How many languages do you know?

[Trek22]

how hard is Mandarin Chinese to learn, its a language I need to start working on soon, but I haven't yet looked at it.  (the course is $300 so it will be a bit before I buy it)

Woah, $300?  That seems a bit pricey for a beginner course.  I thought it was pretty easy to learn, personally.  It was a year in high school, so it was only the basics, but I found the grammar very easy.  Probably the problem you'll run into most is remembering the hanzi (chinese characters) And you can get some books from chinasprout.com that are MUCH cheaper than 300 bucks.

Yeah, $300 is quite expensive for a course, but I've tried books and cheap courses before for learning japanese as a hobby.  I did alright, but the books were so bland that I lost interest and didn't continue.  As for the course, it never stood a chance.  This course is from the Pimsleur Approach series and seems to come well recommended.  Especially if it is true that it is the course most used by the fbi and cia to train their agents.  A course that the gov't will turn to for a good foundational knowledge achieved quickly I would imagine is worth the price.  The entire course is audio coming with 30, 30 min lessons in the level 1 pack along with a pronunciation cd with another 8 lessons. 

It sounds like a good course though I have a biased view against the learn in 10 days or your money back crap.

If your curious at all check it at;

http://pimsleurapproach.com/learn-chinese-mandarin.asp

I will check out Chinasprout however as this course doesn't seem to teach anything concerning the hanzi, its more like a learn quickly for survival guide kind of thing.

 

[Rubberducky4u]

well my main language is english i had to learn french and german for a few years not that im very good at it.
ummm Ich spreche nicht viel Deutsches i hope thats right lol bit rusty
Je ne parle pas beaucoup francais

 

[Toams]

Dutch is my main language..
I also know English, German, French, li'l bit of Spanish, and a little bit of Italian..

 

[syphonmax]

The languages I now know are:

French (not very fluent yet)
Swahili (Fluent - I was born in Zanzibar)
English (Fluent DuH)
Japanese (Actually really good)
Spanish (Not very fluent yet)
Arabic (Fluent)

O_o wow I feel like I wasted my time :tongue: I'm half German and I didn't even try and learn the language yet >_< 

 

[CatKeyz]

Yo no hablo o escribe espanol!... Except maybe a couple of words here and there. (Veintiuno, or somewhere around that number.)

Pronouncing "rr" is kinda hard. BTW, are you supposed to "roll" the "rr" by vibrating the tip of your tongue against the gumline, or vibrating it against the roof of your mouth, or by vibrating your throat itself?

 

[kumoKami]

Only English and Hebrew :c

 

[syphonmax]

Pronouncing "rr" is kinda hard. BTW, are you supposed to "roll" the "rr" by vibrating the tip of your tongue against the gumline, or vibrating it against the roof of your mouth, or by vibrating your throat itself?

I pronounce it by rolling it on the top of my mouth but my aunt says you pronounce it normally she is fluent so I'll go with her

 

[CatKeyz]

Pronouncing "rr" is kinda hard. BTW, are you supposed to "roll" the "rr" by vibrating the tip of your tongue against the gumline, or vibrating it against the roof of your mouth, or by vibrating your throat itself?

I pronounce it by rolling it on the top of my mouth but my aunt says you pronounce it normally she is fluent so I'll go with her

What do you mean by "normally"? Would any of the 3 methods that I described be considered normal?

 

[Emtch]

Let's see now. My first language is Swedish, and I understand norwegian and danish (but I can't speak it). I know english too (pretty good english for a Swedish guy), and I am learning spanish, but it's really hard.

 

[syphonmax]

Pronouncing "rr" is kinda hard. BTW, are you supposed to "roll" the "rr" by vibrating the tip of your tongue against the gumline, or vibrating it against the roof of your mouth, or by vibrating your throat itself?

I pronounce it by rolling it on the top of my mouth but my aunt says you pronounce it normally she is fluent so I'll go with her

What do you mean by "normally"? Would any of the 3 methods that I described be considered normal?

well like how you would normally pronounce it in english

 

[Trek22]

Pronouncing "rr" is kinda hard. BTW, are you supposed to "roll" the "rr" by vibrating the tip of your tongue against the gumline, or vibrating it against the roof of your mouth, or by vibrating your throat itself?

I pronounce it by rolling it on the top of my mouth but my aunt says you pronounce it normally she is fluent so I'll go with her

What do you mean by "normally"? Would any of the 3 methods that I described be considered normal?

well like how you would normally pronounce it in english

There are no rr in the english language, thats why he's having the problem >.>

 

[CatKeyz]

There are no rr in the english language, thats why he's having the problem >.>

Exactly! And the "single r" is pronounced by rolling as well, if it starts a word, otherwise it sounds like a "d"...

So if I'm understanding this correctly, neither one of them is ever pronounced the same as in English? I'll probably have to research more about this on the web; I just don't feel like it.

I've been making the "d-d-d-d-d-d" machine-gun sound with my tongue-tip against my upper gumline to produce the letters "rr"..... To produce the "d" sound for the single letter "r" I simply cut off after one tongue click. But is it correct to do this???

 

[___]

@OP: English... C, C++, PHP... ah, right, right, natural languages.  I know, I talk about how it's good for people to learn other languages all the time, it expands your mental tools, gives you new ways to think about old ideas.  I learned a bunch of programming languages, now I have a habit of thinking of things in terms of algorithmic expressions, content tags, objects and nested blocks.  You should see how many parentheses my typical post has before I edit it; but I digress.

if (languages < 2) languages++;

 

[CERU]

1.25

English, Japanese

Fun Fact: If you're learning Japanese from Anime, you're probably doing it wrong.

 

[syphonmax]

Yep CERU that's right learning japanese from anime doesn't help :tongue:

 

[Nachos]

English, Spanish.. I can speak, normally both languages.. and ofcourse Italian.

little portuguese ,, i can read and translate

and understan a little , very littel german.

 

[Me(tm)]

Can read, speak and write: English, Dutch, German, French, Acient Latin. Although the last one is hard to write and we don't know exactly how it's spoken and I need a dictionary for many words.
Can read: Little bit Acient Greek, very little Greek, bit Esperanto.

Can understand parts of Spanish and Italian and very little of Russian.

 

[Dalton]

First language: German.
So I can comprehend some Dutch when its thrown at me...
Also I speak english.
I just started to learn japanese.

 

[CERU]

Yep CERU that's right learning japanese from anime doesn't help :tongue:

It hurts. Basically, Japanese is the one language you shouldn't start off my trying to learn yourself. ._.;;

 

[syphonmax]

lol I was invited to University to go learn Japanese it was so awesom