@Silver, I understand that, yes. From experience, speaking and writing a language come from vastly different fundamentals. It's often better to pick one path first. If you wish to speak, interact with a native speaker. If you wish to learn to write, then first learn to read.
leaning to speak the language to me would be easier. The few broke sentences that I've learned to speak were self taught and to learning to speak native language it's harder to learn by yourself then when you have someone who's teaching you the proper way to pronounce the words.
I learned Castilian Spanish, and it's quite an adjustment to decipher a Latin American Spanish speaker. Similarly, I can only understand Quebecan French after some adjustment period.
A friend and I met a couple from Canada in Paris and we had lunch, my friend commented to me: "They understand everything we say but I barely understand them, this is crazy."
@Morgan same in reverse with castilian vs. latin american spanish. french i have an easier time with since i learned mainly european french, but most of my francophone friends are canadian (either québecois or acadian).
fun fact: linguists don't actually use the term dialect, and instead use the word variety, for two reasons. one, it has negative connotations to some people. two, it suggests that there are hard lines between languages, and dialects are strictly within those boundaries, which isn't the case.
I once attempted to speak Latin American Spanish with a lost tourist from Argentina for nearly 15 minutes before I learned she spoke English very well.))
Update on the Louvre Robbery: there are four more being arrested today, unfortunately there's no trace of the jewels being found since October 19th according to BBC News.
You know, there was a question from one of my fb pages I follow that asked, if time travel were possible what event would you visit in history and change. My response was that I'd stop or make sure Hitler were never born. And then I began thinking about it. And thought....how would that change ACME? Would we still be Anerican and international? Would we still have The united nations and NATO?