Learning a language online

Surely it is up to them. If they join the chat line willingly they are offering to give up their time you are not asking them to do anything they haven’t already offered and signed up for !

I think this is on the wrong thread Momac55.

Apologies Momac55, didn’t read Cath’s post properly. 🙄

I'm learning Welsh using Duolingo. It's hard but I'm sticking at it as my granddaughter is getting married in August and her fiance has a few Welsh speaking relatives and I want to try it out if I can. I'm happy to say a few words to them but will I understand their replies???????

Mojack26

Duolingo...I do Italian. It's free but stupid scenarios...lol but I enjoy it and have learned quite a lit

My snail is going hiking this weekend!

I can say that a treat in German, amongst other useful phrases on the Duolingo app.

The app is ok for learning the basics and vocabulary but doesn't explain errors in grammar unless you pay.

I’m almost fluent in Spanish but have let it slide since returning to the uk. I decided to revise on Duolingo and it’s going well. My son is fluent and has the pronunciation because I chucked him into a Spanish village school aged about 12. After two years, we could see he was unhappy and transferred him to an English private school close to the village. He now needs Spanish in his day job and it has come in very useful. When he holidays in Spain, he generally goes inland and only uses Spanish. His fiancé is Polish but is fluent too as she lived and worked in Barcelona. I think language is a bit of a thing in our family. My husband is Middle Eastern and I get by in Arabic. I studied Greek as worked for a shipowner. I’m not ashamed to say my Spanish is not great and the revision on Duolingo is recommended. I always had the accent but this is teaching me grammar.

DH struggled a few days ago with the word for foot and mouth disease in French. He knew it wasn't^la maladie du pied et de la bouche^, but no way could he get to^la fièvre aphteuse^. That's when you know whether you are fluent or not as I have no idea where I dragged it up from to help him out. I'm sure I never actually learnt the expression.

Well done everyone who's learning, however they do it. I can dimly (!) recall getting enough French to pass an O-Level, about a million years ago (but failed Spanish - kept getting them mixed up!). And that was a struggle when I had a young receptive brain.

Now we see the French version of Maigret (Cremer) being shown on 'Talking Pictures', and I feel a sense of triumph if, just now and again, I can recognise a phrase without the subtitles! I find I can sort of make sense of a written passage, but trying to understand people speaking at their pace (much too fast!) is just overwhelming.

Has nobody yet brought out the gadgets that the Star Trek people used umpteen decades ago to talk to aliens from far off planets?!

Openlearn ( Open University) have free language courses as well as many many others.. excellent materials and support

Has nobody yet brought out the gadgets that the Star Trek people used umpteen decades ago to talk to aliens from far off planets?!

Or a Babel fish?

But that would take away the fun from learning the languages. And lead to further dumbing down of society. Ladies - keep up learning your languages for the sake of your sanity and metal health, even if you never use them!

Has anyone done the opposite of what the OP asks? Teaching English via a chat line online?

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