Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 339 posts

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#101

Post by misiti3780 »

hluska wrote: post #95

This is anecdotal and I am a sample of one, so do with this as you will. I have learned to speak French at two particular times. When I was very young, my Grandma Yvette often spoke French to me and I spent three years in French immersion. Now, I am an adult who barely speaks the language, but I have a daughter who I badly want to bless with the French language. So, I’m learning again... I have noticed two things. Th…

I am learning french now, this was helpful.

https://www.livelingua.com/french/courses/fsi/French_Phonolo...

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#102

Post by soniman »

She mostly follows english speakers on Twitter. Twitter is a useful way to improve language skill because there is a "Translate" button right there, and it's already part of your routine if it's in your feed. It's kind of funny she mentions circling a word Le Monde and then looking it up, as if there weren't much better ways of doing that online.

Because Twitter is such a good way to learn a language I've started an account for learning a little Greek every day (you need the equivalent of a year of Greek already).

https://twitter.com/oink409/

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#103

Post by hluska »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #99
hluska wrote: post #95

This is anecdotal and I am a sample of one, so do with this as you will. I have learned to speak French at two particular times. When I was very young, my Grandma Yvette often spoke French to me and I spent three years in French immersion. Now, I am an adult who barely speaks the language, but I have a daughter who I badly want to bless with the French language. So, I’m learning again... I have noticed two things. Th…

do you really cold call clients and ask people for money or were those just made up examples?

I do cold call on occasion and I have even grown to enjoy the game of it. I’m never quite that open and up front, but cold calling is always about drumming up business and getting paid. Frankly, it doesn’t work for me unless I hunt rejection in search of pay.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#104

Post by digitalsushi »

adrianN wrote: post #3

Learning a language at any age is hard. It's just harder to fit in thousands of hours of deliberate practice in your thirties than in your teens. As the author correctly notes one needs to know tens of thousands of words to have a reasonable chance of getting through a text without encountering an unknown word. To get to that number a spaced repetition system is much more useful than sticky notes, but it doesn't help…

one of these days i am going to write tmux macro that updates the bottom pane with vocabulary. there will be a cli command that corresponds with it, once i write in the definition, it will cycle to the next word instantly.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#105

Post by intertextuality »

hluska wrote: post #95

This is anecdotal and I am a sample of one, so do with this as you will. I have learned to speak French at two particular times. When I was very young, my Grandma Yvette often spoke French to me and I spent three years in French immersion. Now, I am an adult who barely speaks the language, but I have a daughter who I badly want to bless with the French language. So, I’m learning again... I have noticed two things. Th…

> get a long term disability pension just by saying it

> but when I record it and play it back, I sound quite soft in the head

> Who would have thought that a phrase ... would be such a big problem for me?? :)

If this is how you envision yourself with speaking French, then is it any wonder you might be stuck or have issues with certain phrases? Good lord.

Learning how to talk like a native in another language is exceedingly difficult. It requires thousands of hours of practice, and by practice I mean actually physically speaking. Babies do this over and over and over and over again. We just gloss over it because, well, they're babies.

The only way to learn a language properly (as an adult) is to get over your fear and nervousness. When I hear obvious ESL people speaking English, my first thoughts are not of criticism. It's the exact same with people with other languages.

I have been learning Korean for almost 2 years now and my pronunciation is still not good in a lot of areas because I haven't practiced them enough, or well enough yet. That's just a part of the learning process. I'm understood most of the time, and the rest I just note down as things to work on.

Of course it sucks to hear myself compared to a native or make a mispronunciation so bad I'm not understood. But this is part of the process. If I -didn't- make mistakes I wouldn't be a learner of Korean, no?

> but if I hear people speaking French, I often cannot bring myself to introduce myself or ask how they are.

If you can't overcome this, you will never learn French. As long as you're afraid of making mistakes, you will never learn French. If you don't actually speak the language, you will never learn French... You don't learn a language only in classroom environments or with very patient friends. You learn it by speaking as much as you can, whenever you can, and making as many mistakes as you possibly can.

