A language learners’ forum

Hello all my virtual friends,

Kathrin Klug from Frankfurt, Germany. I am here to learn and discussion on spanish language.

Welcome!
Kathrin, welcome to the forum! I look forward to following your participation in many of the fascinating discussions here on the forum. While I would imagine that, before registering, you took the time to familiarize yourself with various aspects of the forum, in the event that you overlooked something which might be particularly relevant to your study of Spanish, I would make mention of the following:

Español
A sub-form accessible via the main page of this forum.

Spanish Group
A Spanish study group accessible via the “Study Groups” sub-form on the main page.

Spanish Resources
A list of resources for the study of Spanish, most from an English base. Available via the discussion thread “A Master List of Resources” which can be found near the top of the page of “Language Programs and Resources” sub-form.

My Spanish study favorites (gear, people, methods, resource …)
Kraut’s personal list of favourites. It can be found floating around in the of “Language Programs and Resources” sub-form. As Kraut updates his list with additional posts on a fairly frequent basis, it is often one the first page of this sub-form.

Yojik.eu website
A website hosting language courses which are now in the public domain and which may be downloaded freely and legally. For the most part, the materials were created by, or commissioned by, the U.S. Government in the 1960’s and 1970’s for use in a classroom setting. Many of them employ the audio-lingual method of instruction and are suitable for self-instruction. Here’s the link: https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/

How-to-Learn-Any-Language
The language forum which preceded this one. While the post activity has declined to virtually zero, the forum continues to serve as a much-appreciated archive. Here’s the link: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/index.html

Abbreviations
You may come across the abbreviations “LLORG” and “HTLAL” on this forum. The former refers to this forum (A Language Learners’ Forum) whereas the latter refers to the previous one (How-to-Learn-Any-Language)

Viel Vernügung!

PS: I'm 73 and still struggling with German ... It’s time for my nap.

Hey, I'm Asia (in Polish the diminutive of "Joanna" is /aɕa/). I study applied linguistics and I have courses in German (intermediate), English (advanced) and French (complete beginner), but my true love is Norwegian and I wish I had more time to pursue it (I'm somewhere between A2 and B1 now).

I'm focusing on my English recently, especially the pronunciation - I'd like to speak without any hint of Polish accent. My boyfriend is essentially a native (he's Polish but has been living in UK for 11 years) and I've never spoken to him in English because I'm too anxious about it

I hope I'll get some help and motivation here. I already learn languages for multiple hours a day, so being consistent isn't a big deal for me, but I think that I tend to focus on some things too much and completely neglect another (like speaking).

Hello everyone,

My name is Daniëlle. I'm a Dutch university student, currently working on my (research) master's degree. During my bachelor's (in Dutch and biology) I did some linguistics, including some research on birdsong as a model for human language. Besides this, I took some courses in Arabic and I'm still trying to increase my Arabic proficiency on my own.
My primary reason to study other languages is that they grant access to different cultures and viewpoints. I studied German, Latin and Ancient Greek in high school, but only actively use German right now. In university, I picked up some French self-studying, to gain access to its literature. I also dabble into Spanish and Norwegian from time to time, because of my girlfriend's background (though I don't study them as seriously as Arabic and French, which are my priorities right now).

Hello everyone. My name is Alina, I'm Russian.
I don't speak English well, but I want to improve it so much.
And I want to know about others cultures and languages.
Besides, I hope to find some friends and just interesting people.
Maybe somebody wants to study Russian (madmen), I will be glad to help.

Welcome to the forum. I'm sure that there are madmen that study Russian here - I have myself a longterm project to learn it, but so far mostly as a written language. As for birdsong as a model of language, well - I know that there are some birds that learn their songs by imitation and then continue to develop their own personal 'melody' - but as far as I know they don't have any particular talent for grammar.

Iversen wrote:Welcome to the forum. I'm sure that there are madmen that study Russian here - I have myself a longterm project to learn it, but so far mostly as a written language. As for birdsong as a model of language, well - I know that there are some birds that learn their songs by imitation and then continue to develop their own personal 'melody' - but as far as I know they don't have any particular talent for grammar.

