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I Learned French in 12 Months

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Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#201

Post by monster_group »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #196
abnry wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am of the opinion that many people who want to learn a language don't have any real reason to learn a second language other than to say they know two languages. Unless you have extended family or somehow became smitten with a foreign country, I am almost certain this is the case. So any attempts are really halfhearted and very little progress is made because the commitment is so large. This is why, if I ever get ar…

Maybe for secular/atheistic people. For those of us who are religious, there's great value in learning Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Aramaic, etc.

I teach Sanskrit which falls in this category (a religious / cultural / historical language). People show up to the class super excited to learn the language. They badly want to learn the language but have no clue how much effort it is to learn a new language. Learning the language is at the bottom of their priority list. You are not gonna be learning the language if it is the tenth item on your priority list no matter how much you "want to learn it". The semester starts with 20 people and by the end there's less than 10.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#202

Post by rajlego »

BTBurke wrote: post #182

I don't believe there is a shortcut for "hacking" languages. I'm a diplomat, and currently learning my fourth language to the C1+ level. When we learn languages, it's a full time job. It was 9 months to learn Mandarin to a B1, 6 months to a C1+ in Spanish, and I'm currently at a B1 in Estonian after 5 months. There are several things I think are crucial after years of full time study (note: this assumes you're going…

Have you heard of Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis? [1] There are a couple of parts to it but it essentially says that linguistic competence (a fancy way to say your innate knowledge of a language) only increases when you take in input. If you talk all day that doesn't really make you any better (since you don't learn anything new) unless you use a process like deliberate feedback to be corrected. Personally I think it's much more useful to thus focus on reading/listening to start and then later move on to speaking/writing. I learned Spanish through normal school and while I can speak fast the fact that I haven't had much real input really shows since I'm generally just translating English -> spanish and I don't know if I'm using grammar right since I haven't heard it enough.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#203

Post by rajlego »

tmountain wrote: post #108

I've been hacking language learning for about five years, and I've spent ridiculous amounts of time trying and reading about different strategies. I've been to Cuba, Mexico, Spain, and Puerto Rico to try immersion in different settings. Getting to a solid level of competency in a language actually is not that hard. It just requires dedication and consistent practice. That said, native speakers operate on a different…

I really like this site [1] because it shows you just how big the gap between native and non-native speakers is. Non-native speakers generally know around 10,000 words while adult native speakers tend to know upwards of 20,000 words. I think the reason that getting to real native level fluency is extremely hard is that they have thousands more hours of input than you do and it's very hard to make up for that in real situations other than reading/watching lots and lots of Spanish content.

[1] http://testyourvocab.com/

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#204

Post by thedirt0115 »

rajlego wrote: post #202
BTBurke wrote: post #182

I don't believe there is a shortcut for "hacking" languages. I'm a diplomat, and currently learning my fourth language to the C1+ level. When we learn languages, it's a full time job. It was 9 months to learn Mandarin to a B1, 6 months to a C1+ in Spanish, and I'm currently at a B1 in Estonian after 5 months. There are several things I think are crucial after years of full time study (note: this assumes you're going…

Have you heard of Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis? [1] There are a couple of parts to it but it essentially says that linguistic competence (a fancy way to say your innate knowledge of a language) only increases when you take in input. If you talk all day that doesn't really make you any better (since you don't learn anything new) unless you use a process like deliberate feedback to be corrected. Personally I thin…

What of the folks who have watched countless hours of anime, but still can't speak Japanese? Input alone is not enough, at least not for adults wanting to become fluent from what I've seen.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#205

Post by monster_group »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #135
tmountain wrote: post #108

I've been hacking language learning for about five years, and I've spent ridiculous amounts of time trying and reading about different strategies. I've been to Cuba, Mexico, Spain, and Puerto Rico to try immersion in different settings. Getting to a solid level of competency in a language actually is not that hard. It just requires dedication and consistent practice. That said, native speakers operate on a different…

> Getting to a solid level of competency in a language actually is not that hard. It just requires dedication and consistent practice. Though that's why it's hard. Just like eating healthy and exercise isn't hard, just requires dedication, yet notice how few people have a particularly good looking body. The opportunity cost of learning a language is also immense. I've spent an incredible amount of time listening to a…

