ATTN: Bilingual People [Archive]

n00b1n8R

January 23rd, 2012, 05:14 PM

So out of boredom I've decided to see if I can't become passable in Russian by the time I graduate (2 years). However, most of the resources I've looked at online seem be of the school of thought where you should learn crap like "Where is the toilet?".

It would seem to me (with no experience learning a 2nd language since studying Japanese half-assedly for a few years in school) that a better method would be to learn general sentence structure along with common noun/verbs/adjective/etc, instead of fixed phrases.

Basically, I want to know how you went about learning English (and how you got better than me at it ><)

=sw=warlord

January 23rd, 2012, 05:16 PM

Timo

January 23rd, 2012, 05:17 PM

The guy that created recaptcha is doing a similar thing for translating stuff into different languages. Might be worth signing up to, it's in private beta at the moment. http://duolingo.com/

He was on TED a while ago and made a video about it: http://blog.ted.com/2011/12/06/massive-scale-online-collaboration-luis-von-ahn-on-ted-com/

e: Nevermind russian isn't avaliable, but other languages are if anyone else is interested.

Donut

January 23rd, 2012, 05:21 PM

as for learning my portions of German, I listened to Ramstein.
Alot.
this is fucking hilarious :lol:

=sw=warlord

January 23rd, 2012, 05:25 PM

this is fucking hilarious :lol:
Ich werde haben ihre mutter wenn du halten dieser auf.

n00b1n8R

January 23rd, 2012, 05:54 PM

I'll tell you how I learned English.
I'm English, I'm surrounded by English people, i was bound to learn it at some point.

Bilingual doesn't mean people who are not native to the English language.
as for learning my portions of German, I listened to Ramstein.
Alot.

You know what I mean :P
But again, did you start out by learning phrases or did you just get used to common words and learned the structure for stringing them together from music?

=sw=warlord

January 23rd, 2012, 06:08 PM

You know what I mean :P
But again, did you start out by learning phrases or did you just get used to common words and learned the structure for stringing them together from music?
I'd learn the sounds vocally and when I had learned how to pronounce the words as spoken in the songs I looked up what the words meant.
It's alot easier than trying to pronounce a word if you hear it than if you read it, how ever it's easier to read a word if you know how to pronounce it.

Limited

January 23rd, 2012, 06:14 PM

Russian? Of all the languages, why pick Russian?

I definitely do not recommend learning sentence structure early on. Theres a lot different cases where sentence structure is thrown out the window, so its not a learn one know them all style thing.

The second thing is it depends if you want to speak Russian, or write Russian, or probably both. If it will involve speaking Russian I suggest you follow the usual path of learning numbers. It gets you used to how to physically say words, which your mouth + speaking stuff won't be used to. Italian/Spanish speaking people do that tongue roll thing, Dutch/German do that 'nearly-spitting' sound thing, you will need to become used to Russian.

n00b1n8R

January 23rd, 2012, 06:31 PM

Russian because they pirate everything, make up a decent proportion of the internet and it isn't spoken in Brazil.
I don't really intend to go to russia any time soon so reading should be enough, however it'd be handy (and I don't imagine too much harder) to learn to speak it as well.

So far the hardest sound I'd have to learned to make is P (trilled-R sound)

=sw=warlord

January 23rd, 2012, 06:32 PM

You better get cracking with learning all the alt codes for Russian as well then.

Limited

January 23rd, 2012, 06:36 PM

I feel your motivation will lower after a while, but I wish you good luck.

That duolingo thing sounds really interesting, hopefully they will send me an invite.

Donut

January 23rd, 2012, 06:38 PM

^ thats the part where you download a keyboard-conversion program and go to work with a label maker.

unrelated, that is how i learned to play the piano when i was 7.
E: limited ninja'ed me.

rossmum

January 23rd, 2012, 07:59 PM

Russian owns, listening to Russian owns, wanna speak Russian.

I've been picking up words here and there (Russian friends, Russian music and movies, and six years of Red Orchestra), but nowhere near enough to even construct a reasonable sentence. I need to get my shit together and learn it properly, I wish it was one of the options at school here so I could've gotten an early start on it. Instead we had to do at least one term of Japanese and Indonesian, hooray. Two countries I have no intention of ever going to versus one I do.

neuro

January 24th, 2012, 03:05 AM

i speak Dutch, English, German and French.

i learnt english from watching TV
i barely learnt german and french in school.
i learnt most of my french by actually living in france and hearing nothing else all fucking day.

