Learning Natural Languages

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by wolf

I have made several attempts at language acquisition without the benefit of a structured class setting. As a consequence I have a vocabulary of about 20 or so Vietnamese words, and no understanding of the grammar. On a good day I can remember what letters of the Greek alphabet make what sounds, but that's mostly because I learned the Russian Alphabet in a structured class setting and Cyril stole a lot of the characters from the Greek Alphabet.

I learned the Greek Alphabet from a computer science Phd student of all people. He also taught me how to pronounce some Hindi. The Cyrillic alphabet doesn't seem too daunting to me but I'd never want to attempt any of the writings systems for Chinese, Japanese, etc.

I've tried to learn German on my own but it didn't go very far because of lack of motivation. There was nobody to speak it too and I wasn't planning on visiting anytime soon. I took 3 years of Spanish in high school and a semester in college. I can still understand it pretty well mainly because I'm exposed to it around town.

I'm a bit of a language enthusiast.