Learning foreign? What do you use?

[d000hg]

I enjoy learning bits of languages when I meet people from other countries but it doesn't come easily to me, and my formal education stopped at GCSE French and a year of German, so I can't do much apart from order a ham sandwich and ask where the library/disco is (and not understand the reply).

I thought it would be nice to take it a bit more seriously and wondered what others here have done, and recommend? And curious what languages people here are competent in.

I learned French the normal school way, memorising nouns and verb endings which isn't how a native speaker learns. I've been trying DuoLingo which is more real-life but quite eclectic - you learn things ad-hoc so you might learn "I am eating a sandwich" but there's not a way to look up obvious variations on a theme like "I ate a sandwich yesterday" or "I want a sandwich."

I also wonder if it's best to work on one language at a time, or if doing say French and Italian in parallel would give some common ground.

Ta.

[Uncle Albert]

I can't learn more than one at the same time, I did briefly try Italian and Dutch but it was a disaster.

I used Duolingo and local language websites/news reports to read and listen to the spoken language. Duo isn't really very good but it does give you a start.

[ladymuck]

Seeing a lot of adverts for JumpSpeak, which I've not tried.

I gave up on Duolingo because I wanted to learn European Portuguese and it only offers the Brazilian variant. For other languages, it might be better as I know some people really rate it.

I tried going to night classes but that didn't really stick either. I've come to the conclusion that I will never learn another language to the extent of being able to converse in it.

[SueEllen]

Duolingual has Spanish, French and Norwegian as the languages they have most features and lessons in. If you are learning any other languages using it you are wasting your time.

[Smartie]

I've used Duolingo for a few years and it's not bad, though not perfect.
Doing a bit of Spanish before a holiday definitely gave me some useful basics.
Mostly I learn French and it's going pretty well though it does depend on how much time you put in.
I was in the top few % of learners last year but that only equated to 29 hours effort, which for a whole year isn't a lot is it?

The new premium 'Max' subscription can be helpful if you get things wrong as it explains a bit more about why and also provides some more freeform exercises.

Overall though, you probably need to do some work outside the app to improve particularly quickly.

In terms of your specific issue "I've been trying DuoLingo which is more real-life but quite eclectic - you learn things ad-hoc so you might learn "I am eating a sandwich" but there's not a way to look up obvious variations on a theme like "I ate a sandwich yesterday" or "I want a sandwich."

Earlier lessons focus on the present tense - past and future turn up quite a lot later (yesterday/tomorrow) because they're more complicated with endings you might mix up with the present you're learning. Additional verbs like I want 'je veux' or I would like 'je voudrais' appear relatively early in the course though.


Bon courage!

[d000hg]

In terms of your specific issue "I've been trying DuoLingo which is more real-life but quite eclectic - you learn things ad-hoc so you might learn "I am eating a sandwich" but there's not a way to look up obvious variations on a theme like "I ate a sandwich yesterday" or "I want a sandwich."

Earlier lessons focus on the present tense - past and future turn up quite a lot later (yesterday/tomorrow) because they're more complicated with endings you might mix up with the present you're learning. Additional verbs like I want 'je veux' or I would like 'je voudrais' appear relatively early in the course though.


Bon courage!

I think the issue is I remember a fair bit from school but not how to use it.. so early lessons seem too basic as it won't tell me how to use what I (think) I know. I've been sticking at it a bit and it is starting to get a bit more useful.
OTOH when I tried a language I'd never spoken it seemed too hard.. I'd get a picture of a cat and a choice of words and just have to guess, but perhaps that is a deliberate learning mechanism. I assume these things are based on how the brain learns, even if that can be counterintuitive. The idea of learning verb conjugations by rote is obviously not how a native speaker acquires a language!