Learning a language......

[nijinsky's fetlocks]

You could always marry a foreign person, although I wouldn't recommend it personally.
All it means is that they can nag you and call you a **** in two languages.

Vous etes un **** sounds a bit saucier though.

The French for **** is actually con, so needless to say it doesn't go down particularly well when I say 'what a fucking con'.
In fairness mate the French seldom need to swear, as they have an entire range of facial expressions and Gallic shrugs that tell you to go and fuck yourself without recourse to words.

 

[BWTAC]

You could always marry a foreign person, although I wouldn't recommend it personally.
All it means is that they can nag you and call you a **** in two languages.

Vous etes un **** sounds a bit saucier though.

The French for **** is actually con, so needless to say it doesn't go down particularly well when I say 'what a fucking con'.
In fairness mate the French seldom need to swear, as they have an entire range of facial expressions and Gallic shrugs that tell you to go and fuck yourself without recourse to words.

I'd love to be a con artist in France.

 

[tweetstreet]

nice little bump here,

anyone have any experience of Rosetta stone etc? going to give French a crack. Some form of computer learning is my best option living in the south west of Wales we are limited for real life tutor availability....

 

[bucks]

If your learning Spanish try 'canal 24 horas en directo.' Spanish news channel on all day.

You could also try 'News in slow Spanish.'

 

[tweetstreet]

French is my chosen language i'm afraid but french language channel on Sky may well hope to pick things up from context etc

 

[PragueBlue]

nice little bump here,

anyone have any experience of Rosetta stone etc? going to give French a crack. Some form of computer learning is my best option living in the south west of Wales we are limited for real life tutor availability....

It's ok for some basic vocabulary acquisition but I personally think the Linguaphone courses are the best out there together (though not cheap) with some French lessons from a native speaker over Skype. I've started a few languages that way before going on to more in-depth study in-country. Living in a country where the language you are learning is spoken is always the best way though it is obviously not always that practical.

 

[Gabriel]

The Babbel apps are quite good, especially if you are in the habit of carrying a phone/tablet device. They offer a broad range of vocabulary and grammar constructions, and with video, too, they have a more contemporary feel than Linguaphone. I find having to repeat pronunciation for accuracy a tad frustrating, at times, but I suppose it's forcing you to conform to an acceptable and,therefore, comprehensible pattern of speech.

 

[Len Rum]

If you try to learn a language from courses, tapes, computers,tutors etc you will only get as far as 'tourist level' I.e able to order a few beers, book a hotel room, converse with the locals on basic issues without having to point etc etc -but it is worth getting to this basic level.
The only way to become anywhere near fluent is to live in the country for at least six months and sprechen zee lingo for all that time without recourse to any English ( that will take you at best to conversational level but well short of more advanced communication required in business for example).
This is what most people who take up a language don't realize. They imagine they will become fluent by taking up a course and when they realize this isn't the case they lose interest. Best to have realistic expectations and then you won't be disappointed .

 

[I'm With Stupid]

nice little bump here,

anyone have any experience of Rosetta stone etc? going to give French a crack. Some form of computer learning is my best option living in the south west of Wales we are limited for real life tutor availability....

Rosetta Stone is famously shit. For my money, Pimsleur is the best language learning programme on the market, but it's really expensive (unless you find another way to *ahem* acquire it). It gets your fluency of common phrases and structures up pretty quickly. Michel Thomas is decent for grammar. Assimil is a good all round book, that will bring you to a higher level than the other two when you've finished them. In addition to these, you'll have to do quite a bit of vocab study at the start. I use Duolingo for that, since it's cheap and fun, but I wouldn't use it for anything else, since it has loads of really unnatural sentences created by amateurs (I eat the sugar? Really?). You can also use the flashcard app Anki to practice your vocab. But yeah, these things combined will give you a good grounding in the language, but you should supplement them with Skype lessons, if you really want to get good. It's a myth that you need to live in a country to become fluent. I know plenty of fluent English speakers who've never been to an English speaking country, and plenty of failed learners of languages who live in the country of the language they're trying to learn. The most important thing is to not treat it like an academic subject, treat it like a skill. Like if you're learning the guitar, if you don't practice every day, you won't get any better. The same is true of languages. Immerse yourself as much as you can. Switch your computer and phone languages to French. Read the day's news in French before you read it in English. Watch French films, TV shows and Youtube channels (with French subtitles) and actually make an effort to understand what they're saying.

 

[stony]

Mi burro está teniendo una siesta por la tarde