Yeah good luck. For the average person it’d take a lifetime of practice and total immersion to pull off fluent Mandarin/Chinese. Unless you’re extremely serious about, for reasons that are beyond me, it seems like a great waste of time/energy.
Some people do things for fun or leisure. It is a great means to channel one’s energies towards something concrete- learn a new language or what ever.
I am fluent in Japanese and I’d like to study German next so I can move back to Europe in a year or two. I started last week, and I’ve put in… 2 hours 
Wunderbar 
Ich lerne auch Deutsch. Andreea_Mn Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I am fluent in Japanese and I’d like to study > German next so I can move back to Europe in a year > or two. I started last week, and I’ve put in… 2 > hours
Butt Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Wunderbar Ich lerne auch Deutsch. Would you like to teach me then? 
wanted to write in German, but got stuck after Wollen Sie… I really should be more disciplined, I need German to move to Europe fast, I’m not so crazy about Japan and would like to get fluent asap. I start working full time next year, and after one year of full time- that’s in the summer of 2012 - I want to start aplying for jobs in Europe. I think speaking the local language would help given that my experience won’t be so great - one year internship and one year full time. It’s not the grammar that’s slowing me down, all the grammar exists in my native language as well - all the genders, and the tenses etc - it’s just laziness I guess
Wollen Sie mich Deutsch lehren? Its been a couple of months since I started learning and I study between 5-6 hours a week. I’d be willing to help you; the best way is to join Live Mocha. That’s where I’ve made friends with lots of people who’re learning German as well as native speakers. My screen name on Live Mocha is ace. You could give me your email id here if you want. Andreea_Mn Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Butt Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Wunderbar Ich lerne auch Deutsch. > > Would you like to teach me then? wanted to > write in German, but got stuck after Wollen Sie… > > > I really should be more disciplined, I need German > to move to Europe fast, I’m not so crazy about > Japan and would like to get fluent asap. I start > working full time next year, and after one year of > full time- that’s in the summer of 2012 - I want > to start aplying for jobs in Europe. I think > speaking the local language would help given that > my experience won’t be so great - one year > internship and one year full time. > > It’s not the grammar that’s slowing me down, all > the grammar exists in my native language as well - > all the genders, and the tenses etc - it’s just > laziness I guess
Guten Tag mittenand. Ich spreche auch Deutsche. I will have to look into Live Mocha. That soujnds pretty handy. Particularly for the conversational part. I just need another lifetime to fit it all in. I can also recommed using Google translate (90%+ quality of translation). They also have an audio button (though didnt seem to be working recently on my lappy). You can pretty much have a conversation on email with someone and translate it to see how it looks & sounds. I also have The Rosetta Stone. It is the best of the PC learning guides I have come across. Plenty of repetition. And repetition is the mother of all learning.
^ Muddahudda Wie geht es Ihnen? I would never recommend you to use Google translate for learning to speak a language since it does not pick on your grammatical errors. For example, if I were to say, Ich trinke ein kaltes Tee. Google would translate it into " I drink a cold tea" However, the correct German is Ich trinke einen kalten Tee. I have found Live Mocha to be particularly helpful in improving pronunciation since most members are willing to Skype.
Sie haben rechts, warscheinlich. Meinen grammer ist schlecht! I’ll give Live Mocha a look up for sure. Though my wife might get suspicious when I chat to pretty young wimmin on skype…! shhhh
Muddahudda Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Sie haben rechts, warscheinlich. Meinen grammer > ist schlecht! I’ll give Live Mocha a look up for > sure. Though my wife might get suspicious when I > chat to pretty young wimmin on skype…! shhhh LMAO! The end probably justifies the means. And yes Deine Grammatik ist sehr schlecht!!!
Pah! Don’t trust any language that has three different words for ‘the’…
Muddahudda Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Pah! Don’t trust any language that has three > different words for ‘the’… Spanish has 4 (male/female x singular/plural). Similar happens with French, German and others. English is the wierd lazy one. But, hey… that’s great for those of us who learn it as a second language.
^ No it doesn’t. Spanish has two genders male and female. No special gender for plurals. French also has two. Only German and Arabic have 3 genders. This may come as a surprise to a lot of people here, but English has gender as well, only we don’t use it except sometimes. “Look at that car. Isn’t SHE a beauty?”
