What is in your cup?

[astra]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

spanish and Italian I have connection and opportunity to use.

I see.
Practical use. It is a great incentive (the strongest and probably the only one that worked for me). It helped me to learn English. I needed English for roleplaying online game and reading books.

[aceflor]

Italian and Spanish at the same time ? !!!!

What does sound the best for you when you listen to it ? Choose that.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by astra

I see.
Practical use. It is a great incentive (the strongest and probably the only one that worked for me). It helped me to learn English. I needed English for roleplaying online game and reading books.

Practical is stracthing it a bit. I have lived all this time with out learning them just fine, probably could continue... BUT I want to learn... and those 2 I might be able to use.

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

THe next tough question of course is how to learn it. Thinking of trying a software package like Rossetta Stone to get started. My son has "hook on Spanish" that someone gave him... the bast way of course would be to travel some place where its spoken and live there, but thats not an option.

Those of you that have learned as ADULTS a 2nd, 3rd, or nth language, what worked for you?

German and Spanish: both with real courses and reading the newspapers. Never tried a DIY Method, so I can't help here, sorry.

Originally Posted by astra

How interesting.
I always said the same about Hebrew.

I think it could be said about any language but I guess in German it is more noticeable because you say it the same way you write it vs. English.

I think German language would be the only language I would be able to succeed.

Well, in German you have the declinations (is it said that way ?) as you have them in Latin or Russian, so the logical aspect of the sentence contruction is very important.
Bad English, I know. Please, anyone, feel free to write this properly... tired right now, going for a coffee to wake up!

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by aceflor

Bad English, I know. Please, anyone, feel free to write this properly... tired right now, going for a coffee to wake up!

There is no one right way, but here are a plenty of correct ways:

• I am tired right now, so I am going for a coffee to wake me up.
• I am tired right now. I am going to get a coffee to wake me up.
• I am tired right now, therefor I am leaving to get some coffee which I hope will wake me up!

But none talks like that here in America. More commonly you would here:

I need coffee.

The "I am tired" and "going for a coffee" are assumed when the person gets up to leave after saying that. You could add 'really' to emphasize how tired you are:

I really need coffee.

If you wanted to express the the action this would be more common:

• I am off to get some coffee.
• I am running out to get coffee.
• I need to wake up, so I am off to get coffee.

But in conversation we often drop an obvious subject so you might hear

Off to get coffee, be right back.

Just remember... grammar is written after the language is created and describes the language, it does not set rules on it.

[beppe]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Coke Zero 1 in my cup.

And I'll query that vocabulary figure. This discussion has recently happened in another thread. It's very hard to make comparisons, because of the different ways of counting words.

The OED, the closest thing to an authority in English, reckons there are about 175,000 words in current use.

I beleive that in German Duden is the rough equivalent of the OED, and contains around 135,000 words.

The Global Language Monitor announced that the English language had crossed the 1,000,000-word threshold on 10 June 2009.[79] The announcement was met with strong scepticism by linguists and lexicographers,[80] though a number of non-specialist reports[81][82] accepted the figure uncritically. However, in December 2010 a joint Harvard/Google study found the language to contain 1,022,000 words and was expanding at the rate of 8,500 words per year.[83] The findings came from the computer analysis of 5,195,769 digitised books. The difference between the Google/Harvard estimate and that of the Global Language Monitor is about thirteen thousandth of one percent.
Comparisons of the vocabulary size of English to that of other languages are generally not taken very seriously by linguists and lexicographers. Besides the fact that dictionaries will vary in their policies for including and counting entries,[84] what is meant by a given language and what counts as a word do not have simple definitions. Also, a definition of word that works for one language may not work well in another,[85] with differences in morphology and orthography making cross-linguistic definitions and word-counting difficult, and potentially giving very different results.[86] Linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum has gone so far as to compare concerns over vocabulary size (and the notion that a supposedly larger lexicon leads to "greater richness and precision") to an obsession with penis length.[87]

The modern German scientific vocabulary has nine million words and word groups (based on the analysis of 35 million sentences of a corpus in Leipzig, which as of July 2003 included 500 million words in total).[38]

[beppe]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Those of you that have learned as ADULTS a 2nd, 3rd, or nth language, what worked for you?

English and French I can follow live sport broadcasts, movies, songs, the works.
Spanish and Portuguese I can follow and take part in a technical meeting.
With German I can function while traveling in German speaking countries: hotels, restaurants, road signs. That's all.

