other way

and words like schrijven give me trouble with the transition to the r.

pimsleur I'm pretty sure teaches the northern dutch accent with the uvular g sound— which is fun too.

You obviously have Dutch ancestors.

Ok, thats confusing. Anyway, feel free to fire away with any questions you may have regarding the Dutch language.

indeed I do, along with my German and Irish ones

I never could learn the sicilian

Oh you ninja editing bastard.

I can see schrijven giving you trouble.

We indeed have a distinction between a "soft" g and a "hard" g as we call it here. The hard g is mainly Holland and Utrecht or "de Randstad". Soft G is mostly the southern provinces like N-Brabant and Limburg. Other provinces have their own accents too.

I learned a lot about it from this book. I still suck though.

Nazi, Car Bomber and stoned all the time..sick combo imo

Dutch is probably tons easier to learn for an Anglo than German. At least my very nonscientific observation is that there's more Anglo friendly soft stuff in Dutch when it's harder stuff in German (languages are similar enough, Dutch kind of reminds me of a mixture of German and English heh)

Also dustin: I'll start a primsleur course next Monday. Not sure which one but most likely French just to brush up on it. My plan is to go through that one in a month or so and then find something else after that. I was thinking two languages per year sounds like a decent tempo as long as they are not of the pretty hard variety.

also: I'm a midterm travelling noob. Does anyone know how hard it is to get one-two month apartments at decent (i.e. sub hotel level) prices ind different countries?

It depends a bit on where you're going but in general for large urban areas I'd say it's pretty easy. The places where hotels might be cheaper are areas where prices are so low that you shouldn't care about the difference.

Biggest issue with Pimsleur is that there are only a handful of languages where you can get a full 90 lesson course. You're limited to:

Arabic
Chinese
French
German
Hebrew
Italian
Japanese
Portuguese
Spanish
Russian

My plan is to start learning Slavic languages eventually since thats the next logical step. After that perhaps it would be time to step out of the I.E. family, but I have no clue with what.

My Maroczy Bind would tie your dragon up in knots.

nonsense, I counter with kingside expansion and an ill-conceived premature attack on your king, sac, sac, mate.

I'm somewhat likely to go Portuguese next because
a) My aunt/uncle have friends there and go there each year
b) Next world cup is in Brazil
c) I think Lisbon is a beautifull city with just the right climate for my taste. Could very well see myself retireing there

I'm 23. I took a few years off from college, but I'm a sophomore.

2 3 hours

2 2 hours

3 1 hour

2 0 hour

I learned Cantonese using Pimsleur, but I believe there were only 30 lessons.

i know i've said it before here but for as much as I love brazilian portuguese is about how much i hate portuguese portuguese— it makes my skin crawl listening to it. i'd still go portugual in a heartbeat of course and just deal with it, but I would definitely resist their accent.

pimsleur does have a 10 part course on the european variety, but the 90 lesson course is brazilian. There are pretty substantial differences such that the two variety are barely even mutually intelligible— way different than say american vs british english or canadian for european french.

Deutsche Welle has a Portuguese podcast that I listen to where you get to hear both varieties though. Since you already know French, Portuguese shouldn't be too difficult for you— especially with its phonetics.

**** French though— the whole dropping of final consonants/ not dropping of final consonants is too much for me. I'll be content just to be able to read it— which I need to be able to do (and practically can) because I keep coming across untranslated quotes while reading linguistics books.

Yeah French will come in handy because I want to read a bunch of econ books in French I also refuse to just waste my pretty good fundamentals.

Owen finally figured out how to clap his lands last night. My wife is working today, so Owen is there with her (she works at a daycare). She sent me this message:

obligatory "mod in training"

zurvan. kids are

too adorable

When you guys say you learned a language, how well do you actually speak it?

honest answer is not very well

with Spanish I can listen to the news and understand a lot...most actually....portuguese too. Communicating with native speakers speaking at native speed is another story.

*As far as my own purely-speaking-ability (ignoring comprehension issues).....it involves a lot of 'uhhh' and searching for words— but I can usually find them.

I usually say that when I understand the meaning of the phrases.

I understand English texts and can watch movies and series without subs, can talk and people understand but don't know almost any grammar when writing.

Spanish I don't talk but I understand almost everything when my Argentinian friend speaks to me and we can understand each other, same when going to other Spanish talking countries nearby Brazil, they mostly understand fairly well Portuguese and we can understand them well talking in Spanish, so we communicate each one talking one language. Can read too but don't write and don't speak.

Japanese I can understand somewhat what they are saying but without making much sense. Like I can identify which topic they are talking about. Can't read.

Italian I can understand somewhat depending on the topic if I am familiar, but can't talk many things besides porco zio, porca madonna, maledeta, figlia di putana, etc.

German, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X1VIyZe3Ws, noo, didn't understand anything...

obviously not a math major. no way to make this work out to 3.75 without some odd system which doesnt weight grades by hours or by classes.

LXThrottle,

You're Brazilian? Where in Brazil do you live?