You ever realize how hard it is to learn a new language?
I've been trying to learn Spanish for my new accounting job, because about 5-7% of it involves dealing with Latinos who don't speak English, aside from "No speak English" bit I hear often.
Well, I've been trying to learn via Rosetta Stone, which, when put together, is more expensive than major kidney surgery. No, seriously. Getting life-saving surgery costs $2,000 less than ALLLLLLLLLL the Rosetta Stone Spanish programs put together. I thought "Hey, maybe its just one disk", but there are different series/versions, and if I wanted to become fluent with them, it would cost something like $17K, while kidney surgery is something like $15K in LA (I'm going off memory from AARP stats I read a few months back, but STILL!)
So basically, there is no fast and EFFECTIVE way to learn another language ASAP. I say effective so... well, effectively, because all the other systems to learn a language suck. I know this because I took Spanish classes AND Japanese lessons, and with the two combined, I have spent 4 years of my life failing to learn a language. Its all memorization, and most people these days can't memorize anything unless they really need to, and even THEN they forget one detail and have to start all over again, versus just printing the info out, sending it via email, writing it down or just simply using the cut and paste functions available on all computers now.
My brothers friend, Phillip, took Spanish for 7 years (!), and to this day cannot speak a word of it. If you help him out, he can slowly stumble along a sentence asking where the bathroom train station is, but that's only if you can help him with the first words. He can't speak the language, much less understand it, because he, for 7 years straight, read out of multiple textbooks that this means this, with no memory aids to enforce it. Just text. And people get bored easily with text upon text upon text if there's no real motivation behind it. Thats why so many people fail to make taxes. (I think...)
Thats why I love Rosetta Stone, and other programs like it. They teach you the basics with pictures AND words at the same time, and you have to match up the word with the picture. Rojo is either Yellow, Blue, Red or White. Which one is it? Click on red. ITS RED!!! AND NOW YOU KNOW IT TOO!!! Thats effective teaching.
So why aren't we teaching everything EFFECTIVELY? I know some people learn some ways, and some by others, but our current teaching method doesn't work. It is, in both a monetary and political standpoint, an epic failure in America. And, as such, we probably won't have any decent multi-lingual Spanish or Chinese or Japanese or Scots students to give us effective translations that cross that race boundary, and thus, the information pipeline falls on Google Translate and BabbleFish. And we all know how effective that is.
GOOGLE TRANSLATION OF THE FIRST TWO PARAGRAPHS:
¿Alguna vez se dan cuenta de lo difícil que es aprender un nuevo idioma?
He estado tratando de aprender español para mi trabajo de contabilidad, ya que aproximadamente el 5-7% de la misma consiste en tratar con los latinos que no hablan Inglés, además de "no hablar Inglés" poco que oigo a menudo.
NOW TRANSLATED BACK INTO ENGLISH:
Did you ever realize how difficult it is to learn a new language?
I've been trying to learn Spanish for my job in accounting, since approximately 5-7% of it is to deal with Latinos who speak English as well as "do not speak English" bit that I hear often.
And guess what? I copied and pasted that translation.
-NicS