learn a new language

Soooo, I used to speak pretty fluent Italian. Then I learned quite a bit of Spanish in high school.

Now? Now I can barely speak English properly. It’s pathetic. I’ve dumbed down so much.

Ultimately, there area few languages I’d like to learn, in no particular order:

- Italian
- Spanish
- Japanese
- Russian
- German

I had to go to the library today, so I took along my audio cassettes to practice in the car. It was my first time listening to Portuguese and I realized immediately that it must be spelled differently than it sounds!

While I was at the library, I checked out “Portuguese for Dummies” so I can look at things and learn from the written words and the sounds on the tape.

My birthday has since passed and I still have no idea which language I want to learn, although I did buy a Japanese to English dictionary and a German grammar book, which cost about forty dollars together, by the beginning of this school year I will decide, right now I’m leaning more towards Japanese though, since I already know a few words, and I watch a lot of anime and listen to a lot of Jpop and such, it really does seem to be the most practical to learn, even though I don’t know anyone who speaks it.

At church today, my Brazilian friend was rejoicing over how “luck” she is to have such wonderful friends, etc. No one thought she was weird for saying it wrong, but no one corrected her either, because her tiny mistake did not impair the communication at all.

I pondered on this, though, and later asked my husband (who is fully fluent in Spanish and has a pretty good handle on Italian, Portuguese, Imara, and Quechua) whether people in other cultures are offended when English speakers butcher their words.

He said no, but they are more likely to correct because it helps the person learning.

OK, but what if it’s some drastically wrong word like in that cell-phone commercial when the guy calls the Chinese businessman “stinky fish face” ???!

He said that commercial is unrealistic and that most people would NOT really be offended, but would correct the error so the other person could learn.

Now what I wonder is if the one person only speaks the one language, how are they going to correct someone who clearly isn’t fluent enough to understand?

Anyway . . . my point is that I realized today that a big limitation to my learning new languages is FEAR!!! I don’t want to offend anyone by saying something stupid, and I certainly don’t want anyone to think I AM stupid, so I don’t try. I just learn and then don’t use what I know.

That’s about as silly as anything. What good is knowing stuff if you don’t use it?!

I put this on hold hoping that I’d get more spare time later on… guess what? I didn’t, and there is no prospect of ever getting more free time in future either! :) What I see now, however, is that I could have used the little time that I had here and there to learn something instead of abandoning it altogether.

I’m picking up one of the self-teaching Spanish softwares to give it a shot. I’m just not sure which one would be the best for me.

I love the romantic languages especially Italian and I love the history of the language. I’ve been in Italy recently and would have loved to make myself understood beyond the basic please and thank you. Started Italian lessons years ago in work but need to get focused and pick this up again somehow.

1) JAPANESE
2) CANTONESE
3) SPANISH

I want to learn a language or possibly several as I’m well aware of the current culture in my country to be arrogant enough to go to a foreign country and expect them to speak English.

I think I want to learn Spanish or Chinese… spanish is probably and easier one to start with since I can speak passable French

i think I’ll take a book out of the library about Spanish.

As of right now I’m still deciding which language I want to learn. I’m going to make a decision by August 1st so I can use my birthday money to buy some of the stuff I’ll need to do it. And as of right now I’m leaning more towards Spanish or Japanese, which seem the most sensible.