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    #26
    Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys View Post
    I discovered recently there were categories based on difficulty for English native speakers.

    Category I's basically Romance and Germanic languages (although not German itself, because the fiddly grammar makes it Category II). Russian's Category IV. Arabic and Cantonese are Category V.

    [Link]
    Finnish is Category IV* which is probably about right. Postpositions and a vast array of words of Finno-Ugric stock (rather than Indo-European) make it pretty challenging.

    Quick example:

    auto (car)
    auto+ni (my car)
    auto+ssa (in the car)
    auto+ssa+ni (in my car)
    auto+ssa+ni+kin

    Compound words are not actually too bad once you get used to them, but something like Lentokonesuihkuturbiiniapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppi las is likely to make beginners run for the hills.
    Last edited by Me Old Flower; 18-09-2017, 16:06.

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      #27
      Any advice on how an adult who didn't do very well in languages in school - partly because the teacher sucked - could take another stab at it now? Do those Rosetta Stone things work? I did German in school but it was hard to learn because there's not much chance to practice, but now with the internet, if nothing else, I could access all kinds of videos and newspapers and try to practice that way.

      Spanish would be more useful.

      I don't think I can do French. My mouth won't make those sounds.

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        #28
        Grammar niceties can be tricky.

        A non-native speaker will almost always be caught out at some point, but as Capybara notes, it rarely has any effect on one's day to day existence, and certainly doesn't come anywhere close to offsetting the benefit of being able to communicate in another language (particularly if it is the native language in the country one is living in).

        At the same time, one may encounter people who are persnickety about such technicalities and consider their command of them a badge of honour, but then I'm not sure such people are any more common than they are among native speakers of English (in fact, I would say that they are less common, at least in my experience).

        On the other hand, I do believe that working on a credible accent (it will never be perfect) is quite valuable. My experience has been that doing so enhances the quality of communication with natives much more than technically precise speech delivered in an implausible accent.

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          #29
          Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
          Do those Rosetta Stone things work?
          I don't think I can do French. My mouth won't make those sounds.
          My stepdaughter used Rosetta Stone to help with her French. She found it useful but was living in Paris which was much more so.

          Don't worry too much about the accent. Most native French speakers give you props for trying. My French sounds awful, but no one's ever complained about it.

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            #30
            I've found Babbel to be quite useful, much more so than Duolingo.

            Vocabulary and pronunciation are the most important things. Think about how many times you've had a non-native coworker make a grammar mistake and literally nobody noticed or cared.

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              #31
              Originally posted by MsD View Post
              The guy from the corner shop seems to have left so thankfully I have a reprieve from the 1am Turkish lessons. He may just be on holiday, though, so I will have to keep my thank you and goodnight up to speed.

              I have (or had) an aptitude for languages, which is why I cockily said I would learn it, but it's harder than I thought and I'm not planning to go to Turkey, so it would be just for Hackney.
              I found Turkish relatively straightforward, it's logical and phonetic but the structure is very different to English which was hard at first. Living there I was always amazed by how surprised Turks were that foreigners spoke it.

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                #32
                Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                Any advice on how an adult who didn't do very well in languages in school - partly because the teacher sucked - could take another stab at it now? Do those Rosetta Stone things work? I did German in school but it was hard to learn because there's not much chance to practice, but now with the internet, if nothing else, I could access all kinds of videos and newspapers and try to practice that way.

                Spanish would be more useful.

                I don't think I can do French. My mouth won't make those sounds.
                I'll give Michel Thomas another plug, and I promise I don't get commission; he manages (with French, as well as Spanish) to get the learner speaking and understanding hundreds of words really quickly. In Spanish, the thing people - well, me - mainly had trouble with was the verb tables. He got me past that by almost ignoring them, so that I was able to easily converse and read. The first 8 CDs of about an hour each (these days, I think they're on iTunes etc) were brilliant.

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                  #33
                  Originally posted by Duncan Gardner View Post
                  Adding to MsD above: I started school Russian aged 12 in 1974. It probably helped having a smattering of French and Latin from school, plus Arabic, Hebrew, Chichewa, Sinhala and Polish from my primary school travels defending the Empire.

                  So anyway my brother says, "Why don't you do a refresher, you can be the courier if we qualify"...

                  PS note to Mynheer AP: if visiting Norn Iron in the near future you'll need a fourth language, as that crazy witch Michelle P O'Neill (aka Provi in Pink) wants to make everyone learn Irish
                  I should be alright, I can always use Ulster Scots. That can be learned on the plane on the way over.

