Well, english is my second language, and I remember becoming fluent at it by reading comics when I was a kid. It was both fun and educational at the same time. Also, I was a 80's kid and it did help that the era/place i lived in did not have much access to computers, video games etc, and reading comics was still considered a fun activity (apart from playing cricket / sports ) !
Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
81–90 of 207 posts
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I ask respectfully what you mean by fluent? Only because...the textbook definition and the colloquial definition differ. I think generally when people say 'fluent' they mean 'native speaker level at reading, writing and speaking language X', whereas fluent actually means you can speak without hesitation on a range of topics. Just a clarification, not an attack! Edit: Plus, I wouldn't knock wordlists. I started tr…
I also have a problem with the word "fluent". Ok you say you're fluent, here's a simple self-check: Explain to someone in the language you claim to be fluent in how you'd go about making a fire without any matches. (hint: you need to use words like tinder, kindling, flint, etc.). If you can't do this, or grapple with the fact that you don't have a repertoire of these words in your vocabulary, you might want to recons…
To be fair, there's a lot of native English speakers who can't explain how to make a fire with any matches, and wouldn't know what tinder and kindling are.
That is a reasonably specific domain of knowledge.
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#83Spent five years in the UK after 15 years practising from home, neither native nor perfectly fluent but understood the place and have found my own voice. I can even produce non-trivial poems ehehe. If you need business level only, you don't need to be fluent, just proficient within your field of expertise so grammar, pronunciation, daily vocabulary and deep into your industry slang. Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#84Anecdotally, one girl loved Harry Potter books. After acquiring basic level of foreign language, she would re-read those books in that language. As she knew the story back and forth, new words came to her in very familiar context, and learning was much more effective. I'd be interesting to research more this method !
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#85I'm surprised to see no mention of Kindles / ebook readers. I tried reading novels to improve my German, but the physical effort of switching to a dictionary (either physical or web-based) was enough to make reading a chore. With my Kindle, I've downloaded an English-German dictionary and some novels, and now when I don't know a word I just tap it (well, kinda hold my finger down in a ZX81 fashion) and a translation…
Similarly, OSX can be configured so that a triple click does a dictionary look-up, which I find extremely useful for reading material online in German.
I'd love something like that in Windows 8.1.
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I ask respectfully what you mean by fluent? Only because...the textbook definition and the colloquial definition differ. I think generally when people say 'fluent' they mean 'native speaker level at reading, writing and speaking language X', whereas fluent actually means you can speak without hesitation on a range of topics. Just a clarification, not an attack! Edit: Plus, I wouldn't knock wordlists. I started tr…
I also have a problem with the word "fluent". Ok you say you're fluent, here's a simple self-check: Explain to someone in the language you claim to be fluent in how you'd go about making a fire without any matches. (hint: you need to use words like tinder, kindling, flint, etc.). If you can't do this, or grapple with the fact that you don't have a repertoire of these words in your vocabulary, you might want to recons…
Problem is that I'm not sure I'd be able to convey that message to someone even in my native language (it's a Romance one). I'd probably use two archaisms for "smaller pieces of wood" (probably the "tinder" and "flint" words you mention) and then I'd use "small rock" and "rub the thing between your hands until you get tired of it and then use a lighter".
There's lots of words in my native language of which I know the meaning of, technically, but practically speaking they might as well be Greek to me.
There are all of these types of flowers, trees, countryside-related mechanical terms (my peasant brother knows the names of all the pieces of which his wooden-made carriage is made of, I have no such knowledge) which might as well be from a foreign language to me. They sound right but I don't know exactly what they represent.
I'd say that you can call yourself fluent in a language once you can express feelings like anger, love, nostalgia etc. and can understand and make jokes in said language.
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#87I learned to speak French starting from scratch in my 30s, while living in the US. I speak it well enough to enroll in an easy college-level course intended for native speakers[a] or to work professionally[b], although either experience would be painful at first. For me, the process occurred in three phases: 1. Bootstrapping to the point where I could kinda-sorta read books and kinda-sorta carry on conversations. I p…
When you were watching shows did you have subtitles on or did you always just have the French audio playing?
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#88You need to get a language partner. Rote learning is nothing if you can't recall when you need to.
Just being able to make repetitive small-talk - but being able to do so with a degree of confidence is the base for expanding your "working set" into more useful and fluent conversations.
Beyond that, I found Anki to be the best flash-card system. Customizable, it's great if you are motivated enough to design and build your own card decks. Getting a "basic" vocab of around 1000 words should be a rapid short-term goal over 3 months or so (that's 10 new words a day, more than that will be challenging for most people).
And find a good textbook. There are a lot of ordinary books out there. But there are also usually a couple of highly regarded/respected series for a given language that stand out above the rest. For the two language I have learned they are the Integrated Korean series, and Japanese for Busy People.
But...go back to the first point. Language partner. There is not point trying to study a language in a vacuum, you need to be recalling in realistic conversations scenarios everyday ideally.
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#89When you're totally immersed in a language, even if you're lost, you'll learn far faster than everyone else.
Scott H. Young's 9 Tactics for Rapid Learning
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2009/12/23/9-tactics-for-ra...
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#90I'm fluent in German, English. I'm living in Japan and am almost fluent in Japanese and quarter fluent in Korean. I also recently started Hungarian and Spanish. The most important part in my opinion is to live in a country that speaks the language you want to learn. You have to immerse yourself as much as possible with the culture and language. Also very important that you aren't afraid to try to use what you learned…
> The most important part in my opinion is to live in a country that speaks the language you want to learn. You have to immerse yourself as much as possible with the culture and language. Also very important that you aren't afraid to try to use what you learned. I cannot agree with this more. Coincidentally, I'm also fluent in German and English, and am learning Japanese. At school, I took French, but I hated it. It…
I had the same experience with French. I learned it for 10 years, I even won a national essay competition - guess what, when I was in France, I couldn't open my mouth. English on the other hand - I had only 2 years of study under my belt, and lots and lots of practice - movies, programming books, Shogun by James Clavell, song lyrics, chats on IRC, and so on. I'm fairly confident in my English skills. I know Russian a fair bit, and it's just a consequence of living in Moldova, where we have a lot of Russian influence and a lot of speakers of the language (16%) - but since I don't use it every day, I tend to forget it.