How many years does it take you to learn a foreign language?

[cooliegirly]

I'm interested in finding out how long does it take a person to learn a foreign language well. And by learn it well, it means you can have an intellectual conversation with another person using this certain language.

[Ajanah]

Hi Coliegirly,
I guess a year or a bit less would be enough for a really dedicated & hard-working language-learner...
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Be yourself no matter what they say!

[Conchita]

[Ajanah]

Hi Conchita,

What I meant of course was learning the basics of a language and most of its nuances. But surely not to get to the level of "native" speaking abilities...There I totally agree with you. You don't really need to be a "genius", as you said, to grasp "most" of the basics of a language, and I am one striking example. I'm Arabic-speaking, but I acquired most of French language basics and nuances throughout a year or so with a lot of...sweat, surely. As Bernard Shaw puts it: " Genius is 1% of inspiration and 99% of perspiration."

See you
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Be yourself no matter what they say!

[Andreana]

Ajanah and Conchita, I agree with a lot of what both you have said. You are right, we would have to define the term 'acquire a language'. As Conchita is pointing out, learning a language is a lifelong process, nobody can say that they speak their mother tongue perfectly. We did a project at university collecting information about the language skills of immigrants and one of the challenges was to determine the threshold level of language proficiency. We ended up with a clumsy description of our self-made 'communication competency scale system'. The project was very interesting because we go access to immegration information from local authorities and we could speak to a variety of communities but a lot of time we also spent on creating definitions and processing data. To return to the initial question - based on the results of our project these factors determine how fast you can learn a language:
- your understanding of language structures (are you aware of grammar patterns and basic linguistic items?)

- your motivation (do you know why you want to learn the langauge?)

- relationship between your native language and your target language (if you mother tongue is Spanish, you will learn Portuguese or Italian faster than Chinese or Japanese)

- your personal and professional situation (how much time can you spend learning the language, do you have access to resources every day, how many people around you speak your target language, etc.?)

I think it also depends how many languages you already speak. If you are bilingual already it will be easier for you to learn a third language.

There probably are even more aspects to language learning and I'm looking forward to talking about them with you all.
Andreana
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[Jan]

Hi,
in my opinion the most significant is age when did you start to learn, kids under 7 or 8 years have natural ability to memorize sounds, store them in mind and in the range of them later will be able to decode what they have heard ,
or pronounce or repeat etc.
If somebody has started after the magic childhood something like 10 years old
will be suprise because human brain is not taking anything more (naturally ,easy way) .We actually have to mark it by force with new sounds.
It is like recording second hand tape without removing previous text.
Teacher , teacher ,teacher ,teacher .......
if you had bad teacher good help you
because of some teachers you will be stuck for years,
native teachers are in my opinion no good
A man who has not learned a second laungage himself
is getting lost in entire process and my be good for testing
or checking but unable to point out you obvious mistakes
Native teachers mostly underestimate a lot of important
exercises overestimate first sign of improvment
The good teacher does not need to have a lot of knowleage
he needs to be good psychologist.
Languages are so mach stick to our psycho, a way of talking doctors are able to say if you are sick!
The language is first to undercover social status ,age,education itp ...

this is more than culture it is your home
childhood job etc ......

The foreign language needs to be define if it is for simple communication, fun, job, writing, translating , just reading all togeather etc...

[Jan]

Hi,
to write about languages we may easy find enough material
for entire book maybe few books even,
but just to emphasize some of my thoughts
Is the language really just one subject ?
We need probably separete talking from reading ,
understanding from talking , reading from writing and
thinking in foreign language or vocabulary studing
from translating
This is all connected but math and biology is also connected and we study them separate?
The drama is when some people are in deep need of english
due to profesional life changes (for example) and they are just not born to be english spoken.
Great part of english born population is unable to use
any foreign language
but they don't must
Many of my english friends use to say I know
French ,Russian, German, itp...
When me suprise start to ask more - this is going out to be they manage to learn something like
ten - twenty sentences and unforunatly mostly wrong.
English is not easy language not at all.
What i think , a human being is able to learn on very high
level just few languages - precisely three everything more
will be very very over surface.Maybe I am wrong.
Of course are exemptions.
Greetings
Jan

[chocolatee]

Learning the basics of a language is easier but being able to speak it fluently is another matter. To be able to do that, you should speak to someone speaking the language often or if you can afford it, you can live in the country speaking that language. The amount of time needed to learn a language also depends on the person's ability to adapt to the accent and the pronunciation of the words.
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[jav_knot]

Hi.
I think that 1 year is enough to learn a new language (from the basics) if you have at least 3 hours a day to study and practice. I learned French in 1 year and I don't think I am a genious.

[Torsten]

Hi jav_knot,

I agree with you, given the right circumstances you certainly can reach a decent level of proficiency in any language. What about you, why and how did you learn French? Any secrets?
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[jav_knot]

well, I used to listen to a french radio station everyday for at least 1 hour, I read as many french books as I could, and I always searched the meaning of every single word I didn't know. I think the glutamic acid helped as well.

[Torsten]

I suppose it was a French Internet radio channel you used to listen to? Also why did you learn French, I would have thought that Spanish is more widespread in Texas?
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[jav_knot]

well, I'm a native spanish speaker. and yes, it was a French Internet radio channel.

[Torsten]

That's quite interesting. Do you get to use your French in your neighborhood? What lanugage do you speak most of the time, Spanish or English? As far as I can see your English seems impeccable, how did you achieve this?
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[Yankee]