English I studied 8 years in school, lived in America for years, had a NY girl friend for a couple of years.
French I learned it in bed. Quebec variety. I even speak the patois. Hard time writing in it. Luckily when I worked there, secretaries were still secretaries. But the spelling is atrocious.
Spanish, just from Spanish speaking friends. Very good friends. I can easily watch a movie in Spanish. Reading it is tougher.
Portuguese. I worked for few months in Brazil. After two months I picked up the rhythm and the individual words and from that on it was elementary. Reading it is surprisingly easy.
German is fun. We are surrounded by German speaking countries, with excellent skiing, like Switzerland and Austria, so it is mostly through tourism. I had a German girlfriend. She loved to tease me in her tongue. I'd love to learn German.

The problem is understanding. Making oneself understood is never an obstacle. It helps that I do not have any inferiority complex of sort.

[bjones6416]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

There is no one right way, but here are a plenty of correct ways:

• I am tired right now, so I am going for a coffee to wake me up.
• I am tired right now. I am going to get a coffee to wake me up.
• I am tired right now, therefor I am leaving to get some coffee which I hope will wake me up!

But none talks like that here in America. More commonly you would here:

I need coffee.

The "I am tired" and "going for a coffee" are assumed when the person gets up to leave after saying that. You could add 'really' to emphasize how tired you are:

I really need coffee.

If you wanted to express the the action this would be more common:

• I am off to get some coffee.
• I am running out to get coffee.
• I need to wake up, so I am off to get coffee.

But in conversation we often drop an obvious subject so you might hear

Off to get coffee, be right back.

Just remember... grammar is written after the language is created and describes the language, it does not set rules on it.

"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

I'm pretty sure that aceflor was looking for clarification on her statement about declinations, not her statement about coffee.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by bjones6416

"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

I'm pretty sure that aceflor was looking for clarification on her statement about declinations, not her statement about coffee.

LOL ops

[astra]

Originally Posted by bjones6416

"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

I'm pretty sure that aceflor was looking for clarification on her statement about declinations, not her statement about coffee.

I decided not to comment because I thought that I am too tired and my "logic" was at fault

[maianhvk]

Originally Posted by aceflor

French peanut here, who speaks french (duh), english, spanish and german:
English obviously is straight, practical and useful.

What? English is BEAUTIFUL!! Full of traps, but there's no rose without thorns

Originally Posted by aceflor

French is super difficult, so unless you are crazy, don't go there. But it is a fascinating idiom in its subtleties. Not very logical though, and packed with irregularities that you have to learn, no explanations for those.

You just confirmed my most feared thought...

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Those of you that have learned as ADULTS a 2nd, 3rd, or nth language, what worked for you?

Good songs, and movies. Of course, lots of books. But not self-teaching books, that doesn't work. I learn English like that.

Originally Posted by astra

Addendum.
If for fun, I would throw in Chinese or Japanese.

I admire your courage.

For me:
Chinese? No.
Japanese? *clicking tongue*

Originally Posted by beppe

English I studied 8 years in school, lived in America for years, had a NY girl friend for a couple of years.
French I learned it in bed. Quebec variety. I even speak the patois. Hard time writing in it. Luckily when I worked there, secretaries were still secretaries. But the spelling is atrocious.
[...]
I had a German girlfriend. She loved to tease me in her tongue. I'd love to learn German.

I read somewhere that the best way (place?) to learn a language is in bed...

[beppe]

Originally Posted by maianhvk

I read somewhere that the best way (place?) to learn a language is in bed...

it is certainly a very entertaining endeavor

when we started, we used a little note book. I wrote what I had to say in English and she wrote her stuff in French. Shuffling it across the kitchen table.

It is actually a very good exercise to learn organization and management of thoughts and concepts. You have something to say and you want to distill it in very few words, possibly simple words.

I remember our first date. We had dinner and she ordered artichokes. The conversation was delirious.

She knew some English of course, being a Montreal belle, but her generation grew with the refusal of it. She never learned it. When she came to Italy she learned Italian in no time, but we kept using French.
I got French in few months of living together. I think it is the best language for the soul and for loving.

[astra]

Originally Posted by maianhvk

What? English is BEAUTIFUL!! Full of traps, but there's no rose without thorns

It is a very beautiful language. I love it.
However, it doesn't make it an easy one or logical...
daughter - dôtər?? FTW??? it either MUST be pronounced d a u g h t e r! or at the very least spelled as doter

Originally Posted by maianhvk

I admire your courage.

For me:
Chinese? No.
Japanese? *clicking tongue*

Hey, I never said that I would study them On the other hand, it is easy to give a tiny piece of advice, isn't it?
I would love to but there is no chance in the world I will, unless China takes over the world and it will be either learn and live or copper mine pits

Originally Posted by maianhvk

I read somewhere that the best way (place?) to learn a language is in bed...

