For all those bilingual/multilingual people who did not grow up speaking another language, how long did it take you to learn another language, and what did you do to learn it? (By “learning” I mean you are able to write/speak quite fluently.) Thanks!
P.S. I am learning Italian, so any tips on learning this language would be appreciated!
By: hunnybunny_lc
About the Author:
P.S. I am learning Italian, so any tips on learning this language would be appreciated!
By: hunnybunny_lc
About the Author:
December 18th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Craguss
i spoke french and creole when i came here at like 11. and my step dad found out that i liked doing those word search puzzles. so he bought me this book of 300 and gave it to me.
Then he told me as an extra bonus, i get to look up every word in the english/french dictionary and learn at least 10 each night or else i wouldn’t get fed LOL
no i kid. but i had done some crazy shit and that was his ingenious idea..
but um i was holding normal conversations within 2.5 months of being here. and people always tell me that it doesn’t even sound like I’m “foreign” w/e the fuck that means.
anyways, yeah i don’t think your dedicated enough or being punished to do some crazy thing like that but I’m just making time till i have to get ready for work. (=
December 21st, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Craguss
Well I’m Romanian and I came to Australia when I was 6 months old and I didn’t learn English that well cause my family wasn’t speak it at home (even though they knew it fluently from learning it at school in Romania) and I ended up going to kindergarten not knowing English. Within a month I picked up a lot of words and my brother started conversing with me more and more and I learnt it simultaneously with Romanian, so basically it was easy.
I learnt Italian when I was 11 and it was a little easy since it’s similar to Romanian, but all I remember is how to count from 1 – 10, say, “my name is…” and “good night”, so that was a waste of a year, lol.
The best thing to do is the old LCWC (Look, Cover, Write, Check). Basically look at the word, cover it, write it down and then check if it’s correct. Then after doing that you should memorise words better.
December 24th, 2009 at 7:27 am
Craguss
Find italian friends to practice. In general, they are so lovely they will be pleased to help you learn their language. ( They are latinos !)
Ask your cable provider for RAI the italian television which is really good.
By the way, I learned english,portuguesse, italian and papiamento talking with my little friends when I was a child, but later I needed to learn the grammar by myself. Try your best, Italian is a wonderful language.
EXTRA BONUS FOR YOU. visit:
December 27th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Craig
Well, the truth is you never stop learning, but combining my experience with watching others go through it, I would say it takes a several to many years of using the language on a daily basis before you get to the point of what I would call reasonable fluency, meaning you can converse and write with a native speaker without any real trouble. (I am talking about learning a language as an adult and not as a child).
You can become functional, meaning you can get by speaking with people in the language, in a couple years or so. By functional, I mean that you can talk to someone and they won’t keep trying to switch into your language rather than suffer you in their language, and you will be able to understand them and they will understand you. Writing takes way longer than speaking.
For me, it went in steps, I could read the language, then I could follow a conversation, then I could participate (speak and listen) in a conversation, then I could write without having a million mistakes. And even now, after about 20 years, I still have a tendency to structure my statements in English form even though I am using french.
A huge jump occurs when you switch from always translating from english in your head to the other language aloud (and backwards when you listen) and actually start to think directly in the language, and that takes time and exposure.
Get a girlfriend or boyfriend according to your tastes and spend a lot of time with them solely in the language you are trying to learn. That is a very good way to speed things up. Watch tv in the other language too. A lot.
Things will also go a lot faster if you almost never use your own language anymore. Reality is that most of us only use the other language in public, so only about half the time at most is spent trying to use the other language, and this makes it take a lot longer to become fluent.
December 27th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Craig
Well, this hugely depends on the person, some people have the gift of learning languages easier than others.
All u have to do is practice EVERYDAY. Listen to many songs, try to write down the lyrics u hear, look them up in ur dictionary, better be an italian-italian dictionary, that way u acquire as much vocabulary as u can AND u get to learn how sentences r composed in italian (This applies to any other language).
Watch news in italian, they speak clearer than they do in films or TV shows.
Do cruciverba, gives u a lot of words too.
I recommend reading, but nothing difficult or u’ll hate the whole learning thing
December 30th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Craig
It took me two 1/2 years. I did not have a tutor I just watched the languages movies and it helped with some translations at the bottom. I did not grow up in a forgein country, but I learned a hard language… Arabic. Italian is sort of like english!
Hope this helped!
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Craguss
I was learning and REMEMBERING basic Italian in about 2 weeks using Unforgettable Languages courses. They have a proven scientific memory method to help you learn a variety of languages…they offer all sorts of level types too. I swear by these tutorials and find myself way more advanced with the Italian language than I ever thought possible
Here’s the Italian Demo