Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?

#41

Post by atgm » Mon, Jun 27, 2011, 6:11 AM UTC

English and Japanese. I also studied Latin for quite a long time, which means I have a decent stepping stone for all of the Romance languages and can read many of them with a bit of thinking. I've also studied a bit of Mandarin. I also learned American Sign Language for a bit and am learning some Japanese Sign Language now as well.

I'd like to study Arabic and Welsh sometime.

I generally study languages based on how much I'd like to learn that language and how different it is from English. I have a lot of friends that study based on business (Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin being the big ones), but that doesn't really appeal to me.

Re: Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?

#42

Post by shii » Mon, Jun 27, 2011, 6:23 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #28

scottseaward wrote: post #25

German - 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…

Anki is amazing on the desktop, but the iPhone app leaves something to be desired (note, I last tried it Dec 2010, so the app might have changed significantly since then).

If you want a large base of cards to start with and the same idea of learning (SRS/Spaced Repetition Software), I'd recommend one of the many excellent Quizlet iPhone apps[1]. I personally use Flashcards Deluxe by OrangeorApple[2].

[1] http://quizlet.com/mobile/

[2] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flashcards-deluxe/id307840670...

Re: Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?

#43

Post by mattm » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 5:47 AM UTC

wisty wrote: post #15

tokenadult wrote: post #2

Chinese (various Sinitic languages, but especially Modern Standard Chinese), German, Japanese, Russian, the original languages of the Bible, samplings of Latin and of various Romance languages, interesting conlangs, and others. Here's a link to language-learning advice: http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html Here's one of my favorite links about one conlang: http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

Chinese too. I've found Mnemosyne (a flash card app) quite useful, for learning lots of characters, though I already knew a lot about radicals, and how to combine them. My personal project (not working yet) is a language learning web app. I think there's actually a couple of more advanced language web apps by HNers too.

Check out Remembering the Hanzi by Heisig

Re: Ask HN: What natural languages do you learn?

#44

Post by civilian » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 9:59 PM UTC

lsb wrote: post #10

I 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 have an undeveloped passion for latin (I usually just get excited when I figure out the latin roots for English words). Quick question, what about all of the small words that aren't included in that? Like "qui" and "ab" on the first line of that link you gave? Are you imagining that your users will figure them out through context, or was there another good reason for not including them?