Kensai

Bem vindo, 欢迎, bienevue, välkommen and welcome to the language thread! I didn't see anything like this around so I thought it would be a fun idea to bring together people who are currently speaking or wanting to learn more languages.

I currently am trying to learn portuguese, arabic and mandarine chinese for work/fun/travel reasons. I'm currently working with a project in Brazil where veeery few people speak English, so that'll be useful. As an archaeologist I'm also interested in a lot of the work being done in China and the middle east, and knowing the languages spoken can't hurt my chances.

Please share languages you know, are learning and your methods!

I'll see about adding different sections for different languages, and perhaps adding who speaks it/wants to learn it/etc

General linguistic online resources:

• Busuu.com: One of the biggest language learning sites, and is a great language learning resource. Through flashcards, audio, writing exercises, dialogues and more you build up your knowledgebase and understanding. It also has an active community that allows you to join groups, talk to native speakers and have them correct your exercises. It also has mobile apps which are great. The website is very handsome and easy to get started with. This link is a reference link of mine so if you're registering please click that http://www.busuu.com/invite/accept/Mzg0MjUyMw==
• BBC Languages: What thread would be complete without a BBC link? The BBC website offers an extensive list of languages you can learn, along with facts about the language. The website is clean and easy to maneuver.
• Google Translate: Good for your translating needs. Has come a long way since first launched. It allows phonetic typing which is great if you don't have a keyboard of the language you want to translate into (like chinese).
• Livemocha is a website I have found useful. I have heard that it is similar to busuu but not quite as good (though it offers tons of languages). (courtesy of TheCD)
• My language exchange <-- That's another good site for learning. You exchange languages with other people through email. (courtesy of -Annihilation-)

Additional resources:

• For those using firefox or chrome, there are several extensions to help you translate text by just hovering above it, or other exstensions which help. I'm using the pop-up translate thing while learning chinese, which *really* helps.
• Some asian symbols won't show up on some computers. If so, click here for support.

Rules:

• No illegal material in this thread
• Try to keep this mainly in English as this is an English speaking forum. It might be difficult if you want something translated or have questions about things, but let's try our best.

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Kensai

*Reserved for user specific things*

If you want to be added here, please let me know
Levels are (learning) -> (beginner) -> (intermediate) -> (expert) ->(native)

Language speakers:

Arabic

• Kensai (learning)
• ali.guitarkid7
• sakura'sdarkest (learning)

Chinese (Mandarin)

• Kensai (learning)
• Gorelord666 (learning)
• raoooos (learning)
• Harmonius (native)

Chinese (Hong Kong Cantonese)

• Harmonius (native)

Chinese (Hakka)

• Harmonius (native)

Dutch:

• Lord_Doku (native)
• TheCD (learning)
• Antis0cial (native)

English:

• Kensai (native)
• akack (native)
• Gorelord666 (native)
• ZombieCran (native)
• Lord_Doku (expert)
• ErikLensherr (native)
• TheCD (native)
• Extra Ordinary (native)
• Telecaster7 (native)
• Pi! (native)
• VillainousLatin (expert)
• JamSessionFreak (expert)
• TheTones (native)
• S0n1c '97 (native)
• gabcd86 (native)
• NothingRocks (native)
• solo_freak (native)
• guitarxo (native)
• MAC2322 (native)
• Antis0cial (native)
• MiG_853 (native)
• Cb4rabid (native)
• Bushinarin (native)
• sakura'sdarkest (expert)
• Philip_pepper (native)

French:

• ZombieCran (beginner)
• spitonastranger (beginner)
• ali.guitarkid7 (?)
• CrimsonBizzare (beginner)
• isabiggles (intermediate)
• JamSessionFreak (learning)
• N_J_B_B (learning)
• gabcd86 (native)
• solo_freak (intermediate)
• MAC2322 (learning)
• Antis0cial (beginner)
• MiG_853 (beginner)
• sakura'sdarkest (native)
• sakura'sdarkest (learning)

German:

• Kensai (beginner)
• Weirdbag (native)
• Telecaster7 (beginner)
• EvilDomo (learning)
• Antis0cial (intermediate)
• Philip_pepper (native)

Hebrew:

• TheTee56

Hindi:

• akack (native)

Italian:

• Gorelord666 (intermediate)
• isabiggles (intermediate)
• Basti95 (NATIVE!!)
• JamSessionFreak (learning)
• solo_freak (native)
• MAC2322 (learning)
• MiG_853 (beginner)

Japanese

• TheTones (learning)
• EvilDomo (learning)
• NothingRocks (learning)
• Wesleyisgay
• Antis0cial (learning)
• sakura'sdarkest (learning)

Korean:

• chaoticfables (native)

Latin:

• CrimsonBizzare (beginner)
• AeroRocker

Portuguese:

• Kensai (beginner - learning)
• gabcd86 (native/beginner)
• MiG_853 (native)
• Ometh (native)
• Ippon (learning)
• Philip_pepper (native)

Romanian:

• DonGlover (learning)

Russian:

• Dash49 (native)
• S0n1c '97 (learning)
• loose bowels (learning)
• sakura'sdarkest (learning)

Slovene:

• JamSessionFreak (native)

Spanish:

• Gorelord666 (native)
• ZombieCran (native)
• ErikLensherr (native)
• damian_91 (native)
• Pi! (intermediate)
• VillainousLatin (native)
• S0n1c '97 (learning)
• gabcd86 (expert)
• guitarxo (beginner)
• MAC2322 (native)
• Antis0cial (intermediate - learning)
• MiG_853 (expert)
• Cb4rabid (expert)
• Bushinarin (beginner)
• Ippon (learning)
• Philip_pepper (intermediate)