Even if you don't know how to say one exact thing in particular, circumlocution is your friend. Or rewording it in another way.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#106

Post by kurtisc »

imtringued wrote: post #16

It's just a matter on how much time you spend learning the language. Even if you only consider the time you spent in school merely learning your own native language those school lessons will add up to thousands of hours. How many adults, who have already "learned" a foreign language, dedicate 6 hours per week purely on further improving their skills in that language for 12 years? If you are worried about not knowing…

Where do you find the words to add to your deck? I add words discovered in lessons - which are great for a proper context - but using words from internet sources (the news, etc.) is time consuming and means I keep seeing words from a few narrow niches (politics, economics, slang) without any understanding of how they'll be interpreted.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#107

Post by asark »

1) it's really, really hard to effectively drill vocab out of context because the gender of nouns affects everything around them, the indefinite form conceals gender (via contraction) in too many cases to be of much use, while the definite is awkward and still doesn't really drill modifying words around it anyway. To do it right you've really gotta come up with a few short model sentences or phrases involving adjectives, which is a giant pain in the ass.

2) It's bizarrely hard to get ahold of French media online, outside the EU. I just want to stream Le Juste Prix, damnit! Makes one envy Japanese learners. The language may, in some ways, be a lot harder, but there's so much media readily available and there are so many tools for it.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#108

Post by x0x0 »

tambre wrote: post #39
imtringued wrote: post #16

It's just a matter on how much time you spend learning the language. Even if you only consider the time you spent in school merely learning your own native language those school lessons will add up to thousands of hours. How many adults, who have already "learned" a foreign language, dedicate 6 hours per week purely on further improving their skills in that language for 12 years? If you are worried about not knowing…

What website/application would you recommend for spaced repetition of vocabulary? I've found the changing Windows logon screens quite nice, since every other day or so there's a new beautiful picture along with a few bubbles of text in German, enabling me to learn a few new words (though I'll probably forget most of them).

I like readlang a lot. They have a very nice browser integration allowing you to read text and get dictionary lookups in-line. It does cost $5/month but it's very well made.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#109

Post by x0x0 »

atemerev wrote: post #88
bpyne wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An anecdote from a trip to Paris, I walked into a store to look for a gift for someone back home. After making the greeting in French, I started to explain what I was looking for. The woman stopped me. With a dramatic eye roll she said, "Speak English, pleeeease." An anecdote from a trip to Quebec city. My wife and I walked up to a hostess to inquire about getting a table for dinner. We greeted her in French. As soon…

Sure, I am passionate about Russian grammar too, and I used to correct mistakes of native Russians writing in Russian (I stopped doing that when I learned that dyslexia is quite real and common, and I now feel sorry for that). However, any foreigner trying to speak Russian, no matter how broken or incorrect, will meet nothing but praise and encouragement from other Russians.

Except the lady who sells subway tickets in Moscow. That lady is quite grumpy.

(Everyone else was kind.)

I took immersive classes, speaking 6 hours / day, 90 minutes spent on pronunciation drills. The only downside is my accent got better faster than my vocab, confusing lots of people with whom I interacted.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#110

Post by mewfree »

taejo wrote: post #89
bpyne wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An anecdote from a trip to Paris, I walked into a store to look for a gift for someone back home. After making the greeting in French, I started to explain what I was looking for. The woman stopped me. With a dramatic eye roll she said, "Speak English, pleeeease." An anecdote from a trip to Quebec city. My wife and I walked up to a hostess to inquire about getting a table for dinner. We greeted her in French. As soon…

> An anecdote from a trip to Quebec city. My wife and I walked up to a hostess to inquire about getting a table for dinner. We greeted her in French. As soon as we started to ask about a table, she stopped us and said, "No no no no. This will be in English." I was under the impression (having never been to Quebec) that she was in fact breaking the law by doing this.

To my knowledge that wouldn't be breaking the law. The law is that service has to be AVAILABLE in French.

From the Charter of the French language: "Consumers of goods and services have a right to be informed and served in French." http://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/showdoc/cs/C-11#se:5

Post reply on HN