fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4037 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4037 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Watership Down]

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03.

[Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little Town on the Prairie]

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04.

[Gordon Ramsay]

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05.

[Line of Duty]

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06.

[Spider-Man (Marvel-616)]

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07.

[The Grimsby Brothers (2016)]

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08.

[Dirk Gently / Dollhouse]

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09.

[Electronic Arts]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #578.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

How did you do it? I thought about using Duolingo but I just don't see how it iwll teach me another language.

I didn't start learning languages until college, and now I'm late 20s and still like learning new ones. Duolingo is a fantastic free tool. There are a lot of great free flashcard apps too (I recommend Anki). But I don't think anything can take the place of practicing regularly with a tutor or conversation exchange partner.

You can absolutely learn as an adult, though. Plenty of people become totally fluent, even very late in life.

I use Memrise as like a... flash card type app for quick repetition and helping me keep things in my head, but a friend recently turned me onto Coursera (which has classes other than just languages) and we've been learning Korean together.

The class we're taking has videos, downloadable worksheets, and quizzes.

Duolingo isn't going to get you to fluency, but it can certainly lay a solid foundation for you to work from. It's really no different from any middle or high school language class. (I went through part of the French and Russian courses a while back, just out of curiosity. They both seemed to be very accurate and very in-line with the type of language learning I've done before.

Combine that with a memorization program like Anki, Busuu, or Memrise. Learn the top 100 most-used words, then the next 100 and so on. (This is imo the most useful thing you can do. It'll let you start reading in your target language much faster than normal.) Look on youtube for the bajillions of "how to speak x" videos to hear native speakers. If you can't find someone to practice with, speak out loud to yourself.

Learning a language is really not that hard even in adulthood. Just spend an hour or two a day on it and you'll be decent within a year or two.

ETA: There's also a LOT of free online language courses provided by various govts and schools and stuff. The BBC has a couple available for the languages of the UK, and RT has a Russian course. Some Mongolian news thing has a series on youtube for learning Mongolian.... Just do some googling and you'll find a lot.

Edited 2018-01-23 01:11 (UTC)

Well, I'm working on Spanish. I'm taking private lessons 3 times a week. But there are also CD courses you can buy. I tried duolingo and it was way too slow for me.

I'm with you anon, duolinguo wasn't any help to me at all. I'm trying to learn Japanese and already have actual vocabulary down, it's the grammar and sentence structure I need, so repeating vocabulary isn't enough.

(I had the same problem with Gaelic; I nail pronunciation and long lists of nouns in an instant but conjugating verbs? HELP!)

I'm 50 and I started learning German about six years ago, though I haven't been working on it non-stop for six straight years. I had a small class starting out and later on I had a one-on-one tutor but I also taught myself some grammar. I'm still really a beginner (like I said, I haven't been learning for six years non-stop) and my listening comprehension is terrible but I've definitely made significant progress.

If by any chance you want to learn German there is a load of free online stuff, especially from the Deutsche Welle.

Find a good grammar book with exercises, duolingo sucks.

[ SECRET POST #4037 ]

Has anyone here ever learned a language as an adult?

Re: Has anyone here ever learned a language as an adult?

Re: Has anyone here ever learned a language as an adult?

Re: Has anyone here ever learned a language as an adult?

Re: Has anyone here ever learned a language as an adult?

Re: Has anyone here ever learned a language as an adult?

Re: Has anyone here ever learned a language as an adult?

Re: Has anyone here ever learned a language as an adult?