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Anybody Else Learning a Foreign Language?

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Calthrop

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Slavic languages are very far from English, and involve more new sounds which is difficult. The Czech course in particular isn't really good enough to learn from though. I'm struggling to follow it and I've spent most of the last year learning Polish, which is fairly similar

Very many years ago now, I did two years of (optional) Russian at school, ending up with my just scraping a GCE "O" Level pass. I found it, for sure, difficult; and basically, by the end of the two years I was fed up with it, and putting less effort into it than I might have done. Most of it is now forgotten -- I regret my overall lack of application. I've not been to Russia; but have found what I did remember of Russian, useful when travelling in other Slavic countries, as a help towards figuring out "the written word" -- public notices etc; and to some extent, for word-of-mouth communication. Particularly thus in Poland, where I've been most: Polish and Russian are quite closely related (though they use different alphabets).

Russian's big "headaches" for me (the alphabet, I found the least of my worries): Slavic languages have few words with any similarity to their equivalents in English, or in other western European languages. Russian words are highly inflected -- numerous and assorted variations in their endings, according to their role in the sentence. Russian "does" verbs in an insanely complicated way: two forms of every verb, depending on what job the word is doing.
 
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YorkshireBear

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I'm usinhrg duolingo to learn German. Supported by a colons guide and lots of googling. I think it is going well and i really enjoy it.

Also tried Portuguese, and had a B in French GCSE but both those I know much more in a tourist basic rather than having half a conversation.
 

mikeg

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I've tried to learn many languages. One of the reasons I insisted on going to mainstream secondary school was the ability to learn a foreign language. I was put in French for year 7, then the higher achieving kids at French (or German) also got to study the other language from year 8 onwards. I fell in love with German, although I still speak it substandardly and dropped French at the end of year 9 to take German at GCSE, then A-level and then also a post-A-Level mini course as part of Keele's then existing 'Complimentary Studies Programme'.

I know a bit of Dutch, but having been never formally taught it I'm told it's a tad slangy. 'N stukkie Afrikaans ook, baeie verlyknis met Nederlands....Actually West Germanic languages in general: Mostly German, Dutch, Yiddish and Afrikaans. The latter three all learnt through some informal means to a greater or lesser extent. The latter two probably the least useful also.

I remember about 13 or so I also tried Esperanto, for the simple reasons that it's said if you learn one language it becomes easy to learn others and Esperanto is easy to learn, combined with the first two series of Red Dwarf !

I think the key is learning a wide lexicon combined with the basic grammatical structure and then finding ways to apply it.
 

70014IronDuke

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Slavic languages are very far from English, and involve more new sounds which is difficult. The Czech course in particular isn't really good enough to learn from though. I'm struggling to follow it and I've spent most of the last year learning Polish, which is fairly similar
It depends. I agree that Slavic languages are very difficult to learn for English speakers using the correct grammar, especially if you have no initial understanding or concept of case endings.

And I agree that Polish, from friends who have tried to learn both Polish and Russian, say it is particularly difficult, both in terms of grammar and pronunciation.

But they are all still part of the one Indo-European group, which is the same grand family as English.

If you know no Slavic language and are faced with "moja sestra" and had to guess what it means to save your life, I think a fair few might well hit it, for example. Whereas the same words in Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, Albanian or Chinese are nothing like the English for "my sister". (OK, I don't know all those for certain, but I'd be willing to bet.)

Many - probably ALL in fact - of the Slavic languages have adopted some German, English and French words. You can't usually hear this if you don't know the way the local language adopts and adapts them, but once you tag onto the rules, they at least become clearer.
 
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takno

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It depends. I agree that Slavic languages are very difficult to learn for English speakers using the correct grammar, especially if you have no initial understanding or concept of case endings.

And I agree that Polish, from friends who have tried to learn both Czech and Russian, say it is particularly difficult, both in terms of grammar and pronunciation.

But they are all still part of the one Indo-European group, which is the same grand family as English.

If you know no Slavic language and are faced with "moja sestra" and had to guess what it means to save your life, I think a fair few might well hit it, for example. Whereas the same words in Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, Albanian or Chinese are nothing like the English for "my sister". (OK, I don't know all those for certain, but I'd be willing to bet.)

