Learning a New Language

[Dev]

Conjugating verbs is hard, y'all.

 

I wanted to find out, from those of you who have done it, what methods you used.  I'm currently in the beginning stages of learning Spanish using the Rosetta Stone software.  More years ago than I care to count, I enrolled at the local Berlitz school to learn Spanish, and had a heck of a time with the verbs and tenses.  This time around - and I credit this to the Rosetta Stone method - it seems easier, but they hit me pretty early on expecting me to speak in complete sentences.  Surprised me so much the first time I was struck mute.

 

So what's your second language, how did you learn it, and how easily did it come to you?

[Tejana]

1 hour ago, Dev said:

Conjugating verbs is hard, y'all. I wanted to find out, from those of you who have done it, what methods you used.  I'm currently in the beginning stages of learning Spanish using the Rosetta Stone software.  More years ago than I care to count, I enrolled at the local Berlitz school to learn Spanish, and had a heck of a time with the verbs and tenses.  This time around - and I credit this to the Rosetta Stone method - it seems easier, but they hit me pretty early on expecting me to speak in complete sentences.  Surprised me so much the first time I was struck mute. So what's your second language, how did you learn it, and how easily did it come to you?

 

Hhmmm....I do not seem to have much of a facility in language.  I have some capacity in Spanish; doing better w/ reading than speaking.  College & university classes in Spanish, but never really fluent.  What facility I have (had?) was mostly due to sheer exposure.  However, over the years, increasing access to translators & language lines actually seem to degrade what fluency I once possessed.  Interestingly enough though, even after years of using translators & language lines I was till able to occasionally pick up errors in what was being translated for me. 

 

 

Three semesters of German in university, but I'm afraid that my 3rd semester destroyed whatever little fluency I had, heretofore, possessed.  [The third semester was a technical & scientific translation course, and was designed to mechanistically attack & translate German sentences in  journals articles (i.e., "cookbook" German.]

 

 

Again, I don't thing I have much of an aptitude for foreign languages.  Glad to see that apparently something works.

[Dev]

You're more apt for language than I if you managed German.  I thought it would be fun to learn German as that's pretty much my entire ancestry, but I failed miserably.  I seem to be more inclined toward Spanish.  So far, at any rate.