Learning a new language

[domunique]

I really want to learn Mandarin, the method that I applied so far is limited in conversation only in Mandarin, because I learned from the Chinese descendants, who are in my country.

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[1714787562]

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[lipcoins]

I would like to learn some Scandinavian language, but there are no training course for those in my country, at least there is none in my city.
Since I can only do that by myself I have chosen Finnish as it seams most easy for me. I have use some applications with word games, but I cant remember the names of those, since that was long time ago, lately I don`t have much time to get into it. Now I am only left with music and movies, so I watch Finnish movies every time I got chance for it. And since I like metal music, there is a lot of Finnish bands to listen.

I think that Finnish is one of the most difficult to learn of Scandinavian languages but if you know one Scandinavian language, it is much easier to learn the rest. The process of learning requires patience, discipline and time. Also some philological abilities 

Finnish looks most easy one for me cause it seams that most words are spoken similar ways as it written (as it is case with my language: Serbian, this is maybe `cause Finland is near to Russia so it has influence to it)
I dont think that knowing one Scandinavian language would help learning the rest since there is large difference between them. For example Swedish and Norwegian are Indo-Europian type of languages and Finish and Estonian are Uralic.

Hey SlaughterGirl,

I hate to break it to you but Finnish is NOT a Scandinavian language. It is part of the Ugro-finnic group of languages (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Turkish...) as you rightly point out in your last sentence, whereas Scandinavian languages are Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic.
The fact that Finland borders with Russia has no influence whatsoever on the fact that Finnish is spoken as it is written. Russian is a Slavic language  written in Cyrillic, as your own language, and it is not entirely spoken as it is written as there are many subtleties and exceptions.

I don't know where you decided that Finnish must be easier than any Scandinavian language since it is actually the other way around but since you are Serbian and surely understand Russian here's a comparison:

- Russian has 6 cases. Finnish has 16. That alone should make anyone run for their life!!!!!

- Finnish is exclusively spoken in Finland, a population of roughly 5 million people who are all but talkative (and often "netrezovy"...) and therefore holding a conversation can prove extremely challenging to say the least...

- the most frequently used letter in Finnish is "K" which, together with all those double vowels, give it its typical hard sound.

- unlike what you stated in your post, knowing one Scandinavian language actually unlocks all the others as Norwegians, Danes and Swedes easily communicate with each other by each speaking their own language. They kind of tone down the pronunciation by gearing it a bit more towards Swedish (mostly Danes do that as Norwegian may be more similar to Danish in writing but when spoken it is extremely close to Swedish). When they do this they usually refer to it as "speaking Scandinavian"

- unlike what you stated in your post, there is not a "large difference between them" at all. I've learnt one, didn't take too long, and I easily read financial papers in all the 3 languages. Three birds with one stone!

- Finland has two official national languages: Finnish and Swedish, which most people speak or learn in school. That's the reason why in Finland all street signs are written in both languages so if you had chosen Swedish instead, you would have had direct access to Finland too! Four birds with a single stone!!!

I don't know at which stage you are at this point or why you decided to learn Finnish (for fun, work or to move there eventually) but if you're looking at getting some gain out of a language, you might want to check Swedish. I don't know if I'm allowed to post links so I won't but you can stream some programs from the Swedish national channel SVT  or the Finnish YLE  (careful! most programs here are subtitled in Finnish but sometimes the program itself in in Swedish...). You can take some time to get acquainted with their different sounds and then make up your mind. As someone experienced with languages however, I would always suggest doing research PRIOR to starting learning a language!  

[lipcoins]

I would like to learn some Scandinavian language, but there are no training course for those in my country, at least there is none in my city.
Since I can only do that by myself I have chosen Finnish as it seams most easy for me. I have use some applications with word games, but I cant remember the names of those, since that was long time ago, lately I don`t have much time to get into it. Now I am only left with music and movies, so I watch Finnish movies every time I got chance for it. And since I like metal music, there is a lot of Finnish bands to listen.

