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Why didn't you like Pimsleur, Pistolen? Or were you speaking specifically of the Japanese course?
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<p>I can't speak for any of the courses but Japanese, but I felt that it was a complete waste of my time. They information that they teach is sometimes wrong, and is extremely dumbed down. For example- they keep stressing that 分かる means "to know". In fact, it means "to understand". While this may seem trivial, if they dumb down all the words and concepts to this level you will have a poor grasp of the language. It will also impede upon trying to actually learn the language. For the time that it takes you to listen to the lessons, you could have learned 2x more information through independent study. Another thing that annoys me about pimsleur is that they don't teach you any grammar. This prevents you from formulating sentences on your own that are not presented in the lesson.</p>
<p>If you've already studied some Spanish, it might be easier for you to pick up one of the other romance languages--Italian or French. I have nothing but good things to say about French, and many of my friends enjoyed learning Italian.</p>
<p>You could also try out, as a previous poster mentioned, Latin. It's useful in a range of disciplines, and while it can be difficult to master, it's pretty rewarding to study.</p>
<p>Anybody got an idea about how to learn an obscure language? In particular, my interest is in Serbian (or, as some linguists would classify it, the Serbian regional dialect of Serbo-Croatian). Unsurprisingly, this is not offered at my university, or any nearby institution. Nor are there an abundance or langauge-learning resources available as there are for more popular languages like Arabic and Spanish. </p>
<p>I realize the practical worth of such a language is limited, as it is useful only in the Serbian parts of the Balkans (since speaking the Serbian dialect/language in places like Croatia carries with it a risk to one's physical safety). But I'm highly interested in the region, and have been studying its history as best I can through English sources. And I keep myself as abreast of its current events as possible, using multiple English langauge news sources. But this is understandably quite limiting, as some of the most important Serbian books, such as Kriminalac i ratni zločinac Havijer Solana by Vojislav Šešelj have not yet been translated, and are unlikely to be any time soon, for fairly obvious reasons.</p>
<p>With any language and particularly more difficult ones like Chinese and Japanese, simply the practical motivation to learn it is not going to be sufficient to take you through to fluency, especially if languages are not your main concentration. A genuine interest in the culture and the language itself is necessary. What I mean is, just pick the language that interests you. </p>
<p>Also, if you're just learning a language on the side and aren't planning to study abroad, you should expect that it will take more than the time in college to learn it fluently. Definitions of fluency vary, but I mean the ability to read novels without missing more than one word per page, discuss high-level topics with native speakers with ease, etc.</p>
<p>You should really only use Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone if you can get them for free. They're overhyped commercial programs that sucker people into paying exorbitant prices for them because there are people who actually believe that you can learn a language from a short program. They're handy as a start if you can get them from a library, but save your money for lessons with a native speakers. Also another note on Rosetta Stone: they have a set collection of phrases and pictures that they just use from program to program. This can be OK for languages closely related to English. However, in a lot of languages such phrases would never be heard from a native speakers as they have a completely different way of describing such actions. And when are you going to need to say things like "the boy is on top of the airplane"? A lot less often than you're going to need to use basic introductions (which aren't taught in RS, btw).</p>
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Anybody got an idea about how to learn an obscure language?
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<p>I'm pretty sure FSI has created programs for a lot of obscure languages. You won't find it on the aforementioned website, but I'm pretty sure you can find an old copy if you dig for it on the internet. But seriously, if it interests you go ahead and learn it. If anything you'll find more uses and opportunities for more obscure languages as so few people outside of the natives can speak them.</p>
<p>@gprime- talk to the history and political science professors at your university who specialize in Central/Eastern Europe. They'll have much better idea of how you can learn Serbian because chances are, they've encountered opportunities along the way (even if they didn't study the language).</p>
<p>I'm very interested in Sub-saharan Africa. Any idea which language would be most ideal to learn - or is English prevalent enough there that it's not a necessity?</p>
<p>Lately, I'm leaning more towards Russian. I'm so unfamiliar with it, and would love to gain a quick, shallow exposure to it. I'll check out the FSI site, but does anyone else have any tips on getting a "feel" for a language?</p>
<p>There are lots of quick-pick-up language books for business travellers, and audiobooks as well. When I started messing around with German I picked up some conversational tapes. To advance beyond a slightly stilted repertoire of phrases you'd need to really study the grammar more, but they're pretty good for just trying out a language. Berlitz makes some of the best beginning language books.</p>
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I've been studying Japanese for a while now. Avoid pimsleur and rosetta stone at all costs. Watch a lot of TV (news and regular programming... not anime) and take the classes offered in college.
