How did you learn a foreign language and how did it affect your life?

For me I have been trying to learn Thai for many years but it is very difficult. The words just don't seem to stick in my brain or make any memorable lasting impression and the tones are always quite difficult for me to pronounce. I have been to school to try to learn if writing would improve my time but it just made me not want to learn anymore.

Learning Thai has definitely improved my experience living in the country, it's a lot easier for me to communicate in Thai when I'm buying things in the street or when I'm listening to a conversation I know exactly if they are talking about me or not. Sometimes as a final living in Thailand we get a bit paranoid if we cannot understand the language so it makes sense to understand it and then you can appreciate the country and the people much better.

Thai people are very kind people and learning the language will help you to better understand the culture and the way they think.
Although in the beginning I thought that learning to speak in Thai would mean I could have deep and meaningful conversations with Thai people, I have quickly realize that having deep and meaningful conversations with Thai people is not really the way they are. Food and drink and men seems to be as far as i get. Anything else is just frowned upon!

I found that you cannot really learn a language well unless you live in a place where you are forced to use it in daily life to get things done.
And mastery of a language comes only when you stop translating in your head, but directly thinking in that language.
I only managed to get that far in English, which is now our family tongue - despite being second language to both my wife and me.
Because languages are so important in our interconnected world, we raise our kids tri-lingual.

For me it's Spanish, it's the best foreign language I have come across. I first began by having friends speaking it, then got tracks to listen to and then an app. Today I am confident in Spanish and can speak considerably well.

This is something that has happened in three months time. I would like to start believing that maybe I am smart lol.

Hi there,
@beppi, Learning a language living in that country does not entitle you to master it unless you have good friends. I am pretty sure in Asian/English-speaking world, people socialize better than here. Going to school to learn a new language might give just little insight into basic vocabulary used in daily life, but would not help much. A language can be learned with a free mind in a group of native speaking friends, who corrects your pronunciation and grammar at every drop of the hat with a friendly smile. This is the age-old process of learning any language. Just a Tim980 pointed out -- this takes considerably less time in comparison to school/books. And - no language is tougher to learn. @Tim980, I agree to the fact that Spanish is not just wonderful, but a romantic language. I wish I could learn Spanish in my lifetime.

I am currently in Germany for a while. As far as my experience is concerned learning a new language truly helps to stay in that country and makes your life a lot easier. I would just point to one experience to highlight the importance. In the beginning year of my stay in Germany, I was mugged in the night by a bunch of guys. I had been to the police station to file a complaint. The police obviously do not understand English, asked me to wait one hour until they could find a translator in their office. I would draw your attention to a couple of imaginary situations. when you have a serious health complaint and there is no translator at the hospital? When there is an emergency such as fire complaint, and the guys at fire emergency services do not understand you?

Well, I do not want to read literary works of Sigmund Freud or Emanuel Kant in their native language to understand them better nor do not make friends with typically unfriendly and busy population around me. but I certainly want to live the life without hassle. so learning a new language, especially when living there helps.

And on the final note - English is the beautiful language. We can appreciate many languages and cultures in translated form. Learning this one language with dedication can enable you to make friends and live in most parts of the world.

Cheers
DL

I'm a 21 year veteran foreign language teacher (Germam) in the US...so my opinion is totally biased! LOL. Learning a foreign language is the key to understanding a new country of residence!

I began my life monolingual as many northern Americans do.  Started with German in high school and then continued.  Japanese in college...didn't use so nihongo wa wakarimasen     Picked up a little Italian while in Italy and French from the radio while living in Germany...and recently Spanish (took a semester at a local college to understand the grammatical framework...) for living en la Republica Dominicana...sorry no accent marks available on this platform...  The only way to really become fluent is to live immersed in the language.  And, the best part of learning a 3rd or 4th language is that you have no self-esteem to get in the way...because you've learned that mistakes are UNAVOIDABLE and 99% people will be thrilled that you are trying and will help you!

started learning languages at school... flemish, dutch, french, english, german, latin and greek. Everybody has to learn languages in belgium.
later studied some italian, some spanish and indonesian. Trying to learn arabic now.
languages are a doorway to meet other people. Everybody can do it. you don't need to be fluent to be able to commune.

Language changed my life,and made me able to study abroad and opened lots of chances in life,
Ineed to learn German,Dutch and Japanese and I'll have 10 different languages

When you know many languages, are you sometime confuse between them?

