How would you go about teaching your SO your language?

[dragonlady]

google on the internet about learning (insert lang. here) i found some fun stuff in the manor about animals and how to pronounce ect

[teachernicole]

My SO got lucky because I'm an ESL Teacher hehe. But I learned Portuguese slowly by talking with him an hour a day. He also introduced me to his friends and I started talking to his family everyday. It was a slow process for me, but that's how he taught me Portuguese What worked for me was setting aside time to practice Portuguese. I would be able to ask him questions and put together sentences with no stress. As for him...he's my guinea pig for my ESL lessons

[differentcountries]

I wondered about this too... Actually, my husband has taught my boyfriend some Norwegian phrases. I did teach him the mening of "kos" thought He saw the word on a picture of me in front of my friend 's wall and wondered if it was the name of a company and what it meant (a bit hard to explain!). I have sent him some YouTube- videos of Basic Norwegian that he liked. Did not think of buying him basic /children 's books! To learn the language well i guess a proffessional language course is best. I know a little about Turkish prononciation and some words. They say grammer is hard though. Even if he relocates i want to be able to talk a bit with his family/friends and so on.

[TwoThree]

Maybe it's just the kind of person that I am (and the kind of person that my SO is) but I think learning one another's language should be an individual effort. Of course you should help one another with certain aspects/correct each other, but when I try to rely on my SO to teach me Finnish we fail pretty badly.

So yeah, giving them a book for beginner is a pretty good idea.

[Lucky]

I used to offer private english lessons and at some point I did end up teaching in a small school here in Mexico, I always thought I would enjoy doing private spanish lessons for english speakers but never had the chance. Not sure I would want to take the whole responsibility for this for someone I am in a relationship though, I have tried with relatives and it's awkward enough.

If the person knows absolutely nothing about the language that you are trying to teach them, like others mentioned start, with words that you will use a lot. I would follow with a list of cognates to expand their vocabulary and help them not to get intimidated as this will make it feel like it's easy.

Depending on the language you might need to focus more on alphabet and sounds at first, if it's similar enough you can just mention the most obvious differences.

[meaton]

I started to learn Tagalog (my SO native language is Tagalog as she is originally from the Philippines, she just lives in Japan now) using a few websites which provided human translations of various sentences and phrases. I started with the basics (hello, I love you, good bye, how are you). I have Rosetta Stone which has helped so much and the assistance of my SO whenever I need it.

[Dziubka]

I bought my SO books for toddlers, haha!

Books for toddlers or kids and MAGAZINES. In the beginning when I was learning Polish I bought all kinds of magazines, the housewife-ones with stupid stories and recipes and Glamour/Joy/Cosmopolitan. They have really easy texts and the language is very close to spoken language a lot of the time, which means a lot of useful vocabulary.

[Deleted]

Books for toddlers or kids and MAGAZINES. In the beginning when I was learning Polish I bought all kinds of magazines, the housewife-ones with stupid stories and recipes and Glamour/Joy/Cosmopolitan. They have really easy texts and the language is very close to spoken language a lot of the time, which means a lot of useful vocabulary.

Yeah! Native texts are key. The best way to learn a language is to start speaking it from day one, so if your SO's into it, try having a conversation.