Fdez Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Muddahudda Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Pah! Don’t trust any language that has three > > different words for ‘the’… > > Spanish has 4 (male/female x singular/plural). > Similar happens with French, German and others. > English is the wierd lazy one. But, hey… that’s > great for those of us who learn it as a second > language. I’m a native English speaker, but I wouldn’t say it’s easy by any means. Chinese is hard for the tones and characters, German for grammar and tenses, but English has a ton of slang. I don’t think any book-learner would be able to pick up >10% if they were dropped into a conversation with some teenage girls, a group of frat guys, or Snoop Dogg. Accent aside, I can still pick out a non-native in a sentence or two by word choice. Guess it all depends how you define fluency.
^ French has a ton of slang too. Every language does. It just depends on who you’re talking to. Someone book learning English for business motives will do much better than the same person book learning english for social (bar/club etc) services.
True, can’t speak relative to European languages, but Asian languages are highly limited in how creative you can get in adding your personal flavor (i.e. create your own character in Chinese and no one will know what the hell it means or how to say it). >Someone book learning English for business motives will do much better than the same >person book learning english for social (bar/club etc) services. I agree, but while I’d like to say learning foreign languages will help me professionally, it’s more likely to be a social advantage. People tend to discount those making grammar mistakes or strange word choices as less intelligent, which is probably not good for a business setting. Better off hiring a fluent translator than risk calling yourself a jelly doughnut…
chelseace Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ^ No it doesn’t. Spanish has two genders male and > female. No special gender for plurals. > > French also has two. Only German and Arabic have 3 > genders. > > This may come as a surprise to a lot of people > here, but English has gender as well, only we > don’t use it except sometimes. > > “Look at that car. Isn’t SHE a beauty?” I was talking abut articles (what “the” is), not genders. Besides, yes, there’s a neutral gender, although it is used differently, not as an article like you see in German. “El” is singular for male. “Los” is plural for male and neutral (singular is “lo”). And we also have la/las for female. Similarly, for what english has only “a/an”, Spanish has un/unos and una/unas. “She” is a pronoun, for which Spanish has also 4 (el/ellos, ella/ellas). In this case there’s no neutral. My point is just that English is much simpler, since you only need one word (the) for what others require 4 precisely combined. Dy the way, I’m from Spain.
sundevl21 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I’m a native English speaker, but I wouldn’t say > it’s easy by any means. Chinese is hard for the > tones and characters, German for grammar and > tenses, but English has a ton of slang. I don’t > think any book-learner would be able to pick up > >10% if they were dropped into a conversation with > some teenage girls, a group of frat guys, or Snoop > Dogg. Accent aside, I can still pick out a > non-native in a sentence or two by word choice. > Guess it all depends how you define fluency. As ASSet_MANagement said, every language has a lot of slang. You will hear more or less of it depending on the situation you are in. In Spanish you have a lot of slang from every single country in Latinamerica that most Spaniards don’t even understand in many cases. And the same happens the other way around. Within Spain, and forgetting about regional languages like galician or catalan, you have a lot of dialects and words that belong to a certain region or even a certain town. I can tell a guy from the town 10 km away from mine just by talking with him for 2 minutes. And I’m aware that same thing happens in France or Germany. If you only learn the “books’ language”, you will be pretty lost in a social situation. Bottom line is you ALWAYS have to spend some time in a native speaker country if you want to learn some of the real stuff. And even then… Anyway, I know that English is the international one et all, but I’m amazed by how little interest English speakers have in learning other languages.
It is embarrassing how few Americans attempt to learn a foreign language, but looking at it from a European perspective is a bit biased. Unlike Europe, the US is not geographically located near a foreign language speaking country except Mexico (sorry but I’m not including French Canada). Most vacations are domestic; we don’t need to go to Austria to ski or Italy for a beach when we can have the same experience without a passport. Finally, a much lower % of jobs deal with foreign trade compared with Europe, so it doesn’t help many people for business or leisure. Finally, if most of the world spoke or was learning your native language, it would make learning another language even less a necessity. If that sounds cocky so be it, but I see it as practical when middle class factory worker Joe from Nebraska doesn’t bother to dabble in German. However, if middle class Wilhelm ever takes a job or vacations a few hours from his home in Germany it might be helpful to know English, French, etc.