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I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How

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Re: I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How

#41

Post by rms25 »

mdaniel wrote: post #30
binarycrusader wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often see Rosetta Stone advertised and mentioned, and I even briefly toyed with a demo version in the past, but it didn't click for me. Can anyone provide their own success story for Rosetta or a competing alternative?

I bought all 5 levels of Rosetta French version 3, and I lambast it at every opportunity. There is one positive item, one huge negative and one poor implementation point. The positive is that I think the mechanism, or put another way the Rosetta Stone platform, is mostly good. The combination of visual and aural, with a relatively simple screen-is-one-concept approach, is good. The negative for me was the actual cont…

Pimsleur is all about pronunciation, you should try it.

Re: I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How

#42

Post by oops »

why-el wrote: post #12

I speak three languages fluently (Arabic, French, and English), and I have the same advice for anybody who wants to learn a new language: - Watch their news media. For instance, if you are learning Arabic, then watch Arabic media. It might be tough at first, but just go at it. Be a baby. Babies bombard their minds with input and eventually patterns form. - Pick a TV show you saw and watch the whole thing again using…

Comprehension exercises using foreign music videos and magazines can be good too, for the less formal stuff.

Re: I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How

#44

Post by Jun8 »

I looked at the estimates for learning difficulty for English speakers (http://voxy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/110329-VOXY-...) and saw that they mix together the language difficulty with the difficulty of the writing system. For example, Japanese (labeled hard) and Turkish (labeled medium) are similar (relatively speaking, looking from a English speaker's vantage, also add Korean to this group). In the explanation for why Japanese is so difficulty they mention the three different writing systems, etc., which is true (some consider the convoluted Japanese writing system to be the most complex in the world, on par with Maya hieroglyphs). But what if you want to learn just spoken Japanase? Similarly, what if you wanted to learn Turkish in the 1910s when it was still using the (modified) Arabic alphabet?

As for the "thousands of characters" scare for Chinese, I've read estimates that for daily communication you can make do with less than a thousand characters.

Re: I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How

#45

Post by throwawaytruth »

surferoso wrote: post #33

downvote me please, but why is this on HN? I am currently learning Swedish just because we moved here for work, but English is the language we ALL speak at work, no matter where we come from. most HNers would need to learn a language if they get a job overseas for daily survival outside of work, @ work I bet 100% will be speaking English.

Anything that falls within topic as long as the author frames to match the guidelines ("anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity"). Don't believe me? Try looking back at some of the /best lists in archive.org for politics, crime, or sports. They are there and it's the high rep Hners posting them. This is all about framing it right as long as you are seen in a favorable condition for framing the item.

So yeah, that's how it is. I am sure to expect a counter stating why this is on-topic, or how this one topic is rare etc etc. Framing. Frame shit well, anything looks like gold.

----

The backstory? HN tells you to read http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html and http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html but not even the regulars do it. No one follows the rules, because the rules are the regulars and hive mind make the rules. They make this their land to stomp on all and armchair speak. And that's the truth. I can pull references all day.

If ever tried swearing here? Or giving a point against the masses? Downvoted right? Blame the hive mind and their inability to think on their own.

Now check a regular high rep HNer. He swears, he goes against the masses tells them "What are you all thinking? I am ashamed of these comments here"

A bazillion votes right? Same content, different framing.

Before this post ends up as a dead link from users with too much emotion overflowed from the workplace, remember if you want to do well in this community, here are some steps to follow. I assure you these work. I've experimented with them and have studied high rep members for months

* Circle jerk with reference, your point must inflate the previous point if not disagree with reference.

* Frame your shit. Follow the masters and their styling, they can make cooking a pasta HN worthy. It's amazing actually they really do have that bullshit making skill

* Bring in completely tangential points and references to counter anything written. The aim of the game is to disagree with just the right level of snark

* Never ask why HN is the way it is, this will only upset the hivemind, they don't like their emotions swayed.

* Attack YC companies, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, the community gets a kick out of this, they love seeing them fail and pointing how crappy they but never when those companies are busting their chops making something successful

* If you are really really really angry about something someone wrote, use a throwaway account this is key. HN regulars do this, all the time.

