Languages

[Fapuccino]

Anyone here a non-native speaker of Mandarin, Japanese or Korean ever studied or picked them up and was successful at learning the characters?

I'm interested in learning Japanese Kana (and eventually Kanji) and was wondering what a good approach was to properly studying/memorizing a new and completely foreign written language system.

Don't speak any of these, but from what little I know/'ve heard, Korean will be by far the easiest to read since it's phonetic. For Japanese, Hiragana/Katakana are just syllables and should be easy to pick up.

For Kanji, and Mandarin I'm assuming too since Kanji is based off of it, it's straight up memorisation. From what I've heard they don't teach that shit there up until middle school, and even spell a lot of Kanji in Hiragana/Katakana with hints to help kids pronounce Kanji.

 

[Wunderboy]

For Kanji, and Mandarin I'm assuming too since Kanji is based off of it, it's straight up memorisation. From what I've heard they don't teach that shit there up until middle school, and even spell a lot of Kanji in Hiragana/Katakana with hints to help kids pronounce Kanji.

I best get cracking then I suppose! :S

 

[Kramerica Industries]

I've studied, to varying degrees -- German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan. Haven't done anything with Italian yet, might feel like expanding into Dutch and maybe some Nordic languages in the future but that's in the way off future at best I imagine. The obvious problem (obvious) comes from trying to do too much at once and not really getting enough absorption out of any of them.

German was always my favorite foreign language but my grade school learning of it was fucked by a totally inconsistent teacher pattern. I never had a chance with how that turned out. French is #2 on that list but it's always the grammar structures of foreign languages that throw me off, and while German obviously has many common roots with English, French and the other romance languages obviously don't, and so I get grammar structure wrong all the g-ddamned time when trying to write in that language.

In a perfect world, if I can figure out German, Spanish, Italian, and French, then I'll be more than happy with that. Anything else would truly be a bonus. Eastern Asian languages have such intricate characters that I would never be able to handwrite them, and so truly I've never had enough interest in learning languages from the Orient. Call me a colonialist, but my interests really only originate in Europe on this.

 

[America]

My Italian speakers

wtf is the difference between "camera" and "stanza"

 

[JJM]

My Italian speakers

wtf is the difference between "camera" and "stanza"

https://italian.stackexchange.com/questions/34/camera-vs-stanza

Have a fun read...

Sent from my BLA-L29 using Tapatalk

 

[firmino]

My Italian speakers

wtf is the difference between "camera" and "stanza"

They are nearly interchangeable. The user sklivvz on the page JJM linked gives a good answer: stanza is slightly more generic, camera is generally more often intended as bedroom.

Both words are also used with other, entirely different meanings, for instance "camera dei deputati", chamber of the deputies, first of the two parliaments that have to approve a law; and stanza is also used as a technical term in poetry.

 

[Glass box]

Tried Spanish, that didn't last.

I speak English and Serbian. Also I understand Bulgarian, which is very close to Macedonian language.

So I can speak in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and everyone would understand me. South Slavic peoples understand each other, this is known.

My English can be judged by how I write on this forum, but sometimes when you're tired you lack concentration. I try to improve it by reading books and watching movies/shows without subtitles.

 

[America]

I can speak Spanish well, but it's listening to native speakers that is absolute torture. I can pick up words, but cannot understand the sentence in full, at all.

 

[crzdcolombian]

I can speak Spanish well, but it's listening to native speakers that is absolute torture. I can pick up words, but cannot understand the sentence in full, at all.

Do they just talk too quickly?

My wife learned to speak Spanish but she thinks it’s tough as my family talks super fast

 

[America]

Yeah they talk hella fast.

 

[Devious]

I can speak English and American.

 

[Anubis]

Studied Russian for 2 years, but probably only A2 level due to it being so goddamn hard. A2 level German. Studied German due to family and because I watch a lot of German cinema.But I fizzled out because I just don't care for the way it sounds. Finally studying Italian. Should have started sooner, and that irritates me I waited so long. I mean, last year alone I watched an entire season of Inter calcio via Italian streams. You'd think I would have been motivated sooner to learn the language.

 

[Wallace]

Languages are too hard, because they are very often ambiguous.

Programming languages are more explicit and absolute.

Everyone should be communicating through programming languages.

 

[Fapuccino]

Languages are too hard, because they are very often ambiguous.

Programming languages are more explicit and absolute.

Everyone should be communicating through programming languages.

Brain.use() -> NullPointerException

 

[America]

Another question about Italian.

1.) How do you say tape (i.e duck tape). I learned it as "nostro"
2.) How do you say sweatpants. I learned it as "pantaloni della tuta"

 

[firmino]

pantaloni della tuta is correct. we don't have a single word specifically for that (I have a feeling that sooner or later we will import sweatpants from English, but that's just my guess).

as for the other one, it is a bit tricky.

to answer your question, nastro adesivo telato is the correct translation. but bear in mind that it's not used here outside the industrial world, so not many Italians will know what you are talking about, if you say that.

nastro adesivo is the most generic word, the one that can be used for any adhesive tape.

typically, in an italian house, you will find what we call "scotch", the transparent one used for paper, posters in your room and the like. the name is from the commercial name of a brand, which became the common name for this kind of nastro adesivo.

then you have the industrial ones. among them, the most common here (and the only two you will likely find in an italian house) are the following two:

- nastro adesivo da imballaggio, also called scotch da imballaggio, used for cardboard boxes.

- nastro isolante, used for wires.

so, as you can see, we have a problem here: in case we kidnap someone, we won't have at home a proper tape for prisoners. blivious:

 

[America]

Alright, got another question.

I was looking through an Italian producer's films and found a movie called "L'abbiamo fatta grossa". I recognized some of the words, but when I translated it via Google - it translates to "We did it big". What confuses me is that I thought "abbiamo" meant "we have", but the title says "We did". Is this a translation error, or is this some sort of technicality, I'm not aware of.

 

[Dylan]

In that tense, essere or avere (noi- siamo, abbiamo) is used depending on the second verb (fare-fatta) depending on if it it transitive or not. It was the main point that was driven home time and time again while I learned Italian but that was a while ago and I can't remember the details of it anymore.

If you have a look at how the passato prossimo is formed then you should get a grasp of it.

 

[ADRossi]

In that tense, essere or avere (noi- siamo, abbiamo) is used depending on the second verb (fare-fatta) depending on if it it transitive or not. It was the main point that was driven home time and time again while I learned Italian but that was a while ago and I can't remember the details of it anymore.

If you have a look at how the passato prossimo is formed then you should get a grasp of it.

And here I was thinking all you did during your study abroad in Italy was bang insecure teens and eat gelato.

 

[America]

So based on the form (i.e present or past tense) of the transitive verb (i.e fare), you use either Avere or Essere?