131–140 of 166 posts
"German volunteers learning Dutch who’d drunk enough vodka to achieve a blood alcohol level of 0.04 per cent (approximately equivalent to just under a pint of beer for a 70kg male) were rated by independent Dutch speakers as speaking the language more proficiently during a short-test" Based on my limited exposure to Dutch, this sounds about right; drunken German. Edit: "Als vliegen achter vliegen vliegen, vliegen vli…
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Sure. I was watching tv shows with english subtitles and was looking up every word I didn't understand in a dictionary for an hour or more every day. Some days much more, if the show was interesting to me, so it was kind of motivating. At the beginning pausing video and switching between media player and dictionary proved to be a bit too exhausting, so I also wrote a tiny program that did that with a single hotkey be…
> At the beginning pausing video and switching between media player and dictionary proved to be a bit too exhausting, so I also wrote a tiny program that did that with a single hotkey before I really started doing all this. That sounds like a great idea for a service to help learn languages: subtitled videos with links from each word (or idiomatic phrase) in the subtitles to dictionary definitions.
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Just bear in mind that there's a huge difference between being able to get the gist of something spoken in a foreign language and being able to convey your thoughts effectively in that language. Even after man-years of study I still sound like an idiot when trying to speak English in conference calls, even though I can understand nearly 100% of written and spoken English.
I sound like an idiot when trying to speak English and I'm a native speaker. I don't know what my conclusion is; maybe speaking is difficult.
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Sure. I was watching tv shows with english subtitles and was looking up every word I didn't understand in a dictionary for an hour or more every day. Some days much more, if the show was interesting to me, so it was kind of motivating. At the beginning pausing video and switching between media player and dictionary proved to be a bit too exhausting, so I also wrote a tiny program that did that with a single hotkey be…
> At the beginning pausing video and switching between media player and dictionary proved to be a bit too exhausting, so I also wrote a tiny program that did that with a single hotkey before I really started doing all this. That sounds like a great idea for a service to help learn languages: subtitled videos with links from each word (or idiomatic phrase) in the subtitles to dictionary definitions.
My feeling is that you need an incredible amount of repetition. I never really learned Spanish well until I took immersion classes in Guatemala then continued on backpacking through South America for several months. A decade later I still struggle to retain what I learned. I’ve built many language learning Android and iPhone apps over the years. I still don’t have a great formula but I think my latest iPhone apps are…
I learned how to turn a stream of nonsense (from my perspective) into words by listening to hundreds of hours of Spanish TV that I didn't understand. Spanish audio + Spanish subtitles (to figure out how to parse sound, and to map sound to writing), and then Spanish audio only (prevent reliance on reading). Surprisingly effective. Incomprehensible input appears to be quite valuable. At some point I'll try applying my…
Just bear in mind that there's a huge difference between being able to get the gist of something spoken in a foreign language and being able to convey your thoughts effectively in that language. Even after man-years of study I still sound like an idiot when trying to speak English in conference calls, even though I can understand nearly 100% of written and spoken English.
Immersion still remains the best method. I've tried a plethora of approaches to learn German (not the easiest or most fancy and I swear I'm not masochist) and it's not working. The biggest progress I made came when I was forced to speak it with my gym buddy because that was our common denominator. That said, if you want to learn German, avoid Berlin. Everyone will meet you with English.
Did you try watching German movies or tv shows with German subtitles and translating every word you don't yet understand? It's like immersion but on steroids. It naturally prioritized and trains your brain on all the common words and you get to seemingly impossible levels of understanding in the shortest possible time.
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Back in the ‘50s or ‘60s, the U.S. government Foreign Service Institute put together a series of language learning courses that covered most of the popular languages at the time. They’re public domain and if you look hard enough, you can find them on the internet - they’re dated, but they’re still accurate (there are some here http://www.fsi-language-courses.net/ but the hosting sucks). I’ve learned Spanish and Frenc…
Interesting. The text to go along with the audio includes a phonetic version. Good morning. bwenozdiás [Some marks removed.] Buenos días. http://www.fsi-language-courses.net/languages/Spanish/Basic/... , Unit 1 - Useful phrases.
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Can you expand on your "very different methodology"?
Sure. I was watching tv shows with english subtitles and was looking up every word I didn't understand in a dictionary for an hour or more every day. Some days much more, if the show was interesting to me, so it was kind of motivating. At the beginning pausing video and switching between media player and dictionary proved to be a bit too exhausting, so I also wrote a tiny program that did that with a single hotkey be…