Please advise. 

Thanks.

Katie, why are you learning Korean?

Great points.  If you could see a person's profile and contact them before meeting would it help ease the discomfort in meeting a stranger?  Anything that can be done to increase the chances of productive, long-term study with a language exchange partner?   

I think I'm ready. I have a fairly full week of Skype ahead, so that I'm as much into speaking as possible. I'm regretting that I didn't take a week or two vacation and wrote the exam somewhere Spanish speaking, so that I could be fully immersed, but oh well. It is what it is. I have a good feeling and I think I can do it. We shall see. I'm still thinking about the C1 down the road, but for now if I pass the B2 I'll be pretty damn pleased with myself. 

Wish me luck and good luck to anyone else scheduled for DELE exams next weekend. 

New article, this time about combining books and audiobooks:

http://nointhedwarf.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/ein-buch-und-ein-horbuch-2/

I'm James. I'm a 23 year old American. I've studied German for 2 years now and spent a month in summer '11 studying in Germany. I had decent conversational skills, but I feel like I'm losing them. Use it or lose it!

I also recently started studying French to communicate with my sister's in-laws and would love the chance to stumble around in the language to get some conversational skills going.

I'd be excited to do a conversation exchange and share my knowledge of my native language. I do not, however, have any experience whatsoever in tandem language learning, but am enthusiastic about giving it my best.

I followed up on your suggestion and I am really impressed with the Michel Thomas course.  I've been a big Pimsleur fan for years and had never used MT.  The Advanced Review lessons were exactly what I needed to help me work on the various verb conjugations.

new on this forum. Native French, fluent English, total beginner in Spanish, looking for a language partner so I'm interested.

Salut,

nouveau sur ce forum. Langue maternelle Français, je parle couramment l'Anglais et je débute totalement en Espagnol. Je cherche un partenaire pour progresser en Espagnol.

Hervé

France

Edmundyong said

中文是我的母语所以对我来说比别的语文还简单。还记得小时候背啦啦啦背得很痛苦！！！汉语拼音也不会很难，不会变来变去。各国的朋友们加油吧！*有志者事竟成~别放弃

* 有志者事竟成 （成语）：If there's a will, there's a way!

有问题的话，可以问我！很乐意帮助你们！！！ 

I just managed to understand the context of the first phrase!

JamesLinguist said
Interesting discussion. Well, I think it's a good to think of mastering languages as a surmountable challenge. However, let's be clear about the reality of conjugation in English: "My mother go to the fruit shop every day." "Yesterday she buy a watermelon." We understand the meaning. Can we say it's "bad English"? "Incorrect"? Well, "pidgin English" is used as a lingua franca by non-native speakers. They can communicate, without "even" conjugating. Should native speakers "correct" non-standard use of their language? Perhaps it depends on the situation ...
 

Oh, come on, that barely counts as conjugation . Here, this is more like it: http://www.wordreference.com/conj/ESverbs.aspx?v=ir

Stephanie S said
Hi. There are thousands of languages I've never studied, but in my humble opinion, here's my humble list.

1. Chinese - (I'm not talking about the writing, of course) The pronunciation is difficult if you're not a native tonal language speaker, but the grammar is almost unbelievably simple. 

2. English - ...And not just because it's my native language. There's hardly any complexity left in this language, and the pronunciation is fairly simple. We don't even conjugate!  

3. Romance Languages - Tenses and conjugations, yes, but no cases or declensions that I'm aware of. I never tried Esperanto, but I imagine it's one of the easiest, since the purpose of its invention was to be so.  

I've heard Afrikaans and Scandinavian languages are also supposed to be particularly easy for English speakers, but I've never tried.

Stephanie

Elanguest English Language School

Interesting discussion. Well, I think it's a good to think of mastering languages as a surmountable challenge. However, let's be clear about the reality of conjugation in English: "My mother go to the fruit shop every day." "Yesterday she buy a watermelon." We understand the meaning. Can we say it's "bad English"? "Incorrect"? Well, "pidgin English" is used as a lingua franca by non-native speakers. They can communicate, without "even" conjugating. Should native speakers "correct" non-standard use of their language? Perhaps it depends on the situation ...

I live in China and I agree with Robert B to quite a large extent: in some areas people really can't speak Mandarin Chinese very well! 

Therefore, to get the most out of your trip, I think a city near to Beijing may well be the best location for you!

It's about making connections based around specific categories.

I like to have a written record of my knowledge bank, so I'm a big fan of pencil and paper.

In fact, I'm a big fan of lists and Mind Maps.

As Benny teaches us, we need to take action to make our knowledge truly active, so we need to converse with natives about topics of common interest.

