Self Teaching Foreign Lanuguage books.

[Despain]

Rosetta Stone

Seconded.

Shit works.

[Darus Grey]

Ok, I see what you're saying. I'd agree that in most cases, basic grammar and the tenses can be summed up in about a page.

On that note, do you know any resources for 1 page grammar for a variety of languages?

I don't know of any resources dedicated to that. Though even having no knowledge of a language it's easy enough to assemble your own.

[Beckwin]

I don't know of any resources dedicated to that. Though even having no knowledge of a language it's easy enough to assemble your own.

Yeah I guess so, but with no/limited linguistics knowledge it would be difficult to do well. Also from the standpoint of language educators, it would be convenient to have easy references when you have a variety of L1 students.

So for the 1-page basics, you'd wanna establish sentence order, run through the tenses (this would include verb conjugation, right?), copula, auxiliary verb use, establish prepositional/adpositional, adjective forms and position, adverb forms and position, cover pronouns (and any changes), articles/particles...

Script should probably be left on it's own/assumed knowledge.

Anything missing?

[Antithesis]

or free

Oh-ho-ho!

Spoiler: show

Bit Torrent

[Dolmen]

Tekki, my bandmate's wife teaches German, so I'll ask her what she recommends. She's teaching everyone in the band along with some other people German on the weekends, but she's writing the "homework" herself.

[Tekki]

Thanks for the advice guys. As for the Q on why. Its not outside the realm of possibility of me wanting to move outside of the states for, including Europe for work. I also don't want to stop at one additional language, so this is just a start.

I find learning extremely easy for me, and I have the tendency to pick up what I am passionate about, run with it and absorb it thoroughly. (I think a couple of people who have posted in this thread who know me better might even attest to my mentality lol)

Dolmen hit me up with some books if you get a chance (And we also need to talk beer, I live next to beer heaven.)

DS games, ya there is. Don't think I've seen a German one.

This Rosetta Stone is clever as fuck. Seriously. I plowed through the first iso and I really think its awesome how they create a foundation for language building. I can see why people like this so much, and I also see why more critical consumers can say simply relying on RS is bad. This is a perfect supplement. This can't be used as a sole tool for learning but its a powerful starting block for sure. (I wouldn't pay the price they want, but I would suggest it)

Definitely want to invest in some of the sites you guys recommend. Still want to get some pen and paper study material.

[arus2001]

I hear German is a pain in the ass to learn

Once you get past the accents and some of the harder sounding letter combinations, it's really not that bad. Just don't call yourself a jelly donut.

Then again, I'm basing this after a year of high school where I'd also taken French for a few years and Latin. Even if Latin's a dead language, the relations to French, German, and English make cross-learning easier.

I'm a bit tempted to look into RS for Japanese (yay inner weeaboo), but like my French, I'd probably lose a lot of what I'd learned because I have nobody local to speak it with. In general, I can still read some French and German stuff and get a gist of things. Was actually kind of funny watching Inglorious Basterds a few weeks back and recalling as much French as I did during the dinner scene and such. Some things even translated differently than I would have (even though context was the same).

[wyrmtung]

There's an app for that. Get an iPod Touch and there are a ton of apps available in the iTunes Store. They are most often visual, audial and interactive. Some are free, some are $0.99 and of course more.

Plus you can download podcasts, audiobooks, and iTunes U to the Touch too.

[Viq]

Maybe Korean just isn't a language that lends itself well to Rosetta Stone's formula, but I found that program to be little more than glorified flash cards. Learning a lot of the grammar points (sup honorific infix), and things like the difference between Banmal and Jondaenmal, or when to use Native Korean vs. Sino-Korean numbers were very difficult without consulting other sources. It certainly helped to build my vocabulary while making me more comfortable reading Hangul, but I'm not sure I would recommend it for someone looking for a one-stop way to learn another language.

[Darus Grey]

Maybe Korean just isn't a language that lends itself well to Rosetta Stone's formula, but I found that program to be little more than glorified flash cards. Learning a lot of the grammar points (sup honorific infix), and things like the difference between Banmal and Jondaenmal, or when to use Native Korean vs. Sino-Korean numbers were very difficult without consulting other sources. It certainly helped to build my vocabulary while making me more comfortable reading Hangul, but I'm not sure I would recommend it for someone looking for a one-stop way to learn another language.

The only one-stop way to learn a language is REAL immersion. The fact that Rosetta Stone as a company tries to portray their product as something that fulfills that, is my and many other language acquisition experts problem with it.

The reality of language learning is as I stated earlier, about a page of grammar material. Learning Syntax, Morphology, and Phonology of a language. The rest is vocabulary.

The problem is that for all intents and purposes language learning products(be they books, software, tapes, etc) try and teach standardized versions of a language.

