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Um, Mandy, we were in first grade, it's not like we were stressed over which language we'd take. And we were given the chance to switch to Spanish when we hit 6th grade.

Um um, Mandy, I was trying to explain that it WASN'T useless, and when did I ever need to STFU anyway? I wasn't going on and on about your choice of language. XD

I'm seriously considering learning Lojban, an artificial language... how's that for useless? The main thing holding me back is they don't have vocabulary lists for beginners, so I'll have to compile one myself from the dictionary files. The good news is it's a very small but very powerful language. The amount of needed vocabulary is much, much less than for spoken languages, and the grammar is as simple and straightforward as a language's grammar can be.

So why would I want to learn such a thing? I think it'd expand my horizons a bit. Lojban is a very logical language (much more than Esperanto) and encourages a very different way of thinking. Lojban permits no syntactic ambiguity. What that means is there are no sentences like "Time flies like an arrow", where any of the first three words could be the verb. (We know it's the second, of course, but it could be any of the first three.) If you try to form such a sentence, the vocabulary of the language forces you to choose among something like "Time flies in the manner that an arrow flies", or "Time some flies in the manner you would time an arrow", or "Flies called 'time flies' enjoy an arrow". Now, there may not be too many advantages to speaking that way for humans, but it can help computers understand what you mean a lot. Moreover, it's also useful to help you understand language and all the little assumptions we make in speaking... that "expanding horizons" thing.

I don't know if I'll do it, though... again, there's that vocabulary thing, as well as the fact I'm juggling two languages already, So I don't know, but it's something for me to keep in mind.

- Kef

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Well, I'm pretty much bombing Spanish in comparison to my other classes. Worst grades since high school. The problem seems to be that I can understand vocab when it's said and usually when it's written, but I can never ever remember a word when I have to say it or write it or come up with a translation. Probably just need to study better, but that's not something I'm used to having to do (oh no poor me!!) so I'm not entirely sure how. Making flash cards? I guess... it's just not something I'm used to. It seems so... rote But if that's the way it has to be...

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ATTN: LOWER BOARD USERS HAVE MOVED TO ANOTHER FORUM. COME JOIN THE FUN!

Spanish is mandatory. Next year I think French is mandatory next year.

French teacher is retiring in a few years though so I don't know if we're still gonna have that or not.

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I'm taking Spanish.
For some reason, it comes easily to me.

Well I'm back in German. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to earn credit for the course because of my previous experience(I took a full slate in high school). Lucky for me, I was 5 years removed from my last German class, and I only needed to be 4 years removed. My class is great and I've got a really cute girl that sits next to me, always a plus.

If you had an experience in Latin that would be why.

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Naw, but I'm taking it in high school.

At least you won't have to take it with a priest as your teacher. My Latin Course could rival most college courses in difficulty.

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I use SuperMemo to study... it's a great flash card system, though it's designed for long term rather than short term use. It works great, really. But most people can probably use Mnemosyne instead, which uses the same principle and it's free. You don't have to spend terribly much time studying the flash cards, and what you do spend will stick with you pretty well... I'm definitely better at Spanish because of it.

- Kef

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I had a big project occupying all my time last month -- although I must admit I didn't work on it as much as I should have -- so I largely neglected my studies of Japanese. I've begun studying again, and I'm making good progress. I left off at 620 kanji, and over the past three days I've added 111 kanji to make it 731. There are 2042 in the book, so I still have quite a ways to go, but I'm still over 1/3 the way there. That ain't bad, and I certainly shouldn't give up now. I'm hoping to make it to 781 tonight. I'm probably going to study hardcore until I make it to 1000, and then I'll ease up a bit so I can get back to working on my big project, but I'm hoping I won't drop the ball completely again like I did before.

Right now I'm only learning to write the kanji from English keywords. So even when I make it to the end, my knowledge of how to read Japanese won't be improved at all... not directly. It's still a necessary step in the process, though, because the next step is to use what I learned to recognize kanji in sentences and correlate them to sounds and words.

Yep, learnin' Japanese is a long and hard process, and I'm really still at the beginning. After all this, I'll still have to learn vocabulary and grammar... the stuff that you can just dive right into with other languages. You can do it with Japanese, but I don't think it's the best approach. You'll have to learn kanji sooner or later, and sooner is much better for several reasons: kanji is the dominant writing system; it's better to get the hard part out of the way first so you'll get it done; and the sooner you do learn the kanji, the more practice and experience you can get with them as you learn the other things. It's much easier to learn grammar using kanji than to learn kanji using grammar. So I think learning kanji first presents you many more opportunities for 一石二鳥 (issekinichou: one-stone-two-birds... you can guess the allusion).

- Kef

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spanish and french even thpough i really dont wanna learn french

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THE FORUM HAS MOVED HERE COME JOIN US!

I found a page from the old thread in Google's cache: here

It looks like that's the only one that survives, though. The other pages are nowhere to be found in the cache. At least it's the page that includes my explanation of how to say "A cat is in my pants" in Japanese.

My kanji studies aren't going well right now. Yesterday I made only a dozen kanji cards, and the day before only 10. Today I'm sleepy and still don't feel like adding many more cards... looks like I might not break 800 until tomorrow or even later. Right now I have 753.

Making new cards is hard. But I'm making a lot more progress than I was before I bought Heisig's kanji book. Before, making cards used to be easy, but remembering what was on them was extremely hard. I'd add 50 flash cards, and two days later when I reviewed them, I'd have forgotten almost all of them and I'd have to repeat them over and over... it'd take forever to memorize one, and then there was no guarantee I'd still remember it months later. That sort of thing never happens with Heisig's method. I do forget kanji here and there, especially those I haven't studied in a while, but I never totally bomb my reviews anymore. It does take so much longer to create the cards, though, so it balances out a bit. I think Heisig's method ultimately saves more time than it wastes, though.

