foreign language advice

[MattNC]

Can anyone offer tips on the best/quickest way to learn a foreign language?

Most people have recommended learning Spanish since I live in the South, but I'm hoping of working in the intelligence community for a profession, and would like to learn something else.

[DagmarK]

1. Follow the political interest route.....

Russian!
Arabic! (but look where you might have to go.....)
I heard Japanese and German are very valuable.

And when you choose a language, BUY dimestore novels in that language. No kidding! You know what's happening, basically, and you pick up the lingo.

Also.......watch the world news in the chosen language. You already know what is happening, basically, so you can follow it. and hey, you get pictures too!

I am not in the intelligence biz......but just was a language major in college........

[Kellanved]

5. For German: Goethe Institut

http://www.goethe-institut.de/enindex.htm

For French:
Institut Francais http://www.afusa.org/


Watching Movies with English subtitles isn't a bad idea either. The tricky part is learning to actually use the language - I have learned a great deal about English here already.

[democrat in Tallahassee]

2. they really need Arabic speakers--Farsi, I think is how it is spelled

that is one language they are in desparate need of people knowing

[OrdinaryTa]

12. Farsi Is Not Arabic

Farsi is the language of the Iranians, who are not Arabs. Arabs speak Arabic, and there are a few principal dialects. I believe that all Arabs can more or less understand each other no matter where they are from.

[Astarho]

21. Farsi vs. Arabic

There are dialects of Farsi in Iran, and Afghanistan (where it is known as Dari) Farsi is also Indo-European, distantly related to English, Spanish, Greek, Sanskrit etc.

Classical Arabic is understood by scholars throught the Muslim world, and there is a standard version of modern Arabic understood as well, but the dialects can be as different as English and German. The main dialects are Moroccan, Egyptian, Saudi, Iraqi, Levantine, Gulf and probably others I'm forgetting.

[patrice]

3. The world's major language groups . . . .

(including both native and second-language speakers) in order from larger to smaller:
Chinese
English
Hindu
Spanish
Russian
Arab (would that be Farsee ((sp?)))
Portugese
Japanese
French
German
and Italian.

I'm currently learning German (in college classes) just because I want to. Depending upon the language and the learning cohort you work with, you can actually pick up at least listening and writing skills pretty quickly with some focused work. There are many multi-media study aids around now too. I started German about 8 weeks ago, and I can already write and understand spoken conversation pretty well. Vocabulary is the only limiting factor so far. Lots of people recommend learning Spanish, which makes sense, but I chose German because of my ancestry.

[Bossy Monkey]

8. Farsi is what is spoken in Iran

Advice to the original poster: don't go into intelligence. If you do not heed this advice, the languages to learn are Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Urdu (Pakistan), Farsi.

[Maddy McCall]

4. I took German.

And I am in the deep south. I won't ever use it...that's why I can't recall much of it. Except for a few dirty words :-) and putting the verb at the end of the sentence.

Here's Mark Twain's take on "That Awful German Language"

Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions." He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it.

So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand. Such has been, and continues to be, my experience. Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing "cases" where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me.

For instance, my book inquires after a certain bird -- (it is always inquiring after things which are of no sort of consequence to anybody): "Where is the bird?" Now the answer to this question -- according to the book -- is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would do that, but then you must stick to the book.

Very well, I begin to cipher out the German for that answer. I begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea. I say to myself, "Regen (rain) is masculine -- or maybe it is feminine -- or possibly neuter -- it is too much trouble to look now. Therefore, it is either der (the) Regen, or die (the) Regen, or das (the) Regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when I look. In the interest of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine.

Very well -- then the rain is der Regen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned, without enlargement or discussion -- Nominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it is doing something -- that is, resting (which is one of the German grammar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the rain into the Dative case, and makes it dem Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but is doing something actively, -- it is falling -- to interfere with the bird, likely -- and this indicates movement, which has the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case and changing dem Regen into den Regen."

Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) den Regen." Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the Genitive case, regardless of consequences -- and that therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop "wegen des Regens."


you can read more at http://www.bdsnett.no/klaus/twain/

[Kellanved]

7. a good friend of mine mailed me that one a few years ago

She is from Vietnam; BTW she speaks German perfectly now.
We were undergraduate students at the time.

[patrice]

10. Oh those pesky German AC/DC prepositions.

Twain apparently was confused by a group of prepositions that can take either Accusative or Dative case. Accusative for referring to the location when there is motion toward a location, and Dative for referring to where something (not in motion) is located. In the example sentence, that would be the blacksmith shop, not the rain, and the ending of the article, the "the", for the blacksmith shop would have to be in the Dative for whatever gender a blacksmith shop is, masculine probably.