Warsaw

January 24th, 2012, 03:13 AM

I speak English and could get by on my French if someone dropped me in France all of a sudden. If I found myself in Germany, I'd struggle, but I could catch on in a reasonably short amount of time.

n00b, look for a Berlitz book. By far the best teaching aid that I have ever used to learn a new language. I have one for German, and it does exactly what you want and it does it well. I slacked off on my German lessons, though, so I'm not where I used to be, but that's no fault of the book.

That said, you are climbing two walls here. Not only do you have to learn the language, but you must also learn a new alphabet. I can read Cyrillic, but it took a lot of writing it down and actually using it (yay for my story universe using Cyrillic and taking my school notes in Greek!) to get it ingrained into your head. Also, it's easier to learn how to write in a language than it is to speak it. You don't have to worry about inflection, sounding out accents, not getting nervous etc. when writing.

Fake E: my Berlitz book is from 1952. I don't know if there are modern ones or how they teach.

n00b1n8R

January 24th, 2012, 08:07 AM

Sanctus

January 24th, 2012, 08:17 AM

Russian? Of all the languages, why pick Russian?

Why not Russian? I'd like to speak Russian

nuttyyayap

January 24th, 2012, 08:29 AM

This fag speaks Polish, German, English, Japanese and Romanian

Born into German
Learned Polish and Japanese in my early life (Still don't see why I learned POLISH :ohdear:)
English came from spending 13 years of my life in Australia (Had to teach myself alot of it from dictionaries and such to repair the broken bits!.. Just to find out I still fucking suck at it)
Romanian came from... I'll just say I once knew a Romanian woman :saddowns:

I'd like to learn Russian, but I cannot pronounce most of it. Oh well, 5 languages is enough.

EagerYoungSpaceCadet

January 24th, 2012, 08:46 AM

Here's how I learned English:

I listened to English music, watched English movies (not dubbed but with subtitles), and when I heard a new word or something, I went to look for it in the dictionary.
And by age of 7 I knew English better than our ex-prime minister (once, she didn't know how to say "today" so she went with "day after yesterday" lmao)

Zeph

January 24th, 2012, 08:49 AM

i learnt most of my french by actually living in france and hearing nothing else all fucking day.

This is pretty much the quickest way to learn. I used to speak spanish in high school, but after five years of not bothering with it, I've forgotten nearly everything.

Other than that, it depends on how similar the language is compared to your own. Going from english to spanish is quite simple. The syntax is nearly the same, but you might just switch a few things around (green pants -> pants green). For something like english -> japanese, you'll have three alphabets to learn and a bunch of particles to learn that tell you how to form sentences. While this is that awkward time where you learn to ask where the toilet is or if that guy was a teacher, as long as you keep at it you'll ingrain how sentences are made and be able to speak the overwhelming majority of the language just by learning more words.

Jelly

January 24th, 2012, 12:35 PM

play eve, join a russian corp

http://bunkerhub.de/stuff/russia/russiansguide.htm

STLRamsFan

January 24th, 2012, 12:59 PM

This reminds me of when KOD member Musty learned English by listening to people on Counter Strike I believe it was... Could have it all wrong but from what I remember he lived in a part of Canada that mostly consisted of French speakers.

Limited

January 24th, 2012, 03:25 PM

The only reason I'd learn Russian, was so that I had a badass accent when I speak English.

Anyone else got an invite from that site? I know its closed beta and they send invites slowly in batches, but I cant wait god damnit :)

Bodzilla

January 24th, 2012, 03:45 PM

The only reason I'd learn Russian, was so that I had a badass accent when I speak English.

sometimes you astound me limited.

Limited

January 24th, 2012, 06:01 PM

sometimes you astound me limited.I scare myself sometimes too.

If I could pick any accent though, it would have to be American.

rossmum

January 24th, 2012, 11:46 PM

I probably shouldn't have too much trouble finding decent reference books at one of the libraries (if not the uni then definitely the public one). Learning Cyrillic actually hasn't been as hard as I expected, I'm able to sound out most words (at like a first grade level~) after a couple of days of going over it.
Considering I recall you asking me why I had my Steam name in German about 3 years ago (it was Russian), that's good to hear :v:

This reminds me of when KOD member Musty learned English by listening to people on Counter Strike I believe it was... Could have it all wrong but from what I remember he lived in a part of Canada that mostly consisted of French speakers.
FRENCHIES :argh:

make us learn their shitty language and then don't learn ours, the hide of them

I scare myself sometimes too.

If I could pick any accent though, it would have to be American.
America is a big place with a lot of accents and dialects...

Rook

January 25th, 2012, 05:41 AM

If I could pick any accent though, it would have to be American.