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                    #34
                    Originally posted by Flynnie View Post
                    I've found Babbel to be quite useful, much more so than Duolingo.

                    Vocabulary and pronunciation are the most important things. Think about how many times you've had a non-native coworker make a grammar mistake and literally nobody noticed or cared.
                    What's Babbel?

                    My mind is a sieve for vocabulary. Even in English.

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                      #35
                      Babbel website.

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                        #36
                        Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                        If it's a political act, then Welsh doesn't seem the right way to go (given that Wales, like England, voted to turn away from foreigns).
                        Counties with majority Welsh speakers voted to remain ... except, embarrassingly, Ynys Môn

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                          #37
                          Spanish is a piece of piss compared to French or Portuguese, if you are looking for quick proficiency. Hardest bit of grammar is the subjunctive tense, and it's not like suddenly being confronted with madness like German noun cases. Very few weird exceptions to rules, and it's more or less phonetic so there's no silent letter messing like French or even Catala. On the downside, fucking lisping is the way you'd be told to do it if they teach "proper" Castellano, must be just class hatred poisoning my ears (and having to teach RP pronunciation when I schwa a shit ton less than Headway books seemed to think appropriate) but RP and its equivalents in other European languages (especially the posh Milan accent) really hurt my ears in general. Marseilles accent pisses over the Parisian whine. If I learn German I'd like to learn Plattdeutsch, just to be contrary.
                          Last edited by Lang Spoon; 18-09-2017, 18:26.

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                            #38
                            Originally posted by antoine polus View Post
                            In the beginning, I never bother learning the various genders and/or prepositions that go with certain words. Why bother, if you use the wrong gender for a word like 'table' or 'car', they'll still know that you are talking about a 'table' or a 'car'.
                            Totally agree with this. I also just concentrated on present and past tenses in Portuguese and only focussed on first and third person verb forms, using real names rather than "you". My Portuguese is nothing to write home about, but I can be perfectly understood as long as someone isn't correcting me or replying to me in English.

                            Ad hoc mentioned Arabic script is easy to learn. I also agree with this, it is amazingly straight forward and you can be reading words after a few hours of study. Egyptian Arabic is also very easy to learn. Colleagues of mine who gave it a shot with weekly classes were fairly fluent after just 2 years living in the country. The lovely thing about a place like Cairo is that you will never have to look far for someone willing to converse with you in Arabic and also have the patience to support your stammering conversation.

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                              #39
                              I'm a court translator in French, Dutch and English. My French is absolute pants - worse than O level (remember them?). The Dutch is just about passable and the English is northern. The trick is good pronunciation and being very inventive with a limited vocabulary. I'm hoping to master it one day.

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                                #40
                                Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys View Post
                                I discovered recently there were categories based on difficulty for English native speakers.

                                Category I's basically Romance and Germanic languages (although not German itself, because the fiddly grammar makes it Category II). Russian's Category IV. Arabic and Cantonese are Category V.

                                [Link]
                                This is interesting. Why is Icelandic so much harder than Danish, Norwegian or Swedish?

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                                  #41
                                  Wow. First off, thanks all, diolch, merci, danke, xie xie, sukriya, etc. More contributions than I'd expected. Secondly, sorry to be late to my own thread; work, work, work....

                                  I'm in tune with the 'don't worry about the grammar' vibe. I did make better progress with German once I stopped giving more than a passing fuck whether it was der, die, das, den or dem and just said stuff. Oddly, I think I started to hear the right ones too. I like German. It sounds nice.

                                  I think most languages have challenges and everyone responds differently. I've had people look in horror when I've described the Welsh mutation system but it never bothered me. On the other hand, a lifetime of playing/ teaching percussion has left me with sufficiently diminished auditory discrimination that I struggle with the subtleties of Chinese tones. Maybe that's why I was so wiped out - although I was sailing along in class and my teacher had no worries, so perhaps it was the Sichuan accent. Like porridge it is.

                                  Anyway, lots of useful nuggets, so thanks. WOM's right about one I'll use and I think there's a lot in UA's suggestion that accent or pronunciation is important. And everyone who said or intimated it's about motivation is, of course, correct. However, a teacher is also a help. Decision time looms.

                                  Arabic, eh? I do like the script, though I get that with Urdu, plus Hindi pretty much thrown in free. (Think Serb and Croat.) Turkish is also cool. Learned a little for a trekking holiday a couple of years back. I'm skipping Russian and Finnish though, thanks all the same. Given my struggles with 4 German cases, 6 to 15 is probably pushing it.

                                  Anyone ever learned Farsi, btw?

