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An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

drdru.github.io

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Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#61

Post by zumu »

_solr wrote: post #15

Hi I am the OP. I just discovered that my submission has made it to the front page. A quick word on the rationale for not using translation. All of the classic apps (Anki, Duolingo, Memrise, ...) are to some extent translation based. Translating has three scalability issues. First, if you want to be inclusive and your product to be used by everyone you have to translate the whole product in a long list of languages.…

I learned Japanese without translation, but I learned it in a classroom in Japan.

From that experience, I don't know how you expect to start with reading and not listening first. You really need to hear something over and over and watch people pronounce the words to learn it properly yourself.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#62

Post by lmm »

unabst wrote: post #35
_solr wrote: post #15

Hi I am the OP. I just discovered that my submission has made it to the front page. A quick word on the rationale for not using translation. All of the classic apps (Anki, Duolingo, Memrise, ...) are to some extent translation based. Translating has three scalability issues. First, if you want to be inclusive and your product to be used by everyone you have to translate the whole product in a long list of languages.…

You're still translating the mouse image into "mouse" in your mother tongue, then staring at the Japanese word. But I do agree translation does about as much harm as good. It's a shortcut that helps you shorten the learning curve by importing what you already know about language and the things you often say generically from another language. Learning a language is really really hard, so for many, without this shortcu…

> The best way to learn a language is through mimicry, immersion, and repetition as you're surrouned by people who only speak that language, who are also friendly, forgiving, and willing to talk to you. Like, children surrounded by their parents, then friends, then friends and teachers.

Those people must also be willing to correct you when you make a mistake, which is socially much harder as an adult.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#63

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

toto444 wrote: post #17
gryson wrote: post #12

But... why? Translation is not something to be avoided for the adult language learner. We should use every advantage at our disposal. You can spend hours trying to guess the meaning of a word through pictures and context (and not getting anywhere far), or you can spend a minute reading the translated meaning and then spend hours understanding it in context (and reinforcing it, and learning its semantics). I wonder if…

> But... why? I started it for two reasons. First there is close to no easy to read content when you begin learning Japanese and there is demand for such thing. The second reason is to see how far I can go like this. It is a sort of thought experiment like you say in your comment. I discovered after I started that Hans Ørberg something similar for Latin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg ). His Lingua L…

I find this approach fascinating, it's simple yet so intuitive! I hope you keep going.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#64

Post by tsimionescu »

Xenograph wrote: post #40
henrikschroder wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one more anecdote, but this is what turned me off from duolingo completely. You can't just learn words or sentences alone, you have to have at least some grammar in there. You need lists of prepositions and pronouns, and you need a little bit of at least simple rules for verbs and nouns. Yes, it's boring but otherwise you'll really struggle.

Not that I disagree necessarily, but to play devil's advocate: kids don't learn any formal grammar rules before they speak their first language fluently.

Sure, but there are two caveats:

1. Kids take about 7-10 years of constant immersion to become fluent in a language

2. Child brains are different from adult brains, and it is likely that the ability to pick up a language in this way degrades significantly after a certain age

I'm not saying it is impossible to pick up a language without being told the grammar rules, just that it's much faster if you do learn them.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#65

Post by tsimionescu »

jamil7 wrote: post #58
Xenograph wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I disagree necessarily, but to play devil's advocate: kids don't learn any formal grammar rules before they speak their first language fluently.

Well kind of depends what you mean. Kids do years of formal grammar in school here in Germany, the language is hard. Kids take a long time to pick up a language via immersion and they typically don’t need to express any complicated constructs. They also have all their needs met by a caregiver, I know what you’re getting at but it’s impractical for most adults to learn this way.

To be fair, people were speaking German for hundreds of years without any formal education in grammar.

But the key point is that, while it is POSSIBLE to learn a language this way, it is definitely more efficient with some formal training as well, until you can develop the "ear" for it.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#66

Post by jamil7 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #65
jamil7 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well kind of depends what you mean. Kids do years of formal grammar in school here in Germany, the language is hard. Kids take a long time to pick up a language via immersion and they typically don’t need to express any complicated constructs. They also have all their needs met by a caregiver, I know what you’re getting at but it’s impractical for most adults to learn this way.

To be fair, people were speaking German for hundreds of years without any formal education in grammar. But the key point is that, while it is POSSIBLE to learn a language this way, it is definitely more efficient with some formal training as well, until you can develop the "ear" for it.

> But the key point is that, while it is POSSIBLE to learn a language this way, it is definitely more efficient with some formal training as well, until you can develop the "ear" for it.

