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Learning Another Language

If English is your second language, or you have found yourself trying to learn other languages than those you master, how easy was it for you? For some it is really easy, and for others not so.

Language Learning

Learning other languages is not terribly easy for me in oral conversation, but most Germanic and Romance languages are fairly easy for me to read and pronounce. I use this in my singing quite often. Since I am a geek about English and also studying certain linguistic aspects of the Bible, learning Hebrew, Greek and Latin roots of many words has helped me in interpreting the meaning of other written languages that stem from the same origins. I can now read and pronounce about anything in Spanish or Italian, but I cannot carry on a conversation in either language.

Learning Another Language UFO & Writing Art Education Sciences

I love languages since I was a little girl. I remember my uncle teaching me the basics of English and German and I always wanted to learn more and more....I thought I had a pretty decent English until I moved to a English-speaking country and then realise I did not know anything. It was very frustrating, specially because in the beginning you translate everything from your mother tongue to the language you wanna speak and it takes a lot of time if you are carrying a conversation that way. The first year was a nightmare, I could talk but very basic...then when I moved to the US for two years, I think I got pretty confident. So I would say it took me a couple of years in order to establish a normal conversation without translating in my mind. I still have a long way to master my oral and writting skills (I have some problems with written english) but I can understand almost anything when someone is speaking with me, unless they use a fancy word that I don't know about. I'm not afraid to ask what it means either.
Now, I think in English, I dream in English, I'm so used to the language and I love it so much that just thinking that I'll be moving back to Argentina and I will have to speak Spanish, makes me a little sad although I plan to continue speaking English at home, specially to my son.

Language Learning

For me, it was easy to learn English when I first came here when I was six. The second time, though, when I came back to the US at the age of thirteen, it proved harder to do.

I think it's so with all of us that we learn the best at a young age and that it requires no special effort as it does to learn a language some years later. I was also pretty good with Arabic when we learnt it at school in Israel, partly because the two are so similar.

I also know a tiny bit of Spanish, from our vacations there every christmas - nothing to be proud of, though.

Language Learning

For me learning other languages seems to be easy. I mean I have a good "ear" and learn to pronounce very well foreign words without effort. The hard part comes when I have to go further and "really" learn the language.

Learning Another Language

Learning another language is the most difficult endeaver I've ever tried to wrap my mind around. I have taken a couple of semisters of Latin at college and the time that needs to be allocated to learn the material is atrocious! All the memorization and the fact that some things just don't make sense to me. Why do things like tables have a gender in some non-english languages- I would really like to know?! Learning latin isn't particularly useful, but it is very rewarding if only because it is so hard. I'm not anywhere near mastery, but I am making slow and steady progress.
-Unferth

Learning Language

I'm not currently studying a language, and I have not mastered any (not even my own! ), but I do seem to have a knack for it. Perhaps because of living in an area where other languages are spoken regularly helped me to have more of an aptitude for it, because I've heard many Spanish speakers from the time I was a child. I really should pursue studying Spanish, because of the high population of immigrants we have in So. California.

Learning Language Sciences Education Art Writing & UFO

I have been studying English for I don't even know how long - thirteen, fourteen years at least - and I still cannot say that I know the language. My fluency improves with each year thanks to my studying English, I never had problems with pronounciation, I deal fine with reading and listening, and I write more and more complicated things. But I am still afraid to use my English in front of English speaking people. Does that count as difficulty in learning? Or is it just because I had too little practise?

English is so far the only language I've been studying, but I dream of learning Italian and Chinese. I wonder how hard that could be