Who here is bilingual? Anyone self taught?

[JDawg1536]

I need to learn Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, or Spanish. I don't need to become extremely fluent, just good enough to take an intermediate class. Anyone have any suggestions as to which would be easier to teach yourself and which one's would be more difficult?

[l2elapse]

spanish is pretty easy to learn

[StoneGRMI]

I think there's a few bi's on this forum. Good luck in your search!

Kidding aside, I took French for 6 years and as soon as I passed all my tests then got my credits I forgot everything. From what most people tell me the only way to really learn a language that you'll grasp and retain would be to live wherever that language is spoken. Probably not an option for ya though.

[JDawg1536]

Not really an option or a desire. From what I hear Spanish and French are the easiest, so that's what I'm leaning toward I suppose.

[WARMachine]

I know English, portuguese, spanish, french, a little german and italian.

Spanish is an easy language. English is by far the hardest to learn.

Rosetta stone my friend. Its worth every penny.

Hit me up if you need help with anything.

[Ernst]

Just IMO German or Spanish. English is a language with Germanic roots, so if that's your first language then German isn't too bad, even though it's probably a more difficult language to master than Spanish.

[JDawg1536]

I know English, portuguese, spanish, french, a little german and italian.

Spanish is an easy language. English is by far the hardest to learn.

Rosetta stone my friend. Its worth every penny.

Hit me up if you need help with anything.

I thought you might chime in with a some Portuguese input lol. My buddy was born in Rio, and when I hear him talking to his family on the phone I can't even fathom learning that stuff. Did you use Rosetta Stone to learn all of those, and how long does it take with that program to start seeing good results?

[WARMachine]

lol yes... You should see the looks on peoples faces when im at the DMV or something and im on the phone...

One lady actually asked me where my caregiver was!

She thought i was retarted or something... I couldnt believe it! LMAO!!!


I grew up learning Portuguese english, spanish, and french. The German and Italian was with Rosetta stone.

When i was living in Holland i became pretty fluent as well... Though i didnt think it was worth mentioning.

[cardiodan]

I speak five languages fluently without accent.
Italian, spanish, portuguese, french and english.

English and german are anglo saxon languages, and are more similar to each other
than the romance languages.

So youre better off with german.
However, I would choose spanish since it is the worlds "second language" and is spoken in more places than any other language. Even chinese, as chinese has many dialects (mandarin, cantonese as an example).

Many ppl in the US speak spanish. So that will help.
Listen to songs, and constantly practice, otherwise youll forget.

[Prada]

French isn't easy. It is if you already know a Latin derived language. Especially when it comes to verb conjugations. You also need to know if nouns are masc. or fem. Its very different from English.

[Ernst]

That's the worst part about German, too. Every goddamn thing has gender assigned to it seemingly without rhyme or reason. They're pretty lenient about it with those who are learning.

[WARMachine]

I speak five languages fluently without accent.
Italian, spanish, portuguese, french and english.

English and german are anglo saxon languages, and are more similar to each other
than the romance languages.

So youre better off with german.
However, I would choose spanish since it is the worlds "second language" and is spoken in more places than any other language. Even chinese, as chinese has many dialects (mandarin, cantonese as an example).

Many ppl in the US speak spanish. So that will help.
Listen to songs, and constantly practice, otherwise youll forget.

Onde aprendeu o Portugues?

[DSM4Life]

i do both boys and girls.....

[WARMachine]

^^^ Gross...

[cardiodan]

minha mae eh paulista

[MuscleScience]

I speak 3 totally unrelated languages and am learning german now again. No advice but to practice or date a chick that speaks the language your trying to learn.

[Zino]

I speak english, spanish, italian and french.

I've spoken them since I was very young so I can't really relate to learning from scratch but I'd say french would have to be the easiest as it makes the most sense when learning. Although there are very few exceptions to conjugations, those exceptions are some of the most common, besides that its a piece of cake

[WARMachine]

Bem, entao bem-vindo meu irmao!

Im de Rio entanto

[Zino]

Hey Ernst, is your picture related to this post?

http://forums.steroid.com/showthread.php?t=361426

[Older lifter]

I need to learn Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, or Spanish. I don't need to become extremely fluent, just good enough to take an intermediate class. Anyone have any suggestions as to which would be easier to teach yourself and which one's would be more difficult?

I can speack Lao, Thai, and a little Swedish (I hide the asian ones so i know what there saying while they think i don't understand).
Self taught. I know that Chinese is very hard, then Japanese, the others are not so difficult i believe. I think you will find all a bit hard without living where you need to speak it everyday

[Ernst]

Hey Ernst, is your picture related to this post?

http://forums.steroid.com/showthread.php?t=361426

lolz Caught! I did find this pic after reading that!

[kaberle_15]

I used to be able to speak 3 languages and now I've forgotten 2 and I'm struggling with english

I would go with spanish

[Older lifter]

Not really an option or a desire. From what I hear Spanish and French are the easiest, so that's what I'm leaning toward I suppose.

Don't you think you should learn the one that you are going to get the most out of?????

