Learning a Language in the Digital Age 450
UmmRa points out his discussion of four flash-card programs for language learning, excerpting "As someone who has learned three dead languages in the past six years (Latin, Egyptian, and Akkadian) I have had my share of experience with language software....If there is one thing I have learned from the experience, it is that no program is a panacea. Until we all have Matrix-esque jacks at the base of our skulls, learning a language will be a process that requires some amount of work and time. However that does not mean there isn't cheap (or free!) software out there to greatly simplify the process." None of the program compared are free (or Free), though two are shareware; two of them are for Windows only, one is Mac-only, and the other is "Java based, so it can operate on any platform." Update: 03/21 02:34 GMT by T : The actual link got dropped -- my fault -- in editing this post; now fixed.
Akkadian language (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Egyptian? (Score:3, Informative)
Egyptians long ago gave up the Egyptian language [wikipedia.org] and started speaking Arabic.
Also watch Hindi Movies (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Also watch Hindi Movies (Score:2, Informative)
This is because the english subtitles that even allow me to enjoy the movie, in the slightest way, tend to me a terrible translation of the hindi. I end up half ignoring the hindi and just paying attention to the subtitles.
Perhaps, I'm watching these movies incorrectly?
Google is your Friend... (Score:3, Informative)
In conclusion, there's more than a few references for any language online, learn the basics, then start from the ground up in "Real Life"(tm). Like a kid that's learning his first tongue. Only other advice I can give is to learn the language on its own, use the basics of the language as a catapult to learn the rest with sites that use that actual language and if you don't know the meaning, use a dictionary (don't translate, just define). If you try to learn a language by becoming a walking babel-fish... you'll sound like it when having a conversation. And that ain't a good thing. You get the whole immigrant accent going on. My parents have that...
Learn any foreign language in one word (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Learning German (Score:5, Informative)
I am moving to Germany in June for 2 years and started learning it using that. Let me impart a bit of advice to you, make sure you learn to listen and speak before you delve deep into grammar and vocab. I made the mistake with learning Japanese purely by book until I took a few classes at my college. Even though I lived there for 6 months, to this day I can still write/read Japanese with ease but I have trouble listening to it.
Re:why learn a dead language (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Best thing about learning a dead language? (Score:1, Informative)
"Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound."
Learning Chinese, software and resources... (Score:4, Informative)
WenLin chinese editor/dictionary environment: http://www.wenlin.com/
It's really helpful to paste some Chinese into the editor and be able to hover the mouse over words to get instant dictionary lookup.
Pleco Palm Chinese English dictionary:
http://pleco.com/oxford.html
Best thing to have on your palm/phone in China.
Flash Palm chinese flash cards:
http://www.andante.org/chinese_pilot.html
This is free and easy to use... Pleco software also has flashcards.
As for books: The old standard Practical Chinese Reader series is good, but I like the newer "Integrated Chinese" by Yao and it has CDs available with listening exercises.
Also, if you have a sat dish check out CCTV9 (now free on Dish network) for their 15 minute daily "Communicate in Chinese" show... I'm encoding these to MP4 and putting them on my Treo650...
Pat
Pimsleurs (Score:4, Informative)
I planned on just listening to the MP3's at my desk, but it was erie talking to my computer monitor and I could never find the time. So I've been burning them to CD to listen in my car. Definitely the way to spend a long drive.
Re:Learning Chinese, software and resources... (Score:5, Informative)
There's an open source project doing exactly this for the simplified character set at:
http://www.adsotrans.com
Neatest feature is the collaborative backend database, which is also open source and downloadable. The Beijing-based server is a bit slow for trans-Pacific, but there is a language learning news portal using it which loads much faster. I use it as my homepage:
http://www.newsinchinese.com
Re:Rosetta Stone (Score:2, Informative)
Rosetta Stone is a little pricey, though: about $150 per course. It's worth it as far as I'm concerned if you're serious about learning the language.