100% agree on the opportunity cost. I taught myself Sanskrit to the level that I now teach two batches of students at different proficiency levels. I really wanted to learn it and I did it. I spent a lot of time to get to this level. Now I am learning to play guitar. I am finding it even more difficult than learning Sanskrit and everyday I find myself questioning the opportunity cost. Do I really want to play guitar that bad that I spend 1-2 hours every day practicing after coming home from my full time job? Instead of that if I practiced 1-2 hours of Leetcode everyday I could get a significant pay raise. Am I crazy to be spending time on something that is almost guaranteed to have a negative ROI - I ask myself everyday.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#206

Post by Ghjklov »

thedirt0115 wrote: post #204
rajlego wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis? [1] There are a couple of parts to it but it essentially says that linguistic competence (a fancy way to say your innate knowledge of a language) only increases when you take in input. If you talk all day that doesn't really make you any better (since you don't learn anything new) unless you use a process like deliberate feedback to be corrected. Personally I thin…

What of the folks who have watched countless hours of anime, but still can't speak Japanese? Input alone is not enough, at least not for adults wanting to become fluent from what I've seen.

I think that’s more of a lack of initiative to learn. They may not know how to speak Japanese, but they can listen to it and be able to discern words from each other and be able to grasp ongoing conversations. After years of watching anime and learning kana and even a number of kanji, Japanese doesn’t seem hard at all anymore. I just lack the initiative or immediate need to advance my skills since I live in America. Now French, they speak so freaking fast. I wonder if that’ll change after I watch enough French content.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#207

Post by schoen »

billfruit wrote: post #186
BTBurke wrote: post #182

I don't believe there is a shortcut for "hacking" languages. I'm a diplomat, and currently learning my fourth language to the C1+ level. When we learn languages, it's a full time job. It was 9 months to learn Mandarin to a B1, 6 months to a C1+ in Spanish, and I'm currently at a B1 in Estonian after 5 months. There are several things I think are crucial after years of full time study (note: this assumes you're going…

Very good inputs, but these may not help with languages like Latin which aren't actively spoken or used in present day communication.

There are some great spoken Latin programs out there. See https://latin.org/ and https://www.paideiainstitute.org/, for example.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#208

Post by gramie »

k__ wrote: post #35

Pretty good! I tried to learn Spanish with DuoLingo only, and I couldn't motivate me to do the whole tree. I only did 1/3, but everything to level 5.

I found DuoLingo interesting, but it didn't really help me to learn Spanish. I had a lot more success (I just came back from a trip to Panama where I had to interact with people who spoke little no no English) using https://www.languagetransfer.org (it also has courses for Greek, French, German, Arabic, Turkish, Italian and Swahili).

The courses are sets of MP3 tracks that are free to download, but if you find them useful, please donate!

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#209

Post by schoen »

alexis_fr wrote: post #115
shmat wrote: post #101

I studied French from 7th-12th grade in an American High School. After that, I could not understand any French beyond "bonjour". I could not have a conversation in French. I could conjugate verbs and I could read some. Fast forward 45 years and I retired and decided to actually learn French. I followed a very, very similar method and after 9 months of self study took a 2 week intensive course in France where I was to…

> I studied French from 7th-12th grade As a French, I’ve lived a few years in Australia. A lot of people there can only say “Bonjour” and keep a bitter memory of their lessons. It feels like learning German for the French people, also a difficult (albeit more regular) language. It is merely necessary for political cohesion but not at an individual level; As such German lessons are... not designed for the students. If…

> If I had to believe the lessons, there are only two topics that Germans talk about: The Wiedervereinigung (reunification) and the war.

According to my lessons, they also talk about Umweltschutz (environmental protection), especially Mülltrennung (garbage sorting).

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#210

Post by animalnewbie »

BTBurke wrote: post #182

I don't believe there is a shortcut for "hacking" languages. I'm a diplomat, and currently learning my fourth language to the C1+ level. When we learn languages, it's a full time job. It was 9 months to learn Mandarin to a B1, 6 months to a C1+ in Spanish, and I'm currently at a B1 in Estonian after 5 months. There are several things I think are crucial after years of full time study (note: this assumes you're going…

I've seen computational biologists , mechanical engineers , non-programmjng entrepreneurs but what does a diplomat do on HN?
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