[Kellanved]

11. A nice example:

--snip
Der Werwolf
Ein Werwolf eines Nachts entwich
von Weib und Kind und sich begab
an eines Dorfschullehrers Grab
und bat ihn: Bitte, beuge mich!

Der Dorfschulmeister stieg hinauf
auf seines Blechschilds Messingknauf
und sprach zum Wolf, der seine Pfoten
geduldig kreuzte vor dem Toten:

"Der Werwolf" - sprach der gute Mann,
"des Weswolfs, Genitiv sodann,
dem Wemwolf, Dativ, wie man's nennt,
den Wenwolf, - damit hat's ein End."

Dem Werwolf schmeichelten die Fälle,
er rollte seine Augenbälle.
Indessen, bat er, füge doch
zur Einzahl auch die Mehrzahl noch!

Der Dorfschulmeister aber musste
gestehn, dass er von ihr nichts wusste,
Zwar Wölfe gäb's in grosser Schar,
doch "Wer" gäb's nur im Sigular.

Der Wolf erhob sich tränenblind -
er hatte ja doch Weib und Kind!!
Doch da er kein Gelehrter eben,
so schied er dankend und ergeben.
Christian Morgenstern
--snap

Very hard, if not impossible, to translate this into English.

[KCDem]

13. I memorized this poem in 7th grade

for a local American Assoc. of Teachers of German convention! lol, haven't seen it since. Thanks for a blast from the past!

(can't remember if I took a place or not... thinking 2nd.)

[Kellanved]

16. A friend of the family translated it

He teaches German at Yale and has some incredible translations of German humorous poems.

Hollywood Minute

A giant lizzard famed of yore
once knocked on Steven Spielberg's door.
The great director flashed a grin:
"T.Rex, my man, I'll sqeeze you in."

He squeezed, but just the toothy enda
Rex would fit in his agenda.
"Sweetheart, I can give you five -
this business wats me up alive.

What's on your tiny brain?" The king
of reptiles spoke the following:
"I'd like your draftsmen to design a
consort for me : T. Regina."

"Done!" " But I foresee the queen
will nursw ambition; so, to please her,
please have me proclaimed on Screen,
Tyrannosaurus Julius Caesar."

"Why stop there?" - cried Steve. "Dictator!
Fancy Pants and Pontifex!
'Regina (T) seeks Pantocrator;
object: world domination, sex.'

Get lost, you fossil! I've a hunch
you're all washed up - let's not do lunch."
T. Rex was totally deflacted,
slithered out and abdictated.




As you can see: he had to change the underlying story to get something close to the original. And even so it's more a inspired poem, than a translation. BTW: great job for 7th grade on your part - I can think of easier poems by poets more famous.

[OrdinaryTa]

17. Learning German

Native speakers of German have no greater difficulty learning it than speakers of any other language. Native speakers of English have difficulty learning German because English is similar to German. It feels like it ought to be easier. Even the vocabulary is deceptive. The German word Hand is the same as the English word hand, but Lust is not lust.

I love German, and should have studied it more when I had the chance. My idea of a productive year or two would be to study the great German writers in the original, perhaps at the University of Heidelburg. Alas, it is so expensive!

English is very quirky, too. Especially the pronunciation. Why does the word "do" rhyme with "shoe"? Because it does, that's all.

[Maple]

6. If we were to reduce the world population to a village of 1000 inhabitants

The people of our village would have a great deal of difficulty communicating. This list only accounts for half of our villagers. The other half are made up of; Bengali, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, German, French, and 200 other languages.
165 speak Mandarin
86 speak English
83 speak Hindi
64 speak Spanish
58 speak Russian
37 speak Arabic
507 other languages

[Capn Sunshine]

15. ...and of course . 15 are village idiots

Thereby assuring we will always have the Bush family to deal with in one form or another
:nuke:

[patrice]

9. Russian would be a very good choice. n/t

[Capn Sunshine]

14. Best route : IMMERSION

There are language schools that actually are like camp, in Minnesota(?) Concord I think they ar called; each language has its own little town and that is the obnnly language spoken.

Immersion works if you cann afford to spend lots of time in the country of interest and have a sympathetic guide. Or LOVER; this is the best approach.....

[MattNC]

18. thanks!

thanks for all the tips, guys! I appreciate it.

[Aristus]

19. If you want to learn French, Italian or German, the principle languages

of Opera, get some recordings with a full libretto, and follow the original language and the English translation simultaneously. You'll pick up the language before you know it. That's how I learned German. Good luck.

[matt819]

20. If you're want to try your hand in the intelligence community. . .

learn Arabic, Farsi, or Chinese.

Immersion is great, but limited in those languages. Skip the off the shelf tapes. Look for tapes used by the State Dept or the Defense Language Institute. They're pricey, if available, but better than the bookstore stuff.

And, while you're at it, spend as much time as humanly possible learning about the culture as well. Go there. Live there if you have the time and money.