1) Spend the time!
By far the most important factor is how much time you are immersed in the language. The more time you spend with the language, the faster you will learn. This means listening, reading, writing, speaking, and studying words and phrases. This does not mean sitting in class looking out the window, nor listening to other students who do not speak well, nor getting explanations in your own language about how the language works. This means spending time enjoyably connected to the language you are learning.
2) Listen and read every day!
Listen wherever you are on your MP3 player. Read what you are listening to. Listen to and read things that you like, things that you can mostly understand, or even partly understand. If you keep listening and reading you will get used to the language. One hour of listening or reading is more effective than many hours of class time.
3) Focus on words and phrases!
Build up your vocabulary, you’ll need lots. Start to notice words and how they come together as phrases. Learn these words and phrases through your listening and reading. Read online, using online dictionaries, and make your own vocabulary lists for review. Soon you will run into your new words and phrases elsewhere. Gradually you will be able to use them. Do not worry about how accurately you speak until you have accumulated a plenty of words through listening and reading.
4) Take responsibility for your own learning!
If you do not want to learn the language, you won’t. If you do want to learn the language, take control. Choose content of interest, that you want to listen to and read. Seek out the words and phrases that you need to understand your listening and reading. Do not wait for someone else to show you the language, nor to tell you what to do. Discover the language by yourself, like a child growing up. Talk when you feel like it. Write when you feel like it. A teacher cannot teach you to become fluent, but you can learn to become fluent if you want to.
5) Relax and enjoy yourself!
Do not worry about what you cannot remember, or cannot yet understand, or cannot yet say. It does not matter. You are learning and improving. The language will gradually become clearer in your brain, but this will happen on a schedule that you cannot control. So sit back and enjoy. Just make sure you spend enough time with the language. That is the greatest guarantee of success.
Steve Kaufmann is a former Canadian diplomat, who has had his own company in the international trade of forest products for over 20 years. Steve founded The Linguist Institute Ltd. in 2002 to develop a new approach to language learning using the web. The new LingQ system for learning multiple languages is now available in Beta. Steve speaks nine languages fluently and is currently learning Russian using LingQ. Steve maintains a blog on language learning.
Any Ideas about Esperanto?
What is Esperanto?
It's a language that is particularly useful for international communication.
Important traits of Esperanto
International: Esperanto is most useful for communicating among people of diverse nations who do not have a common mother tongue.
Neutral: It doesn't belong to one people or country, so it works as a neutral language.
Equal: When you use Esperanto, you feel more equal from a linguistic standpoint than when, for example, you speak Spanish with a native Spanish speaker.
Relatively easy: Thanks to the structure of Esperanto, it's usually much easier to master than other foreign languages.
Living: Esperanto evolves and lives just like other languages, and it can be used to express the most varied facets of human thought and emotion.
A link for those who want to learn more about Esperanto
It's a language that is particularly useful for international communication.
Important traits of Esperanto
International: Esperanto is most useful for communicating among people of diverse nations who do not have a common mother tongue.
Neutral: It doesn't belong to one people or country, so it works as a neutral language.
Equal: When you use Esperanto, you feel more equal from a linguistic standpoint than when, for example, you speak Spanish with a native Spanish speaker.
Relatively easy: Thanks to the structure of Esperanto, it's usually much easier to master than other foreign languages.
Living: Esperanto evolves and lives just like other languages, and it can be used to express the most varied facets of human thought and emotion.
A link for those who want to learn more about Esperanto
Slavic Languages
Scholars traditionally divide Slavic languages on the basis of geographical distribution into three main branches, some of which feature sub-branches:
East Slavic, extant: Russian, Ukrainian, Rusyn (a language or a dialect of Ukrainian), and Belarusian
West Slavic, which further subdivides into:
Czech and Slovak
Upper and Lower Sorbian (minority languages in Germany)
Lechitic languages: Polish, Pomeranian/Kashubian, Silesian and extinct Polabian
South Slavic, which further subdivides into:
Western subgroup composed of Slovene and Serbo-Croatian (Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin).
