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Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Best programs for learning other languages?
We've been talking about going to Italy in the fall and I'd love to know a bit of the language if we do go. Anyone have a recommendation of a good program to learn Italian? Preferably one that I can listen to (especially on my commute, so on an ipod preferably).
Re: Best programs for learning other languages?
I second Pimsleur. I had one semester of French YEARS ago, and before our trip to Paris, I spent 10 months brushing up with their cds. I'd say my tourist French had no gaps.
In fact, I actually went back to school last year and also started learning German (school setting, mind you), and I'm in my fourth semester, and I STILL don't feel as comfortable speaking it as I did French just using cds.
I think it all depends on how you learn. I cannot stand the listen and learn type cds because they tend to be all over the place when it comes to lessons. I got so fed up with my french ones that I gave up.
I am currenly "re-learning" German. I have not spoken it in over 20 years and I need to be totally fluent by the fall. I have been listening to a ton of German synthpop/darkwave/industrial music (Wolfsheim, Melotron, Peter Heppner, And One, etc) plus artist interviews. I am on a fan forum thats totally in German. I email a friend in Hannover in my horrible german. I do use google translate quite a bit but I do find it very frustrating because some stuff does not translate properly; it is helping me with how I communicate (slang, figures of speech, vocab, etc).
I am going to test out Livemocha gold starting next month. I will have to see how that works out for me.
If you have a Costco in your area you should check them out. I know ours has the Rosetta Stone for around $400. They also have a few other programs and it seems to be mainly Spanish, French and Italian.
If you have an audible.com membership they also have a ton of stuff and some of it is free.
I am on Livemocha gold right now. I'm not too far into it so I cannot really comment yet. But it seems pretty good. You also have the ability to chat with people who are fluent in the language. I haven't taken advantage of that cause...it's not really my thing. I feel rather weird "meeting" people online and just having a conversatoin with them in another language...just to do it. Maybe because I only know a handful of phrases right now and don't have much to say. I had someone pop up who wanted to chat with me last night and I felt very weird.
Anyway - it's a good mix of vocab and phrases and contextual grammar. The free course is just a lot of vocab, but the one you have to pay for is a bit more about learning how to speak fluently - putting together sentences, etc.
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