I think that Finnish is one of the most difficult to learn of Scandinavian languages but if you know one Scandinavian language, it is much easier to learn the rest. The process of learning requires patience, discipline and time. Also some philological abilities 

Finnish is NOT a Scandinavian language! Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are!

[Seng Mangan]

I am now in the process of learning Mandarin because I believe that China became the center of the world economy beat the US,
In Chinese is very difficult in pronunciation because of its difficult logat for me. For that I studied directly with a native tutor from China

[lipcoins]

I'm too lazy to learn languages, because there is Google translator) Maybe in the future I'll get patience and when I'm traveling, I'll learn at least one foreign language.

Google Translator is an endless source of fun for real linguists! The translations are all over the place and it's great entertainment! Nowhere near as bad though as Facebook translations these days...ha ha! 

[lipcoins]

The best way to learn a new language is by simply learning their basic, e.g alphabets, vowels, words and how to say it/speak etc 

You will find that learning a bit of grammar helps too. Trust me.

[kalodu]

I would like to learn some Scandinavian language, but there are no training course for those in my country, at least there is none in my city.
Since I can only do that by myself I have chosen Finnish as it seams most easy for me. I have use some applications with word games, but I cant remember the names of those, since that was long time ago, lately I don`t have much time to get into it. Now I am only left with music and movies, so I watch Finnish movies every time I got chance for it. And since I like metal music, there is a lot of Finnish bands to listen.

I think that Finnish is one of the most difficult to learn of Scandinavian languages but if you know one Scandinavian language, it is much easier to learn the rest. The process of learning requires patience, discipline and time. Also some philological abilities 

Finnish is NOT a Scandinavian language! Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are!

Finnish people should just stick to learning Swedish 

[lipcoins]

learning a new language is a good

but me not love learning language

Yup... that kind of comes through from what you've just written...

[Douglasyukanov]

There are two ways to learn many foreign languages: sequentially (one language to another) or simultaneously at a time. Learning many foreign languages ​​at a time will certainly save you time, because basically, you do multitasking.Instead of mastering one language in 1.5 years, you can master two languages ​​in two years.
No need to bother to the destination country to learn the language. Today, the Internet is filled with language learning tools, such as apps, translators, online flashcards, and ebooks. Many of these facilities you can get for free.Now, just leave it all back to you to harvest all these conveniences. You live in an age where education and information are at your fingertips.

[lipcoins]

Hello,
How to we learn a new language?
What is the most practical method of learning a new language?
What are the methods of learning that you apply and benefit you?

Well, it depends on the language you want to learn and also why you want to learn it (fun, work, relocating...) but as a general rule I would suggest to:

1) buy a basic grammar book and a bilingual dictionary
2) try to find audio/videos on line to acquaint yourself with the pronunciation (if you don't have a teacher or a native speaker to help you)
3) once you have the basics such as alphabet, pronunciation and its exceptions, the basic verbs such as "to be" and "to have", try to learn a few words and their articles and plurals.
4) expand your vocabulary by incorporating more words and verbs to start forming simple sentences.
5) repeat 4) ad infinitum!

Good luck and have fun!

[lipcoins]

Danish! I eventually want to move there. I studied abroad there a while back and I miss everything there. The food, culture, people. I felt they were more friendly than Americans in a different way.

That's a very original choice! The pronunciation is hell but everything else is a breeze. Danes come across as very open and friendly, however  it really isn't that easy to make friends with them but if you are in the capital there is a great expat community and life standards are pretty high. So, all I can say to you is...tillykke! 

[lipcoins]

It's interesting how you can't lose an accent if you learn a new language as an adult. The best way to learn is to expose yourself to the language. Like through TV.

That actually isn't true. It depends on personal skills of course but it is possible to learn to speak a language without (or with very little) accent and even lose the intonation of your native language. Very hard, but possible, especially for those who have a good musical ear and can get to reproduce sounds very accurately.

