How long to learn languages?

just do it senpai

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I write down the six gramathical persons on a column. Next to it, the verbs conjugated in each form and tense. Start with the most essential verbs can, have, being, want and you'll be able to form basic sentences. I've taught myself italian with this. (And watching anime dubbed all day). Took me about four months; but given spanish is my mother tongue it was a walk down the lane.

>>9495022
thanks for the advice mate, what level would you say you're at now with your italian?

An hour a day for a hundred days or so and you could read basic literature in French (prob It and Sp too but i dont know them).
Half an hour a day would prob take 300 days
15 mins etc

>>9495038
Conversational. I'd say 80 percent. I can understand tv or music, and just recently got a book to read it. My problem is the word ci wich has lots of uses and variations; but other than that, is going pretty well.

English is my fourth language
I think I can say something about realistic experiences rather than mere speculations or idealistic guesses. I'm not telling you what to do, just writting some notes I think would be helpful.
I'll write it assuming you're a native english speaker, btw.
Here it goes
1) assuming you're working on other indo european languages, make sure you're paying enough attention to the grammar early on. The later you start caring about it, the later you'll end up speaking it naturally, what will ensure you a hard time to adapt.
Vocabulary is important, but compared to english other indo european languages rely heavily on grammar.

2) It takes time, it doesn't mean you're dumb, and it doesn't mean "the language is difficult" either. It only means you didn't adapt up to now. And you're being naive if you're thinking you're going to adapt that fast at the beginning.

3) try to get rid of your accent by learning the differences between the sounds of english and the other languages you're learning. One of the most typical things native english speakers do when they try to learn other languages is that they do it without changing the way they used to pronounce words in english. I wouldn't advise anyone to neglect that.

4) read a lot and use the language all the time. That's how you're going to learn new words, the "pitch" the language has, and so on.

5) learn about the culture. It will help you understand a lot of things about the language as well.

You're going to make horrible mistakes at first, but there's no problem with that as long as you're humble enough to accept people correcting you now and then without taking it personally. Making mistakes is going to be the thing that will help you the most at the beginning when you start speaking to people in that language. So don't avoid that, embrace it and just go for it. Later on you'll stop making them and will be able to tell what is right and what wrong by yourself.

If you end up looking at the learning process as a positive thing and actually enjoying the process, then you won't have a hard time.

>>9495198
thanks for this advice mate, really useful and i'll be sure to make a note of it.
Which languages do you speak other than English?
If I need any other advice/questions do you mind if I take your email/discord or whatever you use (lol is an option if you play)
thanks a lot

>>9494983
I have experience in French, Italian, and Spanish, OP.

French is probably the easiest modern, widely spoken language a native Anglo can learn (they say Afrikaans is easiest, but who knows?). I'll list a few examples why French is easier than Italian and Spanish for Anglos.

>French has one verb for "to be," Spanish and Italian have two.
>More vocabulary in common with French e.g. "danser" for "to dance" whereas Spanish and Italian use "bailar" and "ballare."
>French has fewer verb tenses and less irregular verb forms.
>There is more good French media to consume to help you gain fluency than there is in Spanish and Italian.

It's slightly easier to learn Italian after Spanish and vice versa because they're a little closer to Latin than French. However, knowledge of French would certainly aid you if you wanted to learn Spanish and Italian later.

Most of all, you want to study a language of a culture you love or intrigues. You won't want to feel like you're wasting all that time for nothing.

>>9495327
or intrigues you*

>>9495327
>Most of all, you want to study a language of a culture you love or intrigues. You won't want to feel like you're wasting all that time for nothing.

This is the most important thing imo. Learning a language is still boring/frustrating and requires willpower to persevere.

>>9495345
That's exactly it. I managed to get pretty far in French because I loved the chansons, poetry like Rimbaud, and the New Wave cinema. I don't care as much for that now, but it helped me become fluent.

That's why there are so many people here who know Japanese. They like anime, J-Pop, Yukio Mishima, etc. Yet Japanese is as hard as any other Asian language.

Study any language which has the most media you like in it. If it doesn't have great media, I hope you'll have many opportunities to practice it with people in your country or abroad otherwise you'll go out of practice.

>>9495247
Other than english I can speak german, french, and some spanish

You can lurk around /t/ if you're interested in language resources (they have a language thread over there), or that /lang/ thread they make every now and then on /int/. Some years ago you could easily find "language learning packs" on torrent websites all around, but I don't really know if they're still seeding them nowadays. If you're looking for some interesting material you can check it out and maybe you could find something useful to you.

Another thing I can add is that if you're looking for grammar books you'll find some great material if you look for older books, stuff written before the 50's or so. These books can be quite big and intimidating, but their content always pays off at the end.

If you have any other questions you can always ask or make a thread, /lit/ is a relatively small community of posters, and most of the people you'll probably talk to will be regular posters since the topics allowed to discuss on the board are quite restricted and well defined by mods.
It's not that I don't want to tell you my email address, it's just that I wouldn't be that comfortable sharing it on 4chan, I'd rather just be an anon instead of identifying myself in any way whatsoever

As long as you reserve a few hours a day to the language and work on your passive skills (listening, reading, etc) as much as your active skills (speaking, writting, formulating, etc) you won't find any trouble along the way

>>9494983
Anyone know the artist for OP's pic? (I like it)