OT: Learning a foreign language

[sabresfaninthesouth]

So elo and pix are voting to deport Sly to Seoul....

That would be awesome. With his lightning fast S. Korean internet and being 13 hours in the future, he'll be able to respond to our posts before we even post them.

It will be like Spaceballs but with snarky internet comments.

 

[IPostedWhat]

You're Welcome!

 

[IPostedWhat]

This might help as well?

 

[SLY]

Well fuck... Thanks IPW, I'm doomed.

 

[dare2be]

¿Que?

 

[Comeds]

So elo and pix are voting to deport Sly to Seoul....

Jeff Sly, kicking Ass In The 38th Parallel!*

Well fuck... Thanks IPW, I'm doomed.

My wife thinks languages are fun so she recently took a couple college courses in Arabic. That language is written right to left which took her a while to grasp but would have had me dropping out after class one.




*a Golan Globus film

 

[sabresfaninthesouth]

I had a friend in college who had a knack for languages. She was, not surprisingly, a linguistics major.

Spoke a ridiculous number of languages fluently. German ("normal" and the Swiss version), English, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Japanese, and one of the Chinese dialects (don't remember which).

I wish I had that skill.

 

[jstewismybastardson]

I had a friend in college who had a knack for languages. She was, not surprisingly, a linguistics major.

Spoke a ridiculous number of languages fluently. German ("normal" and the Swiss version), English, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Japanese, and one of the Chinese dialects (don't remember which).

I wish I had that skill.

for the kids out there ... if you ever take a university linguistics course and you end up having a hot TA ... ask her if you can see her bilabial fricative

 

[IPostedWhat]

Well fuck... Thanks IPW, I'm doomed.

You could always go with a Thai chick instead? SportsHoopla could help you with that no problem.

 

[Comeds]

You could always go with a Thai chick instead? SportsHoopla could help you with that no problem.

SportsHoopla gave me an ad for "Senior Russian Women" last night.

 

[IPostedWhat]

SportsHoopla gave me an ad for "Senior Russian Women" last night.

Sly doesn't need to start Russian into a relationship with some old babushka.

What would Mischa think?

 

[SLY]

I'm very happy with my current lady (Korean/Japanese), no need for Thai (great food) or Russian.

And yes, these ads lately are fucking ridiculous.

 

[makeshiftb0y]

I don't have the time or care enough to read through all the posts, so I apologize if any of this has already been said.

I lived in Korea for a few years and didn't know any Korean prior to going there but tried usually Rosetta Stone a bit before going and while there. I found, and most people I talked to seemed to agree, that it can be great software for learning Western languages but not really for Eastern languages, because the grammar and structure and so drastically different from English that it's hard to just pick things up and make connections like you would with a language more similar to English. I think it was fairly helpful with pronunciation though (which seemed to be the most important thing to the locals while I was there).

I would just try to find classes locally and/or find a language exchange partner or study group you could practice with; depending on your area, there are probably some Korean students studying there looking to improve their English. They might not be great teachers, but it could be a good supplement to a class or studying on your own.

Beginner books that I found to be pretty decent were "Korean Made Easy" by Seung Eun Oh and the Active Korean series. The latter is published by Seoul National University.

Talktomeinkorean.com is also pretty helpful with grammar and structure. They had MP3s to go along with each of their PDF lessons, but I found the MP3s to be really boring, drawn out, and too much English, while the PDFs are informative but don't offer much in the way of practice.

I hope this helps a bit, and good luck; the alphabet is really simple and you can learn it in an hour or so, but the language itself can be really difficult.

If this wasn't posted yet, here's a good start:

 

[SLY]

Thanks for the info makeshift.

 

[elocomotive]

This thread is so typically Sly. He speaks a language for years, and then all of a sudden - he switches and is speaking another language.

 

[pixburgher66]

Great...now all my ads are about learning languages. Better than the Russian dating site, which others have apparently been afflicted with as well.

 

[mattola]

so this is the ad I got.

 

[forty_three]

Great...now all my ads are about learning languages. Better than the Russian dating site, which others have apparently been afflicted with as well.

so this is the ad I got.

Quick - post more in the advanced stats thread. Your ads will change to ones for TI-84 calculators.

 

[Comeds]

SportsHoopla gave me an ad for "Senior Russian Women" last night.

 

[dash]

Okay, to balance things out, here's one for pix and higgy.

[youtube]RjrdK_sZ-mI[/youtube]