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Language Advice Needed!! (German,Arabic &/or Spanish


ItWasNiceKnowingYou

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ItWasNiceKnowingYou

Okay so i am currently in the process of starting to learn Spanish, German,& Arabic.

 

Any tips or apps (other than Duolingo) or programs for starting these?

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Read magazines or watch movies in the language you are studying.

 

Maybe pick a novel you are familiar with in the language you are studying to decipher the language.

 

Good luck.

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ItWasNiceKnowingYou
2 minutes ago, argar said:

Read magazines or watch movies in the language you are studying.

 

Maybe pick a novel you are familiar with in the language you are studying to decipher the language.

 

Good luck.

YOU ARE SO FREAKING SMART!!!! :D *high fives* thank yoouuuuu!!

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Ha!

 

Hardly!

 

I hope the suggestions helps though

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RoseGoesToYale

If you want to take an "elementary" approach to language learning, look for kids books, movies (Disney is your friend, they translate all their content into most languages), songs, and TV shows in those languages. If you can, you can do that thing teachers do where they label everything with tape and a magic marker. Also, try searching for language learning blogs. Recently more people have begun teaching others their native language via blogging.

 

And I know most teachers won't say this out loud, but make a point of thinking something in the language(s) you're learning, even if it's something simple like "This tree is green." Eventually you'll be able to think more complexly without taking ten minutes to translate it, since you've been practicing.

 

Happy language learning!

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Lord Jade Cross

Well, when I took french several years ago, the teacher would have us start with numbers and colors to get a feel for pronunciation and then moved us to basic sentence construction.

 

I can speak spanish (not the original from Spain though) so if you need to practice, I might be able to help

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Get music, media, and children's books/cartoons to watch and read. 

 

Memrise is a good site/app that competes with duolingo. I prefer memrise out of both of them. 

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ItWasNiceKnowingYou

Thanks you guys!! These three languages are hopefully going to make 7 languages i can read/speak/write/understand.

 

@RoseGoesToYale i love thinking in different languages!! I find myself doing so unconsciously. I never knew people taught through blogs either

 

@Jade Cross i am starting out with the basics for Spanish and German... Hopefully i can start Arabic by the time i finish uni

 

@Maou-sama I've never heard of Memrise!

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When you learn German, I might have a tip:

To learn articles/word genders properly by (for example) listening to Germans talking or reading texts, you would have to be somewhat fluent in grammar first since they can be misleading depending on context, so make sure to be familiar with the article genders and their different cases before diving into the monotonous memorizing or memorizing by listening/reading.

For example:

It's "das Bein" (leg, neutral) – but in another context it can be "der" (male article), like in "Verletzung der Beine" (injury of legs). Someone with little knowledge would assume Bein is male when reading the second, but it is still neutral. It just depends on the grammatical context.

Another example would be "die Untreue" (infidelity), which is female. But when you say "Er wurde der Untreue beschuldigt" ("He was accused of infidelity"), you suddenly have "der", which can be interpreted as male again by unknowing people. In fact, both examples are just the genetive.

 

For memorizing words in no matter what langauge, there's also the tip of using sticky notes, writing words on it and putting it on their respective objects, so you memorize everyday objects fairly quickly by being confronted with the words on a daily base. For example, make a note with "der Tisch" (table) and smack it onto a table. You can do this with every language, if you use differently coloured notes for example. ;)

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ItWasNiceKnowingYou
23 minutes ago, Sylvastor said:

When you learn German, I might have a tip:

To learn articles/word genders properly by (for example) listening to Germans talking or reading texts, you would have to be somewhat fluent in grammar first since they can be misleading depending on context, so make sure to be familiar with the article genders and their different cases before diving into the monotonous memorizing or memorizing by listening/reading.

For example:

It's "das Bein" (leg, neutral) – but in another context it can be "der" (male article), like in "Verletzung der Beine" (injury of legs). Someone with little knowledge would assume Bein is male when reading the second, but it is still neutral. It just depends on the grammatical context.

