retired_Rosangela carv

OK, in Spanish they pronounce certain letters (like c/z) differently depending upon the region. So they will sound different in Cataluña, AndalucÃ*a etc. Which way do you learn?

Also is there a lot of difference between Spanish and Latin American-style Spanish?

And finally how do you get so good at this:

Navarro Correas

alidog

Apart from English...

- OK-ish French, enough to get by if I was to move there.
- Basic Italian, learnt for my recent holiday there. Enough to order food, ask directions and a few conversational basics etc.
- Tiny bits of Russian, Hindi (From being over there for a month), Latin (From school) and ancient Greek (Again, from school) but not enough in any of them to be of any real, practical use - Especially as there's not too many native Latin or Ancient Greek speakers around these days.

As I said earlier in the thread I really want to learn a language properly, but have always struggled on deciding what to learn.

Anyone got any ideas on which European language (Don't fancy anything too masochistic like Chinese) might actually be of any use or are in demand right now?

bodymassindicator

The success of Rosetta and Pimsleur depend to a large degree on your personality. Personally, I'm a very visual person and remember words much easier when I've seen them spelled out. I can't for the life of me remember words I only hear, and it takes an immense amount of repetitions. Yet, once I've seen it written down I can visualize the word in my head and remember that way.

For me the Rosetta Stone and Pimsleurs didn't work too well, and neither did full immersion (I've lived in Brazil for almost a year now and still struggle with spoken language, but learn a lot by reading).

retired_assy22

Fluent Mandarin, can speak Cantonese passably well, would survive in Spain, 10 months of lessons getting me somewhere. Next step would be French, I suppose.

trotamundos

How/why are you living in Brazil Dale?

DebSchiff

I wanted to do Japanese as a free choice module this year, but it clashed with my compulsary unit. Would have been well cool.

I'm frankly ashamed at my lack of language skills, a B in GCSE French and the ability to say "the cat is on the table" in German isn't anything to be proud of imo.

(Die katze ist auf dem tisch fwiw)

teebee

Been using Pimsleur for learning Spanish.

Find it really quite good, I have had 3 lessons on the 1st course and have already picked up a few basic phrases and conversations.

Thinking about ripping it to my mp3 so I can listen to some on the way to work.

Next step, Turkish

Sarah

Hijack

Im taking German GCSE this year and Im not very good at it even though I revise and would love to get a good grade. Is there something that would help me that wouldnt cost too much?

teebee

Search google for learning tools, you will find loads of free/cheap stuff.

You can get buy a lot of good material although it will really depend on how much you want to pay.

retired_tam5868

i learned french via total immersion basically, no other choice, was out there for erasmus, before that it was horrible.

apart from that i speak some german (well, i have a gcse in it), know a bit more spanish, can understand some italian and because of work i can bizarrely actually read and understand a bit of dutch.
i really want to improve my spanish but i am just too lazy really at the moment. in theory i should improve my german as well, but i don't like it much so i doubt i will. and after 5 years here i really should know more 20 words of luxembourgish but there is simply no need.