Eastern subgroup composed of Bulgarian, and Macedonian
The oldest Slavic literary language was Old Church Slavonic, of which Church Slavonic is a later descendant
Some linguists speculate that a North Slavic branch has existed as well. The Old Novgorod dialect may have reflected some idiosyncrasies of this group. On the other hand, the term "North Slavic" is also used sometimes to combine the West and East Slavic languages into one group, in opposition to the South Slavic languages, due to traits the West and East Slavic branches share with each other that they do not with the South Slavic languages.
The most obvious differences between the West and East Slavic branches, are in orthography of standard languages; West Slavic languages are written in the Latin alphabet, and have had more Western European influence due to their speakers being historically Roman Catholic, whereas the East Slavic languages are written in the Cyrillic alphabet and with Eastern Orthodox or Uniate faithful, have had more Greek influence.
The tripartite division of the Slavic languages does not take into account the spoken dialects of each language. Of these, certain so-called transitional dialects and hybrid dialects often bridge the gaps between different languages, showing similarities that do not stand out when comparing Slavic literary (i.e., standard) languages. For example, Slovak (West Slavic) and Ukrainian (East Slavic) are bridged by eastern Slovak dialects, Rusyn[citation needed], and western Ukrainian dialects. Polish has similar transitionality with both western Ukrainian and Belarusian dialects.
Although the Slavic languages split from a common proto-language later than any other group of the Indo-European language family, enough differences exist between the various Slavic dialects and languages to make communication between speakers of different Slavic languages difficult. Within the individual Slavic languages, dialects may vary to a lesser degree, as those of Russian, or to a much greater degree, as those of Slovene.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_languages
East Slavic, extant: Russian, Ukrainian, Rusyn (a language or a dialect of Ukrainian), and Belarusian
West Slavic, which further subdivides into:
Czech and Slovak
Upper and Lower Sorbian (minority languages in Germany)
Lechitic languages: Polish, Pomeranian/Kashubian, Silesian and extinct Polabian
South Slavic, which further subdivides into:
Western subgroup composed of Slovene and Serbo-Croatian (Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin).
Eastern subgroup composed of Bulgarian, and Macedonian
The oldest Slavic literary language was Old Church Slavonic, of which Church Slavonic is a later descendant
Some linguists speculate that a North Slavic branch has existed as well. The Old Novgorod dialect may have reflected some idiosyncrasies of this group. On the other hand, the term "North Slavic" is also used sometimes to combine the West and East Slavic languages into one group, in opposition to the South Slavic languages, due to traits the West and East Slavic branches share with each other that they do not with the South Slavic languages.
The most obvious differences between the West and East Slavic branches, are in orthography of standard languages; West Slavic languages are written in the Latin alphabet, and have had more Western European influence due to their speakers being historically Roman Catholic, whereas the East Slavic languages are written in the Cyrillic alphabet and with Eastern Orthodox or Uniate faithful, have had more Greek influence.
The tripartite division of the Slavic languages does not take into account the spoken dialects of each language. Of these, certain so-called transitional dialects and hybrid dialects often bridge the gaps between different languages, showing similarities that do not stand out when comparing Slavic literary (i.e., standard) languages. For example, Slovak (West Slavic) and Ukrainian (East Slavic) are bridged by eastern Slovak dialects, Rusyn[citation needed], and western Ukrainian dialects. Polish has similar transitionality with both western Ukrainian and Belarusian dialects.
Although the Slavic languages split from a common proto-language later than any other group of the Indo-European language family, enough differences exist between the various Slavic dialects and languages to make communication between speakers of different Slavic languages difficult. Within the individual Slavic languages, dialects may vary to a lesser degree, as those of Russian, or to a much greater degree, as those of Slovene.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_languages
Which language should I learn?
Once you have decided to learn a language, you may not be quite sure which language to choose. To some extent, your choice depends on your reasons for learning a language. For example, if you'd like to communicate with as many people as possible, learning such languages as Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian or Arabic would enable you to do so.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