Swedish:

• Kensai (native)
• loose bowels (learning)
• Bushinarin (intermediate)

Tamil:

• guitarxo (beginner)

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Kensai

*Reserved for language specific resources*

Japanese:

• Obenkyo - This is basically your one-stop shop for hiragana, katakana, numbers, and kanji. It also has an extensive range of basic grammar lessons. If your phone/tablet comes with a stylus, you can even try practising the strokes for all the symbols. You can use the stroke practise functionality without a stylus too, though. (courtesy of hriday_hazarika)
• JED - This is perhaps the best Japanese-English dictionary app I have come across. You can search by English, romaji, kana, and kanji. It has a huge list of words, and every entry has the kanji, kana, general style of usage [polite/casual speech], verb formations, and example sentences. Definitely a must-have. Make sure you're on a Wi-Fi connection or have a good data plan before you download this, since the dictionary is in excess of 100 MB, IIRC. But, the good thing is, once you download it, you can use it even if you don't have any Internet on your phone. (Courtesy of hriday_hazarika)

Korean:

• http://www.talktomeinkorean.com/:
  I can't begin to say how awesome this site is and the people that run it. They're super super friendly, and the website has everything you could possibly want, for free. There's a whole series of beginner lessons and soforth, all with PDFs that you can use to read and revise with. Here's the link to where you start ;
  http://www.talktomeinkorean.com/cat.../?sort=date_asc
  And here is a nice site where you can start learning hangeul ;
  http://www.koreanwikiproject.com/wi...e=Learn_hangeul (courtesy of Don_Humpador)

Latin:

• Cambridge School Classics Project - Cambridge Latin Course
  It has all of the stories from the course books - you can translate specific words just by clicking on them (for Book V, it also tells you grammatical information regarding the tense and such). There are vocabulary tests and other activities. There are also links to pages on the cultural background. It's free to use, but it doesn't contain the lessons on grammar, words, or cultural background from the books. There are also no further activities on the stories - it just has the stories themselves. You can buy the books or E-learning materials (only for the first 2 books, I think) from the site as well.
  There's also some resources for Ancient Greek on the site, from Eton College:
  http://www.cambridgescp.com/page.php?p=ag^Eton^intro
  Some further free Ancient Greek resources here:
  Dr. Shirley
  Open University (courtesy of CrimsonBizarre)

Mandarine chinese:

• Chinese dictionary: It has mirrors of translators, but also explains each word individually, making it easy to check the correctness of the translation. (courtesy of SLEESTAK_BRO)
• http://www.nciku.com/ If you find a character you don't know, you can draw it and it'll detect it 99% of the time (if using a physical dictionary ain't yo thang). Lots of example sentences too. (courtesy of raoooos)
• http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dictionary Just type in any Chinese character and if you're unsure of the pronunciation, listen to the same on Google Translate. Further explanation done well by Harmonius can be found here. (Courtesy of Harmonius).
  

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Gorelord666

Spanish (native language) and I also took an Italian class for two years.
There was another language in there, forget which one. Learned something about that when I was about eight or so.

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ESPLTDV401DX

I'm actually pretty interested in learning German. I might check out that busuu website

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E-Married to necrosis1193

entity0009

I know Spanish pretty much fluently, used to be completely fluent but I've lost practice since moving away. Same with german, used to know it to DaF C1 but I've forgotten a lot.

Currently considering teaching myself Mandarin and Polish.

Kensai

Feel free to, I think it's very easy to learn using that site

Oh and if you do, let me know if you did so I can see if the reference thing works.

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Thecla

Portuguese is hard to learn right? Just came back from Brazil and normally I don't have a problem learning the language a bit during a holiday but with portuguese.... I still can't pronounce não

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~And the raindrops in the cars

Keep on falling from off the bars

Blocking out a good song

Playing on the radio~

Aralingh

A couple of questions that will determine whether or not I will learn a new language,


Do I need french in Canada?
Do I need norwegian in Norway?

Other than that, I know russian, english and estonian.

AtaBorMan

I speak Swedish and English.. That's about it. A wee bit of German aswell.

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Call me Max.

ESPLTDV401DX

Not unless you are going to be in Quebec. Even so, the vast majority of people there can speak fluent english
edit:

Just signed up for it

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E-Married to necrosis1193

Gorelord666

I heard it was somewhat like "no" but said in a slight different manner.

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Aralingh

Well that's actually the least important question of two, I'm much more interested in Norway.

I did suspect I wouldn't need it there though, thanks.

akack

If anyone is learning Hindi, feel free to hit me up over PM for help.

Kämpfer

Oh you're an archaeologist? That's great cause,

I have a very large bone for you to examine.

lul

AtaBorMan

You don't really need Norwegian in Norway, but it would probably help a lot.

__________________
Call me Max.

AnAngrySquirrel

I'm planning on trying to learn a bit of Japanese over the summer. Even though this thread was made just so you could get bonuses from that busuu site, it worked. Just signed up.

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Gamertag, PSN & Steam: Maystack

StewieSwan

I'm going to start taking Mandarin classes this fall for my degree field and I know enough German to get by. I've found that having a native speaker as a friend is invaluable and superior to any flashcards, websites, etc that you'll find. Just try skyping with someone who speaks the language you're learning.



My accent in Mandarin is going to be so bad.

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ZombieCran

I speak English, Spanish, and very basic French.

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(❍ᴥ❍ʋ)