Learning a foreign language

bunberry

Check out https://www.germanpod101.com - I currently have a membership for another language and rather like it so far. They offer a 7 day free trial

You should be able to find discount codes too if you want to get a full membership afterwards.

Mistral001

bunberry wrote: »

Check out www.germanpod101.com - I currently have a membership for another language and rather like it so far. They offer a 7 day free trial

You should be able to find discount codes too if you want to get a full membership afterwards.

It looks like one of the better courses. The free trial seems to be very comprehensive.

The amount of courses online is amazing compared to four years ago when I went to the evening classes.

Being very MSE now. There is an amazing amount of free stuff. Youtube have a lot of good clips. I particularily learned a lot from Mark Wolter's youtube clips. He does other languages as well I believe. The Happen Deutsch clips are good and there must be 100's of them. There is a lot of rubbish as well I must admit.

BBC has some free stuff on their site. Also there is german.about.com.

bunberry

Forgot to mention - my current membership is actually the introductory one they offer when you first sign up for an account. For $1 I received a month's premium membership and a Getting Started package.

There's a 65% off code VIP65 which appears to work for all of their language sites. However, if you download everything via iTunes podcast or another podcatcher of your choice with the $1 membership, you'll have more than enough content to last a good few months

Mistral001

bunberry wrote: »

Forgot to mention - my current membership is actually the introductory one they offer when you first sign up for an account. For $1 I received a month's premium membership and a Getting Started package.

There's a 65% off code VIP65 which appears to work for all of their language sites. However, if you download everything via iTunes podcast or another podcatcher of your choice with the $1 membership, you'll have more than enough content to last a good few months

That is very very good value. Even without the discount it is still good value. Some of the courses cost over £100.

Horace

I am another one who was taught Latin at school and this has certainly helped me to learn new languages. I can now understand and converse in Italian (mostly self taught), I can speak French (learnt at school) and spent some time learning how to speak Dutch although I can read it much better than I can speak it. Dutch was learnt purely because I had Dutch friends and wanted to coverse with them in Dutch and not English.

I am in the process of teaching myself to speak Spanish as I have a CD course bought a while ago but put to oneside until I had time to learn. I picked up a book called Teach yourself Finnish in my local charity shop so I am having a go with that too:D

Maybe when funds allow I will go to the local language school and learn Dutch and Russian (I wanted to learn Russian at school but as only 3 of us wanted to learn it the school decided that it wasn't worth a teacher so we had to do German instead:()

inmypocketnottheirs

Mistral001 wrote: »

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BTW German is the most spoken first language in Europe (more than English). Not a lot of people know that.

Based on the fact Germany has the highest population in Europe that isn't very surprising.

Permanently_confused

Hi,

I think having other languages puts you in an excellent position, especially if you have had the dedication to learn one as an adult.

For literally hundreds of hours of free lessons, downoad iTunes if you don't already have it and click onto "podcasts" on the iTunes store homepage navigation bar.

From there either type in "German/ French/ Spanish/ Italian" etc and you will see both paid and free subscriptions.

A particularly good free service is Coffee Break French/ Spanish and also German pod101 - which is free as well, the lessons are bite-sized, you can use the language immediately and it builds your confidence. Most of them have sites you can get the lesson transcript and extra material from as well, so that you learn correct spelling also.

I totally agree with what Jason said about more "emerging" languages, however for these I would be careful. He has suggested Arabic - whilst there is a so called "Modern Standard Arabic", few people use it and most countries have their own take on the language. I say this from experience as I speak Egyptian Arabic. Note - to write in cursive Arabic is very difficult too. However, Arabic is massively rewarding to learn and I'd recommend it to anyone.

If you do wish to learn a more rarely-spoken-as a-second-language language, Pimsleur courses are excellent. They run into quite a bit of expense though if you add each unit up. I would suggest buying two units to try from iTunes at about £3.50 each to see. They do offer rapid improvement on a 30 minutes a day basis.

When it comes to speaking languages, employers don't check where/ how you learnt the language as an adult, they just want to know you can speak it. So if the free podcast works for you, go for it - and let us know how you get on!

Savvy_Sue

Horace wrote: »

I picked up a book called Teach yourself Finnish in my local charity shop so I am having a go with that too:D

Good luck with that, on your own! :rotfl: Another of those languages with far more letters in each word than there should be.

Mistral001

Horace wrote: »

I picked up a book called Teach yourself Finnish in my local charity shop so I am having a go with that too:D

Lots of youtube clips on Finnish:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqySLJhCxWs

paddyrg

Surprised I haven't seen the recommendation above - Michel Thomas series for French or Spanish are wonderful. Set of 8 CD's and by the time you're through (there is NO notetaking allowed, just listen, pause, try, carry on!) you'll be speaking sentences with remarkable confidence. From there, you expand your vocabulary either with more CD's or however you please. I did some of the Michel Thomas Method Arabic course, the method is still good, but I preferred the ones he did before he died (eg French and Spanish).

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Michel-Thomas-French-Foundation-Course-8-CD-Boxed-Set-/221036045869?pt=Non_Fiction&hash=item3376c6662d
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Michel-Thomas-Foundation-Review-Course/dp/0340929375/ref=tmm_abk_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1338735546&sr=8-4
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/French-Michel-Thomas-Michel-Thomas-CD-Audio-2000-/261035231008?pt=Non_Fiction&hash=item3cc6e98720

Just to give you an idea how quickly you can get 'good enough', a friend's company went bust when his partner ran off with the wages - he had to find £30k pronto so was open to IT contracts anywhere in the world. He got one somewhere in Spanish-speaking Latin America starting a few days later... but didn't speak any Spanish. He did the 8-disc course and got by well enough to be able to work within a week.