Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Let's learn a foreign language!

English is my mother tongue, and I speak reasonably good German. I recently decided to learn some foreign languages, so I picked up some books on Russian and French. Then I decided that anything worth doing was worth overdoing, so I picked up some books on Spanish and Japanese as well. All this meant is that I would spread my studying so thin I would learn nothing. Sooo....

I decided to learn just one new language - Russian. (I am not sure why I picked Russian - just seems cool.) Here is my plan of attack. A person can have a working vocabulary with only 1000 words or so, and with 3000 words a person could likely claim fluency in a language.

To that end, in addition to studying Russian grammar and phases in a book, I have decided to make sure I memorize 10 new words every day. This means in one year, I will have learned 3650 words, which should be cool. To make sure I learn them, I am using 4x6 index cards.

Each card will conatain maybe 5 words. Nouns will only go on a card with other nouns of the same gender, regular and irregular verbs are separated, colors are on one card, and so on.

I will quiz myself with these cards every day, to refresh everything I have learned. (I won't do every card every day; I will just give myself a pop quiz with cards picked at random in an attempt to insure that I remember what I have learned.)

What do you think of my system? Any other suggestions?

I've never used it, but I've heard really good things about Rosetta Stone.

I recommend that you record your voice speaking all the new words you learn, and then erase them later as you go. It has something to do with memory retention being better when you hear yourself speak.

Don't ask me why this works but it sure helped my brother and I re-learn Greek 6 years after we moved to Canada (having forgotten almost everything in the six years we were living here and then had to go back and learn it again). Our parents did this with us at our teacher's request.

Small children are such cyphers!

I've been studying Mandarin using Rosetta Stone. I think it's an awesome method because it avoids translations altogether; you work with the foreign language and pictures, nothing else. And you hear natives pronouncing things, which definitely helps.

What's Mandarin for, "Thank you to our new Overlords! Allow me to bend forward and grab my ankles while you collect ourdebt!"

No idea. I'm at the 'this is a green apple' level.

If the price of Rosetta Stone seems too much, see if your public library offers access to Mango Languages, a web-based language-learning program that is available for free.

awl hale inn-sewer-ants kompa-knees


*Phonetic mandarin.

what?

Say it fast, with breaks between the words.

Do you mean "inn-sure-ants"?

well, ah godda throw in a liddle redneck.

and, it was lifted from Terry Pratchet, and that was his, except for "awl hail", and kompa-knees

All joking aside, I took french in highschool way back when. I remember zero of it. I would like to learn spanish and possibly a little bit of some other language.

OOOOooohhhh , I say we all learn latin, and then just speak it at really annoying people. We can say nasty things but sound really smart doing it.

I took French in junior high school because the French teacher told us that it was becoming the international language. Yeah, right. Around here, I need to know Spanish. I like the concept of Rosetta Stone, but it's so dang expensive.

You do realize that latin is not the same as pig-latin.

My favorite use of Latin in popular culture is in the the movie A Fish Called Wanda where the choirboys at the dog funerals sing "Miserere Dominus, miserere Dominus, Canis mortuus est."

That's choral humor!

Quare perceptum Latin ut is est a mortuus lingua?


Legio Universitas est optimus nuntius tabula. Populus hic es sapiens quod familiaris. Porro Ago Legio!

Grrr.

I can't see paying anything for a language course. The local library system has several books and many CDs on learing Russian, so I refuse to spend one dime if I don't have to, and I don't. I picked up a different text today, as well as a collection of CDs.

One of the books I have is kind of funny though. Early in the book it introduces some phrases one might need if one visits Russia. These phrases include:


I was just attacked.

Help me!

I am bleeding.

I need to speak with my consul.

The book also advises extreme politeness when speaking with the police, immigration officers, and customs officials.

Duh!

Among the French I remember "Ou est la wc?" (Pronunced oo aay la vay say) Where is the bathroom? (wc actually stands for "Water closet")
I tried to learn French to impress girls. It worked to a limited degree.

Here's one for you to use. combibo mihi

Gesundheit!