* Never interact with an HNer out of HN, not on twitter not on forums not on anywhere. The pseudonymity high they get off of being here makes them who they are. Don't take that away from them.

* Never comment on the original article (Cannot let the author know all the snark and non constructive criticism you leave them can you?)

* If you find a cool product on the internet that is not free, find a way to clone it in a weekend and put in on Github on rails and say "Tell HN: This is my piss poor clone done over the weekend give me karma now"

pg once/twice/three times?/I lost count/ tried to fix this community but it's not fixable when the top community members fail to see they are full of themselves and imparting that notion to newcomers that this is how the conversation and behaviour must be.

You may ask, why am I still here? Well you see, after you get past the circle jerk inflated ego mindset, there is actually treasure in here. And that sucks. Love/hate relationship I tell you.

Did I once say frame your shit?

If you haven't already, would you mind reading about HN's approach to comments?

Re: I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How

#46

Post by polymatter »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #32
keiferski wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just get a pair of iPhone earbuds (with a microphone). That way you can pretend to be on the phone.

Then, instead of a crazy person, you look like an asshole.

Why do you care what other people think?

Seriously, just whisper and accept the stares. That's what I do. People lose interest in you after a while anyway.

Re: I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How

#47

Post by mdaniel »

rms25 wrote: post #41
mdaniel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought all 5 levels of Rosetta French version 3, and I lambast it at every opportunity. There is one positive item, one huge negative and one poor implementation point. The positive is that I think the mechanism, or put another way the Rosetta Stone platform, is mostly good. The combination of visual and aural, with a relatively simple screen-is-one-concept approach, is good. The negative for me was the actual cont…

Pimsleur is all about pronunciation, you should try it.

I thought that Pimsleur was basically a language podcast: i.e. unidirectional content. _Hearing_ someone speak a native language is not the same as having ones pronunciation evaluated, which is also separate from learning proper pronunciation.

But yes, after hearing all of the raving reviews in this thread, maybe I should give it a closer look.

Re: I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How

#48

Post by vertis »

Awesome story. I had to laugh at the part where you linked the language difficulties. I had a somewhat abortive attempt to learn Chinese last year (we have an office over there). I don't think I've ever come up against something quite so hard as trying to get the tones right in Chinese.

Re: I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How

#49

Post by acqq »

wisty wrote: post #29
acqq wrote: post #16

I just don't believe his claim: "C1 fluency in French in about 5 months" if he started from 0 unless he didn't do anything but learning the language in the target country. C1 is a damn high fluency: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Re... "Can understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts, and recognise implicit meaning. Can express him/herself fluently and spontaneously without much obvi…

5000 vocabulary cards. It won't be enough. You need (say) 5000 words, but you'd need a lot more idioms to be near native.

Exactly, in the language of the most of the readers here: just like knowing all C++ keywords and class names in the libraries doesn't make you fluent in C++ to the level of "can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, showing controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors and cohesive devices" (that is a C1 definition).

Re: I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How

#50

Post by vellum »

xiaoma wrote: post #13
graeme wrote: post #5

Another great resource is Pimsleur. I've used their courses to learn Italian and German. It's a half hour of audio each day. The key is that you speak out loud. You can do it while cooking or driving, or any other activity that is routine and non-verbal. They teach you to pronounce phrases very well, and you learn the basic structure of the language. Once you can say "I would like a glass of wine", you can easily lea…

I used Pimsleur for Cantonese in 2010 during a trip to HK and have kind of mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it was good for pronunciation. Many people were shocked by how good my Cantonese sounded and had troubles believing me when I said I'd just gotten to Hong Kong. On the other hand, this caused some problems-- people consistently over-estimated my language abilities, and as a result said a ton of stuff I cou…

people consistently over-estimated my language abilities, and as a result said a ton of stuff I couldn't understand

The same thing happened to me in South America. I studied Spanish in high school, but when I asked someone a question there, they started talking at 100mph and I had no idea what they were saying.

I find it's a lot easier to understand Spanish speakers who grew up stateside. They use a more limited vocabulary, and they're Spanglish accent is a lot easier to understand.

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