Another example would be "die Untreue" (infidelity), which is female. But when you say "Er wurde der Untreue beschuldigt" ("He was accused of infidelity"), you suddenly have "der", which can be interpreted as male again by unknowing people. In fact, both examples are just the genetive.

 

For memorizing words in no matter what langauge, there's also the tip of using sticky notes, writing words on it and putting it on their respective objects, so you memorize everyday objects fairly quickly by being confronted with the words on a daily base. For example, make a note with "der Tisch" (table) and smack it onto a table. You can do this with every language, if you use differently coloured notes for example. ;)

Again.... HOW TF DO YOU DO THIS?!?! O-O it makes sense but i am barely able to make sentences. Danke!!!

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I think grammar books could be useful there. I don't know any in English unfortunately and German ones from school would be pretty useless for you I guess. But it would be important to find one where you start off with very basic sentence structures.

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ItWasNiceKnowingYou
19 minutes ago, Sylvastor said:

I think grammar books could be useful there. I don't know any in English unfortunately and German ones from school would be pretty useless for you I guess. But it would be important to find one where you start off with very basic sentence structures.

What the heck is gern geschehen ?!?!?!?

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cooliocool

For those languages, there are grammar books (free grammar reference is hard to find) and frequency dictionaries (5000 words) available on amazon. Quizlet can be used to make flashcards. I recommend starting off with grammar books and then learning the essential vocabulary. An online bilingual dictionary can come in handy when you don't know what the word means. After you know the basics, you can read children's books in those languages and then work your way up to more advanced books/magazines/websites for older people (you can use the english version as a reference). There are also dual language books (for example, english and german side by side). Audio books in those languages can also help you with the listening skills as well as the reading skills. Livemocha is an onllne community where users help each other to learn new languages. On livemocha, you can find a native speaking buddy that could help you with the speaking and writing skills. Well this is all I know. I hope it helps. Good luck. 

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5 minutes ago, SimplyAce said:

What the heck is gern geschehen ?!?!?!?

"gern geschehen" would be "you're welcome". Literal translation on the other hand: "gladly happened", "gern" comes from "gerne", which means "gladly", "geschehen" means "happening"/"to happen". I know, weird, but it's a saying, so it shouldn't be interpreted perfectly literal.

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Are you sure you want to be learning 3 languages at once? Is it not better to learn one but 3 times as fast? A fluent language is a very powerful tool, and you'd get there quicker.

 

I want to pick up a new one myself, so I have knowledge on how to pick a good one :P Unless you have unusual passion for some language or country.

 

(I don't usually frequent this part of AVEN, so quote if you anwser)

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My favourite is watching TV in my target language, along with subtitles in my target language. This will help you to get a hang of pronounciation and stuff.

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I've heard multiple people either learning or getting better at English by taking a book they were interested in and a dictionary and reading the book and looking up every unknown word until they had to look up less and less. I never tried this, but if you like reading that might be a good way to learn to read a language.. 

Other then that, when I had to learn French in school, I was most motivated and enjoyed it the most, leading me to actually practice more and learn some French, when I had the assignment to write dialogues. So I'd write silly dialogues (I got in trouble for this eventually actually..) and that way I learned more French then I ever managed to learn in class (given that wasn't much...), so if you have someone who can correct any dialogues or creative writing or whatever it is you end up doing, that could be fun, and helps you learn vocabulary and sentence structure.. I'd recommend dialogues, dialogues can be written at all language levels, even if you only started learning a language five minutes ago, you can start writing a very simple dialogue.. and it can also be fun to write silly dialogues...  

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fatal flower-boy

My Japanese teacher forced us to speak in class. When you speak it, it sticks better. So, SPEAK! :D 

Also, really learn lots of vocabulary. I find that if I don't know the correct grammar/sentence syntax whatever, if I know the words in the sentence, I can figure out what it means by using context clues.

