Ever taught yourself a language?

[DemonDeac]

I'm going to be studying abroad in Rome this fall and have never taken Italian before. In lieu of taking a summer course, I'm going to try and learn the language as best I can on my on. I've been going at it so far for two days and don't think it's that bad.


So has anyone here ever taught themselves a language and then went on to use what they learned?
What was more effective?
What was least effectve?

Grazie

[joshman1204]

I taught myself texan and a little country hick.

other than that I am not fluent in any language much less two of them

[DemonDeac]

good to know

according to your standards, i speak the southern dialect fluently now too.....just say "ya'll" alot

[joshman1204]

yep just say yall and instead of son of a bitch say sum bitch

so a standard greeting would be "whater yall sum bitches doin"

[Blackjack]

Say Fixin' to a lot if you want to learn how to speak southern English.

As in.. I'm fixin' ta drain the snake right about now.

[DemonDeac]

[ QUOTE ]
Say Fixin' to a lot if you want to learn how to speak southern English.

As in.. I'm fixin' ta drain the snake right about now.

[/ QUOTE ]

or i want a fixin' of 'smashed tatas and fries if you're ordering from bojangles

[gorie]

interesting topic.
i was obsessed with trying to teach myself french last year (i did take 3 years of it in high school but didn't learn much) but it just seems really hard to teach yourself.
i just rented a bunch of french films, listened to "Living Language" a lot , in the end the only thing i'm really confident with is ... ecoutez et repeatez. (listen and repeat) /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[TimM]

Don't forget to say "mah" a lot.

[DemonDeac]

finally a serious response
i can speak spanish well already
so i figure i have a kinda head start cuz italian is another romance language

[gorie]

it's probably easier for some than others (to teach themselves), for sure.
i dunno, it's helped me enough to be able to pick up certain words and know what they mean, but it gets too fast that it's hard for me to keep up. /images/graemlins/frown.gif i love that language though.

it definitely can't hurt to listen to some language learning tapes on your own, and watching movies, or whatever else you plan on doing to teach yourself.

you'll probably pick up on it a lot better when you're living there and around it all the time though. i'm sure you will do fine /images/graemlins/smile.gif 'living language' tapes should at least be good enough to help learn the common words/phrases.

[handsome]

This is very hard. I've tried a couple of times to teach myself Japanese and failed miserably. Most of it really just has to do with sentence structure and memorizing vocabulary. Anyhow, I caved in and registered for a Japanese 101 class for the Fall semester.

[daryn]

va fa in culo

[InchoateHand]

Its so much harder than it seems. I learned more in a week of intensive than I did in a year of self-study.

[bump]

[ QUOTE ]
va fa in culo

[/ QUOTE ]

[InchoateHand]

That was a good song.

[blaze666]

i tried to learn japanese once. i printed all these sheets from this site, and burnt a loa of audio files to CD to make it very prfessional.

[IronDragon1]

If you (or anyone else) wants to learn Spanish just check out Spanish language programming.

You think you're just gawking at hot chicks and the next thing you know you're fluent in a new language.

[DemonDeac]

???

[peachy]

took 6/7 years of french...now im tryin to teach mahself spanish cause im gonna be stuck in a spanish speakin country for a month and i know zilch

[WSUchica]

That's good that you know spanish because if I remember correctly, spanish and italian are very similar

I think the most important things you will want to learn are basic sentence compositions, for instance how in spanish the adjectives come after the nouns (gato pequeno) because if you are going to be staying there, even if you don't know much vocabulary, if you know how to set up basic sentences I think that will help you the most, IMO.

Also, if you are somewhat disciplined I know that people have had sucess with audio tapes (my dad used to use them for french)but I don't think they will help you that much if you only use them one or two times

[thatpfunk]

[ QUOTE ]
im gonna be stuck in a spanish speakin country for a month

[/ QUOTE ]

Where? I wouldn't refer to myself as "stuck" in most Spanish speaking countries...

[Cyrus]

English.

[DiamondDave]

Find a female native speaker. Tell her you want to practice your [foreign language]. Take her for coffee, tea, drinks, whatever. It's not a "date", so there is no pressure on either of you to do anything but converse. Her friends can come, it'll be fun. You'll learn quickly this way, but make sure you listen for and imitate male modes of speech as examples present themselves, or you will end up talking like a girl.

And if you play your cards right, you might gain intimate knowledge of a foreign tongue.

[Shilly]

The key to learning any language is repetition. This is why I think it is easier to learn a language in a classroom setting, because you are forced to pound the information into your head to prepare for quizzes, exams, etc. When you're learning on your own, it's easy to slack off in this area.

My advice is to learn one grammatical rule and five vocabulary words per day. Look over and quiz yourself on the current and past rules/words four or five times a day. This should give you sufficient repetition of the material while learning at a nice pace.

[Anders_G]

I would consider my English, if not completely, mostly self-taught (even though it's being teached in elementary school). As far as learning a language goes if you are just exposed to it you will pick it up. If you live in a country where they speak said language you will pick it up much faster than you would if you took classes. However, I think a combination is the best option.

[DemonDeac]

intense bump. haha

yea. im gonna be takin italian in a class, but im tryin to teach myself just to cover the basics so i can do well in teh placement test so im nto in like Italian 101.

and FWIW, im making good progress. i can alread listen to conversations and comprehend whats goin on.

[Duke]

With Asian languages I'd suggest getting several crappy dictionaries, and cross reference them all. When words don't have direct translations, it's easier to get a feel for what the word actually means by seeing the various ways in which it was translated. And to anyone who says: "You just can't say that in English" I call bullshit. It might take a lot of words to convey what is really trying to be imparted, but it's never impossible to get the point across somehow.

As far as Italian, I think if you know French it'd be best to learn it as someone who knows French already, since I would guess that the similarities would be stronger there than with Italian -> English.

~D