From my experience of knowing other people, having a native speaker as a partner is a tremendous help and a sure way to quickly learn spoken language and acquire listening skill.

Originally Posted by beppe

I got French in few months of living together

Those polyglots...I am green with envy.
I am going to make a cup of Yorkshire Gold in order to calm down.

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

There is no one right way, but here are a plenty of correct ways:

• I am tired right now, so I am going for a coffee to wake me up.
• I am tired right now. I am going to get a coffee to wake me up.
• I am tired right now, therefor I am leaving to get some coffee which I hope will wake me up!

But none talks like that here in America. More commonly you would here:

I need coffee.

The "I am tired" and "going for a coffee" are assumed when the person gets up to leave after saying that. You could add 'really' to emphasize how tired you are:

I really need coffee.

If you wanted to express the the action this would be more common:

• I am off to get some coffee.
• I am running out to get coffee.
• I need to wake up, so I am off to get coffee.

But in conversation we often drop an obvious subject so you might hear

Off to get coffee, be right back.

Just remember... grammar is written after the language is created and describes the language, it does not set rules on it.

Tired. Coffee. NOW!.
See, THAT I know how to say

Originally Posted by bjones6416

"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

I'm pretty sure that aceflor was looking for clarification on her statement about declinations, not her statement about coffee.

Exactly !

Originally Posted by beppe

English and French I can follow live sport broadcasts, movies, songs, the works.
Spanish and Portuguese I can follow and take part in a technical meeting.
With German I can function while traveling in German speaking countries: hotels, restaurants, road signs. That's all.

English I studied 8 years in school, lived in America for years, had a NY girl friend for a couple of years.
French I learned it in bed. Quebec variety. I even speak the patois. Hard time writing in it. Luckily when I worked there, secretaries were still secretaries. But the spelling is atrocious.
Spanish, just from Spanish speaking friends. Very good friends. I can easily watch a movie in Spanish. Reading it is tougher.
Portuguese. I worked for few months in Brazil. After two months I picked up the rhythm and the individual words and from that on it was elementary. Reading it is surprisingly easy.
German is fun. We are surrounded by German speaking countries, with excellent skiing, like Switzerland and Austria, so it is mostly through tourism. I had a German girlfriend. She loved to tease me in her tongue. I'd love to learn German.

The problem is understanding. Making oneself understood is never an obstacle. It helps that I do not have any inferiority complex of sort.

Gosh, beppe.... so you are indeed an easy lay....

Originally Posted by astra

I decided not to comment because I thought that I am too tired and my "logic" was at fault

Nope, you were right, as always. Not meshugge for a minute ....

Originally Posted by maianhvk

What? English is BEAUTIFUL!! Full of traps, but there's no rose without thorns

I beg to differ.
Pratical, and straight forward, but beautiful... some can speak it beautifully, most cannot.

You just confirmed my most feared thought...

Sorry about that...

I read somewhere that the best way (place?) to learn a language is in bed...

we are ruining you....

Originally Posted by beppe

it is certainly a very entertaining endeavor

when we started, we used a little note book. I wrote what I had to say in English and she wrote her stuff in French. Shuffling it across the kitchen table.

It is actually a very good exercise to learn organization and management of thoughts and concepts. You have something to say and you want to distill it in very few words, possibly simple words.

I remember our first date. We had dinner and she ordered artichokes. The conversation was delirious.

She knew some English of course, being a Montreal belle, but her generation grew with the refusal of it. She never learned it. When she came to Italy she learned Italian in no time, but we kept using French.
I got French in few months of living together. I think it is the best language for the soul and for loving.

French is good for romancing,and delicious in bed if not using the dirty words. The dirty words are not nice, really not. German is not bad for f-ing (Anh, do not read that ), if like me you like understatement in bed (speaking German equals keeping the contenance, so it is... interesting). Spanish is the obvious, but superman does not want me to test that option. He does not speak Spanish, or really not well, so I'd need to find someone else for the test. The pool guy is not sexy at all, so that leaves the gardener (25, me almost 45, such a cliché though....)
yummy.

[maianhvk]

Originally Posted by beppe

I got French in few months of living together. I think it is the best language for the soul and for loving.

I'm with Astra It's taking me years to learn English

Originally Posted by aceflor

French is good for romancing,and delicious in bed if not using the dirty words. The dirty words are not nice, really not. German is not bad for f-ing (Anh, do not read that ), if like me you like understatement in bed (speaking German equals keeping the contenance, so it is... interesting).

Only one hyphen?
(Go on, I'm bad already )