Great point on being multilingual. At one time, everyone thought Japanese was going to be an important language skill. Now it look’s like Russian and Chinese will be among the important ones for the future.

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As to Latin, I learned it in kindergarden & first grade so it wasn’t a choice. The private school I attended had it as part of the curriculum. I took French in high school but don’t remember much & Spanish, at this point in my career will get me further than French (even though I work for a French company! They all speak English).

I appreciate everyone’s tips – it’s been very helpful in my quest to become bi-lingual!

@Pamela – start with the spoken language, memorize sentences, not words, at least initially. Avoid translation – you need to learn to think in a language, as in an everyday situation there is no time to translate anything. Memorizing phrases teaches you to think in a language, translating does not. If you read a paragraph, try to grasp the meaning without formulating the sentence in your native language. Look up the words you don’t know but need for understanding, but still try to understand the original paragraph without actually translating it. Get yourself a good course with tapes or CDs spoken by native speakers. I usually prefer CDs where they speak in a normal conversational speed, not that artificial slow tempo of language teachers. Comprehension is very important, and you cannot learn to really understand people if you are only used to very clear, very slow teacher’s “speak”. You cannot always hope to ask everyone to “speak slowly”. People are often in a hurry.

Also, it is important to learn how to talk about simple things in a fluent, idiomatic manner – directions, food, etc. first. There are some people who have a university degree in a language and who can write a composition about the role of providence in the novels of Manzoni in Italian, but don’t know the right words to use to ask for a bill in a restaurant. Our teacher in Perugia university tried it as an experiment once. It was pretty funny: so many advanced students who read all the great literature and who wrote papers, and yet nobody could quickly come up with “il conto, per favore”.

Choose contemporary authors for reading material, at least unless you are really interested in literature and know enough of a language to understand the differences between then and now. You don’t want to worry about whether an expression or sentence is still in use.

You can learn grammar and words while memorizing simple dialogs related to everyday situation a tourist can face. As you get better, you can improve on your grammar and vocabulary, but if you start from conversation, you’ll get the reward of being able to communicate quicker, also you will learn all four aspects – understanding, speaking, reading and writing at the same time. Way too many people who know grammar but cannot speak or understand.

When I was learning Spanish, I tried several courses sold in stores. The one I liked most was made in the UK. It used Spain’s Spanish, which is what I wanted, it may not be what you want. The main reasons I liked it, though, were 1) native speakers on tapes spoke in normal everyday language at normal conversational speed 2) the course started with common situations that tourists encounter, then built on them, and 3) it had everything – good tapes and comprehension exercises, a bit of grammar, vocabulary, reading, and writing.

I don’t agree about Latin. Personally I consider it a waste of time unless you plan to go to medicine or study Latin or old Spanish and old Italian literature. Pretty much any Romance language – Italian, Spanish or French makes it easier to learn any other Romance language, you don’t need Latin for that. Also, learning any other language improves native language as well. At the same time, while Latin may help you with grammar/vocabulary, it’s not going to help you to learn to think in a language, and being able to think in a foreign language is the key to being able to learn any language quickly. This ability to completely switch to thinking in another language immediately, even if you are just starting learning it, is the reason why those of us who know more than one language really well find it easier to learn other languages. Also, unless you have an unlimited amount of time, you cannot learn everything. The time spend on learning Latin can be spent on learning Spanish, and at the end you both improve your ability to learn other Romance languages and know an actual language. This is just my personal opinion, and as I don’t know Latin, who am I to say…

It’s also interesting to me that however rusty and disused those primary and high school languages are, you never lose it entirely. I can still make myself understood, however garbled, in both French and Irish, as can most of my Irish friends.

Here’s a thread I was reading this morning, which you might find interesting Steve.

@WC: Having parents who speak two languages is definitely a help – we are hoping that Little Buddy and his sister will both be completely fluent in my native language (English) and Bubelah’s (Russian).

@Pamela: No problem, going off on this tangent has certainly given me some ideas for future posts, anyway! I may write more at length on this, but there are some very easy ways to pick up a foreign language. One of the simplest – if you already know a little bit of the language – is to read children’s books in that language. I started reading German children’s books, then graduated to comics, then to basic stuff I had read in English (The Hobbit, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, etc.) and then finally to “heavy literature.” Reading newspapers helps, too. The sports section is seldom written with fancy vocabulary in any language.

I’d love to SYL’s tips, too!

Solar Yard Lights: Could you elaborate on the wasy you develop to acquire new languages fast? Since I grew up in Miami I learned basic Spanish & could benefit from knowing it in my job now but I don’t seem to be moving the needle much with language CD’s – any hints?

Steve (a/k/a BB): Thank you for letting us take off on a tangent! It is too bad that colleges are not pushing more for current students to learn an additional language as in business we are becoming more global by the day – my company does business in 55 countries.

And, yes, English is spoken most places on the planet but as you have found out, if you really want to get to know the locals, speaking the language, or even making an effort in their mother tongue is a huge help to entering the culture.