. Just a warning.[/li][li]For obvious reasons, I can’t be objective about French. I studied it in school for 7 years. I still read it with great fluency, I can speak it in a pinch. Listening to French people speak it is a big of a challenge. I do dream in French sometimes, and catch myself thinking in French.[/li][li]I like Spanish and Italian. I live in California, where lots of people speak Spanish. Spanish and Italian are quite close.[/li][li]I’ve been told that Japanese and Chinese are very hard to learn, and nearly impossible to learn to read once you’re an adult.[/li][/ol]

17

It’s extremely easy to learn a foreign language. Merely move to another country, meet a beautiful woman who speaks no English, and fall deeply, deeply in love with her.

Ah, you must excuse me…I have something in my eye…
:wink:

18

http://www.travlang.com/languages/
Best site for languages in general I’ve ever came across. Plenty of links to more specific sites too.

19

Especially if the language is a “difficult” one. I’m just back from Budapest and almost every time I sat down in a restaurant and ordered in Magyar the waiter was just floored. It really does set you apart from the tourists to speak the local language.

As for speaking like a native, I suppose I have a bit of an odd perspective. In any math department, half the people around are aliens (no, not little green men…). They speak English well enough to teach, let alone converse, but it’s still obviously not “perfect”. There are various goofs like you mentioned and the whole thing sounds a bit formalized, partially because they only know one way to say a given concept and partially because idiom is a very subtle thing and (IMHO) is the last thing to pick up.

Now, the interesting thing is that when it really comes down to it they speak “better” English than quite a few Americans. I don’t know if the same thing holds in other languages, but English is insanely bendy. Many deformations of the language still communicate the same idea, and so they’ve become acceptable, at least in local enclaves. Maybe this reflects some aspect of Anglophone culture (shades of Sapir-Whorf), but I’m willing to bet that just as few Mexicans speak “proper” Spanish as Americans speak “proper” English.

To bring this back around: I don’t anticipate ever speaking Magyar like a native, but if I can learn to speak it as well as my foreign colleagues speak English, I’ll be more than happy.

20

Well, I’ve studied German for 4 years now and French for 2, but I just finished French III (I guess that it’s true that they really do get easier after the first foreign language.) I’ve also done a little bit of Latin and Arabic, but not enough to even remember much of it… didn’t even get through all of the Arabic letters, lol. What level of speaking are you trying to get up to? Writing or speaking in German well will take lots of time, because those damn articles change for eeeeverything. And if you don’t know that in the dative case, the plurals add -en, then your sentence is wrong. People would still understand you, probably, but they’d cringe. If you’re planning on sticking with it for a couple of years, German is my hearty reccomendation.

If it’s just a semester you have to fill or something, and don’t plan on continuing, I’d go with Spanish or French.