My American friend, who can speak French, and learning Vietnamese said that:
sometime when she speaks with Vietnamese, she accidentally speak French instead of Vietnamese, and just realized it afterward.

This also happens to children who learn different languages from parents, sometime they can't be aware which language they're speaking.

How about you?

languages that are related can be very confusing. I started to learn Italian, that was good, but then the next year I started spanish too... I mixed up my spanish with my italian big time!

Some people just have the gift to learn new languages. My sister learnt French & German at school than is later life went on to speak Italian and Welsh and she already had English as her mother tongue.

I can speak egyptian arabic but i understand..and i replied them in english ..although i know some words but i have a pronounciation problem same with french which for me is difficult ..i have a short course but i didn't continue and its so awkward sometimes if u are in group and u couldn't even joined the conversation..

Hello

When I was young, my dream was learning Spanish and become a Spanish's teacher but unfortunately in my highschool we had two options: Italian and German.I chose German ,because Italian is very simple for me I can understand and speak some words (due to TV channel...)
After my graduation, I find a training in Spain (Andalucia south of Spain) ; there most of people speak only Spanish (in fact not Spanish it is andalous!! veryyyy difficult and different of Spanish)
In Spain, I found a trainning center ; they give Spanish courses for free and the teacher spoke only Spanish!
I had a classmate for Roumania, he helped me a lot to translate from Spanish to English.
Every Staurday night my Flatemates went to bars and I stayed at home to learn the language.
After 3 months, all my friends were so glad because of my level.
When I come back to my country, I continued to listen to Spanish songs, try to read books to improve my Spanish skills.
I traveled to France and Germany and when I met Spanish people I felt like I met my compatriotes we spoke Spanish and we shared the same joy !
Now I try to learn new languages : Portugease, Turkish, indian, malay, serbian and Korean .

Thank's

Hi, I think Brodies (learning German for 21 years) has totally hit the nail on the head here. Learning a language  helps you make friends in a new culture, and if you go deep get genuine insights in to their ways of seeing the world.

Age 21 I started teaching in Sri Lanka. I was a language nut - although based in the city and teaching in an English-speaking school, in my spare time I took every opportunity to learn Sinhala (first year) and then Tamil. Back then (mid-nineties) it was hard to find materials to help. I searched out language texts in uni libraries and even went to India to get cassettes to learn Tamil! The main thing I did was use the language with friends and my language took off when I started staying with friends and going on trips.

Did it change my life...? Well I met my wife first when I stayed at her house all those years ago. She was young then but when we met up again ten years' later love blossomed and I found the love of my life. I've been working on humanitarian emergencies with aid agencies for 22 years. The first job was... as an interpreter of Sinhala and Tamil with the Red Cross. Although I moved on managing and leadership positions after that, my language skills allowed me to enter a profession that has taken me to over 60 countries and allowed me the priviledge of working with passionate teams to help people in crisis.

I moved to Bangkok a few weeks ago and my family will join me in a few months. Although I speak several languages fluently, I am struggling with Thai. I have a busy day job.  I've never learnt a tonal language, but looking forwards to the challenge! I use ThaiPod 101 which is a million miles away from those materials I struggled with in the nineties. Would welcome any tips on finding a good place to study Thai outside work hours etc.

Adam

İ think that best way is find friends and speaking cuz teoric lessons are just stay on the paper if you dont practise with someone i think you cant improve yourself enough.

Practice make perfect!

I think the best way to learn language is to share your experience with your friends in a social group but unfortunately l could not get any group to make practice with them

I found the only way to learn Dutch, was to speak it.  It was scary, embarrassing, but in retrospect it was funny - I like humour.  Would I do it again - no way.

In Turkey learning English is very difficult process by this way a famous artist cem yılmaz says in his comedy
Do you know English
Yeah l study English for twenty five years
😂 lol

Back to 90's, public school here in Indonesia didn't introduce you to English until you're a 3rd grader.
But my dad was a cook that once traveled alot, so i was introduced to English since a very young age.
I got a pretty good grades (for English) during my elementary-highschool life.
I went to an English Course when i was 13yo but honestly, it didn't help much.
Theories are just theory without being applied properly.
I actually learned alot from TV Shows 'Fear Factor' which was famous that time, i tried to match words along with their expressions, i bought English written book and dictionary, whenever i found difficult words, i open the dictionary right away, when i'm not sure how to pronounce it, i asked my dad.
My parents are both Indonesian, fyi.