Many - probably ALL in fact - of the Slavic languages have adopted some German, English and French words. You can't usually hear this if you don't know the way the local language adopts and adapts them, but once you tag onto the rules, they at least become clearer.
Very true. I was thinking more in comparison to French, German and Spanish which are routinely taught in British schools. Non-european languages and outliers are usually even harder. Slavic languages have a lot of advantages once you get over the hump and learn the rules but Duolingo probably isn't the tool to do that!
 

westv

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I remember about 13 or so I also tried Esperanto, for the simple reasons that it's said if you learn one language it becomes easy to learn others and Esperanto is easy to learn, combined with the first two series of Red Dwarf !

Esperanto. The international language that nobody wants?
 

70014IronDuke

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Very true. I was thinking more in comparison to French, German and Spanish which are routinely taught in British schools. Non-european languages and outliers are usually even harder. Slavic languages have a lot of advantages once you get over the hump and learn the rules but Duolingo probably isn't the tool to do that!

Fair point - although to speak and write German with the correct grammar (eg correct adjective agreement) is also b difficult!

BTW, I mean to write friends who have sought to learn both Russian and Polish (rather than Czech).

Having said that, I also had a friend who had studied Russian and Czech at university in Brno, and later tackled Hungarian. One day I asked her which she thought was most difficult. Her answer, to the chagrin of many a Hungarian I suspect (Magyars tend to take pride and delight that their vernacular is notoriously difficult to master for foreigners) was .... Czech.
I should have quizzed her more intensely as to why - maybe I did - but alas I've forgotten. And she has sadly passed away.
 

westv

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I assume English must have it's difficulties for foreign learners due to the pronunciations of some words.
 

70014IronDuke

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I assume English must have it's difficulties for foreign learners due to the pronunciations of some words.

English has lots of difficulties for foreign learners (and native speakers too!).

Spelling and pronunciation and stressing of syllables being the more obvious (think minute (n) and minute (adj) ). If you have not learnt to listen to native speakers, you could get the equivalent of an A level in English but be totally, totally lost when confronted by a native speaker. I experienced this a lot in Turkey in the 1970s. (Though this is getting rarer these days, since it is so easy to listen to native speech via the internet and music.)

The tense system is also fiendishly complicated for most non-natives to get right. The OP indicated one problem with continuous tenses.

EDIT - apologies, not the OP. I got my threads mixed up. See this one
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/a-good-service-operates-on-all-lines.186223/#post-4108240

Notice too, for example, how many foreigners will say something like: I am the chief designer for 8 years (rather than "I've been the chief....) because their mother language does not have the equivalent of the present perfect that we use in English - they use their present tense to express this function, and automatically use this unless made aware.

Another one that is regularly v difficult is the present passive continuous. (eg I am being beaten up. Here, the engine control settings are being checked.) This is partly because it is not used very much. If I hear a foreigner using this correctly, I am always very suprised. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of times I've heard it properly used in a natural environment.

The plus side is that English is very flexible and most native speakers don't actually understand their grammar very well at all - and therefore don't even notice the errors or quirks. :)
 
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takno

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English has lots of difficulties for foreign learners (and native speakers too!).

Spelling and pronunciation and stressing of syllables being the more obvious (think minute (n) and minute (adj) ). If you have not learnt to listen to native speakers, you could get the equivalent of an A level in English but be totally, totally lost when confronted by a native speaker. (Though this is getting rarer these days, since it is so easy to listen to native speech via the internet and music.)

The tense system is also fiendishly complicated for most non-natives to get right. The OP indicated one problem with continuous tenses. Notice too, for example, how many foreigners will say something like: I am the chief designer for 8 years (rather than "I've been the chief....) because their mother language does not have the equivalent of the present perfect that we use in English - they use their present tense to express this function, and automatically use this unless made aware.

Another one that is regularly v difficult is the present passive continuous. (eg I am being beaten up. Here, the engine control settings are being checked.) This is partly because it is not used very much. If I hear a foreigner using this correctly, I am always very suprised. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of times I've heard it properly used in a natural environment.

The plus side is that English is very flexible and most native speakers don't actually understand their grammar very well at all - and therefore don't even notice the errors or quirks. :)
The learning would have had to have been being done almost from birth to follow some of the things we say in English.
 

70014IronDuke

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The learning would have had to have been being done almost from birth to follow some of the things we say in English.

True - but then that is probably true for all languages.

Another extremely difficult area is the correct use of 'time' adverbs like 'until', 'as long as' and 'while'.
 
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