Yes, I speak Norwegian and English. I studied German for six years at school, I hated it. I've now been studying Italian for six or seven months, love it.
Norwegian is my mother tongue, not much to say there.
English; I am very pleased with my level of comprehension. Which has come with years and years of massive input almost every day. I've taken my English for granted over the years, but I have come to appriciate the fact that I can write about so many things in it and the great advantage it gives me when researching and communicating. My reading and comprehension of the language is pretty damn good, my writing is good.
My speaking abilities is at best okay. My accent is thick, and I imagine holding longer conversations with someone would be pretty exhausting to begin with. If I put an effort in to have weekly conversations(ex: over skype) in english, I am pretty sure I'd excel quickly, considering I've "studied" the language for approx. 15 years.
As for my German, I believe I represent yet another example of the terrible system of language learning that our school's teach us. How many people actually enjoy these classes? Not many! And how many people can actually say they are able to hold a conversation over the level of "Hi, my name is..." "I am 20 years old..." "I come from 'Murica and I like to play hockey..."? And thats an acceptable level? AFTER YEARS OF STUDYING???
I only believe the people who can enjoy such classes are the one's who have a great external influence(you grew up in a family that speaks the language and/or a community where you have many speakers of the language). I believe language teachers are a good source of grammar drilling, but the over-emphasis grammar is the main reason why I think the schools system of language learning fails so badly.
I know for a fact that I can easily gain many levels in my German. I visited Berlin last summer, I didn't try to speak with any of the locals though, I hadn't "done" any German in years, I am also very shy and blabla. I did however pick up the German version of Dan Brown's
Inferno and the audio version of the same book, this in German too. And I read through the book, understanding most of it without the need of a dictionary, it was a great feeling. =)
As for my Italian, I started learning Italian because I love Italian football. Also because I'd like to learn a southern European language, I'd like to get beneath the bullshit images I get from people who "know" Italy. I am so tired of "living on" the stereotypes we have of other cultures and people. I believe that learning a language is the best way to access a better understanding of other cultures' worlds. Rather than reading about it through texts in a foreign language.
Italian is the first language I am actively learning by my self. My "plan" has been to spend a little time(min. 1 hour) every day with the language. My first phase involves gathering vocabulary, listening and reading. My plan is to keep doing this until this summer(15th of june 2014 to be exact). The next phase is to start writing in the language, this is where I'll implement learning grammar too. Then the last phase is to learn to actually speak the language. I've got a really good idea of how I'll go about learning how to write the language and do grammar drills, but learning how to speak it will be a great test in going outside my comfort-zone. I CAN'T WAIT, SUCH GREAT CHALLENGES AHEAD. herpderp.
I started my self-learning by going through the Assimil Italian, reading and listening over and over to the material. This is the hardest and most boring part of learning a language(from what I can understand), you're stuck with material made especially for language learners, which often times can be awfully dreadful. I think Assimil is pretty good though, the edition I used was the one they released in the 80's.
After that I used a lot of material on lingq.com, very good to acquire a bigger vocabulary. I am sure everyone can find some content on there they find interesting. At the same time, I've been listeing to podcasts. RAI, Mix 24 and SBS's Italian edition. I've now arrived at a level where I can understand most of what is said. Currently, I've begun to read a PDF-version of Isaac Asimov's
The Gods Themselves in Italian. It's a lot of work, but I think it will pay off greatly. The plan is to keep learning Italian until the summer of 2015. Then I'll see how I am doing and how interested I am in keeping at it.
If any of you are interested in using this method, just google "download website as PDF", get the app, then download articles in a subject you're interested in. Highlight each word you don't understand and fill in the translated meaning in a language you do understand in pop-up boxes.
My language "mentors" are Steve Kaufmann AKA lingosteve(www.
youtube.com/user/
lingosteve), Moses McCormick AKA laoshu505000(www.
youtube.com/user/
laoshu505000) and Luca Lampariello(
www.youtube.com/user/poliglotta80)
EDIT:
As for learning more languages. I'd like to achieve a fluent level in Mandarin and Arabic.