- Kef

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I just made it to 1000 kanji. I'm halfway through the book!

I'm progressing really well right now, and I'm hoping to make it to 1100-1200 on the 15th. But then I'll have to slow down in order to work on other projects... in particular, trying to make some money. I've been freeloadin' way too long. I'm hoping I can finish the entire book by December, and then I can finally start studying some real Japanese instead of learning bunches of characters.

- Kef

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I haven't managed to progress beyond 1275 kanji because I've been busy with other stuff. Including this weird boring thing called a "job".

Regardless, I'm thinking (again) of learning some Latin, despite all its insane little quirks. I bought Wheelock's Latin a few days ago, since I like flipping through books like that and I know I'm going to end up studying Latin at some time or other anyway. Latin's definitely lower in priority than Spanish and Japanese are, though.

- Kef

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I'm still learning Swedish on and off. Mostly off. But I am improving a little.

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"Explain to me how drowning them would not ruin their date."

not a language as such, but I did learn Cyrillic. I don't see any use for it.

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Well of course there's no use for it if you don't learn Russian. (Or Serbian, or Bulgarian, or Ukrainian, or...)

- Kef

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if I was to end up lost in one of those places, I could at least pronounce the gibberish...

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I'm taking Spainsh 2 at my school and in my free time, I learn a little Swahili. I'm also trying to sing some songs in Japanese.

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Epic Fail.
Sherlock runner was completely correct. What sherlock runner said was "Do you (Plural) speak italian?" Since there is more than 1 person using this forum, it is only correct to use the plural.

Anyway, I had spanish forced upon me as a little kid. I hated it. Most 4 year olds didnt have much use for spanish at the time. Because of this, I vowed never to take spanish if given the choice. Unfortunately, NYS forces schools to teach a foreign language, and spanish was the only option.

In 7th grade, I just stopped paying attention in spanish and instead started teaching myself italian. I taught this to myself until high school, where I began formal classes. I took this until the end of last year. Now, I'm teaching myself russian.

Now that I'm learning russian, I've had the opportunity to try a simon & schuster product, Basic Russian. I highly suggest that anyone who has the opportunity to try one do so. But keep in mind that they are audio-only, so if you need get used to using a different alphaet, find a way to do so prior to using the pimsleur product.

Also, use a library, because pimsleur stuff is really expensive.

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My dad never gets what he wants from Wendy's. All he wants is a Hamburger. Lettuce, Tomatoes, Ketchup, Mustard. No Cheese. He never gets it. Whether we go order for him, or does it himself, they always add cheese.

The other day I told him how to order a Hamburger without cheese In Spanish. "Quiero Un hamergesa sin queso"

He finally got a Wendy's Hamburger.

The End.

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At the mcdonalds drive though, I ordered a large coke, but due to the peson's accent, it sounded like "You want a large cock?" when she repeated it back.

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I'm kind of fluent in Italian. I can translate a few words and sentences for my friends when they need it, but all and all my Italian is not all that great.

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Es "hamburguesa". Though you don't pronounce the "u" after the "g", but if it were spelled "hamburgesa", the "g" would be pronounced like the Spanish "j".

- Kef

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Zeno want lern English for spoke pretty.

Actually though, I really want to learn Esperanto. Greatest language ever.

Shouldn't "hamberguesa" be preceded with "una"? Ah well, the hamburger without cheese was still served.

These days, I'm doing rather well in my Spanish class. I'm actually surviving. Although now that I look back, I really wish I got myself into a foreign language class in my freshman year. Would've had more opportunities, I guess...

That, and I also have some desires to learn French or German in the future. We'll see. We'll all see... Or maybe I'll just see.

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Bonus Stage is so... um... not-worthy-of-siggyness?

Sí, eso también. My gringo eyes (and ears) still let things like that slip by me sometimes... (and you misspelled it too, BTW. )

Hey, I forgot to mention. A few days ago I ordered this Oxford Spanish Dictionary on Amazon.com. It's expensive ($50), but I'm sure it'll be worth it. I should probably get a Japanese dictionary, too, but I don't know what to buy.

- Kef

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Well, the abovementioned Oxford Spanish Dictionary came today. Is it worth $50? Eh... probably not. It didn't have most of the stuff I was hoping it'd have, like tons of example sentences, or great detail about regional usage, or being able to use the text-to-speech engine on the CD-ROM outside of the dictionary program or at least being able to make recordings with it. Seriously, what good is a TTS engine that can only be used in a dictionary? We're talking about Spanish here... it's not hard to learn how to pronounce words in Spanish. It's another thing to develop listening comprehension. Also, it has both Mexican and European Spanish voices, but both are female voices... it'd be nice if it had male voices as well.

Oh, and you have to have the CD-ROM in to use any of it, too. I won't be surprised if I end up hax0ring it so the CD-ROM isn't necessary. Who wants to insert a CD-ROM just to look up a word?

- Kef

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I think I might've said something before in the last incarnation of this thread. I'm taking Spanish 4-IB, and I'm taking the IB Spanish test at the end of this year. Provided my results don't come back with EPIC FAIL stamped on them, I get a free period my senior year. 8D And another free period if I don't fail my IB science test. Although I might opt to take Spanish 5 because I love Sra Cabrera and I wanna go to Spanish State and foreign language festival again (obviously impossible if you are not, in fact, taking a Spanish/foreign language class)

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get LOST

I do Spanish 1...yeah. I guess you could say that I'm okay in the class, though I can't really remember anything Spanish off the top of my head.

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