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Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?

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Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?

#141

Post by greggman »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #74
westiseast wrote: post #41

Earlier 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…

I mostly agree with you. I might not know every English word but I won't consider myself fluent until I can understand and use my second language at the same level as my first.

In other words I should be able to easily explain anything I can explain in my 1st language whether it's how to drive, how to change a tire, what the parts of a bicycle are (wheels, spokes, chain, gears, handlebars, tire, kick stand, peddles, brakes, )etc. Any native 8 yr old can name all those things.

Similarly describing a car. The stick shift, clutch, odometer, glove compartment, engine, seat belts, arm rest, windshield, wheel well, windshield wipers, reat view mirror, antenna, etc.

Any native speaker will know all those words. I'm still at the "explain with smaller words" phase like "antenna" would be "metal stick that receives radio waves".

I'm not fluent.

Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?

#142

Post by tux3 »

happyslobro wrote: post #133
dvcrn wrote: post #12

I'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…

As a guy who grew up in French immersion schools in Canada, I consider myself to be fluent in French, although my grammar isn't quite perfect. I don't mentally translate it to English in order to understand it, at any rate. Recently, I took a short trip that included a few days in Paris, and I made a point of defaulting to French when starting conversations. However, for the most part, as soon as a French person real…

>I wonder if this is unique to the culture of France, or at least Paris, that they do not like to hear their language from a foreigner? Maybe the language is part of a group identity, used to identify locals who can be trusted to follow local customs? It was a little saddening.

I'm sorry to hear that. As a Parisian, I don't think this had anything to do with protecting an identity, rather we're just as happy to practice our (often terrible!) English as you are to practice your French!

Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?

#143

Post by lormayna »

arby123 wrote: post #62
lormayna wrote: post #49

Do you have some resources to learn a not so common language like Danish?

I had a Danish girlfriend for a couple of years who spoke perfect English, so we didn't practice very much unless we wanted to talk about something without other people knowing (that's to expensive, let's go, etc). I got pretty far in Danish with the "Teach Yourself" course. The problem is that some of the lectures are quite dated, but the phrases will be in your head forever after listening to the courses on repeat.…

I'm in your situation: my Danish girlfriend speaks correctly English and Italian (I'm from Italy).

Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?

#144

Post by happy-go-lucky »

alphydan wrote: post #125

There is no substitute for living in the country and avoiding your native speakers like the plague. Immerse yourself completely (take a few language courses, move in with locals, make an effort to avoid English speakers at all costs). Give yourself little challenges: Groceries, info about the train, museum, read a leaflet, book an activity, ask questions at a restaurant (even if you don't quite get the answer)... Peo…

> There is no substitute for living in the country and avoiding your native speakers like the plague.

No better approach to learning a new language than that. It’s like throwing yourself into it and ignoring everything else.

Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?

#147

Post by contravariant »

jjgreen wrote: post #70

Get films in the language and watch them with subtitles (in that language). Read novels as soon as you can. This is hard to start off with, stopping every couple of lines to look up a word, once you get down to 2-3 words a page that you don't know then start reading without a dictionary, skipping words you don't know (humans are great at interpolating meaning). Just those 2 get you half-way to fluency. For the rest,…

To start off you might want to use subtitles in a language you can read, otherwise you're just going to be utterly confused for a couple of hours. If you do this, you do have to force yourself to pay attention to what they're saying though.

Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?

#148

Post by spoiler »

alphydan wrote: post #125

There is no substitute for living in the country and avoiding your native speakers like the plague. Immerse yourself completely (take a few language courses, move in with locals, make an effort to avoid English speakers at all costs). Give yourself little challenges: Groceries, info about the train, museum, read a leaflet, book an activity, ask questions at a restaurant (even if you don't quite get the answer)... Peo…

Another, slightly unconventional way (which is how I learned English as a native Croatian speaker), is to find an online community about something you really enjoy.

For me it was the combination of Harry Potter and online roleplaying[1]. I know that English isn't quite the same as other languages as it's quite widespread, but I believe it's possible to do the same for other languages.

I also improved my Spanish a little through a website called lang-8.com, but I am not sure how active its community is these days; when I joined it was new and the community was relatively small. I stopped using it since I lacked the time and motivation to pursue Spanish more vigorously.

[1]: As a side-note, I met my best friend this way; I was 13, she was 11 when we met. She'd would always go out of her way to help me with my English and would help me prepare for a roleplay and also analyse it afterwards, pointing out all the mistakes and potential improvements, taught me colloquialisms, etc. Although, everyone would help from time to time, too. So, meeting the right people/community also matters.

Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?

#149

Post by Mikeb85 »

j7ake wrote: post #95
westiseast wrote: post #41

Earlier 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…

One test of fluency would be to have the person watch a modern film in the language of interest and ask them to transcribe the dialogue into text and also describe in own words (in language of interest) what is going on in the movie. You can then put that person on a scale from 0 to 100 by comparing the score by a random sample of "known" native speakers. This test is nice because it probes many aspects of language:…

I don't know about other languages, but the French government actually does have tests of French fluency (DELF/DALF exam), which test you in a range of ways (oral comprehension - usually a radio emission, written comprehension - usually a news article, writing on a choice of subjects and speaking - presenting a view on a subject and then debating), at a variety of levels. I took one of these tests (I'm fluent, yay!), and it certainly was testing. But it seemed fair and appropriate, also seemed to correlate with my experiences speaking to French people in France.
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