How to learn a new language in 90 days
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How to learn a new language in 90 days
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Re: How to learn a new language in 90 days
#2I didn't realise it wasn't about learning new computer language until the 4th paragraph:-).
But I think these points are also valid for learning new computer language.
Re: How to learn a new language in 90 days
#3AAAh I'm such a nerd.
I read the whole think before I realized it's about learning a new human language, not programming language. I thought he's going to make some ingenious connection to programming languages at some point.
Re: How to learn a new language in 90 days
#4"how to learn in days", and "how to lose in " are commonly considered dumb slogans.
Apparently, though, the intertubes are still very keen on "how to learn in ". If someone has a good explanation or theory I'd be really interested in learning it.
Re: How to learn a new language in 90 days
#5"how to learn in days", and "how to lose in " are commonly considered dumb slogans. Apparently, though, the intertubes are still very keen on "how to learn in ". If someone has a good explanation or theory I'd be really interested in learning it.
Peter Norvig on this topic: http://norvig.com/21-days.html
Re: How to learn a new language in 90 days
#6One thing that is often gets unmentioned in "how-to-learn-x-in-y-days" discussions (whether x is a programming language or a "human" language) is that learning an (n+1)th language is a lot easier than learning your first (or in the case of human languages second) language. Not just because you discover patterns but also because you sharpen your methodologies - with human languages you'll know which is the best way for you to get a vocabulary (reading books? watching television? memorozing the dictionary?) etc., just like with a computer language you'll know which approach works the best for you (write a game? solve the problems on Euler Project? read the specification? or a book? or a combination of these?).
Point is, if you know 10 programming languages well, you can definitely learn your 11th programming language in 90 days. Just like if you speak English, French, Spanish, Latin and German, you'll find learning Japanese a lot easier even though it doesn't resemble these languages at all.
Re: How to learn a new language in 90 days
#7[deleted]
Re: How to learn a new language in 90 days
#8One thing that is often gets unmentioned in "how-to-learn-x-in-y-days" discussions (whether x is a programming language or a "human" language) is that learning an (n+1)th language is a lot easier than learning your first (or in the case of human languages second) language. Not just because you discover patterns but also because you sharpen your methodologies - with human languages you'll know which is the best way fo…
A friend of mine is learning his 12th and 13th languages right now; he'd probably call bunk on you're last paragraph.
Or, rather, it is a lot easier to learn extra languages. But 90 days is not really possible if you want to learn the language to any useful degree. Certainly picking up Japanese would be hard in 90 days if all you had was romance languages.
(note; there is a subset case of this where you can pick up a language that quickly by living in the country and being forced to learn it)
Re: How to learn a new language in 90 days
#9One thing that is often gets unmentioned in "how-to-learn-x-in-y-days" discussions (whether x is a programming language or a "human" language) is that learning an (n+1)th language is a lot easier than learning your first (or in the case of human languages second) language. Not just because you discover patterns but also because you sharpen your methodologies - with human languages you'll know which is the best way fo…
A friend of mine is learning his 12th and 13th languages right now; he'd probably call bunk on you're last paragraph. Or, rather, it is a lot easier to learn extra languages. But 90 days is not really possible if you want to learn the language to any useful degree. Certainly picking up Japanese would be hard in 90 days if all you had was romance languages. (note; there is a subset case of this where you can pick up a…
Yes, for "human" languages, it is probably more than 90 days. More like a year or two. (Learning a second language well can easily take 6-7 years.) I meant 90 days for programming languages. In my experience with foreign languages, first you struggle for a while and one day it unexpectedly "kicks in", suddenly you're able to comfortably use the language albeit not perfectly yet while the week before you was struggling to form simpler non-trivial sentences. Depending on your experience with foreign languages and the time you spend on learning the language, this can take from half a year to several years.
Re: How to learn a new language in 90 days
#10One thing that is often gets unmentioned in "how-to-learn-x-in-y-days" discussions (whether x is a programming language or a "human" language) is that learning an (n+1)th language is a lot easier than learning your first (or in the case of human languages second) language. Not just because you discover patterns but also because you sharpen your methodologies - with human languages you'll know which is the best way fo…
This is very true, and I think it's one of the reasons that Esperanto works so well as one's first second language. (I recall seeing one study where a group of students who learned Esperanto for one year and then French for three years ended up knowing French better than a group of students who studied French exclusively for four years straight. Not conclusive by any means, but suggestive.)
By eliminating the complicated grammatical idiosyncrasies of natural languages, someone learning Esperanto can focus on learning how to learn a foreign language. If you've never learned a second language before, it's easy to memorize vocabulary and obscure grammatical rules, but it's extremely hard to make the transition from reading prose word-by-word to reading it fluently.