How To Go About Learning A New Language

Sooo im working a pretty easy job atm in a supermarket, no stress or anything. I just finished uni this last summer, i got a 2:1 in business law. I have free time at the moment and want to make use of it instead of watching tv and all the other pointless crap I do. Im trying to set up an eccomerce business currently to do along side my job, and also have a youtube gaming channel.

I'd like to learn a new language. I did french at school for like 8 years or so, and got no where, i failed my french GCSE, because quite frankly I didnt give a shit about languages or about french (no offence). I did the bare minimum to get by in class, and used google translate where I could get away with it.

I'm not sure what language I would like to learn for sure, but I have a few ideas including Mandarin, Russian, Polish and Siamese, maybe German (but I did that at school for 3 years and again got no where).

My thoughts: Mandarin- Not sure why exactly I want to learn Manadarin, partly because its the worlds most spoken language, I think it would be a good language to learn as you dont see many white guys speaking chinese. I also lived with some chinese in my third year of uni and it was hard to communicate. We expect them to be able to speak english, but itd be nice to be able to talk to them in there own language I think.

Siamese- because I had loads of thai friends in third year, some of theirs english was great others it was hard to communicate with them. Id like to visit them, and be able to speak there language to some level. Also my cousin lives in thailand and his 3 kids are growing up there and learning both thai and english, so i think that would be nice for me to learn.

Polish- because my grandfather's (who I never met) family is polish. I't likely i have relatives over there and my dad recently fugured out where his dads family lived. Itd be nice to visit someday and know the language to some degree. Also think itd be nice to carry on my heritage, my dad doesnt know any polish.

Russian- because why not, everyone thinks im russian anyway, i know a few phrases i learnt just to wind up the people at work, but I genuinely think its a cool language, and id love to spend time in russia someday if Putin will have me.

So I dont know if anyone has any thoughts or there own pros or cons of each language or any recommendations. Obviously I cant learn more than 1 realistically, so I have to choose 1 and stick with it for a few years I guess.

I also am not sure how to go about learning a new language. As in I've always just translated from english to french or german at school. Like when i did french id think in english, like if i want to say the colour red, in french i know its rouge. I dont really know how to explain this very well, but i think I always learned other languages as english phrases translated directly into french or german (because they can be) rather than learning a phrase in german and what it means in german, so for example the phrase i play football is translated to ich spiele Fußball. The way its structured and stuff is similar to english. I might be talking out my arse here, but i guess how you learn a language when you're a baby/toddler, where you're learning speech for the first time is much more easily engraved in your brain, than learning a language from knowing another language. Right I give up, im just confusing myself now hahaha. Please help

Submitted January 27, 2020 at 04:10PM by BudgetKiller99 https://ift.tt/30XnScG