 

Good Luck, & Study Hard! \(^___^  )/

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ItWasNiceKnowingYou
On 6/8/2017 at 10:14 AM, Emery. said:

Are you sure you want to be learning 3 languages at once? Is it not better to learn one but 3 times as fast? A fluent language is a very powerful tool, and you'd get there quicker.

 

I want to pick up a new one myself, so I have knowledge on how to pick a good one :P Unless you have unusual passion for some language or country.

 

(I don't usually frequent this part of AVEN, so quote if you anwser)

I focusing more on Spanish than German at the moment but Spanish, German, and Arabic are three languages I hope to one day be able to understand. Sometimes learning Spanish bores me so i end up looking up German vocab and being surprised a how much of it I can figure out just by reading it.... so that's how German became a thing :lol:

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Forest Spirit

I quite like the app "Memrise", even though I currently don't have much time for studying with it (in my case it's just improving a language but anyways). I really like that they have a bunch of courses with audio since I learn words the best by listening and reading them at the same time. As already suggested: watching films, series, random videos, reading, trying to write down a thought you currently have ecc. I also like listening to songs while looking up the translation, note that translations aren't always that good though but it helps me remember single words because my brain connects it with music, dunno.

Learning a language mainly includes a lot of practice, so using it is as much as possible is one of the best ways to improve your skills :) Even though I've had italian courses at school 4 years longer than english my english is 10 times better since I basically read/watch everything and also write a lot in english :D yes I love this language!

My respect for learning 3 languages at a time!! And yey for german, it's nice to see that not everyone thinks it's just ugly and harsh and therefore keeps away from it...

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@SimplyAce

Wow, you want to start to learning 3 languages AT ONCE? :o Also, German is highly inflected so there's a lot of grammar to be leanred before you can construct your own sentences. I don't know anything about Arabic, but it's also said to be quite challenging. The only one of those 3 I have learned to some degree is Spanish.

 

Anyway, some sites I have found useful or fun (or both) :

- if you like writing/blogging check out www.lang-8.com It's a laguage-exchange website where native speakers correct your blog entries (the notes can be short too, so it's not like you have to write a lot). I used to be super active there blogging in Italian and Spanish and I would always receive corrections very swiftly. I've recently come back after a long hiatus and now it's taking longer to have an entry corrected, but this may be because the people I knew there don't seem to be active anymore so they don't get notified when I post something. One caveat is that just because someone speaks the language natively doesn't necessarily mean their corrections will be perfect.

 

Some German-related YT channels that I subscribed to when I had this short phase some time ago when I wanted to revive my German:

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/user/MrLAntrim

an American high school teacher of German

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClBrbJXNh2sFxOuvH4o5H9g

German videos with a native speaker

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZwegPHTG4gvnR0WLzaq5OQ

Again, German lessons with a native speaker

 

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I always love going with learning grammatical concepts first because then you can listen to stuff and actually follow a structure. You may not know what the words mean but you know "where you are" in the sentence. Also, speak with native speakers! 

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njosnavelin

I have been working on Turkish for 4 months. I try to sneak it in for at least an hour. 

 

Not much of a resource, but I have starting using Instagram Live to gain further exposure. 

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On 6/6/2017 at 8:20 PM, Sylvastor said:

I think grammar books could be useful there. I don't know any in English unfortunately and German ones from school would be pretty useless for you I guess. But it would be important to find one where you start off with very basic sentence structures.

 

On 6/6/2017 at 8:03 PM, SimplyAce said:

Again.... HOW TF DO YOU DO THIS?!?! O-O it makes sense but i am barely able to make sentences. Danke!!!

I thought Schaum's Outline of German Grammar is pretty good. 

 

My college class used a book called Vorsprung. It was very easy to follow along. We were all writing simple sentences by the second or third class.  

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