That's the fun part: birds might actually have a very good feeling for grammar! Some experimental work on birdsong shows patterns (of song and of learning) that show a striking resemblance to some predictions Chomskey's Universal Grammar theory makes about grammar. There's actually a wild discussion going on between chomskonians and birdsong researchers about whether this actually suggests that systems of birdsong and systems of human language are indeed very similar and might have a shared evolutionary history. But alas, this might go a bit beyond a self-introduction

My name is Vladimir, I'm from Russian, nowadays me and mywife sitting home and have a big wish improve English skill. If you have a free time and want to help us, we will glad to see you to the skype or etc... skype : vovan_kras
Also we can help you improve your Russian

Hi All,

I've been a longtime reader of these forums/HTLAL, but I've finally decided to sign up (and possibly start a log!). I've been studying languages on and off for years, with varying levels of success, but I think I've finally hit my stride for the long term (being an adult with a relatively fixed schedule helps).

I've dabbled (very briefly in most) in German, Mandarin, Italian, and Dutch, but my focuses lately have been Spanish (main one) and French. Of course take this with a grain of salt since these aren't real test results, but I'd say I'm sneaking up on B2 in Spanish (my first iTalki lesson yesterday I was able to express most of what I wanted, although sometimes slower than I'd like, but I'm able to read Spanish genre fiction novels with no dictionary and have been watching Club de Cuervos with subs with no problem). French is definitely probably strong A2 weak B1 level, I've been reading Camus on LingQ but I know I'm not ready for a real book (yet).

As far as learning methods, I'm a huge fan of Assimil, with maybe an intro from Michel Thomas or Language Transfer (LT French is not good though). I've done Assimil With Ease and Using for both Spanish and French, currently casually working through Assimil Business French as well. In addition, I'm working through FSI Spanish to practice automaticity, and starting iTalki lessons for it. For both I'm also trying to read a ton. Once I'm done with FSI Spanish I'd like to do that for French--I feel like it has cleaned up some of my knowledge.

Also...since this pandemic has me bored, I bought Orberg's Lingua Latina because I found it cheap on Abebooks and I think it'll be fun. Sue me.

Hello there,

LaMancha, my nickname, comes from the name of my "Autonomous Community" in Spain: Castilla-La Mancha. As some may know, it could be translated in english as "the stain". It is a vaste piece of plain land in the south part of the Iberic Plateau.

After the "bookish" introduction of my land of origin, let me introduce myself and tell you why I'm here and why I want to keep active on this forum.

I'm 22, studying an MBA in Madrid, at a government public program. This sounds cool, but all my life I've hated to study, I'm a much more street and neighborhood person: having fun, seeking some trouble, all this. Now I'm trying to adjust myself at a healthy, no-drugs, learning-focused life.

My adventure with languages started with english and french. In Spain we start to learn english since we are 6 or so, but honestly I don't know what was worse: my interest to be a good student or my various teacher's motivation. Now that I am 22 I regret this happened, but... whatever. I've hated french all my life. Reached a level in which I could maintain basic conversation fluid, but now it has been 5 years without even thinking about it.
Back to english. When I was 12 or 13 my father and mother sent me to the US alone to a host family to try to make me see other things that were not my neighborhood nor my parent's village. I learned a lot in just two months from the scratch. It was an amazing experience, where I realize you need to live inside the language. Next year, same movement, but I ended up in a black family smoking weed every f day with my new 16 year-old brand new jumped on the roads friend. Also pretty nice. That is how I learned english. After that I've been in everyday contact with it, even passed a C1 exam, even though my grammar is horrible...

When being a problematic teenager, my father made me choose: work or university. I've been such an idiot all my youth, but my parents has always been working hard and the saved money for my education... how lucky I am?. Now I realise and I'm working on it. So my parents told me that if I wanted to go to uni, it had to be... Chinese studies major. REDACTED

Here comes the chinese adventure: I started uni, pretty slow training and teachers, following a book and all this... and in my group level was pretty low. I had the luck (again) that I was accepted in Peking University with a scholarship to do my third year of uni.
In China I did the same as I did with english: full inmersion, thinking in chinese, mental dialogues, REDACTED with natives (and also foreigners ) , but this time I started to study!!! This combined made me go way up, reaching an HSK5 in 10 months. It was hard though.

Last year I had to attend to basic Korean classes. Pretty nice to taste a chinese-influenced language. I may retake it on the future!

After telling you my life... (sorry for being tiresome) I've arrived here. I really hope I can make this forum an scape-way from my MBA courses, which are pretty hard for me. I really appreciate the time I could study languages. So I hope we can share our methods, our views, our perspectives... and become better together. Also, I will read some first page threads. If anyone has some suggestions of good threads to have a look, I will appreciate him telling me.

Have a nice day,
LaMancha.