How can someone who understands a language start learning to speak it? [more inside]
posted by ieatwords on Mar 17, 2011 - 15 answers

How do sufferers of Receptive (aka Fluent or Wernicke's) Aphasia understand instruction from experimenters? [more inside]
posted by nilihm on Apr 15, 2008 - 8 answers

For those of you fluent in Japanese, I'd like to hear your best advice on the subject. I've studied for about 4 years, and have been living in Japan for nearly a year, but despite this, achieving true "fluency" still seems like an insurmountable task. Although I am conversationally fluent, at times I become incredibly frustrated. How long do you think it takes to become fluent? And now for the oh-so-impossible question: what should I do to speed up the process? Advice, experiences, suggestions would be welcome from any students of foreign language.
posted by dead_ on Feb 13, 2005 - 9 answers

If I wanted my baby to learn a second language from a family member who speaks it natively, how many hours per week minimum would they need to spend together? I know the more the better, but I am trying to figure out if four or five hours a week will do the trick if we are extremely consistent and do this for many years.
posted by limitedpie on Jan 20, 2005 - 12 answers

How are Spanish and Portuguese different when it comes to grammar?

I speak Spanish fluently and now want to to take up Brazilian Portuguese. From hearing my Brazilian friends speak, and generally understanding them pretty well, I figured that Spanish and Portuguese grammar (syntax) must be very similar, the only differences between the languages being vocabulary and pronunciation. How right am I? If there are syntactic differences, what are they?

Would any speakers of these languages care to comment?
posted by pealco on Mar 28, 2004 - 6 answers