Goa #2: Start a family.

Goal #3: Re-learn Spanish.

Goal #4: Be living in Colorado.

On the other hand the French are well known to not understand English.

A quote from a friend (none-Scandinavian): “Ask a Norwegian/Dane/Swede if he speaks English and he will say “A little” and then continue to speak fluently in English. Ask a south-European if he speaks English and he will say “A little” and it really is a _little_ English.

-Don’t do a university course. They’re a waste of time, because you usually have one teacher and lots of students – in my experience, the teacher spends the hour telling you what to ddo, then you do it for homework. Assuming you’re motivated, you can do without the cost (in time and money) of the course quite fine.
-French, all the way. I’m doing it, so of course you want to do it! :-)
-the foreign service institute puts out language learning resources, and since they’re a government entity, (almost) all the audio recordings and transcripts etc are public domain. the website [http://www.fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php] hosts these files legally – get them and use them. They’re a really good resource. I can’t see one for Norwegian, but there is one for French, and Spanish.
-For learning vocab, I have two resources: the first is anki [http://ichi2.net/anki/], and the second is the shkoota project [http://shtooka.net/en/]. I don’t have time to explain them, but check out the websites – they’re both invaluable resources!

Thanks,
Chad Oliver

Maybe you need to prioritize the three and specify which 1 or 2 you are willing to sacrifice in the interest of completing the first?

I don’t know, I’m just thinking out loud here. I suspect I struggle with the same issue for myself. I often get motivated, make lots of goals, but apparently don’t consider that they will all be draining my time and maybe I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

However, some languages are just more fun to learn and to speak. I’ve learned a little ASL, Latin, Hebrew, German, French, Spanish, and Italian. The most fun to learn was ASL because it’s fun to try to guess where the signs came from. The easiest for me was German and I also think it’s fun to learn because of all the compound words. (The word for glove could be translated as handshoe, for example). The most fun to try to speak with an authentic is accent is (I know I’m supposed to say French) Italian.

On a different note, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is coming up.

On learning another language, I would suggest no more than an hour daily practice. Some days, your head fills up in 1/2 hour and that extra 30 minutes gains you nothing. I would also suggest that you begin reading children’s books in the foreign language to your kids (this doesn’t count as you studying). They should be easy to find or request at your local library. Don’t expect your children to start talking to you in French (or whatever language you choose) unless you’re talking to them in French. I speak a bit of French and Spanish at work and have had housekeepers who spoke Spanish and French since my boy was two. They proclaimed his childish fluency but no matter how much I spoke to my boy, he’d always say “No! Momma speak English” until just this past year. Maybe he was just telling me how bad my accent is :-) .

*Everything sounds more profound in Latin.

In addition to all the reasons Joanna listed, it’s also easier to learn in the US because all region 1 DVDs have a French track on them. Also you’ve said before that you’d like to spend time living in rural France when you retire; that is not realistic unless you speak French (or are willing to compromise your plans by staying in Paris or a touristy area).

Norwegians are not used to foreginers learning their language and expect to speak English; they also tend speak English better than Frenchmen or Germans because a lot of their American TV programmes are only subtitled, whereas in the larger countries they are dubbed.

I don’t recommend learning French and Spanish at the same time, as you can get them confused, and your progress isn’t as tangible. Better to learn one, and then use that knowledge to make learning the other easier.

You should read Your Mortgage: and how to pay it off in five years (by someone who did it in three) by Anita Bell. It’s great motivation and a great read. Interestingly, she also wanted to be a novelist and initially couldn’t get published. She wrote a series of personal finance books and then was able to get published as a childrens author.

And I found it interesting that you were the one who made me aware of LiveMocha, but you didn’t mention it when you talked about learning a foreign language. They have huge resources and lots of native speakers (all free and available whenever you are) for at least 3 out of the 4 languages you listed. I’m not sure how much Norwegian material they have, although they’ve recently added Finnish lessons.

Here’s my guess on the popularity of the language detour: in addition to being a goal, learning a foreign language is also a diversion, which is kind of fun. There’s certainly work and dedication required to get there, but not nearly as much as would be the case with paying off $190,000 in debt over five years. Learning a foreign language seems downright doable compared to that!

I speak french….living in Quebec province (I immigrated here from the states)…it is easy to practice. If you ever want to chat me up for a lesson I could give introductory lessons via webcam inexpensively we could prehaps even barter. You just have to give me a shout…and know that my french is french canadian not european. Which means that I prounce vowels differently and slang is a different ball game here. There are some french people who think it is not great sounding french but personally I think quebec french is more practical for Americans. It is much less expensive to take a visit and practice here. Networking is also easier having a command of french. Every conference I have gone to since learning to speak fluently a couple of people speak french and they seem to congregate together no matter which country they come from. Its nice.

My four big goals : Purchasing a condo or house, starting my business successfully and out of the red (which means maintaining part time work for a while), writing my first books (a non-fiction and fiction book which are already started), and losing the last 10 lbs of the 45 I gained while pregnant.

They always say we overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in five years. I like the notion of asking “what am I doing this month to advance this goal”.

French is definitely on the “easy” end of languages to learn for most of us, just because of how much of it is around, but I’m learning quite a minority language in Bengali (and keep up with my home language of Irish too). It would be very tough without having my husband and his family to practice with and bounce questions off, just reading ain’t the same. Not sure how you’d go about getting conversational practice in Norwegian in Iowa (?) but you never know.

other goals i have is to finish my education, increase my emergency fund and have a company of my own one day- in robotics.