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Showing results for tags 'book language'.
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I noticed there are a couple of bilingual members on this forum, and was wondering whether anyone is learning a language at the moment? I've only learnt Spanish to GCSE Level (two years of learning for those not from the UK), but I went to Spain twice this year and was surprised at my ability to converse with the locals despite my mediocre ability. These visits to Spain have stimulated my desire to learn languages now - it is such a different experience when you can converse with people in their native tongue. I've started learning French now alongside Spanish. I'm currently using a website called DuoLingo, which consists of various levels of vocab which you need to practice through - a bit like a game. It makes learning languages more enjoyable. As for Spanish, I have been listening to some Spanish music, watching films (with subtitles) and reading the news everyday in Spanish to try and improve my vocabulary. When we learnt languages in school, we spent a lot of time learning words which would never be spoken on a day-to-day basis (my Spanish presentation in school was on Global Warming!). So I've been trying to improve my everyday Spanish by using the media. My French isn't good enough to understand full sentences at the moment, so I am just going to stick to DuoLingo until I feel more comfortable with the structure and grammar. Bringing this thread back to books, I have been planning to read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Marquez for a while now. However, I wonder whether a translated version of the story can really be the same as the original? Surely by translating it, you are taking away some of the meanings behind the sentences? I have bought the english translation of the book and will get around to reading it soon, but I do wonder how different the experience would be, reading the novel in Spanish. What is everyones experiences of learning languages? What methods did you use? My main weakness is pronunciation, as I have little opportunity to practice French or Spanish here in the UK. I think I may start talking to myself just for practice.