Let's put these two methods together:

1) Make a Mind Map on the topic of food: record your favourite food, adjectives to describe food, conversation starter questions. You can even lead in to advanced topics such as GM food, food safety in China, Fair Trade, and so on.

2) Start a conversation on this topic with a native speaker.

I need to make myself do Step 2 more! We know we can set up a language exchange with a native speaker, talk on Skype and so on. Step 1 is the easy part!

Great to be making my first post here.

I live and work in China. I primarily work as an English teacher.

I have various projects that I'm passionate about, including blogging. 

My main language mission is to be able to verbalize my own responses to at least 100 small-talk starter questions in Chinese by next Spring Festival (Friday January 31 2014).

I'll be checking out other people's progress and methods on this forum.

I will continue to read Benny's great articles and watch the YouTube videos.

Benny is a living legend and this website is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. 

Enjoy.

LG,

Walter

I'm learning German and would be glad to help you with your Spanish. We could arrange some conversation exchanges via Skype. I send you a PM!

Besos,

Walter

LG

TL;DR: Why do you wanna learn these languages? Pick one that you want the most, for specific reasons. Learning them all at once is way too hard!

I use the website memrise.com to build vocabulary, it's super easy and gives you "mems," or ideas for memorizing words, with each vocab word.

I also use TalkToMeInKorean.com! I only use their podcasts here (i download the mp3s and pdf's) and they teach you simple grammar lessons, and explain how they are used in everyday language way better than a book would. They're also pretty funny

Have you listened to any K-Pop songs? I suggest listening to online K-Pop radio stations and watching music videos. It's very satisfying when I listen to a song and I notice that I've learned another line of the song from what I've been learning! I could suggest some great songs if you'd like. Fortunately, almost all K-Pop have a few lines in English, often in the chorus, so they can be quite catchy and easy to listen to.

And last, I use the website InterPals to talk to people from Korea, where I help them with their English, and they help me with my Korean! It's a great penpal website. And usually they're willing to Skype with you so you can speak to each other and practice pronunciation as well.

Tell me what other resources you guys use for learning Korean!

I would recommend the Pimsleur program to you as a good start for strict memorization. You will still learn the tenses and the grammar but it's less thinking about conjugating and more just phrase recognition and response.

If you want less grammar might I recommend a few other languages to you? Esperanto is extremely easy with grammar and perhaps you wouldn't even need to know it to speak to natives, but with only two million speakers it's not as practical. For something more useful might I recommend Mandarin (Chinese)? Now I know Mandarin sounds a bit more intimidating than Spanish, but the grammar is actually pretty similar to English. There's no weird inflections, rolled r's or many sounds not common to English, and, there's no conjugating!

Bueno suerte mi gringo compañero.

That all sounds very impressive. What books are you using? Are you enjoying it? What sort of level do you have?

I prefer learning with a teacher but my life's pretty busy. If you want to make friends then I can see how a language exchange would be better (and free!). 

My progress is... progressing! I don't work nearly so fast as Benny or half the people on here but that's okay with me. It's not my priority any more. I can make myself understood and I'm getting better at the basic grammar so I'm happy. Sadly I'm not going to have lessons any more.

My journey is going very well. I've been focusing on several important tenses, vocab and pronunciation. 

Resources so far:

Duolingo - quite a good resource. I've used it mainly for pronunciation on my iPad.

Spanish textbooks (various).

Online articles and journals in Spanish.

Help from a friend!

Anyone else on a similar journey? Let me know and we could help each other out!

Želim ljudi da razgovaraju sa.

Govorite li hrvatski?

Te corrijo, ok?.

Si estoy en lo cierto, te conocí ayer a través de Verbling y luego hablamos por Skype. (Mark) recuerdo que te hablé sobre este sitio web. Me alegro, que hayas ingresado en este sitio.  ¡Hay muchos artículos útiles!

Intentaré hablar contigo cuando pueda, pero a veces me es difícil porque "yo solo hablar con skype al azar." (I didn't understand well maybe "Solo hablo por skype con gente al azar").

Espero que encuentres a más gente para poder hablar con skype!

Buena suerte.

I've been learning Chinese for a few years and Spanish for a bit over a year now. I know all the basic grammar structures/rules for both languages, but what's keeping me from becoming completely fluent is a lack of active vocabulary. I can understand people pretty well and can get the general idea when reading something, but when it comes to actually talking to people, I tend to run our of words quite often.

My question for the people who have become fluent in their languages is how did you build a strong active vocabulary?

If I'm right , I was the person you skyped with yesterday via verbling. ( Mark )  I remember telling you about this site. I'm glad you could get on here. Lots of helpful articles!

I will try and catch you when I'm on, but I'm only able to Skype at very random times unfortunately.

Hope you're able to find other people to skype with.