[JDawg1536]

Don't you think you should learn the one that you are going to get the most out of?????

That would probably be spanish (being from southern california I already know a little bit). But I kinda wanted to learn something else. Even though I HAVE to choose one, I would still like to mix it up and maybe choose a european language. I have a ton of Rosetta Stone programs, so I guess I'll go through a bunch and see what I like. I'll probably end up learning espanol though.

[Older lifter]

OK, I can see that Spanish would be useful, chinese could be good if your into business and want the possibility of working in Asia for awhile. Same with Japanese. French, well i don't really want to talk to them anyway..lol.

[JDawg1536]

OK, I can see that Spanish would be useful, chinese could be good if your into business and want the possibility of working in Asia for awhile. Same with Japanese. French, well i don't really want to talk to them anyway..lol.

Lol. I guess I just wanna try something different. Everyone in California that speaks a second language speaks Spanish (which would probably be a great reason to learn it), but I hate being like everyone else and I don't think it would matter that much in the "corporate world". Chinese and Japanese would be good to learn for business, but I'm not really into the Asian culture. Since I'm probably gonna be studying econ/business/poli sci, French may be a good choice - http://faculty.ignatius.edu/turner/f...s/business.htm

How long did it take you to become proficient at the languages you speak? I'm sure it was much faster since you live over there.....

[Older lifter]

About 6-8 months, but like you say if your in it you just have to learn quickly, i started with a 'talk now' program but ended up just using what i had and learning everyday, but now i rarely speak either, just let them think i don't understand, helps with business here.
Anyhow, what ever you decide good luck with it and don't worry about people laughing at you in the begining, its the same for everyone.

[JDawg1536]

About 6-8 months, but like you say if your in it you just have to learn quickly, i started with a 'talk now' program but ended up just using what i had and learning everyday, but now i rarely speak either, just let them think i don't understand, helps with business here.
Anyhow, what ever you decide good luck with it and don't worry about people laughing at you in the begining, its the same for everyone.

For sure man. Thanks to everyone for their advice and input, especially DSM. I'll let you know how it goes....

[gst528i]

I use to know french. Now its just swahili, hindi, gujrati, and english. (not in that order though).

[Kale]

I speak fluent Cunnilingus !!

[hugovsilva]

Bem, entao bem-vindo meu irmao!

Im de Rio entanto

Há aqui mais gente a falar portugues do que eu pensava.

I speak fluent portuguese (I'm from Portugal), Spanish (its very similar to portuguese) and english (learned at school).

Other than that I also speak a little bit of French.

[G-1000]

I speak English and spell in my own language

[melbgymnst]

hows pig lattin ? or doubble dutch ?

[redz]

I took grades 1-11 in french which was a bitch btu now I speak english and french. My wife is Colombian I definitely need to learn spanish but never seem to ahve the time.

[J.S.N.]

hey **** you bra i never even looked at another guy.


naw but for languages, the easiest has to be spanish or french. french is about as close to english as you can get, but it is much easier to read than speak. the vowels esp. take some oral gymnastics compared to us because we tend to use an "ah/uh" sound (schwa) for pretty much an unstressed syllable. still, it's not hard.

spanish is a little farther away from english, but everything is a bit simpler, at least at a lower level. i think it's a little easier to speak just because of the way it's written, although you are going to use a lot more tenses in spoken language than french or english, so it's only easy to a point.

german's a bit harder than either of those two. you have an extra grammatical gender, and a lot of times have to memorize what gender a word is because the ending won't give it away. on top of that, there are 3 commonly used grammatical cases used where you have to switch set of pronouns, articles, and endings of your nouns depending on their function of the sentence. on top of that, a lot of german words are not borrowed or formulated from greek like we do in english, but instead built from german words so like for 'television' you'd get 'fernseher' in german (which literally means the same thing) instead of 'televisión' in spanish.

japanese i've heard is actually pretty easy to learn in terms of speaking since it's so simple, although some of writing systems are hard.

chinese similarly would be easy because of its simplicity, but the tones of the language are extremely hard for 'mericans people to hear much less replicate.


in terms of what to pick, i would say pick spanish if you just need it for school and don't care about learning any other language. it'll most likely be most useful and will be prolly the easiest to take to an intermediate level.

if you want to take one that will be challenging but rewarding, go with chinese. that will help you in your career for many career paths. we can't get enough people who can speak chinese.

one more consideration is that some french knowledge can make you look like you own a bit of haute culture mastery. it's nice to be able to walk into a nice restaurant and pronounce things on the menu.

[inky-e]

]Há aqui mais gente a falar portugues do que eu pensava.[/B]

I speak fluent portuguese (I'm from Portugal), Spanish (its very similar to portuguese) and english (learned at school).

Other than that I also speak a little bit of French.

Yup..you thought wrong! lol

[Edgar]

vaat faer on cule fis de poot!

[Edgar]

I speak fluent Cunnilingus !!

what dialect of cunnilingus do you speak, is it Cvntie tounge.

[Panzerfaust]

English and German

I know some Norwegian as well.

[hugovsilva]

Yup..you thought wrong! lol