I'm fluent in English, learning Esperanto (mother tongue: spanish). Took 3 years of Portuguese at high school. I'm learning sign language too (i'm not deaf), does that count as a natural language?
Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?
31–40 of 44 posts
Re: Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?
#32German - I'm moving to Berlin in a few weeks and want to cram as much language learning into that time as possible. Can any of you talented polyglots recommend techniques for learning lots of vocabulary quickly?
The quickest dirty hack is using Anki or another spaced repitition sytem program. If you download Anki you can get at the shared decks and there rea some very nice ones for German vocabulary. For speaking/understanding speech I've heard great things about Pimsleur. Once you have the rudiments of the language listen to podcasts all the time. Learn the grammar. You are unlikely to pick up more than the utter basics by…
Excellent, thanks for the recommendations!
Re: Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?
#33I am native German and learned English and Latin in school. I value both languages very highly. I started with Esperanto, but got bored fast and left it again. Later in school I added Russian, which I really liked, but have forgotten by now, because I never get to pratice. I picked up Finnish at university, which really is a beautiful language and I can only recommend (not much use, but nice to learn^^). At the moment I am learning Swedish as I will move to Sweden in a few months. On my still-to-learn-list reside Arabic on top, closely followed by Japanese. I just love learning a few more scripts.
Re: Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?
#34I read Latin and Greek, want to know more French, and am intrigued by Sanskrit and Japanese. I wanted to read more Latin and have more fun reading, and I decided that looking words up in a dictionary was an easy step to circumvent, so I made a website nodictionaries.com --- if you read Latin, check out http://nodictionaries.com/vergil/aeneid-1/1-7 if you want to read twice as fast.
Mea Hercule! Hodie facere cupivi, sed hunc ludam.
Seriously, though, this is incredible. I'll probably play with this all weekend.
Re: Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?
#35I would like to learn French and Chinese. Being Vietnamese and trying to understand more about Vietnam's history, I know that there are a lot of ancient tomes written in French and Chinese (Vietnam had 1000+ years of Chinese occupation and about 200 years of French). My hope is to some day read those original tomes in their full context and meaning rather than translated ones.
Re: Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?
#36I used to study Spanish but have become quite rusty at it due to lack of use over the last 10 years. Quite interested in picking up either German or Russian (I like both, I just haven't settled on one yet).
Re: Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
The quickest dirty hack is using Anki or another spaced repitition sytem program. If you download Anki you can get at the shared decks and there rea some very nice ones for German vocabulary. For speaking/understanding speech I've heard great things about Pimsleur. Once you have the rudiments of the language listen to podcasts all the time. Learn the grammar. You are unlikely to pick up more than the utter basics by…
Excellent, thanks for the recommendations!
You're welcome. The Volkshochschule have ridiculously cheap evening classes for all levels of German ability. In the unlikely event that you're at a loose end for weeks at a time the Integrationskurse are ~free. Google 'em for more info.
Re: Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?
#38I used to study Spanish but have become quite rusty at it due to lack of use over the last 10 years. Quite interested in picking up either German or Russian (I like both, I just haven't settled on one yet).
As a native Russian speaker, may I advise German. Russian has all the grammatical complexity of German + non-Roman phonetics + Cyrillic alphabet + word order that's not prescribed, but has stylistic meaning.
Re: Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?
#39I read Latin and Greek, want to know more French, and am intrigued by Sanskrit and Japanese. I wanted to read more Latin and have more fun reading, and I decided that looking words up in a dictionary was an easy step to circumvent, so I made a website nodictionaries.com --- if you read Latin, check out http://nodictionaries.com/vergil/aeneid-1/1-7 if you want to read twice as fast.
I really like the website! Would it be possible to add more languages and allow users to enter text - stem it and add the dictionary entries automatically?
nodictionaries.com/novifex
Re: Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?
#40I know Tamil, Sanskrit, English(a mix of US,UK and Ind), Hindi, French(a bit)