Buena suerte

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hola Javier

Si tengo razón, conocerte con skype ayer a través de Verbling. (Mark) recordé te dije sobre este sitio web. Me alegro, que pudiste ingresar este sitio.  ¡Hay muchos artículos útiles!

Intentaré hablar contigo cuando yo puedo, pero a veces es difícil para me porque yo solo hablar con skype al azar.

Te espero que encontrará otra gente a hablar con skype!

Buena suerte

Si quieres corregir mis errores, ¡No me importa! 

I'm trying to learn Russian as well, I just went back to italki but I don't know where to start (if I should start with a tutor or just language exchange), I'm also studying with books and with audio lessons... I guess I'm still too shy haha

how's your progress going?

My name is Javier, I'm form Spain and I'd like to speak english, and spanish of course.

My level is not well and for that I'm here. 

I have skype. 

Mandarme un Mesaje privado si quereis practicar.

I am mark & watched a lot of TV Shows till a day...Like Simpsons, American Idol & much more...So guys tell me which TV Shows you prefer Reality or General TV Shows?? According to me General TV Shows are best for me because in reality shows mostly celebrities use abusing languages in TV show....which too bad for childrens..Agree guys??

I recently ran into another interesting fact: I had a few minutes of boredom and have already finished my German "chores" for the day, so I opened the article about Sweden in Wikipedia.

There I saw that the Swedish "motto" is "För Sverige i tiden" , which is translated there as "For Sweden – With the Times" .

Tiden = Times?

So apparently, the words "tide" and "time" are connected. Both are derived from an Indo-Europan root that means "to cut up, divide". This is baffling, but reading explanations you can actually formulated how this came to be:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=time

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tide

Mind blowing

That reminds me of the greek expression for "to cut": τέμνω (temno) from which originated the english words "tome" "atom" (impossible to cut) "anatomy" (art or repeatedly cutting the body) "entomology" (from the greek word for insect: ἔντομον (entomon) that means "divided into pieces" (head, abdomen, etc..))

Definitely like your approach to coming to China and get the real immersion that the language requires.  I would only caution to make sure your expectations are realistic as even 2-3 weeks might not see large tangible improvements.  It will most likely help your ear the most. 

My advice is to choose a tier-2 or 3 city in the North of China where you can get away from other foreigners and Chinese eager to practice English.  I say the North because their Mandarin is more standard and in the South you will run into local dialects.

Find a tutor and tell them you want to speak Chinese the entire time.  It is relatively cheap and will definitely help you meet your Mandarin language goals. 

Best,

Robert

My name is Egidio and I'm looking for a native english for some conversations. I'm italian.

medicivalencia said
It depends on your mother tongue. In my case, for example, my mother tongue is Spanish (I also speak Catalan fluently). Italian was very easy because it's very similar to Catalan. Portuguese is also very easy to read when you speak Spanish but Portuguese phonetics are a bit more complicated. 

And English is NOT an easy language to learn for Spanish-speaking people for some reasons:

1. Spelling is not phonetic like Spanish. It's more ethymologic.

2. English has many more sounds than Spanish. Thus, pronunciation is more complicated.

3. English is the language that has most vocabulary in the world (there are too many words to learn.)

4. Phrasal verbs are an endless list that combines verbs with prepositions.

Anyway, I love learning languages, so English for me it's just a challenge!

Hi Medici,I can see what you mean. The writing is a nightmare, I agree with you. Also I can see how phrasal verbs would be a problem... I guess English does have a more sounds than Spanish, but as far as number of phonemes, does anyone know how English compares in general with other languages? I'd be interested to know. And does it really have the most vocabulary in the world? I didn't know that. Where did you hear it? Thanks!

Stephanie

Elanguest

Also if people would like to practice Japanese with me, feel free to add me as well.

日本語：
こんにちはどくしゃ！私は友達に日本語をはなしにさがしています。私は英語を話します。私はげんごこうかんをしていない。でも、たのしいと思います！私のスケジュールで暇は平日の１８：００意向。勉強たくさんしたら、Viber Appがあります。

も、いっしょに日本語を話したら、私をついかください。

＿＿＿＿＿＿＿

About me:

I have studied Japanese for 2 years and am at a rusty intermediate level. I'm not too into Anime/Manga anymore, but I do appreciate the storytelling in them. I love art and have recently focused in on sculpture, both traditional and digital. I also like video games and technology a ton!

My Skype: Proto715

Please send me a message with why you're adding me. Thank you very much!

ありがとうございます！

This summer looks to be full of TV dramas, children's cartoons, and Andy Lau. Things I've already done since the summer started is gone to karaoke with some friends of mine. I've also set up a regular time to chat with my friend everyday so that I can practice my spoken Chinese.