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XenonSovereign

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I'm a native English speaker and I have questions for those who learned other languages. I'm trying to learn Spanish, I have Hispanic friends and I bought a book called "Hide This Spanish Book Xtreme" that teaches Spanish.

- How long did it take you to learn a new language?
- How did you learn (like, did you buy a book, or have a friend who spoke the language, etc.)?
- On a scale of 1-10, how difficult was it to be fluent in the new language?

Thank you
 

Musical charm

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1. I'm still learning it
2.my parents and school are teaching me it
# I'd give it a 4, its easy, well, probably 'cause I'm half hispanic/my parents are hispanic which makes it easier for me.
 

SorasTwilight

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Well for me Im taking Japanese. I did do spanish, but the way i was taught was unfair and it made no sense. But with any language in general I say it rly depends on how much u rly want to kno the language. Spanish i had rly no desire to learn so it made things kinda harder for me, plus the teacher being unfair. With japanese i get it and the teacher is japanese herself, plus she's rly nice.

So it depends on how much u rly wanna learn the language to get it as quickly.
 

Silver_Soul

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for me

my parents language is spanish, and my parents dont speak english at home(they do speak it though)
yet i already knew english before i entered school

all im going to say, is that watching tv helps alot

now in highschool, i have taken 3 years of french, and i really enjoy putiing movies in french

just so i dont forget
 

Wehrmacht

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My native language is portuguese, I learned english pretty much on my own in the year I was living in Florida, watching TV, reading books, and just observing people talk. Not sure when I became fluent exactly but by the time I left I had pretty much got it down.
 

Ehres

` dragon dance
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- How long did it take you to learn a new language?
- How did you learn (like, did you buy a book, or have a friend who spoke the language, etc.)?
- On a scale of 1-10, how difficult was it to be fluent in the new language?

I speak four languages, two of them native (French and English), so I'll give separate answers for the ones I did learn (Spanish and Italian).

Spanish

- You can never be fluent in a language which is not your own, but you can be very good at it, which comes through years of practise and experience, talking with people whose countries speak the language you are learning (in the case of Spanish, many people from many countries to see the linguistic differences) and travelling. You can learn from a book or a teacher all you like, but immersion is the best 'teacher'. Having said this, I started Spanish in 2008 when I started college and took an advanced fast course so by the end of two years I was of a very high standard because the tutor was very demanding and we needed a lot of concentration. This means that your dedication is a key factor in how 'fast' you learn a language.

- I took ab-initio classes at college and the tutor was a lady who had been speaking Spanish for most of her life and had lived in Spain for a while. She was also very, very passionate about the language and totally immersed herself in it and as a result chose to teach it as a career. It also helps to talk with foreigners to pick up lingo, to correct your mistakes and to practise in general. Listening to the radio in the background is also a nice little trick since you start to tune into it after a while and your listening skills become much better. Apart from that, constant studying and reviewing of notes.

- 10 being the most difficult, I would say that learning Spanish was about a 2 or a 3. This is because my native language is French, which is a Roman language just like Spanish, so my basis of understanding was already firmly set in stone. There are grammatical differences and of course vocabulary but this is nothing studying can't resolve. Since I also speak fluent English, this helped me, since you can figure out Spanish words from English, and also French.

Italian

- Same as above except I started learning Italian from scratch in 2009 and found it - aside from vocabulary - very easy since I speak three other languages either fluently or very well.

- Again, it was a college course so I was taught by a teacher. However, the teacher was Mexican and while she spoke Italian well and was a lovely lady, she wasn't a very good teacher so most of the time it was down to myself to really get to know Italian. I got to know some Italians and Italian-speaking people as well as revision and studying, which is a key if you really want to succeed linguistically.

- I am by no means fluent in Italian vocabulary-wise but grammatically, I am fluent. This is because I find that Italian is grammatically a cross-over of Spanish and French (Spanish in the sense of verb conjugation, syntax and certain grammatical points such as direct/indirect object pronouns and the subjunctive mood; French in the sense of grammatical points such as proceeding direct object pronouns and certain verbs) as well as having verbs that I recognise from French and Spanish. Combining all the factors, I'd say that Italian has been about a 3 for me. Without Spanish it would have been a 4, but luckily I know Spanish.

Hope this helps!
 

padlock

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i've been on and off studying japanese for 7 years now, and i can easily say that i will never stop learning. none, finishes learning a language, as it is an evolving changing thing - heck we are all still "learning" english :)

My Japanese, however is terrible! I can only speak it when i am in japan, surrounded by people speaking it all the time.. it is horrible! haha

And, i think difficulty depeends not only the person, but the dedication you put into studying the language. good luck with spanish though :)
 
O

Oberon

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I learned two languages. One of which on my own (which is why I'm so bad at it) and another by way of college courses. The one I TRIED to teach myself was Japanese. It failed.

The important one (French) I learned in college, as I said, and it took me one semester before I got it down really well (accent, basic grammar, etc). After that it became more about learning more grammar rules and vocabulary which, despite the difficulty it reached, paid off in my opinion.

Does it take 4-5 months to learn a language? Maybe. Maybe more. That's how long it took me on a very VERY basic level. I'm in no way fluent, but I'm decent at recognizing it in a casual way and speaking it without looking like I try too hard. It's not like the same with English where I think and plan, because in English I don't worry about grammar anymore. In French I still do and it makes using it difficult.
 
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