The reason that is a problem is *(practically)no one speaks the standardized version of their language*, this is also often called the "Literary Form", which often even has different syntax and morphology than the spoken form...and sometimes even different word order.

To use the thread's example of German? Which? There are 40~ major varieties of German spoken just in Germany alone, not including German languages in neighboring countries like Belgium-German, Swiss-German, Austrian-German, etc. Ignoring that, there isn't even a standardized form of standardized German! There's "High" and "Low" German as two major subgroups.

I'm ranting on about this issue as I often do, point is, the realty of learning a language is almost every book/resource on the material is practically useless for actually gaining towards fluency.

The absolute biggest step you'll make is trying to find a group or friend who speaks said language natively, and learning by interacting with them(just like I often join Qubec guilds in online games to keep up with my French, cause despite being a native speaker I do not get a chance to use it in my daily life for long periods sometimes).

Yeah I guess so, but with no/limited linguistics knowledge it would be difficult to do well. Also from the standpoint of language educators, it would be convenient to have easy references when you have a variety of L1 students.

So for the 1-page basics, you'd wanna establish sentence order, run through the tenses (this would include verb conjugation, right?), copula, auxiliary verb use, establish prepositional/adpositional, adjective forms and position, adverb forms and position, cover pronouns (and any changes), articles/particles...

Script should probably be left on it's own/assumed knowledge.

Anything missing?

Yeah, order of Syntax, SVO, SOV, OSV, VSO, etc. The different Tenses, which generally coincides with aux use. Adjective/Adjunct(<--Important distinction from simply saying adverb) forms, particles, and one important thing you forget...question formation, importantly WH-Question forms.

[Beckwin]

The absolute biggest step you'll make is trying to find a group or friend who speaks said language natively, and learning by interacting with them(just like I often join Qubec guilds in online games to keep up with my French, cause despite being a native speaker I do not get a chance to use it in my daily life for long periods sometimes).

This is why I recommend livemocha.com: there's loads of opportunities to text chat with native speakers, and also get native speaker feedback on written and oral exercises (although a negative for the oral exercises is it seems you pretty much just read a script to evaluate your pronunciation). And thanks to skype, you can connect with people who might be interested in a little conversational practice.

what viq is saying about RS for Korean echoes a lot of what I hear: it only helps with vocab. With languages closer to your L1, I'd imagine RS would be more effective (but still lacking in certain respects). In German, you can get a lot closer to making decent, longer sentences by just using vocab you know with grammar and pragmatics that you're already familiar with... Korean/Japanese/etc not so much.

[Haiko]

How about learning Japanese?

[thetruepandagod]

How about some intense Slovakian instead tekki, so that you can woo the ladies.



PS: im maybe going to ohio soon, i shall call you if i do. We can wrastle.

[Dolmen]

Tekki, here's what my friend's wife said:

"Well, it's difficult to suggest something because most of the German tutoring / teaching I've done has been more involved / intense, not so much something you can do in the car. If you *really* want to learn a language, I think that any material that combines both information on the structure of the language (grammar explanations, etc.), as well as a cd or software that you can listen to is GREAT. He could listen to a bit in the car, read about the structure during a break or something - a little bit at a time. It's even great to try it out, if you don't have someone to talk with, talk to yourself. =P

I absolutely DO NOT recommend getting Rosetta Stone and using this as the sole resource for learning a language. It's excellent for listening comprehension, but it doesn't teach you shit except memorized chunks (I didn't have a very positive experience with a student who used Rosetta Stone - his very first question to me during our first session after working with Rosetta Stone for several weeks was, "what's all this der, die, das" - all the ways to say "the" in german - Rosetta Stone doesn't even teach you that!). Some university German textbooks are great... they provide explanations, exercises, and most come with cds for listening comprehension now. We used "Deutsch Heute" when I taught at the University of Delaware. I thought it was a pretty good book, and I use it for tutoring."

Also, feel free to PM or call me any time for beer talk. I've been on a Belgian kick lately with the White, Dubbels, and Triples.

[Kerberoz]

I wouldn't recommend Rosetta Stone alone, but alongside textbooks. However:

(I didn't have a very positive experience with a student who used Rosetta Stone - his very first question to me during our first session after working with Rosetta Stone for several weeks was, "what's all this der, die, das" - all the ways to say "the" in german - Rosetta Stone doesn't even teach you that!).

sounds like a major dumbfuck if he couldn't infer what it meant.

[Dolmen]

I wouldn't recommend Rosetta Stone alone, but alongside textbooks. However:

sounds like a major dumbfuck if he couldn't infer what it meant.

That would be my guess as a lot of her tutoring business comes from people that tried other pathways, but failed.