Eyes on Final Fantasy Forums > Reference > Study Hall > Learning a foreign language

[scrumpleberry]

Originally Bespoken by Harle-Quin

My mum spent 5 6 years in France. That was enough time to get her fluent enough to be confused for an actual French person, by French people.

Yes. ITT living there is the only surefire path to fluency. Aside from that, most common methods ought to get you by.

[Polaris]

Depends on which language you are learning!
First alphabet
Second simple vocabulary, just the basic to have notions if you will go on holidays or smth like that
Third: Grammar: which includes verbs and sentence structure
Fourth: Typical expressions: it might not be too important, still if you are learning German is one of the main thing you have to lean how to structure sentences, sometimes doesn't work in a portugese (my language and neither in english) and trust me is the worse thing ever.

[Citizen Bleys]

Originally Bespoken by Scarmiglione

...a Cyrillic-alphabetical language learn the letters. Then learn pronunciation and similar mechanics.

For languages with cyrillics, yes, definitely learn the lettering. I find it also helps to try to pick up a little bit of Croatian, since it's written in roman lettering (just with a few accents you have to learn, and some letters pronounced differently). I went through a couple chapters of McGraw-Hill's book on Croatian and it helped me get more comfortable with Ukrainian. Which I still suck at. But I suck less.

[Yaridovich]

Originally Bespoken by Reasoniamalive

One word: PIMSLEUR.

They make great audio learning programs for many languages. I'm learning Portuguese now.

It also helps to have a friend who speaks said language keep inserting words, phrases and correcting sentences/mistakes you make grammer-wise. My fiancee is from Brazil, and she helps me a lot. ;p

The downside of Pimsleur is it doesn't teach written language.

[Ashi]

For some of the languages that I learned / am learning, we started with words then simple sentances. The actual alphabets and pronounciation came later on (which confused things for me a little) but learning the alphabets earlier on would have been a little boring.

Before I spent time with an instructor who approached a language simply by teaching me words. That's all we ever did. Studied words. Not how to use them or put them in sentances. It didn't work out.

[rubah]

perhaps it would be best to teach the oral part when someone is a child, then when they're older and can appreciate things such as grammar theory, the spelling and structure of sentences.

One of the first things I tried to make note of when studying french was how the letter combinations worked to make sounds. I guess this is similar to studying phonics in first grade, so maybe it could be done earlier if approached in the same fashion. But then I don't think many of my peers enjoy the aspects of learning to spell etc.