- How long did it take you to learn a new language?
- How did you learn (like, did you buy a book, or have a friend who spoke the language, etc.)?
- On a scale of 1-10, how difficult was it to be fluent in the new language?
I speak four languages, two of them native (French and English), so I'll give separate answers for the ones I did learn (Spanish and Italian).
Spanish
- You can never be fluent in a language which is not your own, but you can be very good at it, which comes through years of practise and experience, talking with people whose countries speak the language you are learning (in the case of Spanish, many people from many countries to see the linguistic differences) and travelling. You can learn from a book or a teacher all you like, but immersion is the best 'teacher'. Having said this, I started Spanish in 2008 when I started college and took an advanced fast course so by the end of two years I was of a very high standard because the tutor was very demanding and we needed a lot of concentration. This means that your dedication is a key factor in how 'fast' you learn a language.
- I took ab-initio classes at college and the tutor was a lady who had been speaking Spanish for most of her life and had lived in Spain for a while. She was also very, very passionate about the language and totally immersed herself in it and as a result chose to teach it as a career. It also helps to talk with foreigners to pick up lingo, to correct your mistakes and to practise in general. Listening to the radio in the background is also a nice little trick since you start to tune into it after a while and your listening skills become much better. Apart from that, constant studying and reviewing of notes.
- 10 being the most difficult, I would say that learning Spanish was about a 2 or a 3. This is because my native language is French, which is a Roman language just like Spanish, so my basis of understanding was already firmly set in stone. There are grammatical differences and of course vocabulary but this is nothing studying can't resolve. Since I also speak fluent English, this helped me, since you can figure out Spanish words from English, and also French.
Italian
- Same as above except I started learning Italian from scratch in 2009 and found it - aside from vocabulary - very easy since I speak three other languages either fluently or very well.
- Again, it was a college course so I was taught by a teacher. However, the teacher was Mexican and while she spoke Italian well and was a lovely lady, she wasn't a very good teacher so most of the time it was down to myself to really get to know Italian. I got to know some Italians and Italian-speaking people as well as revision and studying, which is a key if you really want to succeed linguistically.
- I am by no means fluent in Italian vocabulary-wise but grammatically, I am fluent. This is because I find that Italian is grammatically a cross-over of Spanish and French (Spanish in the sense of verb conjugation, syntax and certain grammatical points such as direct/indirect object pronouns and the subjunctive mood; French in the sense of grammatical points such as proceeding direct object pronouns and certain verbs) as well as having verbs that I recognise from French and Spanish. Combining all the factors, I'd say that Italian has been about a 3 for me. Without Spanish it would have been a 4, but luckily I know Spanish.
Hope this helps!
