Learning a second language

Who's done this as an adult? How long before you could hold up a conversation? Any tips or big secrets? On whim I'm giving German a whirl.

I took a French class with my wife. I think it would take two or three years at that pace before I could become conversant, and that's with a strong background in Espanol.

I had to learn stupidity a few years ago in order to converse with some clients.

I'm 28, so I am LEGALLY an adult, but feel younger every day It took me a year of living in Germany before I could confidently hold a conversation that went further than "I'm from here, I'm working here, I would like a beer please". Now I can hold somewhat coherent business conversations, and I'm going to try my hand at phone job interviews coming up in the next week.

See what kind of German speaking groups are near your area, because having someone who speaks it natively is key to learning a new language, IMO.

Also, "Turbolader" is Turbocharger auf Deutsch

I learned a new language at around 19. What helped me the most was reading. Having said that, i would suggest you buy magazines on subjects that interest you and read.

J

German is nice because many of the words are very close to English. I finish second year Deutsch 8 years ago. I amaze myself how I'll remember things fluently.

English is mostly German with some word orders reversed and slightly different pronunciation. The rest of it is old French and other Romance languages. Mostly...

The thing that always got to me about trying to learn German was the gendered nouns, which mean there are five extra ways to get grammar wrong. Six genders? Yep, there's male, female, and neutral, in both familiar and formal forms. (You know English's rarely-used royal We? It's like that, times everything) I can pick out bits and pieces while watching foreign movies enough to understand a bit of what's going on, bolstered by subtitles but don't have enough of the language to try to string together my own sentences.

Some of the subtitles in Inglorious Basterds were off, kinda like when Cameron Frye was relaying what Neo was saying in Speed. "E36 M3!!!" gets subtitled as "Oh darn", that sort of thing.

A question. Do you remember learning English? Like, learning to read and learning grammar? I learned all that stuff before I was two, so I don't remember how I learned it. Makes learning a new language trickier, probably.

If you read enough, der, die, das starts to come natural. But, yes, at first it is terrifying.

Learning ASL.....slowly. Get the basics, then immerse yourself in the culture.

I took French for six years in school and then took German for about six months. After a few months of living in Germany, those six years of French went down the crapper.

I suck at languages, but I was conversational in about 3 weeks. I was 35.

The difference is in the learning method. Typical American style classroom (or Internet , video, etc) teaching methods really aren't that great for languages. Immersion is MUCH better.

I went to a village in Guatemala, stayed in a home of no-English speakers, and didn't hear or speak a word of English for 3 weeks. Scary as crap.

But it worked. And I don't know anyone who learned through immersion who doesn't have a simar story.

If you think about it, that's the same way most of learned our first language when we were 2 or so.

I learned by LISTENING, not reading or watching. I developed a really great accent, but my grammar and spelling is not so good.

Classrooms are excellent ways to learn grammar , sentence structure, etc.

I know people who can learn in a classroom or from a book, but not me.

Yeah, Immersion is the best way by far. My problem with German was that although I was living in the country, everybody there speaks English very well and most jump at the chance to show you how well they speak it. That makes immersion very difficult. I imagine it's the similar in most "1st-world" countries...

What looks odd to me about written German is that the words all seem to have 30 some letters, or do they not space them out? I see it written at work all the time, but can't make heads or tails of it.

I've picked up a few words of Japanese from subtitles and such, but surely not the best way to learn. The written language looks like a nightmare with 2,000+ characters!!

I've actually been learning ASL and Spanish at the same time as a result of my child/wife. I took a little spanish in high school, some of it stuck. ASL is actually quite useful to me as I tend to talk with my hands. Spanish I use with the wife as she's needing to know it for work. Lotsa Muzzy and Signing Time DVDs.

MUZZY!! I'd forgotten that! What a riot!

I need to become fluent in spanish within about a year or so for our trip to the olde country (colombia, my wife's old country, not mine lol)
I'm going to be springing for Rosetta Stone.
Living with people who don't speak english helps my comprehension, I just have a hard time paying attention well enough to THINK about what something means. If it's repeated, or in hindsight, I can usually understand everything said.

Gearheadotaku wrote: I've picked up a few words of Japanese from subtitles and such, but surely not the best way to learn. The written language looks like a nightmare with 2,000+ characters!!

That is quite... daunting. I guess it's not always so easy for native speakers, either. What gets me even more than that is the sentence structure. My brain must have "solidified", as I simply can't grasp thinking like Yoda.

Finnish has something like 15 tenses. As described to me, don't worry about getting it right because even the native speakers don't get it right, just drink more vodka and it all makes sense.

There's lots of awesome podcasts for language training. If you have a long commute, they can be a great way to get a feel for the language.

But, yeah, as an adult, short of committing to a full-on classroom setting, immersion is the best way to go. Luckily immersion is easier than we think—at least when it comes to reading a different language. Living in Florida gives me a pretty good handle on written Spanish. And traveling to Germany every year has given me a pretty good handle on written German. Just browsing websites for travel info, you find that after a while you aren't just looking for the "English" button as soon as you get there.

jg