Clark, I am glad I helped. I know it is odd to say that etymology is a hobby but I always loved it. I like to find the connections between many languages. I feel like it is sort of fun, aye. That exercising routine can be very helpful though, it can move boredom away. Exercises always nourished my mind.
I also wanted to add that in case you like karaoke singing, you could try to sing in French. Oh, and I keep all of those “Dear John letters” sent to me, I know it is weird but to a man who make lots of affaires de coeur with many “cultures”, it is a nice collection, LOL.
I do not mind singing along to my music, but ah, if I sang publically, there would be a mass suicide (or they would charge me for murder--how ever they [the audience] died first ;-)
I have gone over this in my head a lot, and what I plan to do with language-learning is learn languages on the next level. For so long have I been learning the basics of language that it has become boring. So what I am going to do now is to really focus hard on only one or two languages. I am going to focus on learning vocabulary and the hard grammar parts (like when to use tenses, when to use certain prepositions, etc).
Yeah, that would be more interesting. I think I am going to do this with my Spanish. In Spanish, I learnt some basic vocabulary and grammar but when I kept on this for a long time, it dulled my enthusiasms so I stopped. I really have troubles imitating some as native Spanish speakers. Such as the consonants “B larga”, “B corta”, and “rr” therefore, I guess I can work on this, too. In addition, I always tried to figure out about that “LL”, sometimes it is like a “Y”, sometimes it is “lli” in “million”. However, I cannot just put a base for it.
I think one good thing about learning other languages is that, after you learnt them, you will be so gratified. I tend to challenge myself when learning a new language; it is fun and helps me not to give up easily.
Spanish is quite easy for me; moreso than French (which makes me angry sometimes).
I do not understand what you mean my, "B larga”, “B corta" ? Do you mean, "b de burro" and "v de vaca" ? If not, I do not understand because "B" and "b" are the same thing.
As for the "ll" I always pronounce it as a "y," and that is how I have always heard it from native speakers from Spain (sometime at the beginning of words it sounds like the English "j").
What methods are you going to use with learning Spanish? For me, I am going to study vocabulary as much as I can. I bought a pack of 1,000 French flashcards yesterday. They come in French, Spanish, German, Japanese, and I am sure the others as well. Anyway, I am going to practice my vocabulary and also my grammar by taking notes and reading a lot from my grammar books that I have.
Oh, sorry I meant by the "B large", the B letter and by the "B corta", the V letter. What you said is right, I guess names I used somewhat wrong. My! I am so bad at Spanish, LOL.
Thanks a lot for explaining that “ll’ matter.
Flashcards seem to be a very good idea; you just gave me that idea, as I did not think about it before. I guess I will many grammar books also.
Oh, I will practice pronunciation, especially words with diphthongs. I will practice my vocabulary. Oh, I am running out of ideas.
You know I was wondering about two things:
As I am bilingual speaking French and English, I always use French way of pronunciation of loan words in English, which is French. Such words as, “bon mot” and “bon vivant”, do other natives pronounce the T or what? That just has been confusing me for a while.
The other question, how many languages you think a brain can hold? I am somewhat ambitious about learning so many languages but I am not quite sure if I can learn so many? How many do you think is too many?
Oh, another thing came to my mind, being partly a Cajun, I found my French is really different in vocabulary, than Canadian French, do you think there is a Cajun French as there is a Cajun dialect of English?
Oh yes, there is a Cajun dialect of French! Look it up on the internet. There is also a Cajun Teach Yourself at Amazon.com that you might look into.
As for French pronounciations in the English language, well, I am speaking mainly for Americans when I say this. So, our accent (West Coast) swallows the "t" at the end oof most words. So we would use the English pronounciation, and in our case, it would sound similar to the way the French pronounce it. But there are things like, "bon appétit" and the English-speakers pronounce the "t" at the end where the French would not.
As for how many languages the brain can hold; I would say a lot. As for being fluent in a lot of languages, I am not so sure. I guess a person could be fluent in almost all of the languages on this earth, but he would have to keep them in order in his head, he would have to speak in all of them every day, for most of the day to keep them fluent; this last one is key. A person I guess could hold as many languages as he could just as long as he was able to practice each of them every day.
For me, pronounciation has never ben a problem. Some languages I do not have the best pronounciation, and some languages (like Romanian and Russian), I have fooled native speakers into thinking that I was a native speaker as well. I think what my trick was, was to listen to tapes/CD's/Videos of the language, but not try to understand what was being said. I just studied how the language sounds, and I would repeat what was being said. This I think helped tremendously for pronounciation.
As for the flashcards, I think that I will make two piles; one for words I know by heart, and one for words that I do not know or hesitate giving the translation to. I think that I will only try 25 words a day, so I can let the words that I just learned, sink into my brain.
Clark, Thanks a lot for your answers!
I believe your idea about those flashcards is great while 25 is a reasonable amount of words. Well, I am at Israel right now and it is about 3 a.m. over here, so I better go and have some sleep.
Good day/night!
Your links post wadn't here when I posted reply, thank you very much! They really helped me understand where the differences are.
Es-tu juif ? Pourquois tu es la-bas ?
Non, je ne suis pas juif. J'ai la réunion d'affaires là et c'est seulement moi suis là. Je suis chrétien
Ah, je comprends. je suis chrétien aussi.
C'est grand ! Ainsi comment apprend le Français va avec vous. J'ai employé votre conseil sur des cartes instantanées et il était vraiment grand.