Thank you all very much for your suggestions. I'm pleasantly surprised at how fast some of you have been able to learn languages overseas. My initial guess was that it would take like a decade to become fluent in a foreign language. Some of you have done it in less than a year.
@E_Irizarry
E_Irizarry wrote:
Call me a grouch, but I feel that you need to earn your answers by being a real contributor to this forum.
I just put another dude on blast yesterday about trying to bum off of us for information.
I'm tired of this pokerface shit you assholes come on here with. Like really.
What do you mean? I have contributed. During the same login session I posted 11 other posts including:
Suggestions I offered to improve the forum
viewtopic.php?p=48188&highlight=#48188
Advice I offered:
Free - Poll: Philippines or Ukraine?
viewtopic.php?p=48177&highlight=#48177
jaymcgoff - Best country for very short guys?
viewtopic.php?p=48180&highlight=#48180
CheezeRaider - Where to go???
viewtopic.php?p=48176&highlight=#48176
Winston - Why I'm tired of living in Angeles City, where to move to?
viewtopic.php?p=48173&highlight=#48173
Humor I contributed
The Onion makes fun of Hillary Clinton
viewtopic.php?p=48190&highlight=#48190
The Onion makes fun of women who tan too much
viewtopic.php?p=48172&highlight=#48172
How Casey Anthony should have been tried
viewtopic.php?p=48171&highlight=#48171
@well-informed
well-informed wrote:
Can't tell if he's spamming the forum or have sincere intentions
I do have sincere intentions. I read Winstons personal story and was very inspired by it.
I have some doubts as to if it will work for me but I'm hoping I'll have more luck overseas.
well-informed wrote:
Believe me i cringe just looking at the cyrillic alphabet
Same here. When I see those wierd symbols it SCARES the crap out of me.
@odbo
odbo wrote:
It's a pretty dumb reason to go to South America instead of Europe because you were too lazy to study.
It makes a difference if it takes one year or ten years to become fluent. I'm 41 so if it takes 10 years then
I'd be in my fifties before I could effectively communicate with the local populace. That would make it much
harder to find a wife.
@DaRick
DaRick wrote:
The ease of learning a language also depends on how old you are. It is easier when you are younger.
Would learning it at 41 be twice as difficult as it was in high school? Three times? Any guesses?
DaRick wrote:
You may be able to get by well with English and German in Eastern Europe and maybe know
just enough of the local language to get by without being particularly fluent.
Well, personally I want to know the language well when I'm in the country I choose.
I'd be pretty scared living somewhere when I didn't know what other people were saying.
@Think Different
Think Different wrote:
For someone who doesn't know anything about languages,
and still wants to go to Eastern Europe, try Slovio instead (
http://www.slovio.com).
By comparison, Spanish is rated by the US State Dept. as one of the world's EASIEST languages
for an American to learn. There is no real EASY language or HARD language. It's all a matter
of perspective of the speaker's native language and how close the language being learned is
linguistically to their native tongue . A Russian will find Bulgarian VERY easy, but English
harder. An Italian would find English hard, but Spanish super easy. A Finn would find
Estonian super easy, but Polish difficult. Got it?
Thank you for the valuable information Think Different!
Someone else had told me all of Eastern Europe used Cyrillic characters. Guess they were wrong.
You put:
Bulgaria as moderately difficult and
Latvia as difficult.
Is moderately difficult more or less difficult than difficult?
@ladislav
ladislav wrote:
I was studying Spanish 2 hours a day and it took me 8 months to get to university level
and then another 2-3 months to speak conversational Spanish fluently.
That is great news! Less than a year to become fluent in Spanish.
ladislav wrote:
I guess Russian would take you some 12-15 months to be fluent in.
Really? With all the backwards R's and strange Cyrillic characters?
Could a person really read Russian books and understand people in only 12-15 months
or did you mean a more basic understanding?
@momopi
Thank you for the very useful link. We should add that to the FAQ page.
So Spanish is 600 hours and most of Eastern Europe is 1100 hours.
Almost twice as long to become fluent in Eastern Europe.
Four times as long in Eastern Asia.
@Jackal
Jackal wrote:
Hungarian has lots of case endings for nouns, its word order is often the exact
opposite than it is in English, it has postpositions instead of prepositions,
it has two different conjugations for transitive verbs in each tense
(which is twice the work), and it has several vowels and consonants which we
don't have in English. Put it all together, and it's
like trying to play chess while riding a motorcycle!
Then why did you move there?
To torture yourself?
Or are the women really, really hot and therefore worth it?
Jackal wrote:
Although I've been in Hungary for 3 years, I am not yet fluent in Hungarian because my job teaching English is a constant distraction, because only a few mediocre resources are available in English about Hungarian, and because I've just been studying it on and off. However, I can now understand most of what people say to me. But I'm still pretty slow replying. I know almost all the grammar, I just need to learn more vocab (I think I approached things backwards and I would recommend emphasizing vocab over grammar from the beginning).
But I would say that it's possible to become fluent in Hungarian in 2 or 3 years if you are in an ideal environment, you work hard at it, and you have excellent teachers from the beginning. The less ideal your situation and the less hard you work, the longer it will take.
Well that isn't that bad. If an extremely difficult language like Hungarian can be learned to the level where you understand most of what people are saying in only three years then the situation isn't as bad as I thought. I initally thought I would have to live in East Europe for like 10 years before I could effectively communicate. That is why I was looking at the easier Spanish countries even though women in South America aren't nearly as hot.
Are you very good with languages? Are you a fast learner or an average learner?
Another useful link we should add to the FAQ page.
Jackal wrote:
What is much less talked about is the advantage of learning such a language. In my view, the main advantage is that once you learn a language that few foreigners ever learn, then that allows you to have whole areas of the country just to yourself where you don't have to compete with other foreign men.
Good point. The less competition overseas, the bigger the advantage.
@onezero4u
onezero4u wrote:
an advantage to spanish besides being relatively easy for native english speakers is that its a passport to around 20 countries which use it as their official language. more bang for your buck so to speak.
Yes, that is true. However, how many of those countries have attractive women? I'm mostly just attracted to Caucasian women. It seems like the only 4 Spanish speaking countries with Caucasian women are
Spain, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay
and they are somewhat darker and less attractive than the East European beauties. Are there any other Caucasian Spanish Speaking countries?