Returning to languages

[zenmonkey]

Hi!

If you don't get a speaking partner here - take a look at italki.com for partners. It is specifically set up for that. Personally, I'm only looking for exchanges which can be mutually beneficial (plus my core languages are romance and I saw your P.S.) - I'll do languages exchanges primarily with people who have some knowledge in my core study areas or during a session on a different subject or area of work (like getting this place running).

However - whatever language you end up choosing, you'll get a lot of support in finding tools and material from the community.

[getreallanguage]

Well, I think Polish is beautiful, even though I can't speak a word of it, so hey, why not. I know next to no Latin, but I did take two semesters of Classical Latin in college so I'm not exactly a true beginner, and I can grasp some of the general meaning of a text sometimes.

I don't know if you're learning Latin just to read it or if you intend to also be able to write/speak. If the latter is true, when you feel confident enough to write something (anything) in Latin, or if you're already at that point, you are welcome to come over and talk to us at the Nova romance thread at the Multilingual room (http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=763). All romance languages, plus Latin, are allowed there. And by all means do start a log :)

Cool username, by the way.

[Kazumi]

PsittacusMagnus, welcome to the Language Learners' forum.

I think if you write a log here, you can find more people with similar interests. Maybe you will be able to exchange languages with someone who is already at advanced level in Latin. Who knows this person is willing to brush up his English (active skills)?

Since you are a native speaker of English, I sure that it won't be difficult to find language partners. You can take a look on "Language Communities: experiences?" in the link below where you can check other communities related to languages.

http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1099

[Elenia]

If you are just starting, it is probably a better idea to find a dedicated tutor than an exchange partner. Italki is one place to find a tutor, Verbling is another. It might be worth seeing if you can find someone local to you who is willing to tutor you also?

You've said that one of your problems with finding exchanges is that people want it to be 100% English - in this case, you just have to be firm. You will find people willing to do a fair exchange with you, but they will be much more willing to exchange properly with you once you can demonstrate that you have a grounding in their language.

Aside from having a human 'contact' to the language, maybe try to create other ties? Look for interesting media that you'd like to be able to understand in the original, or see if it is viable for you to visit the country where the language is spoken. Maybe even pick a language because you like the food! I'm not sure what will work for you, but the more ties you can create to the language, the better chance you have at succeeding.

[zenmonkey]

I've sent you a PM and we can keep that convo going but a more 'public' statement I wanted to make is that, here in this community there are also people participating in year-long challenges (TAC - Total Annihilation Challenge) - once you find what language you want to work on, or even for Latin - you can join what is basically a study group or a group of people working loosely together.

The "I can't" or "that doesn't work for me" thing is real - language learning is generally hard and despite all the BS promises of "3 months to fluency" we see it is an ongoing effort and a lot of ways that work for one person don't work for another. Hey, as long as you are having the conversation with us - individually or as a group or keeping a log - you are still 'listening'.

[Mooby]

I'm intrigued by so many languages, but I don't live in or near a cosmopolitan city, neither do I travel a lot or need foreign langugaes for work. What got me into Polish was contact I had with numerous Polish families who had come to Scotland to settle. I enjoy the studying and the listening to podcasts, but the contact with humans gives me the ultimate motivation to keep going. I don't want to forever study language - I want to live it.
Anyway, your knowledge of Latin would help you with Polish cases, but what immigrant communities exist in your area?

[rdearman]

Zenmonkey, the TAC sounds like a good idea. I don't think that I'd be able to get started with one right now but perhaps for next year. I'll have to learn a bit more about it.

For a long time I've been doubtful of the fanciful claims made by publishers and others. I'm in it for the long term but I'm finding it hard to really build that habit.

Mooby, thanks for sharing the 'short' version of your Polish story. What you say about living the language is important. That's what I felt like I was doing - all study and never engaging with anyone. That's really why I started this thread. Since choosing a language for myself doesn't ever seems to result in any real engagement, I'm trying to see if others would like to engage with me first. Probably a long-shot but I'm kind of out of ideas at the moment.

No real immigrant communities around here within reasonable travel distance. Great idea though, thanks.

You don't say what country you are in so it is difficult to make recommendations. However, here is one suggestion which I think you might like to try. Find people with a common interest which you have and which IS NOT language learning. For example if you enjoy woodworking or boat building then you might try to find an online community of Boat Builders. With this idea in mind, and picking a random language I choose Korean, since they are a peninsula and probably have a lot of sailers.

Popping over to google translate I generated some search strings for: 자신의 요트 계획을 구축 and 항해 블로그. "Build your own yaght plans" and "Sailing blogs" respectively. This gave me a couple of interesting options. But the blog search showed me this page: http://blog.daum.net/yoontaegeun which seems to be a fellow who enjoys sailing.

Now the point of all this is having a common interest in something other than languages gives you a good reason to communicate and reach out to these people. If you were interested in boats and the korean language, you could spend some time reading this fellows blog, then constructing an introductory email to ask him about sailing. You could ask if he would be interested in speaking to you because you have plans to visit Korea and go sailing around the Korean Penisula.

You can pay italki tutor to drill you on the vocabulary related to sailing, or boat building. You could start up a number of email penpal relationships with Korean Sailers and hobbist boat-builders. You can join forums which are specifically open to Korean sailers, etc.

My point is that perhaps you exchanges fail is because actually you have nothing to talk about which interests either yourself or your partner. However if you've both got a shared entusiasm for a particular subject it will give both of you reason to speak. And in fact I find it is normally better to find someone who has no interest in learning your language, but wants to speak to you about a certain subject. This means you'll naturally converse in the language you want to learn, and you'll get entusiastic participation of the other party.

As far as picking a lanugage, why pick one at all? If your interest is in sailing and boat-building you need not limit yourself to learning one language, but spend one day writing to a Greek, the next speaking to a Korean, and a third swapping boat plans with a Japanese person.

[Expugnator]

Something that just came up to mind: if you can't find a native to practice with why not chat with another learner through Skype/HelloTalk and then post it at Lang-8 as if it were a mock dialogue? This could work for any interactions, just remove personal info or change it deliberately .

[Iversen]

I don't have conversations with my TV set, but I regularly watch some program aand try to translate it on the fly into one of my target languages. Of the resultat is throughly rotten and full of holes, which I can't fill out with new words because I haven't got time to look up anything, But I'm forced to think fast, and that's the point with this exercise.