Travel and language learning

Do you find a certain pleasure on traveling to far away lands and learning the tongues of different people? I have been learning Italian and Spanish and find that it has kept me in touch with the “humanities” as an academic subject. I have learned about other countries and how other peoples experience the world. Does anyone else here have this sort of predisposition toward learning other cultures? Has anyone here spent time in other countries and done typical expat things (like teaching English as a second language) and should I consider doing it to further develop myself as a person?

I am not yet in a position to travel, though immersion is likely the best technique for learning a language. Necessity is best teacher

>>13306 How can you apply that philosophy to programming languages? There are many projects I want to start but none that I need to.

>>13314 Hmmm, interesting idea. Would be more difficult to immerse, but perhaps look at any small program you use and think on how you'd make it. Perhaps think of how to "translate" IRL actions into scripts or etc

I would travel but am poor user, so need to keep my job just to put food in my belly. Maybe once I save up a few thousand moneys I will travel more. I do speak 4 languages and am working on french and russian sometimes, mainly because I like listening to music and reading poetry, and it is frustrating not being able to understand the lyrics or reading poems in a way that they actually sound good. I have found that understanding the language goes along with understanding the culture, and when you code-switch you take on different personalities depending on which language you speak at that moment. I used to teach English to foreigners at my local library as a volunteer, but I have been too busy to do that lately.

>>13328 What’s the other language besides English? I’m learning Italian right now.

>>13449 I used to speak Italian well (forgotten a lot of it from not using it in over 20 some years). But Spanish and German, are the other ones (I took german in school because I was always interested in it, and a few years of spanish at uni, because it seemed like it was going to be useful in the future). I have been able to keep up with those languages though. I had a girl tell me I spoke "White boy" Spanish (because no specific country accent) but she thought it was cute.

>>13073 I think traveling is good for your personal growth, mainly for seeing big differences in culture and to open up your perspective of the world. Just going to a country is not enough to learn its language though. I've been to a different country for some months with some intermediate level of the language and the language barrier is still high enough that communication with locals suck. I've talked to people that lived abroad for dozens of years and still don't know a single word of the foreign language. This is specially true when language differs a lot. For example, it's a lot easier to do it from Portuguese to Spanish, which are closer languages, to let's say English and Chinese. You mention you've been learning Italian and Spanish, so I'd suggest you focus in one of them, Spanish is nice as it's more spoken overall on the world, and try to use it as much as you can on your free time. You want to have some degree of fluency before traveling, if what you care is to talk to locals, and you can acquire a good level of fluency still in your country. I learned English without ever leaving my country and I could hold deep conversations with natives once I did leave, so it's all about using it and nothing about your geographic position. If you want and can travel with a lower language level, by all means go, it's good for your immersion anyway, but there is this myth that going to a different country can magically teach you a language. That's bullsoykaf. Specially if you are teaching your own language to people most of the time, you might not have that much time to use and practice the local language. Changing a bit of the subject, what are the techniques Lainons are using to learn foreign languages? Tell me your degree of success also.

>>13451 I really liked the pimsleur method (all audio) because it focuses more on pronouncing and phrase memorization/composition. Where it lacks though is in the grammar/language theory aspects, but the ability to speak is immensely helpful in learning the grammar, spelling and theory later on because you understand how it is supposed to sound. Their programs can be expensive, but a lot of libraries have them for free sometimes you could probably also get the mp3s online, but you wouldn't download a car, would you?. I bought the conversational japenese, and have found myself able to pick up a good number of phrases in anime. I actually have a few of their language programs, because they gave me a bunch of 50% off coupons, I might get around to putting all the CDs onto my mp3 player some day instead of just listening to them on my drive to work. Several of my family members swear by those phone apps, but I am a flip phone user. I had access to free Rosetta stone while in high school, and found it to be a bit lacking. I have also bought some of those "idiots guides" to languages but those usually just help with vocabulary, and the method used to teach phrases is often pretty useless or at least not user friendly.

>>13453 Pimsleur seems good. Thanks lainon.

Here's a fun app for finding nearby speakers of languages you know. Pretty new, so not too many users yet, though. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amikumu.amikumu I also recall a similar app for doing this but you could voice and text chat- anyone know of it?

>>13465 Pimsleur is great for getting your feet wet, but for long-term language learning there's no substitute for: https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition