<p>I'm learning Spanish and Levantine Arabic (spoken only). How long should I study abroad for, a semester for each? I don't have enough time in my schedule to study abroad for a year for both languages.</p>
<p>Im a fast learner too so I think I could do Spanish in a semester (I'll be entering an intermediate level by the time I study abroad and there are plenty of Spanish-speakers in the US that I could practice with) and I'll be learning spoken arabic with a tutor so I would be learning it faster than I would in classes.</p>
<p>It really depends on how long you’ve studied the languages and what level you’re at.</p>
<p>If you’re not already a proficient speaker of Arabic then it would be a total waste of time in my opinion. You certainly won’t come back anywhere near fluent. If you’re a beginner in Spanish and you studied in a hispanophone country for a year then you might return with perhaps an AP-level of Spanish.</p>
<p>MSA is actually pretty pointless; nobody uses it outside of the media. You could learn it but you wouldn’t understand any other variant of Arabic.</p>
<p>Well if you are trying to becom fluent in these languages, then my advice would be 6 months. Spanish you probably could learn in a semester, and if you could then do so, but Arabic on the on the other hand is more complicated, and if you truely want to learn the language, then 6 months is the best way to go.</p>
<p>Why are you giving the OP false hope? If she’s a beginner (which judging from her other posts, she is) then she will learn nothing in 6 months .</p>
<p>Actually 6 months is more than enough. I’ve had friends go into countries with absolutely no knowledge in the native languages, and come back fluent in it within 3 months. This includes Spanish and Arabic.</p>
<p>Your friends are greatly exaggerating their abilities then. There’s no point arguing about it, it’s an impossibility.</p>
<p>Why do so many CC members have this blas</p>
<p>Most semester abroads are glorified pub crawls… you will not become anywhere near fluent, but you will learn how to order drinks in a foreign language and hopefully not catch a foreign STD.</p>
<p>6 months is sufficient for Spanish to be able to communicate sufficiently. Arabic… Not in your wildest dreams.</p>
<p>I speak several languages, including those 2 and let me tell you Arabic was a PITA… I’m 5 years deep in Arabic, using it every day and I’m still learning new words, idioms, etc…</p>
<p>I’m not arguing. They learned the language in 6 months there’s nothing more to say about it. It’s not impossible if people have obviously done it. Please stop trying to discredit everything because you obviously don’t know.</p>
<p>I don’t know? Tell me, what qualifies you to make such assumptions - are you a languages student yourself? What experience in language learning do you have? Spanish might be easier than Arabic but it’s not that easy. Your friend is either lying, exaggerating or you’ve misunderstood them. You can’t just spend 6 months somewhere and leave speaking the local language fluently.</p>
<p>^Actually, 6 months is sufficient amount of time to learn Spanish to professional proficiency according to the Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI) :D. But for Arabic (Fus7a)? Hailss nahh. But she wasn’t asking about Fus7a, she was asking about the Levantine dialect. I think 6 six months will get you really close to fluency. My friend was in Morocco for 6 months on a grant with the Department of State [to learn arabic and do research], and now she speaks Darija (the Moroccan dialect) pretty fluently. (She can understand 95 percent of what she hears, and she speaks well. But keep in mind, she also goes back to Morocco each year).</p>
<p>source: [Languages</a> by Difficulty for English Speakers](<a href=“http://multilingualbooks.com/languagedifficulty.html]Languages”>Languages by Difficulty for English Speakers)</p>
<p>I’m getting tired of being contradicted and having to repeat myself. For what I hope is the last time, six months is not enough to become fluent in any language, no matter what JonathanDS or the FSI says.</p>
<p>I think there’s a question of what fluency means. I studied French from seventh grade through the end of college and spent second semester Junior year in France - not in Paris, in a small city where NOBODY speaks English. I lived with host parents, took classes at the local university, etc. I can express myself in French, I told my host parents all about my life in the US, my interests, my religion, whatever. But that doesn’t mean that I sound French. My accent is good but not perfect and my grammar is passable - and understandable - but not ideal. Writing is much harder than speaking, because speaking is more forgiving. I understand nearly all of what I hear (at least in France French) and I call myself fluent because hey, I could move to Nice tomorrow and be perfectly fine language-wise. But I’m not a native speaker and it shows. To be honest, I think I could spend another year in France and not make much more progress.</p>
<p>If you do want to attain as much fluency as possible when you go abroad, it’s important that you immerse yourself as thoroughly as possible. Don’t hang out with English-speakers, don’t live with other Americans; force yourself to live and breathe the language. But don’t go into it with high expectations either. Be proud of your progress but don’t expect you’ll sound like a native Spanish-speaker when you leave, because you won’t and it’ll just be disappointing.</p>
