How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

General discussion about learning languages
DaveBee
Blue Belt
Posts: 952
Joined: Wed Nov 02, 2016 8:49 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (native). French (studying).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7466
x 1386

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby DaveBee » Tue Mar 28, 2017 5:29 pm

Ani wrote:*I did speak Italian as a kid but I am assuming you mean deliberate learning.
Do you think that's helped you at all with french?
0 x

User avatar
blaurebell
Blue Belt
Posts: 840
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:24 pm
Location: Spain
Languages: German (N), English (C2), Spanish (B2-C1), French (B2+ passive), Italian (A2), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
x 2240

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby blaurebell » Tue Mar 28, 2017 5:38 pm

I started with English in school and then later took Latin. English worked for me - they pushed us through a lot of grammar -, but I turned Latin into a game of how to get As without learning anything. I was very quick with the dictionary and now remember nothing. I also took Italian classes at university that made hardly a dent, but I memorised the whole course book for the exam with some success. Never really pushed through the comprehension barrier though. Later I took immersion classes with Spanish and those worked well enough - early speaking means fossilised mistakes, very effective for listening comprehension though! I tried to learn Russian on my own but failed because I tried to replicate grammar + vocab torture like in my classes. French was the first language I successfully learned on my own and I pushed through the comprehension barrier really super fast. So, lots of failures! It definitely took me a while to figure out what works for me and what doesn't, especially with self-study. Basically, I need to do the opposite of what they do in school and classes :D
3 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

User avatar
Ani
Brown Belt
Posts: 1433
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2016 8:58 am
Location: Alaska
Languages: English (N), speaks French, Russian & Icelandic (beginner)
x 3840
Contact:

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby Ani » Tue Mar 28, 2017 6:41 pm

DaveBee wrote:
Ani wrote:*I did speak Italian as a kid but I am assuming you mean deliberate learning.
Do you think that's helped you at all with french?


I know people say it should but no, not really. I never learned Italian well and I refused to speak it completely around age 11 or 12. I stopped understanding spoken Italian by the time I was in college or so. Italian gave me a boost into Latin and I guess I have some cognates from that, but not any more than an educated English speaker who studied word roots, yk?
1 x
But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

User avatar
Steve
Orange Belt
Posts: 169
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 7:53 am
Location: US (Wisconsin)
Languages: English(N), Spanish (Intermediate), Ancient Greek (Intermediate), Hebrew (Beginner), ASL (Beginner), German (Beginner)
x 801
Contact:

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby Steve » Tue Mar 28, 2017 9:24 pm

I took two years of university level German for fun. This was my first exposure to a foreign language. I'm not sure I'd have gotten started with language learning if I hadn't taken it. On the negative side, I largely wasted a couple decades thinking language learning was about grammar and vocabulary memorization rather than skills practice.

Overall, I'm glad I took the class. Would I take one now? Probably not, unless an employer was paying for it or there was something special about the class. I'm not interested in studying for exams anymore. :)
3 x

Tillumadoguenirurm
Orange Belt
Posts: 193
Joined: Fri May 06, 2016 3:07 pm
Languages: English
x 235

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby Tillumadoguenirurm » Tue Mar 28, 2017 10:05 pm

I'm not a polyglot neither, but I learned my second language, English, with Babelfish and cowboy fanfiction (I still remember the awesome feeling when I figured out what a dun horse was). We hardly learned more than "my name is..." and basic reading at school, so I don't count it at all.

I haven't taken any classes in French or Spanish yet, but I might sometime in the future just to have someone to practice with.
1 x

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby Atinkoriko » Tue Mar 28, 2017 10:57 pm

Took French from primary school to high school, but dropped it later because I was sick of it. Was quite a good student of it, could do conjugations while balanced on my head and all. Unfortunately, we were taught nothing by way of pronunciation and thanks to our inept teacher, I picked up the habit of vocalizing the 'ent' in 'Ils veulent' and other third person plural conjugations.
In all, pretty poor experience.
2 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

galaxyrocker
Brown Belt
Posts: 1120
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 12:44 am
Languages: English (N), Irish (Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge B2), French, dabbling elsewhere sometimes
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=757
x 3328

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby galaxyrocker » Tue Mar 28, 2017 11:03 pm

tomgosse wrote:Currently I am studying French on my own, but I did start by taking a course at night school. I am one of those people who need the structure of a class to get started.


