be fluent in several different languages

french and spanish

Decided after looking into it that this course wasn’t as good as it sounded. So now I have a CD and book set of Teach Your Self French instead. It’s actually going pretty well.

I’ve enrolled in Beginner French clasess! Yay! Hopefully after finishing this one and another couple I’ll be ready to have an actual conversation.

i’ve been lucky enough to be a multi-lingual kid, having 3 first languages and at school having to learn 2 more :)

Your tips really help. Thanks Jack. I’m currently in Spanish at school, I’m learning American Sign Language on my own (very easy, very useful) and next I’m going to start in on Latin. Sometime after I graduate high school I’ll start on Hindi, since I want to go to India and help people.

This past weekend I read an e-book called “How to learn any language” and it was pretty helpful. It also convinced me to rearrange the order in which I learn languages, so I’ve decided to go:

French
Spanish
Italian
Dutch
German
Mandarin
Japanese

The book really encouraged me and made me a believer that I can really learn all of those languages eventually.

I liked some of the ideas of the book, which were pretty close to:

1. Read 5 chapters of grammar for the language
2. Read a paragraph from a native newspaper and highlight words you don’t know.
3. Look up each word you don’t know and make a set of flashcards for each and learn those words and repeat with the newspaper until you can read a page
4. At the same time, listen to “conversational” language tapes

It also suggested that you never wait for the “magic moment” when you are fluent in a language, because you’re always learning any language. So, I’m going to treat each language as if I’m a student of it (including English).

So, I begin my French study.

I am currently living in Japan and I can’t even speak the language. My daughter was born here and I want her to know about the culture and language. I also would like to relearn spanish. I grew up in New Mexico and spanish is a big part of the culture there and I would like to relearn it. I would also like to learn sign language. I would like my children to become fluent in several languages and I would like to be able to encourage them and help them in any way I can.

Heh, I don’t like vague goals so I’m going to define this for myself, one at a time:

1. Italian
2. German
3. Spanish
4. Japanese
5. French

Now I just need to decide the best method to learn a language apart from the obvious total immersion. Hmm, come to think of it maybe I’d like living in Italy. I’ll definitely consider it an option.

edit – not an “option” anymore .. Living in Italy is now one of my goals