Somehow i went to the Philippines 8 years ago and stayed there for about 3years (went home every 6months),
There, i started to speak Tagalog as well after my 3 months-stay.
I hated the language at first, but not knowing it was inconvenient.
I started to compare English Bible-Indonesian Bible-Tagalog Bible, i tend to ask alot of questions and sure i observed the situation, when people talking, i mind the condition, their expressions, body language and, etc. It helped me big time.

It's been a year since i starting to learn Korean (well, not because of Kpop haha), i learned and studied by myself (Thank God for Internet), because i don't really have a free time to enter a course.
I've been teaching Kindergarten for about 5 years now, and this cool idea came to me,
to teach in Korean Kindergarten here in Jakarta, you got paid, at the same time you got to learn about their cultures.

And yes, there i am, teaching English, practicing my Korean, and so helping Koreans learn Bahasa.

Tagalog-Bahasa-Javanese could be really confusing since they shares same sounds and tone sentiments? i'm not sure, lol

Indonesian English-American English-Filipino English-Korean English, they're all different.
Well, i use different English Versions depending on who am i talking to.

Nice to hear from you guys!
Thankyou for reading,
let's be friend

I worked before in singapore hospital they speak british english..when i moved to egypt i didn't understand any arabic word ..but now i understand but i couldnt speak..due to pronounciation now im in morocco their arabic is different and few english speakers majority french which is very difficult for me though i take short course ..but i have some moroccan friends can speak english but communicating especially taxi drivers are difficult

I learned French in Junior High School, then went back to it in college. I didn't have a chance to use it until many years later, when I actually visited France. I found myself excellent at asking the right questions, but I was usually badly equipped to understand the answers!

I've played around with many languages since then, including Japanese and Spanish. Since my late wife was Japanese, I had chances to use the Japanese around the house, but I haven't visited Japan since many years ago, so I can't practice it. I live in California, so I have abundant chances to use Spanish here.

I'm learning Thai now; it's difficult because there are few teachers and few people to practice it with. And I'm older now; I think it gets harder to pick up new languages when you get older.

beppi wrote:

I found that you cannot really learn a language well unless you live in a place where you are forced to use it in daily life to get things done.
And mastery of a language comes only when you stop translating in your head, but directly thinking in that language.
I only managed to get that far in English, which is now our family tongue - despite being second language to both my wife and me.
Because languages are so important in our interconnected world, we raise our kids tri-lingual.

My daughter spoke Arabic before English (first words at 10 months old). When she was 2 1/2 she decided not speak Arabic any more, just English. She still understands it but will only reply in English. Thoughts?

It is normal for a multi-lingual kid to have a preference - usually the language spoken at school and among friends. We continue to encourage our daughter to answer in the language she was adressed in - and don't mix them within the sentence.

I took Latin and French in high school.  French for 3 years.  I got A's but never reached a level where I could make my way in a French speaking setting.

The Navy sent me to Spain for 2 years.  I decided at the outset, I'd enjoy the experience more if I learned top speak Spanish.  After work, I took a dictionary and phrasebook and wnet for it.  After a couple of months, I was sent to a class on base that gave me basic grammar and vocabulary.  Friends and I traveled by ourselves exploring places tourists never went learning much along the way.

After many years, I hold my own, communicating on all levels, not worrying much about perfect grammar or vocabulary.

i learnt french and chinese. Am only fluent in chinese perhaps because i got a chance to live the day today life in china. as for french, i believe i can order food and get around in boudeoux

English kids learn French at school but we forget every bit of it the moment we can drop the subject.
The only life change being wasted time, a hatred of the French language because it was forced on us and a lot of paper that would have looked better if it had remained a tree.

Mandarin was next after I started dating a Chinese girl, then another, and another, and a good few more.
Life changes were a very nice fetish for Chinese girls and a trip to Malaysia because some weren't Chinese at all, just ethnic Chinese from Malaysia.
It also led to doing business with various Chinese communities and business in the UK, and that made money.

The trip to Malaysia was a big life change because I met my wife there.
She turned out to be Indonesian so there goes my next language but no girls because my wife owns a sharp pair of scissors.

you would like that sharp pair of scissors!

I took the first step in school, then I improved my language by learning the meaning of every word I see.
Also the movies helped me a lot.

I learned the basics in school, improved my English in college, and started to get more involved. You know...books, movies, social media, and the Internet.

Been struggling to learn Japanese. I find it very interesting to learn Hiragana characters. Katakana characters are a bit hard to grasp.

I usually watch YouTube tutorials and I have also downloaded some apps to help me.

I'd kill to master Japanese language.

