(January 11, 2023 at 10:31 pm)Ahriman Wrote: How many of you have experience learning/teaching a foreign language? I would imagine most of us here are native English speakers. I tried learning Spanish back in school but that was too hard, I wasn't interested and plus the grammar threw me off. I have heard Portuguese is like Spanish ebonics (easier to learn) but I don't know. I am very much interested in learning Russian, Arabic, and Korean, primarily. I can already read and pronounce the basic vowel sounds of Korean, but the rest of the alphabet is proving very difficult to learn. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Tagalog have all piqued my interest as well. I think Tagalog would be the easiest out of those four because it's written in Latin script (just like English). Vietnamese is written in Latin script as well but has all kinds of weird little accent marks that might be hard to learn. I have always wanted to learn Japanese because Japanese culture is my favorite culture. Chinese would be very practical (like Arabic) but very difficult because of the reading/writing system, same as Japanese. Not to mention the grammar rules of all these languages would be tricky to learn.
When I moved to Japan I couldn't speak the language at all, but I've picked it up over the years. These days I use it a lot more than English.
I think if you wanted to learn a language over the Internet, Japanese would be a good choice. Foreigners are more common and more integrated into Japanese society compared to, say, China. So I think there are a lot of web sites or on-line teachers to help. Textbooks are good but to make real progress you need to converse with a native speaker -- face to face or on line.
It's a common motto (not publicly stated among professional teachers) that if you want to get fluent fast you should find a lover who doesn't speak English.
