Posted on 01/01/2023 9:29:20 AM PST by EEGator
I tried a few during COVID and didn’t get very far. Some companies were offering their content for free during the pandemic. At first I was ambitious, trying to tackle Japanese, then Swedish, finally Spanish. Now I use spanishdict.com. It’s free.
Truthfully, I don’t think it’s that good. It couldn’t have taught me the language from scratch, but I’ve picked up enough Spanish over the years from television to do okay with the exercises, and every little bit of practice helps.
Teaching Company courses (available through online streaming or by ordering the discs from the company) are also pretty good, but I’d rather do exercises on the computer, rather than in a workbook.
I received A’s, but it was written only and not difficult.
I did find it helpful in understanding the roots of words.
I’m glad I took the courses. It was nice since my other classes were upper level Chemical Engineering classes with labs.
Latin is the base of a lot of foreign language. Because I took Latin I can usually read an article and understand it’s basics. I read instructions in the foreign language just to practice.
Vale
What I found is once you learn a Slavic language, like Polish or Russian, it’s fairly easy to pick up the other ones, like Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croat, etc.
Basic Spanish 1: Getting Started from Universitat Politècnica de València
https://www.edx.org/course/basic-spanish-1-getting-started
First of three courses.
Was that Lackland AFB followed by Monterey CA?
Ditto. I’m going to try Duolingo.
ROFL
Exactly! ... Exakt!
Yes, Memrise is an app, you can do the browser-based, or phone app.
Generally I prefer brower-based.
One of my all-time favorite movies.
Good for you.
I Aced all 8 yrs of Latin, in HS and College. I enjoyed it.
My Dad was a Chemical Engineer w/ Allied Chemical, after he received multiple degrees on WWII’s GI Bill, after he was wounded in The Battle of The Bulge, as a Combat Engineer, with Patton’s 3rd Army. He passed in 2018, at 95.
Were you a Chemical Engineer?
https://www.streetsmartlanguages.com/
This dude apparently has a system where he gains limited fluency in a couple weeks. Maybe not your thing but interesting.
I switched from ChemE to EE. I also used my GI Bill for schooling.
I do electrical distribution design now. There’s a ton of work that will continue beyond my death.
I try to steer younger men into my field.
We’re undermanned and old. It’s heavily conservative white males, so no HR BS to deal with.
Sounds like your Dad was tough and intelligent…good combo.
We could use more like him. :)
That goes for reading and listening knowledge, but I wonder if all those words in one's head can make it hard to speak any language correctly.
Italians and Spaniards can generally communicate with each other by each speaking their own language (Come to think of it, it's getting that way in the US with English and Spanish, languages that aren't anywhere near as closely related). French is more different. It can often help you to guess a Spanish word, but it's not always the right Spanish word (or even a real Spanish word).
If you know English and German, Dutch shouldn't be that hard, and German helps with the Scandinavian languages, which (linguist John McWhorter says, maybe half joking) are all basically really one language anyway. I think in those Scandinavian cop shows the Swedes and Danes and Norwegians understand each other without having to learn or speak the others' language.
Thank you.
The one good thing about French is that a lot of words are similar to English, because actually a lot of English is based on French. But it’s a very softly spoken language that it’s difficult to pick up where one word ends and the next one begins.
Duolingo is great for basic familiarity and practice. You can use it on your phone or on the web. You can use it for free with ads and some limitations.
Duolingo gives first class support to Spanish, French and German. Pretty good for Italian. The Welsh course has good voice synthesis. By comparison, the Scot's Gaelic assembles spoken sentences like a mad bomber using discrete words spoken by males, females, old and young just stitched into sentences. The key difference is some languages exist because dedicated volunteers put effort into creating them. Others get the "full corporate support" including voice synthesis, voice recognition, reading exercises, listening exercises.
I started into Mandarin Chinese on Duolingo, but it was a pretty steep learning curve. The Hello Chinese app on Android did a better job of helping me learn the tones in Mandarin. I made good enough progress in Japanese that I was able to read the hiragana/katakana wall graffiti at my local Japanese sushi shop.
Duolingo implementations vary. The Apple app gets the best toys first. Android implementations are good, but run far behind the Apple development. There is a web version that works for desktop computers with just a browser. The web version has other features including forums with other learners and instructors. Sometimes there are group audio chats.
I’ve heard Poles describe Czech as sounding like a baby speaking Polish.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.