Bio: Learning Japanese and now able to read programming, business and general how-to books and communicate via email using Kanji. Reading literature with its flowery vocabulary and Kanji though is still very hard. Can write under 1500 - 2000 Kanji and know nearly a pronunciation for each symbol though there are many many more and far from fluent. I've also started to do some basic translation (Japanese to English) an…
Skype for discussions, Lang8.com for writing blogs and peer review etc etc etc What is/was Lang8.com? It looks like there's nothing there now.
Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?
91–100 of 115 posts
Re: Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?
#92TLDR: attack learning a language from as many angles and media as possible, multitask language learning with other goals (walking/exercise, travel, movies to see etc). -- I've studied over 10 languages, and have known 5 fluently at one point or another. I wrote a post about my 30,000ft tips here: http://cosmicrays.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/language-learning... As for closer to the ground tips WRT study resources, I li…
Impressive. You should write more about this on your blog.
Thanks for the feedback, yea I will probably be blogging more often in the fall, esp. wrt language learning as I'll be starting to learn French in September. I'm usually based in Switzerland which helps with the immersion issue, it's practically one alp from one language to the next ;)
Re: Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?
#93TL;DR: Arabic is a bitch to pick up on your own. Take a class and then build on that. Okay, so you've picked one of the five most difficult languages in the world for English learners to pick up ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_difficult_language_to_lear... ) -- I have a lot of friends who speak Arabic to various levels, and every single one of them did it through a combination of university classes and immersion…
Arabic is hard, because it's hard to find native speakers to take the piss with. I say that because I am Arab and desperately trying to cling onto the language. I read and write it at a poetic level; but speaking with native speakers sucks, because few of them speak the beautiful language (and the ones who do carry shitloads of political baggage to make the companionship worthwhile.)
Arabic would be trivial for converts to Islam, Maronite or Coptic Christianity; because you will find an all embracing community of brothers. For me, someone who switches between Classical Arabic, and near perfect mainstream American accent, and who doesn't shy away from taking pot-shots at established religio-political dogmas on both sides .. well, tough fucking luck finding friends.
If there are any worldly Arabs who enjoy al-Mutanabi with MJ and the occasional line of coke, and who love reading scripture to ladies of ill repute: hola at me, dog.
I hold nothing sacred, and if you aim to offend, well, we should grab a beer, or indulge in some drunken pen-pal wankery to celebrate an idealized image of alleged former glory (of which I am the foremost perpetuator :-)
[Three things I will not talk about: God, Football, or the Bush Administration]
Re: Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?
#94Hasn't this been well covered in books already?
Summary: study, listen, speak, converse (esp with native speakers), immerse, repeat. Add read and write for bonus points.
Re: Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?
#95I have got to a reasonable level with mandarin Chinese through on-and-off study over a few years, mostly in my free time. Here is what worked for me. 1) Most important is how much time you put in. Don't worry about the on-and-off, though regular is better. Don't worry too much about efficiency unless you're putting in the hours. For Chinese I estimate I've spent at least 2000 hours studying to get to where I am today…
Awesome advice! It just so happens for my start-up we're working on language learing apps, and our first one is for Mandarin Chinese. Here's our first one in the itunes store (it's free!), would be great to get some feedback, as a single founder it's been tough to get constructive criticism.
iTunes apps page: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/321speak/id382201422 our site: http://321speak.com
Re: Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?
#96hands down, THE best way to learn a language is to live in a country where they speak that language for at least 3 months. it's the fastest and most effective (ie, you don't forget it as easily as book learning)
Re: Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?
#97I live in Poland and have been trying to learn Polish for the past 10 months. And failing - a lot. There are two main reasons for this (in my mind at least): 1) I haven't been fully immersed in Polish; it's too easy to speak English instead. 2) I don't understand English grammar. If you have an analytical mind, I think point 2 is very important. The amount of textbooks I've read and failed to understand because it's…
Hey, I have a question for you: how do Poles react to your attempts to learn Polish?
I ask because I spent a year or two studying Polish (not in Poland, though) and in my experience, Polish people were nonplussed by this. In fact, they were rather consistently cold and unhelpful. Their attitude seemed to be "Polish is for Poles, why are you intruding?" I'm curious to know if this is endemic or if I just fell afoul of small sample size. I eventually bailed and decided to go learn a language where people would react to my feeble attempts to speak it by kissing me and offering me food.
p.s. Knowledge of English grammar would be nice, but you're overestimating how much it would help you learn a Slavic language. Latin actually would be better, because like Latin the Slavic languages are still highly inflected (i.e. they vary word endings by case). Anyway, you'd be better off learning from an undergraduate Polish grammar textbook in English, or, if you can read it, a children's grammar in Polish.
Re: Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?
#98Shameless plug for our startup: Quizlet, which is trying to make learning languages -- particularly vocabulary -- easier. We've got some cool audio features coming out soon. http://quizlet.com/
Thanks for the plug. I tried it out and like it. Was using Anki for the past few years, but android support was a pain - even though I had it working with ASE.
Re: Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?
#99I learned English by watching cartoons when i was a kid...
Matched the subtitles to what they were saying and doing that everyday i managed to learn...
Re: Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?
#100If you want to learn Hindi, I'm posting some video and text lessons at http://hindipedia.com. I've not been able to do this as often as I'd like to, but I will try to keep up whenever I can. Please tell me what you'd like to learn.