Foreign languages

[ousdahl]

any bilinguals out there?

What language/s?

I took two years of Spanish in high school. Teacher said I was the best student she'd ever had. Like she literally kept my essays as examples for future students to model their essays off of.

but then instead of sticking to it, I studied Italian in college. The two languages are so similar that being familiar with one initially helped to learn the other, but then I just sorta got them all mixed up and don't know which is which.

but can still stumble through both just enough to impress tu madre.

[ousdahl]

oh! but my question was, is anyone familiar or had success with any sort of language tutorial app or anything?

[CrimsonNBlue]

Depends on the language. Spanish? You could probably get by with about anything. Asian, Middle East, Rosetta Stone is not good.

[Shirley]

I did Duolingo for 10-20 minutes every morning for months to polish up on my Spanish. I thought it was worth the time.

[zsn]

Another vote for Duolingo. Did it to learn basic Italian to be able to converse with plant operators when I was doing work there. Helped quite a bit, but I am not certain if it would have been as helpful if I had not the "immersion" experience alongside.

[Deleted User 89]

a buddy of mine got rosetta stone for tagalog (Filipino)

he wasn’t too impressed. learned more by staying in country for 9mo straight...not surprisingly

i’ve taken spanish, french, and tagalog...can’t really speak a lick of any of them now, but can generally get the gist if i’m reading them

[HouseDivided]

Used Duolingo last year trying to learn some more German. One limitation is that the free version only allows a certain number of incorrect answers before it locks you out for the day. If you upgrade to the paid version, you have unlimited use.

[KU76erfan]

Drop me in Italy and I can get by; surprised the last time I was in Germany that I remembered quite a few things from high school classes, thankfully. My Japanese, sadly, is quite terrible.

[seahawk]

Duolingo is pretty good, ousdahl. Also helpful is to buy a children's book picture dictionary and learn terms of all kinds of household, school, vehicles, fruits and veggies, etc. Take the book and pick up the item and learn its name in Spanish, try for 3-5 per day. It really is all about knowing a lot, A LOT of words. It's not what I was taught in junior high, high school and college Spanish, but read a book which gave that suggestion--and was correct.

Who cares if you have subject-verb agreement or get the right tense if you know how to say "crossroads" or "oven" or "microwave" or "laptop"? Had a German neighbor who made all kinds of grammatical mistakes, but could converse with you easily because she knew so many terms. My husband never, ever used proper tense or the correct pronoun, but had learned Oil Rig Spanish and knew all the terms for speaking about hammers and construction tools to workmen who came to our house.