Questions About Language

[afhald]

Can i ask what has Mozambique to do with spanish??

____________________________________


The best advice i can give you, is the imerssion one, surround yourself with speakers, TV or any other thing, so you can learn it faster.

Portuguese is the official language in Mozambique, but maybe he meant the spanish language is pretty similar to the portuguese one.

[valax]

I'm italian, I learned the basics at the elementary school BUT i give most credit to my knlowledge to videogames and the internet
the first game i played in a foreing language was TLoZ: Ocarina of Time (one of my favourites), also Final Fantasy VII since these games weren't translated in italian
then i started playing WOW and being in touch with people speaking english also helped A LOT .
There was also a time when i started even to think in english (guess around 14-15 ). I find difficult to understand why many of my classmates struggle to learn english in school when i learned the most alone with videogames O.o

[dusketernal]

I've done both. I'm a native speaker of English. I then learned a little French first (about a year, in elementary school), then switched to learning German (middle school through college). Then, in graduate school, I took Russian.

Learning earlier in your life is easier in many ways - mainly because your vocal apparatus isn't quite as set to make your native language's sounds. Once you get older, it's harder to get your mouth and tongue to make the newer sounds. Russian wasn't too bad for me because many of the sounds were similar enough to German (in how they are made), though the "shch" and the more back of the throat "L" sounds were a bit of a challenge.

Curiously, learning German actually made me a better speaker of English (particularly in understanding grammar).

Essentially, the sooner you learn the better. Trying to learn a language later in life, especially one with radically different sounds, is problematic the older you get.

[Jackmoves]

I guess watching TV and films in the native language helps as well but 90% of swedish TV is in English otherwise it's gardening and political debates

You can always watch the news, lol... but yeah there is not a whole lot worth of watching in Swedish, I like a couple of shows on SVT(sociaty/news related ones), but thats about it.

This one is pretty good.
http://www.svt.se/korrespondenterna/

and this
http://www.svt.se/ug/

[Aristeus]

I've been learning French for the past few weeks again. It's going okay. Right now I have books, audio lessons, computer lessons, books (for reading) that are in French + I watch some French shows.

[Deleted]

I had english class in primary school, but I hated it. I only started learning english at the age of 13 or so. I've recently passed my "intermediate" exam. I think I can write english pretty well, but I've got issues with pronunciation. While my reading and writing is good, I tend to pronounce things wrong. Maybe that's because I hear both british and american english on tv.

I started learning french much earlier (around age 5), but I've never been able to speak french properly. I would be able to communicate but not have a conversation in french.

The difference is because I learned english by reading books in english, watching movies without subs, talking with people on skype etc. And I learned french by going on vacation to france 2 weeks a year.

[Catta]

Alla fine sei riuscito a capire qualcosa da quegli episodi di Friends?

I had seen the episode before so i got the gist of it...