[lipcoins]

Hello,
How to we learn a new language?
What is the most practical method of learning a new language?
What are the methods of learning that you apply and benefit you?

for me best way to learn foreign language was google.translate and skype, several years ago i didnot knew any word in english, when i decide to learn it, i just add several people in skype and start chatting with them in english, using google.translate and after several month, i stopped using translate

Google Translate is only useful if you want to access content but it usually translates poorly. It's fine if you want to learn a few sentences to enable to communicate at a basic level, say if you're going abroad and want to write down a few basic questions that you think could come in handy. However it is not a way to learn a language. Just because you eventually stopped using it while chatting to Skype users, doesn't mean that what you were writing was correct or even made sense. They probably figured out what you wanted to say but didn't correct you.

The thing with languages is that it's easier to make some effort and learn the basics first and get them right because if you just go along and try to guess you will only hurdle with you a lot of mistakes that will be much harder to correct further down the road.

[bitcoin31]

Learning new language is not easy you need a lot of time, focus, resesrch, understanding and also you need this patience. You can try dictionary like the grammar. What kind of language you want to learn? English or others?

[lipcoins]

There are two ways to learn many foreign languages: sequentially (one language to another) or simultaneously at a time. Learning many foreign languages ​​at a time will certainly save you time, because basically, you do multitasking.Instead of mastering one language in 1.5 years, you can master two languages ​​in two years.
No need to bother to the destination country to learn the language. Today, the Internet is filled with language learning tools, such as apps, translators, online flashcards, and ebooks. Many of these facilities you can get for free.Now, just leave it all back to you to harvest all these conveniences. You live in an age where education and information are at your fingertips.

In order to learn languages simultaneously you need to already be trained a bit and have a certain ease with languages. It would be very hard for someone at their first language to suddenly concentrate on 3 or 4 at once, especially if they are languages from the same group where it's possible to mix many similar words.

It also depends how well someone is interested in learning a language: if you aim high then a full immersion in one at a time is the best way and there's no fuller immersion than being in the environment where that language is spoken as native. Some languages can be learnt on books + internet like French, English, Spanish but the same hardly applies to more complex languages such as Russian. By all means, do take advantage of everything at your fingertips but DO BOTHER to spend some time abroad because a language isn't just an idiom but first and foremost the most essential expression of a culture.

[zedkiel08]

learn it through school , there is a course in language in most school , you can adopt through different peoples culture to learn different language ,

[leopardpointy]

I find a really effective method is to marry someone who speaks another language especially if their family does not speak your language.
What language(s) were you thinking about learning?

Good method, i think that i'll may marry several times. You know, just for learning new languages, culture first.

[joymalieza]

Learning a new language is very interesting and challenging at the same time.  I have learned French language probably 15 years ago I remember it was hard but fun and satisfying after being able to speak and read a little.  It was a 8 months course I  took 5 times a week.  At the end of the course I  could communicate with the French teacher well but after a few months I started forgetting it since i couldn't practice anymore since there was no one to talk to. Learning a new language is a wonderful experience and I recommend it to everyone.   

[lipcoins]

Learning a new language is very interesting and challenging at the same time.  I have learned French language probably 15 years ago I remember it was hard but fun and satisfying after being able to speak and read a little.  It was a 8 months course I  took 5 times a week.  At the end of the course I  could communicate with the French teacher well but after a few months I started forgetting it since i couldn't practice anymore since there was no one to talk to. Learning a new language is a wonderful experience and I recommend it to everyone.   

Even when you have no one to talk to and practice the language with you can still surround yourself with it by playing music or streaming videos in that language. Passive listening can do wonders and it's completely effortless!

[lipcoins]

I find a really effective method is to marry someone who speaks another language especially if their family does not speak your language.
What language(s) were you thinking about learning?

Good method, i think that i'll may marry several times. You know, just for learning new languages, culture first.

Exactly! And in the meantime I will happily part with half of my possessions every time I ask for a divorce to pursue a new... ehm... language!
Priceless!!!