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Damnit, I was going to learn basic Japanese and then become fluent by watching fansubs (without the subs, of course ;) - what the fansubbing groups refer to as 'raws').</p>
<p>@writeincursiv3- Sub-saharan Africa is pretty tribal. For broad based language, I would consider either French (since most of northern Africa was French colony) or Swahili if you want to look a little more towards central Africa. It's also dominated by Muslims so you might want to cosnider a bit of Arabic, especially if you're into Egypt.</p>
<p>It's fremium. Certain services are free (chatting and webcamming with other Skype users I know for sure), but other extra functions require fees.</p>
<p>If you're interested in Africa, writeincursiv3, you probably have three choices unless your school offers a lot of African languages: French, Arabic, and Swahili. I like Swahili the best, but French and Arabic are more useful in a general sense to learn since they're not limited to such a small area.</p>
<p>Arabic is popular in the more Muslim areas; Sub-Saharan Africa is more Christian, generally, although it overlaps a little around Sudan. Sub-Saharan is kind of a big blanket term. It's generally very underdeveloped and I don't think English is widely spoken at all. French is spoken more in the West, which also doesn't sound like what you want.</p>
<p>Swahili might be a fun one to learn. I really enjoy it and encourage others to check it out. (Technically it's 'Kiswahili', the language of the Swahili people [Swahili = coast, and so coastal dwellers, kinda.]) It's mostly spoken in Eastern Africa - Tanzania and Kenya are the main countries that apply. It's a small area, but very cool and interesting to study. It's not difficult. The pronunciation rules are very, very simple and the grammar is very different from English but not hard to get a grasp of - just different enough to be more interesting and strange than learning a romance language. The difficult thing is that there is a ton of memorization, since unlike romance languages almost nothing will look familiar. The words are all very easy to mix up since they're short and kind of simple.</p>
<p>My friends think is sounds cute in a childish way, whereas Russian is cute in an elderly person way. It looks like this: "Jina langu ni kelseyg. Mimi ni mwanafunzi." There's an utterly fantastic Swahili song called "Jambo Bwana" you should look up that is the best thing ever. You can get a small idea of the culture of the language and what it looks like by checking out these great proverbs: Swahili</a> proverbs, sayings and riddles at: <a href="http://www.kiswahili.net%5B/url%5D">www.kiswahili.net</a></p>
<p>Like easy said-
You can talk to other skype users for free, but if you want to call a land line or have people be able to call you from a landline you have to pay. I use it for language exchanges with people in Japan. The only downside is that it's really hard to coordinate schedules because of the time difference. I usually have to do it at like 4-5am here because that's when people are available.</p>
<p>(posted by Johnshade's daughter, who has forgotten her login information after a gap year:)</p>
<p>I have studied Russian for the last 5 years (4 in HS and a gap year of immersion in the country) and I adore it. It is a difficult language to master because the grammar is so difficult for English speakers and there are so many rules. After living in the country, I am conversationally fluent, but still feel I have a lot to learn.</p>
<p>I studied Chinese for a year in HS and for me it was too much. While they have few grammatical rules compared to Russian (at least at the beginning level--I'm by no means an expert!) I found it to be incredibly difficult for me due to the vast amount of rote memorization. (words, tones, characters). </p>
<p>Basically, the two languages are hard in very different ways. I love Russian's difficult parts because for me all the rules and roots are like a big puzzle. they are logical and very interesting. I found myself unable to continue in Chinese because I was unable to focus on memorizing all of those parts and for me the process was daunting rather than exciting.</p>
<p>I hope this helped. If push comes to shove, pick the language whose culture interests you most. I find that my deep love of Russian culture has helped motivate me tremendously in the learning process!</p>
<p>Well, if you'll have anything to do with business later on in life take this advice: LEARN CHINESE. Business is going through the roof there these days and the language will be highly necessary. If not though, you can still learn it, but I'm telling you, it's difficult. I was born in China and all I can do is speak it. When I was two years old, I knew 200 chinese classical poems but now, I've forgotten almost all of it. <em>sigh</em> Unless you really, really enjoy it, I'd say it's a drop. </p>
<p>Japanese is definitely easier to pronounce for people who speak English. Actually, it sounds more like Spanish/Italian than anything. There is Hiragana/katakana so it's more like the English alphabet. In Chinese you just gotta memorize all 5000 of so characters. </p>
<p>Also, no one has mentioned this but if you're only looking for something easy to learn, you could try German. Hello=Hallo Milk=Milch Silver=Silber Get the trend? lol</p>
<p>In order to be truly fluent in Japanese though, you need to learn kanji as well (of which there are 15,000 plus characters.) Kanji characters were "imported" by the Japanese from China. Any kanji character you study in Japanese will be seen in Chinese. Some Japanese kanji characters share similar definitions to Chinese ones, but they can have different sounds.</p>
<p>The hiragana and katakana alphabet is easy to learn, but otherwise, both Chinese and Japanese have a vast amount of characters to be learned.</p>
<p>I'll be entering JPN 201 when I enter college, and am hoping to study Chinese as well.</p>