I'm Polish and I've learned English by taking a 1-1 class for 1 year and.. Playing games in English, watching movies with eng. subtitles, writing a blog in English - now I've started to learn Chinese in the same way - but it's a bit harder due to learning the alphabet (but it's easier that You've might think about it)
Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
171–180 of 207 posts
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#172I'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…
When you live in a foreign country, how do you make sure that you have plenty of opportunities to talk to people?
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 am learning french as well, via Duolingo. Spoken french fries my brain, I just cant keep up. So many words seem to be pronounced the same way. And they speak so fast! For example, did they say: jeune Jaune john je une Je un Joan Je ont Jean Je ne .... Perhaps it's just an unconscious bias on my part. Just for reference, I am fluent in at least two more languages apart from my mother tongue.
Context is king. Language is pretty verbose, most of the time you can understand the gist without understanding 100%. So at least you can make a start - that's the first step! It doesn't have to be perfect. Granted, the French can be gruff about it, but most cultures appreciate you trying to learn and will accommodate you a bit.
It could be the training material. I'm an auditory learner and the Michel Thomas courses work amazingly for me. I also ignore spelling until later, because I find conversations much more important and also pleasurable (so I'm more likely to stick with it). My English spelling was atrocious, I still rely on Chrome's spellchecker (actually, so do many of my English friends!).
Keep at it, everybody's different!
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
When you live in a foreign country, how do you make sure that you have plenty of opportunities to talk to people?
Well, a job or education are obviously the best way to do this. University is amazing for this. Sports work well, e.g. finding an amateur football (soccer) league. Most people hang around before and after.
I've had great success in hackspaces. They're a great place to meet geeky, like-minded people. They can be a bit dead in smaller cities though.
Chat to somebody at a language school and see if they meet up and they'd be interested in speaking to a native speaker. This seems counter-intuitive, but it's about growing your friend circle, and ultimately will probably relapse into the country's tongue. Plus, they're way more sympathetic to your situation.
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Is tinder a real word? I thought it was just a made up word for an app? I can't be expected to explain such words in another language when I can't explain them in my native language. But I think if you said spark instead that would be more reasonable such you need to rub two pieces of wood together and create a spark and then a fire starts.
The icon for Tinder is literally a flame :)
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#176Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think wordlists and learning tons of vocabulary through deliberate study are generally underrated. However, I do agree that once you've got a good foundation, pulling words from texts is a great idea. I think the ideal thing to do is to get a list of words from a text before you read it, then prime yourself on them, and then really solidify them by reading the text. I think it makes the text a lot more enjoyable. I…
I can't seem to register for your site. I humbly suggest removing the requirement to sign up/in. Based on what you have said in your text, you might find this old tool to be interesting: http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/ The lextutor site has quite a bit of interesting information, although the interface and some of the tools are very dated.
I wanted to remove the login (or set up a dedicated demo page) when I planned on posting it in a week or so but this seemed like an opportune time to drop a link.
I assumed someone just changed the guest password, but it appears the database got in some strange locked state over night. It's sqlite since I want this to be as self-hostable as possible. Not sure if I somehow created a deadlock.
It should be fixed now. I'd never seen this lextutor site, I find it very interesting, it looks like its they've got very similar ideas, I found this on the research page: "One ineresting use of VP (I believe the main one for users of online VP) is to evaluate the suitability of reading texts for various levels of learners.".
That's basically what I'm doing at the moment. I'd also like to add an estimate of how many of the unknown lemma's i'm showing that you'd need to learn to get your comprehensions to 98% (or something like that) so that you'd know how much pre-studying might be worthwhile before diving into the text.
I haven't done much research into it but the 98% number gets through around a lot as an ideal place to be to pick up the remaining words through context.
edit: ah, just a few sentences down: "As a rule of thumb, learners can not do much with a text if they know fewer than 90% of its words. From 90% to 95% the text can be used intensively (for dictionary work, contextual inference, re-reads, etc.). From 95% to about 98%, the text can be used for fluency building. Above 98% the text can be used for 'reading to learn' rather than 'learning to read.'"
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#178I learned German in 1 year and landed a job at Siemens where I served German customers in German (and not in English!) How did I do it?
There are multiple ways which can be used together to get the best way. Totally depends on the learner. Here are some of them:
1. Find a good mentor and you're half way through.
2. Join a good institute e.g Goethe Institute for German, Alliance Francaise for French. They have great sources of knowledge and know exactly how those languages are taught.
3.If you have basic knowledge of the language, start listening to simple Radio clips. It helps you improve your pronunciation. Or simply go to youtube and see/listen to the videos. There are many well-known resources and also some reading material on the net. Jump according to the needs and levels.
4.Try to find the meaning of every single word you come across. Use the dictionary for German, French, Spanish, and more. Keep google translator as your last option.
5.Finally, it is a language. It does take time to learn. Have some patience. Enjoy every bit of it and go ahead.
Best of luck. :)
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well the way I learned it, you kindle fires by igniting the kindling . The kindling then ignites tinder (an intermediate stage), which then ignites the real fuel. But I also often hear the two-step usage where tinder is includes kindling.
Kindling is actually a verb, as in, the act of 'kindling' a fire, even though it's also used to describe the material used to kindle a fire. Tinder is just the material.
There are two definitions, the verb and the noun.
Re: Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?
#180There 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…
I agree with everything you recommend, but it is possible to speak grammatically with near perfection much faster than years if you study the grammar. Finding the right grammar book/course may not be easy. I was lucking enough to go through the excellent German course at UCSB in the late '70s before I immersed myself. Getting all noun genders right in German is nearly impossible for a non-native speaker (even native…
> (even native speakers make mistakes)
> colloquial diverges from the proper grammar.
Since we are here on HN I'll allow myself to jump on your, to the topic of this thread totally unrelated, remarks. A native speaker can't really make mistakes, because what a native speaker speaks, defines the language. The grammars have to follow the speakers, not vice versa. The widespread world view that there is a proper language and beside it a inferior colloquial language needs to die.