<p>And my final note (on the subject of what fluency means) is this: think about why you want to become fluent. Is it so you can talk to friends, is it so you can live abroad one day? I wanted to be fluent in French because I study medieval history. I need to be able to read modern French perfectly so that I can make out medieval French. And I like France and might spend more time there one day. And even though I’m not perfectly fluent, I can do those things. So I’m satisfied.</p>
<p>I took five years of French and then spent a year in France. By six months I was very comfortable in French. In Germany I had a year of college German, and then spent four weeks at a Goethe Institute. It was helpful, but I certainly wasn’t fluent. Later I went to live in Germany, I got a job after another three month stint at a Goethe Institute. I had to spend my entire first day at the office asking what everything was called (mylar, masking tape, templates, rulers, tracing paper etc.) Even after five years in Germany I discovered I hadn’t learned any of the vocabulary I needed for having a baby. I’ve always been very diligent about immersing myself, but will always speak with an accent and some grammar errors. </p>
<p>Anyway, I think you can make great strides in Spanish in three months. I think it would be an unusually gifted linguist who would get as far in Arabic. (My son just got back from 7 weeks in Jordan.)</p>
<p>You are obviously not understanding. They went out of the country to Costa Rica for 6 months and actually learned the language. I know they aren’t lying or exaggerating about speaking spanish because they speak it fluently! They didn’t know too much of the language when they went and thet came back fluent in it. You are truely a ■■■■■■■■ person because you swear up and down that its impossible to do it when people do it all of the time. I’ve witnessed it so I have my proof that it can actually happen. I’m done with this conversation because speaking to you is obviously getting us no where.</p>
<p>I’m afraid I don’t believe you. You clearly have no experience yourself in language learning, so why you’re even posting in this thread I don’t know. Like mathmom said, you would certainly improve a lot; perhaps even attain some level of fluency if you spent six months abroad, but only after years of previous study.</p>
<p>I hope nobody reading this thread is foolish enough to listen to JonathanDS; you will end up extremely disappointed.</p>
<p>Okay, I don’t know if you have picked this up by now, but I’m going to make this clear. I don’t like you. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, but I know how things work, and how could you possibly know if I have any experience in learning a language if I never told wheather I have any or not? I actually do have experience (4 years worth), but I know that I’m not yet fluent because I have spoken with native speakers, and they tell me that it needs some work, and I hope that studying abroad will help me attain that level of fluency that I want. Please don’t go around trying to speak ill of me. You can’t get mad when someone isn’t agreeing with what you are saying. You should really be more professional here.</p>
<p>I’m not angry, just frustrated that you keep telling people untruths.</p>
<p>When you say you have four years experience do you mean four years of school lessons? I’d hardly call that experience; the teaching of foreign languages in the US (as with most Anglophone countries) is decidedly poor. Even AP level is quite basic. </p>
<p>My assumption that you have no experience in this area is hardly unreasonable, the fact you attempted to answer the OPs question with anecdotal stories about your friends’ time abroad is proof enough I think that you don’t know what you’re talking about. As I’ve already said, readers of this thread would be well advised to ignore you.</p>
<p>I have studied in school, but half of my family is latino and speaks spanish and I practice with them. It didn’t take me long to pick up the language, I’m just not perfect in it yet. It’s not a lie that my friends have done this, you don’t have to believe it, and neither does anyone else. If she does or does not learn the language in 6 months then that’s her. I just don’t like it when people call me a liar when I know for a fact that I am telling the truth.</p>
<p>I think I agree with Dionysus more. Maybe your friend is one hell of a learner, and I’m not going to say I think your story invalid, but I would assume six months is not enough to ACTUALLY learn the language. By learning a foreign language, you obiviously need to understand how to read, write and even speak with a nice accent. I’m into two years of Spanish, but I would not say I would be fluent if I spend another year at it. Even if I do a study abroad afterwards, it would take more than just that to actually become fluent. However, studying abroad probably would give you skills beyond the basics, but I doubt it would be enough to allow you to do a 45 minute speech of non-stop talking.</p>