Now that another of my kids is back at work (thank you God!) I have been providing some transportation. Sometimes she has to stay a bit late or run an errand, so I wanted to find a way to redeem the time in the car, parked and waiting. I discovered some free language apps for my Kindle Fire tablet and got the same app, "Learn ____ 6000 Words", in 4 different languages. Here is what I have learned so far, after starting each at the beginning and working through a few lessons:
German: My pronunciation skills always need more practice. I don't sound anything like the native speaker on the app. I took German in high school and college, including scientific translation, but am nowhere near fluent. I can read or watch a movie, but want to get much better.
Norwegian: Not as similar to German as I expected, but still not too hard to pick up some basic vocabulary. No previous experience except watching the Ragnarok series in Norwegian with English subtitles.
Italian: I find it downright musical, and decided I wanted to learn some Italian after watching Medici on Netflix. I can roll an r, which is helpful. I did have some experience singing in Latin, but not specifically in Italian.
French: I haven't got a prayer when it comes to spelling or pronouncing French, but I think I could learn to read it. Possibly understand it when spoken, but not sure. The sounds all seem to blur together when I hear the speaker on the app. No experience, although one of my sisters started college as a French major and my daughters all took some in high school.
I have put the link for one of the apps below--just follow it and look for the language you want to check out. Comment and let me know what you think. No affiliation, just free fun.
I'd concentrate on one language, at least not more than two. And I'd try to avoid learning two languages at the same time that are too close - so no two romance languages. I tried learning Spanish in the last years of high school as a third language when I already had French classes for four years. Well, being related made some things easier, but the similarities were too confusing. So I kept to English and French :)
For pronunciation, there's not much to do but training. What about listening to radio, especially news in the foreign language? For German there's the Deutsche Welle. International news is easier than other things because with a lot of topics you know what they are talking about.
And since you are a religious person, what about listening and singing religious hymns? I presume you're not catholic, I don't know much about catholic hymns. But the old German songs like Befiehl du deine Weg or Geh aus, mein Herz, und suche Freud belong to the most beautiful combinations of lyrics and words ever. You should be able to find the lyrics without problems and listen to songs on Youtube. And singing is more fun than simply reciting foreign texts :)
Yes, I have a small collection of German music. Beethoven's 9th, of course. Mozart, Bach. And switching the language on a familiar movie is another trick I use. I also have a prayer app that has a dozen language options, and a German Bible on my Kindle.
I don't plan to learn multiple languages, but wanted to sample a few out of curiosity. German is my priority, but if/when I add another it might be Italian--lots of fun to sing and plenty of great opera music. Also different enough from German to not be confusing.
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