Re:Life Experience (Score:1, Informative)
Only if chatting is your goal (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hindi! (Score:3, Informative)
"How to learn a language" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Latin isn't dead either (Score:4, Informative)
A "real, live Romanian" is no doubt expert at speaking Romanian, but is not necessarily an authority of any sort on how closely Romanian resembles Latin. Furthermore, this sort of thing is a matter of national pride in some countries, which means that people believe all sorts of silly things. A majority of the Greeks that I have known were firmly convinced that ancient Greek was pronounced just like Modern Greek, in spite of the mass of evidence to the contrary, the fact that the language has obviously changed in other ways (which they know because they learn to read Ancient Greek in school), and the fact that every other language is known to change over time.
pop-up hints for learning Chinese/Japanese (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Learning German (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/German [wikibooks.org]
Re:why learn a dead language (Score:3, Informative)
Actually they don't carry over at all. The subject-object-verb structure is a Romance development which replaces the classical Latin complex inflection system in which word order is almost entirely irrelevant. Grammatically, the Romance languages and Latin couldn't be much further apart than they are.
Also, word recognition based on classical Latin is overrated: the meanings of words have shifted dramatically over two thousand years, so it's misleading as often as it is helpful.
If there is any one language that serves as a good introduction to the common body of Latin (and Greek) words present in the European languages, it would be Interlingua [interlingua.com], which was specifically designed for that purpose. It's also much simpler to learn. Plus, anyone knowing any Romance language can actually understand you if you speak it!
Useful Online Resource (Score:2, Informative)
It's a great tool for learning.
Re:why learn a dead language (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, more often than not the problem is that the word has been relegated to some other form, or variations. E.g. "patria" means what? "country"? How are those connected? They're not. But try "patriot" and you'll see the connection.
I speak quite well Norwegian, English and German, and I can usually read most of a latin sentence right. It is much easier to trace roots back to latin than it is to draw them from latin to current languages, simply because if you find a "reasonable" root, that is probably it (worst case you'll find none). Whereas the other way around, anything could have happened since latin was in.
Kjella
Pauker (Score:4, Informative)
Pauker helps teach you the words and quiz you on them. I've found it to be the best open-source flash card program available.
Another similar program (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Latin isn't dead either (Score:3, Informative)
While 'Legal Latin' is highly complex in its written form, it is however doubtful that the common populace spoke Latin with all its fine nuances in everyday life.
Re:Latin isn't dead either (Score:3, Informative)
Also, while you might be technically right about Romanian not being as close to Latin, I can read and UNDERSTAND Latin MUCH better than my Italian friends. I guess that just makes me smarter. Not!
Besides, if you can read Romanian, go here http://www.dr-savescu.com/carte/ [dr-savescu.com] and see that Latin was the language of the people living in what is now Romania and it was the Romans that "borrowed" it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gave up? Nay, forced by Muslims (Score:5, Informative)
Coptic isn't derived from hieroglyphics, but from the Greek alphabet. It has 24 letters from the Greek alphabet, 7 letters to represent sounds that Egyptian had but Greek did not, and one monogram.
However, Coptic is a written version of the Egyptian language, as are hieroglyphics, which might be what you are thinking of.
Freelang is also good and it's free. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:There's no magic way to learn a language (Score:2, Informative)
I've been using Supermemo for the palm pilot now for about a year (mostly with my own Japanese sets [rikai.com]), and I'm not sure the author gave it a fair try. It's not really a program geared towards initial studying like most flashcard programs. It's main purpose is solving this exact long-term retention problem--it figures out for each card the next day you need to see it such that you'll remember 90% (configurable) of the cards you see. Not sure I'd call it magic, but it's been a real breakthrough for me. And yes, of course memorizing vocabulary isn't learning a language--but it's certainly a necessary step.
Super Memo scheduling (Score:4, Informative)
In learning languages, some things are just easy - for example words similar in the new language and in the language(s) you already know, and some things are plain hard, for example words that look/sound similar, but mean different things (like arena meaning sand in Spanish), or similar words with significantly different conotations (phrase verbs in English coming to mind here - make vs. make out).
In Super Memo (and I don't know about the other programs, but the article mentions the scheduling algorithm as one of the advantages of Super Memo) you'll be shown the easy stuff once a year and the hard stuff once a week, if necessary, and it's all on a personal basis, so hard stuff for me can be easy for somebody else and the program will reflect that.
My experience with Super Memo was a very positive one and it would have continued, had my Palm not broken. 8-)
Re:Latin isn't dead either (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Latin isn't dead either (Score:3, Informative)
Romanian has 5 cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, and vocative and their identification is much more clear in the text than you think (a subset of feminine).
ex: baiat (boy) - (masculine, singular)
baiat - nominative (always with an article - see below)
(A/al) baiatului - genitive (a noun relates to it)
Baiatului - dative (a verb relates to it)
baiat - accusative (not always with an article)
Baiatule - vocative
If you're curious I will make further declinations for you for different nouns.
Another note, is that most of all other romanic languages have lost even more the distinction between cases, so from all romanic languages, Romanian is most similar to Latin.
Indeed, Romanian mainly holds 3 visible different forms in all the 5 cases (nom/acc, gen/dat, voc) which sometimes collapse to two (for instance in masculin plural in most of the times genitive, dative and vocative are alike) and holds 3 declensions, and maybe one of these is what you referred to from the beginning.
Regarding article, there are two types. Undefinite ("un baiat") and definite ("baiatul"), the first referring to a boy, whoever is he, the last referring to a certain boy. Please note that the Latin "unus" in romanian is "un" - the indefinite article, but also "unu" - the number "one". Also, it's possible that the undefinied article "-ul" comes from latin demonstrative pronoun "ille". Both were used in Medieval Latin as surrogates for articles, and considering that Romanian is said to be born out of vulgar Latin, you should look for referrences a bit later and lower stylistically than Tacitus
The number of latin-derived words I'm afraid is not a criteria, as you know literary English words are in vast majority derived from latin, but I doubt anyone will hold for a similarity between the two languages. It's rather a matter of how "core" are those words to languages.
For a proof of an obvious similarity between the two languages I give the following text (translated and hopefully well adapted) given by one of the Romanian historians:
The wheat (grau/granum) is milled (se macina/machinare) in the watermill (moara/mola) or is pounded (piseaza/pinsare) in the stamp (piua/pilla-pilula). The flower (faina/farina) is sieved (cerne/cernere) through sieve (ciur/cibrum) and is mixed with water (apa/aqua) and with the dough (aluat/allevatum), then is kneaded (framanta/fermentare), is shaped like a bread (soage/subigere), is laid on a wooden plate (carpator/copertorium) or under a wooden bell (test/testum) is baked (coace/coquere) in the oven (cuptor/coctorium) until the bread (paine/panis) is ready. From the wheat flower can be made also pie (placinta/placenta), from the millet (mei/milium) flower a pounded boiled specific food (pasat/quassatum). To plough (a ara/arare), sow (semana/seminare), to thrash (treiera/tribulare), reap (secera/sicilare), gather (culege/colligere), reverse the sowing (intoarce/intoquere). Wheat (grau/granum), rye (secara/secale), millet (mei/milium), barley (orz/hordeum), mountain-wheat (alac/alica). Ear (spic/spicum), straws (paie/palea), cornockle (neghina/nigellina), land (pamant/pavimentum), field (camp/campus), area (arie/area), approx. 1/2 hectare (falce/falx-cis), yoke (jug/jugum), pitchfork (furca/furca), scythe (secere/sicils). Note that for all the above verbs if you derive a noun from them (e.g. sowing = semanare) you get an even more closer similarity.