Learning a Language

[PonyGirl93]

You are not nerdy at all!! I love learning languages even though I only speak one other than English. My ultimate goal is to learn many of the Romance languages in this order: Spanish (done), Portuguese, French, and Italian.

I have read through several Portuguese grammar books as I have a strange need to conjugate verbs in each tense, even though they say that's not a natural way to learn languages. I struggle with the books as I find that I already understand much of what's written even though I would not know how to speak or recognize what I can already read. I want to be able to speak and understand enough to be able to do business presentations in Portuguese, even if it's with a heavy accent. Understanding written Portuguese isn't my problem..

Do you mind if I ask what you hated about RS? What do members of your language forums say about it and what are their preferred learning methods? Obviously, the best method is to live in the country, but with my five kids and husband, it's not an option at present.

I am most definitely nerdy, but that's alright

The romance languages are beautiful, good luck with your plan!! And I love conjugation! I just feel like I will not know how to say anything if I don't have a firm grasp on the "doing" words. Weird.

Well, I felt that once you got past basic vocab (which it sounds like you will not have a problem with,) it does not teach you anything useful. While it claims that it teaches you in the most natural, thorough method, it really just teaches you mechanical phrases that you strangely and randomly connect with certain photographs. Grammar is miserably neglected, and extremely helpful vocabulary tips (loanwords, false friends, etc) are never explained. That's how I felt about it, anyway. I never paid too much attention to the bashing on the other forum since I was already not using RS. I can PM you the forum if you would like (it is super helpful, useful, and inspiring, regardless of RS bashing :p )