Self learn a language

davholla

Has anyone ever learnt a language on their own and if so what and how?
I learnt Portuguese 100% on my own (from Transparent language and language courses) and Spanish partly lessons partly books.
However I can't despite many years of learning learn Russian on my own
I don't know if it because I am getting older, less time or Russian is harder.
Any ideas?

Caroline_a

Not cheap, but very good - Rosetta Stone.

zagfles

davholla wrote: »

Has anyone ever learnt a language on their own and if so what and how?
I learnt Portuguese 100% on my own (from Transparent language and language courses) and Spanish partly lessons partly books.
However I can't despite many years of learning learn Russian on my own
I don't know if it because I am getting older, less time or Russian is harder.
Any ideas?

Probably all 3, it's definitely harder as you get older. Best way is to go live in the country for a few months!

davholla

Caroline_a wrote: »

Not cheap, but very good - Rosetta Stone.

Have you tried anything else? I was thinking about buying but some reviews were not that positive and some said transparent language was better.
(BTW last time when I used transparent language I was already pretty good at Portuguese).

InsideInsurance

The wife taught herself languages which was mainly through watching TV/ Movies/ Music etc in the language she wanted to learn and translating it plus buying a few books aimed at teaching languages to children.

Ultimately if you want to really learn a language then the only way to do it properly is by being immersed in it

Mistral001

The reason for learing a language can be a big factor in your ability to learn it. Do you have a big enough reason to learn it?

ciderboy2009

One thing you need to bear in mind is that Spanish & Portuguese have a surprising amount in common with English.
From my memories of Russia (approx. 20 years ago) their language has next to nothing in common - not even the alphabet.

davholla

ciderboy2009 wrote: »

One thing you need to bear in mind is that Spanish & Portuguese have a surprising amount in common with English.
From my memories of Russia (approx. 20 years ago) their language has next to nothing in common - not even the alphabet.

Yes I think that is part of the problem.
It is (how do people measure these things) meant to be 5 times harder than Spanish.

DaveTheGeordie

Have you thought about a language swap? I see a lot of people on sites like Gumtree posting 'My German for your Spanish' etc. I would imagine they do it through Skype or meet up once a week if it's local.

Might sound a bit silly but thinking outside of the box. Do you game? Online? I was learning Swedish but they all speak good English so they don't need their own servers but if I was learning Russian I would probably be playing on Russian servers. Or you could look for Russian guilds on English servers. If I started gaming again I would be doing the equivalent.

Watch their TV and movies too. Youtube, you can get everything on there now. Pimsleur is good at grinding in phrases when you start off.