Southern accents, New York accents, "I'm a nigga" accent, etc. There are plenty of options within that generalization.

Jelly

January 25th, 2012, 09:52 AM

he jsut wants to be able to sound american, asshole. are you cool with that

=sw=warlord

January 25th, 2012, 10:32 AM

I can help him sound like an average American if he helps me sound like an average Englishman.
By average Englishman what do you mean?
Southern? Northern? Yorkie? Chav?
I'm sure Limited could help you learn chav but I'm not so sure you would want to if you knew the meaning behind chav.

=sw=warlord

January 25th, 2012, 11:09 AM

Oh god, no. I would prefer Northern English. I think that's one of the more common accents in Britain. Please though, no chav.
I'm sure Pooky, Teekup and Sever could all tell you what my accent is like.
There's certainly no mistaking it.

Limited

January 25th, 2012, 02:57 PM

Pfft, I am not bilingual with 'chav speak', its impossible unless you are a chav, hope your not implying anything! Northerner (boo, hiss).

Just to clarify, I mean what the world perceives the American accent to be like, rough, rugged sounding, Hollywood voice from TV shows and films.

Side note, some of my favourite 'American accents' turned out to be British actors putting the accent on, shattered my mind when I found out.

=sw=warlord

January 25th, 2012, 03:16 PM

Haha, technically I'm not a northerner, I only moved here.
None the less I've got a mix of both accents, southern or "hampshire" accent and northern lincolnshire.

Warsaw

January 25th, 2012, 04:14 PM

rossmum

January 25th, 2012, 06:02 PM

hugh laurie does a convincing as hell american accent. i used to be able to before my australian accent got too strong, now it's even starting to creep across into my canadian one. welp

Pooky

January 25th, 2012, 10:11 PM

I'm sure Pooky, Teekup and Sever could all tell you what my accent is like.
There's certainly no mistaking it.

homoerotic?

TVTyrant

January 25th, 2012, 10:36 PM

I scare myself sometimes too.

If I could pick any accent though, it would have to be American.
We have an accent?
http://bbsimg.ngfiles.com/1/21683000/ngbbs4c75844293d99.jpg

I can teach ya to talk like a goddam redneck sum bitch from orygun. Can o' chaw not included.

n00b1n8R

January 26th, 2012, 12:18 AM

hugh laurie does a convincing as hell american accent. i used to be able to before my australian accent got too strong, now it's even starting to creep across into my canadian one. welp

Surely you aren't saying this is a bad thing???

=sw=warlord

January 26th, 2012, 07:37 AM

homoerotic?
That's Teekup, not me.
Hetero only here.

Rook

January 26th, 2012, 11:29 AM

That's Teekup, not me.
Hetero only here.
It's hard to say if you've never tried it.

TeeKup

January 26th, 2012, 11:42 AM

Go to a club, sit down, try a cock or two.

=sw=warlord

January 26th, 2012, 02:11 PM

It's hard to say if you've never tried it.
Last person to say that to me was about religion, tried that became a massive blasphemer and now living happily ever after as a atheist who tells little old ladies that Mary was ether the village bicycle or that God raped her in her sleep with a turkey baster.

rossmum

January 26th, 2012, 02:33 PM

Surely you aren't saying this is a bad thing???
yes, what are you gonna do about it

doesn't help that my australian accent sounds like i'm talking with a mouthful of dicks

n00b1n8R

January 26th, 2012, 05:15 PM

yes, what are you gonna do about it

doesn't help that my australian accent sounds like i'm talking with a mouthful of dicks
oh you live in nsw i forgot

rossmum

January 29th, 2012, 03:35 PM

yeah, i'm not a swamp being like you

sorry.

Limited

April 7th, 2012, 10:45 AM

Bump

Anyone got an invite yet? I'm dying to have an account on the Spanish one (I'm going there in just over a month).

Limited

May 11th, 2012, 06:14 PM

Bump (again)

Got accepted into it this morning, and wow its amazing. Just in time too as I'm going to Spain in two weeks.

In a nutshell they give you lessons in a tiered structure going from the basics upwards, each 'themed'. In a way they get you to repeat the words, but in a really good way. I picked Spanish and they tell you the word in Spanish, get you to type the meaning in English, they give you a list and you have to fill in the missing word (in Spanish), then they tell you the English and you have to type the Spanish phrase using the words you've learnt. They also have audio and you type, and have the option for you to use a microphone - although I have yet to use that.

I've only done one section (out of TONS) but so far I'm loving it and I'm picking it up real fast.