Agreed. This is the main point I was getting at.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#67

Post by tsimionescu »

Swizec wrote: post #33
tsimionescu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that one problem that eventually happens with this approach, which is a problem I had with Duolingo as well, is that very soon after learning a few words you need to start learning basic grammar. In these approaches that don't explain the grammar at all, you need to spend effort pattern matching to pick up the right grammatical rules to construct your own sentences, and you are never sure that you're doing th…

> In these approaches that don't explain the grammar at all, you need to spend effort pattern matching to pick up the right grammatical rules to construct your own sentences, and you are never sure that you're doing the right thing. To be fair, you learn your first language by inference and don't start learning the rules until you're some 10 years into fluency. Even as late as high school we were taught grammatical r…

As I said elsewhere, the main difference is that children get 7-10 years of constant immersion, 24h a day, to learn their first language. I don't have that kind of time :)

Also, I agree that past a certain point grammar becomes extremely convoluted. But I'm not speaking about complex grammar subtleties here, just basic things such as the role of prepositions, word order, basic conjugations etc. Stuff like "most verbs from their past by adding -ed at the end" or "when you ask a question, you typically change the word order and add "do" " etc.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#68

Post by mssundaram »

rconti wrote: post #54
euske wrote: post #38

I've seen a plenty of "learn Japanese" sites, and always scratched my head wondering what their end goal are. The learning process should accomodate the end goals. Is that to watch Japanese anime without subtitles? To have a deep conversation with ordinary people? Or simply the language is too linguistically intriguing? (BTW, so many languages are just as intriguing as Japanese) To me, a Japanese native majoring in C…

It's an interesting question. I'm a native English speaker (American). I began learning French in school at age 11, and did so for 7 years, before taking a few years off, then minoring in it in college. Even now, another 15 years on, with little practice, I consider myself fluent; I haven't forgotten much and it's fairly easy to hold a conversation. That said, television and radio have always felt slightly out of my…

> I consider myself fluent ... television and radio have always felt slightly out of my grasp

Sorry for the nitpick, however that sounds contradictory

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#69

Post by smeej »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #6
mettamage wrote: post #3

I don't understand anything and I tried a bit, but IMO this is much more effort than normal. A friend of my confirmed you need to know hiragana. She has studied it a bit and could follow the lessons, whereas I couldn't (knowing next to nothing).

I couldn’t even tell if the first example was showing how to create a conjunction “banana and monkey” or something else like “monkey eats banana”. Yeah, this would need a lot slower of an approach to work for day 0 beginners. Rosetta Stone and Duolingo are great examples of how it can be done.

I didn't even get this far. I wonder if it's related to my aspie, literal brain wiring.

In my head, it read like, "Symbol for monkey emoji. New symbol. Symbol for banana emoji with new symbol below it, and to the right."

I certainly didn't get anywhere near "eat."

I was comfortably conversant in English before I was 2, and I've learned Spanish, Greek, and Hebrew reasonably well, so it's not my language ability, or even learning with non-Latin alphabets, though I suppose it could be trying to learn without an alphabet at all? My patterns matching skills are strong.

But guessing meaning of unknown symbols from their nearness to each other? Whooshes right by me!

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#70

Post by knolax »

gryson wrote: post #12

But... why? Translation is not something to be avoided for the adult language learner. We should use every advantage at our disposal. You can spend hours trying to guess the meaning of a word through pictures and context (and not getting anywhere far), or you can spend a minute reading the translated meaning and then spend hours understanding it in context (and reinforcing it, and learning its semantics). I wonder if…

> Translation is not something to be avoided for the adult language learner. We should use every advantage at our disposal.

Because you're relying on the translator to accurately convey the meaning of words to you, which translators rarely do. Most professional translators and language instructors don't exactly have the best grasp of language themselves. They do some 1 to 1 translation of "monkey" and 猿 as if the connotation, denotation, and etymology are all the same when if you look it up, they're only kinda similar but not exactly.

English Wikipedia:

"Monkey is a common name that may refer to groups or species of mammals, in part, the simians of infraorder Simiiformes."

Japanese Wikipedia:

"日本語におけるサル（猿）とは、通俗的な意味ではサル目（霊長目）のうち、ヒト（古人類を含む）を除いたもののことである。"

Former talks about Simians whereas the latter apparently says (correct me if I'm wrong I don't know much japanese) colloquially all non-human primates. Is the translator going to know whether an orangutan or gorilla qualifies as 猿? Probably not, they're not even going to mention it.

Personally I believe people should learn a language well enough to read Wikipedia( or equivalent), and then continue only with media in the language in question from that point onwards.

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