How to learn a foreign language

1) Believe Saffy from Ab Fab when she explains that when it comes to learning a language, "you just have to learn it.  It doesn't just happen because you wear the right shoes or smoke the right cigarettes."  

2) Find an online publication in that language that has a really short horoscope and sit and read it with a dictionary every day.  Jot down some of the recurring words about work, feelings and relationships or any other things you're most likely going to want to be able to discuss.

3) Find a good teacher, get lessons, pay him or her well, do your homework, show up on time and generally stick at it.

4) Indulge your inner child by reading children's stories in that language.  If these are too hard and based on old-fashioned language, find translations of children's books you already know and read them in the new language.  Sometimes it's even more amusing than the original. 

5) Listen to the radio, songs and any free podcasts you can get on topics you are interested in in that language and even if you still barely speak a word and only understand about 5% of it, listen for the words you DO know and repeat them to practise the pronunciation whenever you hear them.

6) Find some online flashcards with audio that give you some basic vocabulary or basic verb charts that you'll need to know.  (If you're a total beginner, start with the obvious - 'to be', 'to have', 'to go' etc and then you'll have learnt the hardest ones, because the most common verbs are usually the most irregular.)

7) Repeat and continue.

P.S. Going out with a friend and having a couple of drinks and then speaking in that language for a while also works quite well.  You tend to hesitate less and 'go for it' with the language you do know, which is much better than stumbling along slowly, trying to find the correct ending in your head before you come out with anything.

Confusing culture

I've not been particularly involved with many people for a while.  Isolation has prevailed somewhat.  However, I have had one or two meetings and the last two days has involved meeting two French speakers for two completely different purposes.  One, as a language exchange and the other as more of an interview situation.  I have to admit, it's been a bit disheartening to find that the fact that I've been learning Czech so avidly lately means it infiltrates my otherwise reasonable-ish French.  I've found myself saying some astonishing things.

The first was mixing up a number; 'vingt tisíc' instead of 'vingt-mille' or 'dvacet tisíc' (= 20,000).  Then I mixed up little linking words like 'mais' with 'ale' (= but) and 'et' / 'a' (= and) and 'ou' / 'nebo' (= or) and it was quite funny really, although pretty confusing and incomprehensible to someone who doesn't speak both languages.  Which would be me, in fact, because I really can't say I speak Czech yet.  I can 'get by', i.e. communicate, though it takes some considerable time and all of my case endings are wrong, but it is no doubt the clumsiest, pigeon-Czech imaginable.  Alas.

Whereas, with French, I've recently had a number of compliments.  It's been rather lovely.  Today it was, "your pronunciation is very good", and last week's language exchange was, "ton français, c'est vraiment top".  But then I discovered, I mispronounced something as simple as 'culture'.  I  was hesitant to pronounce the 'cul' (= bum) in 'culture' basically.  So it came out sounding like 'couture' ('sewing'), which, as you can imagine, was rather confusing.  So now every time I try to say 'culture' in French, I think, "dans ton CUL!", without meaning to, but as a way of remembering, yes, I really have to say it starting with the word for BUM.  Hmm.  How, erm, cultured.