I agree with this. The first (and only) language I've become proficient at (I wouldn't say fluent) was Irish. I started it in school, and used the classes to help structure me to get to a level where I could use immersion (and experienced two periods of immersion while taking classes). That said, I don't think I necessarily need the class per se, but I would need a textbook and, like, an outlined schedule almost. Or, I guess, an audio program that does it for me haha.

Though the class definite helps keep me motivated.
2 x

DaveBee
Blue Belt
Posts: 952
Joined: Wed Nov 02, 2016 8:49 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (native). French (studying).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7466
x 1386

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby DaveBee » Wed Mar 29, 2017 9:01 am

galaxyrocker wrote:That said, I don't think I necessarily need the class per se, but I would need a textbook and, like, an outlined schedule almost.
What I prefer about Assimil over Teach Yourself is the daily structure. It's not chapters to cover, it's one short lesson a day. It's easier to make it a habit, and _stick_ to it.
4 x

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby Iversen » Wed Mar 29, 2017 9:48 am

As far as I remember I had English in school from I was something like 9½ years old (= 3. grade in Denmark), but actually I may have made a headstart a year or two earlier: in the 2. grade all my classmates discussed TV programs they had seen, and my family hadn't got any TV set at home so I was left out. Luckily my 'form' master (weird word!) invited me home to her so I could watch Flintstones there. Sometimes I could also watch Danish and German TV at my uncle and aunt's house, but when we visited them we mostly just wasted our time on eating cake and running through the usual fare of small talk conversations in Danish. Anyway, my mother capitulated to the situation and bought a TV set, and then I started to watch programs in English with subtitles.

So it is not without foundation that I claim that the first English word I learned was "yabba-dabba-doo", but I soon progressed beyond that - enough to order weird things home on my mother's library card since my own didn't allow such loans until I was 13 years old. The weirdest thing I ordered was probably the catalogues of the Natural history museum in London for the amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals - not fish or invertebrates (too numerous) - because I wanted to add as many items as possible to my collection of animal species with their Latin names. I was however only allowed to use these books at the library.

Of course I was also assisted in my language studies by the school system, but I started learning Italian and Spanish and Latin on my own a few years later without the help of any teacher - mostly for fun, but also to understand Italian words in musical scores, Latin scientific nomenclature and .. well Spanish because the same people who wrote the Italian textbook also had written one for Spanish.
4 x

mcthulhu
Orange Belt
Posts: 228
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2017 4:01 pm
Languages: English (native); strong reading skills - Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Slovene, Farsi; fair reading skills - Polish, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Portuguese; beginner/rusty - Swedish, Norwegian, Danish
x 590

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby mcthulhu » Wed Mar 29, 2017 12:11 pm

Probably the very first one would have been Latin, in elementary school, though "learn" would be stretching it. There was an elderly teacher who liked teaching Latin; I think it disappeared from the curriculum not too much later when she left, though. It would not have been common at the elementary level in those days (I'm not sure if that has changed). I can probably thank that teacher for sparking my interest in languages at an early age.

Somewhat later, probably while still in elementary school, I was studying a Spanish grammar on my own from the local public library, and then later followed up on that by taking Spanish when I got to high school. I did continue Latin in high school for a couple of years, though I didn't keep up with Latin after that. I also got exposed to a couple more languages outside of school during that period; there was an Esperanto promoter in the next town over who loaned me a few Esperanto books (our library also had a few novels in Esperanto, for some reason), and at one point my school had a visiting Israeli teacher who was willing to do a little private tutoring in Hebrew. (What Hebrew I learned from her has all evaporated now, unfortunately. I did read a book in Esperanto recently, as a sort of refresher.) I also remember going through a basic German textbook on my own; I never had an actual class in that.

Anyway, my language study was a combination of both classes and reading/studying on my own; I got in the habit of independent study when I was very young, and then after college it became my primary means of learning.
2 x


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Dragon27, emk, themethod and 2 guests