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                                    #42
                                    Older and more conservative, complex forms of grammar, divergent vocab from Latin heavy Northern Europe?
                                    Last edited by Lang Spoon; 18-09-2017, 19:59.

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                                      #43
                                      If this were my CV I'd list French, Spanish, Italian and German in order of proficiency. Spanish and Italian are a piece of piss to learn (although I usually do find languages easy), and the locals usually know what I mean when I use Spanish words in Italy and vice versa, which I do frequently.

                                      I did consider Welsh to connect to my heritage, but was put off by gngh going at the front of words in certain situations, or similar nonsense.

                                      Have lately been trying Polish to connect to Mrs D's heritage, but it's tough, and she can't understand my spoken Polish, possibly because of the cod Ivan Drago East European accent I adopt - it's a bit lighter and more musical than I can manage.

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                                        #44
                                        Originally posted by Antepli Ejderha View Post
                                        I found Turkish relatively straightforward, it's logical and phonetic but the structure is very different to English which was hard at first. Living there I was always amazed by how surprised Turks were that foreigners spoke it.
                                        One thing was fun, when I was in the corner shop and a woman started having a go at the shopkeeper saying that he should SPEAK ENGLISH as we ARE IN ENGLAND. Deadpan, I used the little bit of Turkish that he taught me (hello, how are you, no carrier bag thanks, goodnight) and he answered me as though I was fluent. We had a conspiratorial smirk as I left, as I'm obviously Not Turkish, and she shut up.

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                                          #45
                                          Remoaner.

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                                            #46
                                            Anyone know anyone who speaks Esperanto.

                                            Me and Mrs Thistle have talked about learning Welsh as a) we've both lived longer in Wales then anywhere else, and b) we could use it to keep our conversations private when back in England e.g. if we wanted to express frustration with my parents about something they've said

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                                              #47
                                              I can't link it via my tablet, but search @hectorbellerin on Twitter for a lovely little linguistic exchange between him, Piers Morgan and Jeremy Corbyn.

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                                                #48
                                                Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                                                Spanish is a piece of piss compared to French or Portuguese, if you are looking for quick proficiency. Hardest bit of grammar is the subjunctive tense, and it's not like suddenly being confronted with madness like German noun cases. Very few weird exceptions to rules, and it's more or less phonetic so there's no silent letter messing like French or even Catala. On the downside, fucking lisping is the way you'd be told to do it if they teach "proper" Castellano, must be just class hatred poisoning my ears (and having to teach RP pronunciation when I schwa a shit ton less than Headway books seemed to think appropriate) but RP and its equivalents in other European languages (especially the posh Milan accent) really hurt my ears in general. Marseilles accent pisses over the Parisian whine. If I learn German I'd like to learn Plattdeutsch, just to be contrary.
                                                OK, this is good and my curiousity is piqued.

                                                What's your language's posh accent, what's your language's working class/Mockney pearly king accent, what's your language's most beautiful accent?

                                                Sticking to US English, I'd say the George Plimpton Mid-Atlantic accent, although it's very rare these days. A George Bush Sr. old Yankee accent will also do. An equally rare these days old-school New York City accent* is unquestionably the winning "pearly king" type accent. Bernie has a pretty good one. The most syrupy and easy on the ears probably a middle-class, college educated Southern accent. A Shelby Foote. I dated a girl from Georgia once who had one, and she could get me to do anything I wanted.

                                                *honorary mention to a true New Orleans accent, which is rare but just delightful to hear, because it sounds like somebody from Brooklyn was dragged through a swamp, stuffed with crawfish, and then told to talk.
                                                Last edited by Flynnie; 19-09-2017, 09:49.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Originally posted by Gerontophile View Post
                                                  They've got an app too. It's paid, I think like $6 per month, but it's really useful for that nexus point between "I'm just doing this for giggles" (then get Duolingo) and "I'm super serious and will invest real money to learn this language" (ie signing up for a class, or an immersion holiday).

                                                  The value over Duolingo is they are much better at teaching grammar, and the modules are more structured. I've found it a worthwhile investment.

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                                                    #50
                                                    Posh Dublin has become a horrid West Brit almost RP/Aussie/Californian inflected mess. A walk near Trinity can make me want to stab stuff into my ears. The distinctive North/Southside (there seems more of a sing-song round the Liberties way, cf Imelda May) Dublin inner city variants seem to be dying out a bit, outside of auld wifies smoking John Player Blue. WC Accent seems harsher and more homogenous among younger folk somehow.
                                                    Last edited by Lang Spoon; 19-09-2017, 21:27.

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