I'm not sure where I heard this, maybe in TESOL class, maybe on the Lang Focus channel on Youtube, but certainly living for a year in a country where that language is spoken, especially living with a native, and having few opportunities to fall back on your L1 (native language) is the surest course to fluency.
Can't wait to test that out.

Well for me, its different. The other way around to be honest. I had to learn to change  my life and it affected my language. I am married to an Italian. I made the biggest leap of my life when I decided to migrate here to Italy and boom! it affected my language. I can speak 4 different dialects in the Philippines and I can speak our own national language which is Tagalog and I speak more English than all combined. Now, my English pronunciations is getting messed up because I am embracing Italian. My hubby of course is being complimented for speaking very good English now. We speak English more than we speak Italian and that also he is learning some Tagalog and other Philippine dialects slowly and word by word.

It is very fun to learn a new language. Some are natural in this area and some are not. The key is determination to learn. The goal is to be able to speak it, understand it. Simple. Now the fun part goes when "HOW YOU LEARNED IT", who will teach you, what did you encounter while you were learning it, how it made you understand and how did you remember the things you learned.

Me, thru conversations. Television. Internet. Advertisements. ALL.

We laugh about it because sometimes when you forget the words and you try hard to remember then you say something else!

Now, I go out freely. I mean confidently without being scared because I can't speak the language. Important things is I know how to start a conversation and I know some words that people usually use day to day basis. I mean, nobody needs to learn all at the same time. You can even count which and how many words you use mostly in a day. LEARN THE BASICS FIRST.

I went to Thailand last year, and all I have was my bag, passport, money and my English Language. And I did not get lost, kidnapped and whatsoever. Just be confident enough to go. Do not look like you are scared! Never! If you don't need to talk then stay silent but do not be nervous. Smile and shrug it off.

The best way to learn well is to start with language lessons and have strong basics. Once you reach intermediary level start language exchange with a native speaker. Worked very well for me and both sides get to benefit.

Hello,

Well im indonesian and i can speak english well and now im learning german since i live in switzerland now. For english, i study them since i was in an elementary school and i mostly listen to songs and translate the lyrics to indonesian in order to understand what the song is about. School helps me a lot in understanding english but you can not only depend on it. You have to learn it by yourself.

Now, since i live in switzerland i have to learn german, im going to a deutschkurs (german language course) and i went daily. It helps me a lot. I didnt speak a single word of german since i first came but ive been going for 2 months now and my german is getting better.

So the conclusions are, you can go to a language course to learn a language but you cant just depend on it, you can also learn by yourself at home. Download an app for learning another language, buy a dictionary.

I hope it helps 😊😊

Different languages - different learning methods:

- New Roman-family languages: through Duolingo. I used to learn Italian there.... quite helpful... after that I sent many letters to many Italian penpals so that they can correct my grammar... I am comfortable with studying language alone.

- With languages I used to go to class before such as Korean and Japanese, I always review old lessons by my old notebooks, learn vocabulary everyday. Since I listen to their music everyday, I have no problem in talking, but I have problems in writing and forming skillful sentences, and remembering kanji.

- NOW, I am learning mandarin by speaking, since I stay in Malaysia, where most of people here speak Mandarin and Hokkien.... I decide not to learn to write, but instead, learning how to speak and understand Mandarin by hearing first, so my roommates teach me words and how to speak Mandarin in daily life (she loves it). I start to know that I love this way of learning coz it is supper fun.

Sometimes my boyfriend teach me some Turkish words but mainly he only teaches me how to say love him in many ways. LOL... I have no intention in learning many languages right now.... I am too packed with many not-proficient languages already.

About English.... hmmm I studied in Australian university where we had to use, write essays in English 100% so I think using English is about habits, not learning (of course my university had a lot of courses to improve English, but mainly they taught us to apply critical thinking into English academic purposes).

Hallo,

I will take A1 while in the States on Goethe online since i do not have a location in Seattle, WA.
What language schools are best to take while in Germany that are good but not too expensive? I am hoping to stay with family however i do not know if this will be the case since my family are not the most reliable. Danke. Serina

Check the local Volkshochschule at the place you will reside in.
There are also other non-profit options in most cities, so google them.

Hallo Serina,

There are many good language schools in Germany. I own a language travel agency and can recommend GLS - Berlin and DID Munich.
We send students there both for summer camps and year round. Accommodation options vary - from host family, school campus, hotel and shared flats.
By the way, once you 're at a higher language level there are internships too.

Ktris