Has anyone learned a second language?

I'm looking at going to ministry school and eventually getting a master's and doctorate in either theology or pastoral leadership.

Long story short - some of the programs require a Biblical language (Hebrew or Greek, but not Aramaic). I have a couple "teach-yourself-Greek" books but wondered how much of a challenge it will be to learn another language in my late 30's. I barely know English...

I'm pretty proficient in double dutch

I'm about 50% fluent in "Wife"....but nothing else.

Seriously I tried to learn Spanish with my daughter when she was being home school (with Rosetta Stone).  I had the hardest time keeping up with it.

I am learning some very basic sign language to use with the deaf kids in my room.  That is as close as I have come to learning another language.

Staybrite wrote:

I'm about 50% fluent in "Wife"....

Seriously, you need to open a training school.  We could probably learn a lot from you!

I learned a bunch of French back in High School.

Ou est la salle de bain?  Tout de suite!

Fundy wrote:

Staybrite wrote:

I'm about 50% fluent in "Wife"....

Seriously, you need to open a training school.  We could probably learn a lot from you!

Lesson one in wife-speak.

Wife: "Everything is fine"
Translation:  "You are in serious, serious trouble"

I can also help with learning "Wife".

If you tell her you are going to do something, and she says, "Well, go ahead.  You're going to anyway,"  it means that you have messed up by not reading her mind to know that she wanted to do something particular and hasn't told you or you didn't remember.

If she responds with, "That's fine," then you have probably missed her birthday, your anniversary, the birthday of your kids, or that of her parents and you can go ahead and prepare the dog house if you proceed.

I can speak English, German and a bit French.

I'm fluently bilingual, English-French, as I grew up in a bilingual home. My mom is an anglophone with French as a second language; my dad is a francophone with English as a second language. I have a bit of an accent in both (especially in French, since I grew up in a predominantly English area), and occasionally an expression from one language will make it into the other. I also learned the basics of Spanish and Portuguese, which are very similar, around 4 or 5 years ago. Their similarity to each other and to French made it easier. They say that the more languages you know, the easier it is to pick up more.

There's a French language school on the same campus as the Bible school I attended a couple years ago. Most of the students there are American or Canadian missionaries learning French to go on the missions field, whether in Québec, France, or Africa. A lot of them are anywhere between 30 and 60 (more or less) years old, and perhaps about half haven't had any base in French before. It's interesting watching them struggle with pronouncing certain syllables that don't exist in English, like a nasal n or a rolled r. The grammatical constructs and exceptions aren't the same, either. It's also funny when expressions get translated literally, or just wrong. I have a friend who, instead of "Passe une belle journée" ("Have a nice day"), will say "Fais une bonne journée" ("Do/make a nice day").

My main tip would be to expect the new language (Greek, in this case) to be fundamentally different. Studies have shown that multilingual people think differently in each language, because the underlying structure of the language directs thoughts differently. Try not to literally translate, but instead compare various constructs of Greek with English, and see how they achieve different goals. Have fun.

Thanks Driven for that informative and helpful post.