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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

#51

Post by meepmorp »

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…

Movies, too. When I was learning Russian in college, we'd be assigned a 5-10 ten minute segment of a movie and have to transcribe it for homework. It took forever at first, but it really helped my listening comprehension improve quickly.

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

#52

Post by ashconnor »

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…

Can you recommend a good Arabic TV show?

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

#53

Post by why-el »

meepmorp wrote: post #51
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…

Movies, too. When I was learning Russian in college, we'd be assigned a 5-10 ten minute segment of a movie and have to transcribe it for homework. It took forever at first, but it really helped my listening comprehension improve quickly.

Yes, movies too. I just liked TV Show more because they last longer and they provide a lasting context.

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

#54

Post by WildUtah »

mshafrir wrote: post #26

If you need help deciding which language to learn, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_...

That list is misleading.

1. Mandarin

Lots of people, but spoken in only two countries (China and Singapore) and essentially nowhere else.

2. Spanish

With only half the number of speakers of Mandarin, Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the world. The people of over twenty countries on three continents prefer it.

3. English

Only third in speakers, but the most widely spoken language, number one in both art and commerce.

4. Hindi

Spoken in only two countries.

5. Arabic

The world's third most widely used language, but usually spoken in places where you just can't use it to pick up girls. (Unless you are a girl yourself)

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

#55

Post by njs12345 »

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…

I somewhat agree with the content criticism, it is indeed fairly random sometimes - I doubt I'm ever going to use the French word for 'postage stamp' or the French word for 'ladder'. I think it might have got better in this regard --- you learn a lot of words for food in Level 1 Unit 4, and I've also learned stuff a tourist would ask. Also, to be fair, I think the word for 'ladder' is only taught because it helps you learn the word for 'hardware store' later :)

There definitely are verb tense lessons if you get far enough! It doesn't teach you by rote, but that's the whole idea, I had lessons in French at school where we did rote learning and Rosetta Stone seems to be working a lot better (I feel more confident in my ability to actually speak and read) than my lessons in school ever did.

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

#56

Post by polymatter »

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…

Another vote for Pimsleur here. I've used levels 1-3 Chinese Mandarin and its excellent. I wish they made more.

Another thing on that list is 3. Repeat lessons.

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

#57

Post by why-el »

ashconnor wrote: post #52
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…

Can you recommend a good Arabic TV show?

Oh I don't know. I am actually a native Arabic speaker so never needed TV shows for that purpose. And there is one issue you will face if you want to learn Arabic watching Arabic TV Shows: Any show you pick will be in some colloquial form of Arabic and not Classic Arabic. The most popular ones across the Middle East now are in Turkish dubbed in Lebanese Arabic (Yeah :p), and seconds are Egyptian TV shows, so you will have to choose. Pretty much any country makes TV Shows in its own version of Arabic, except in Syria where they used to make historical TV Shows in Classical Arabic. What I suggest is to watch news outlets like Aljazeera, which you can watch online for free [1]. Don't pay attention to the existing perception of Al Jazeera; they are very professional. And, relevant to our discussion, their Arabic is the best around. If in doubt, get a feeling of their editorial policies watching Al Jazeera English, then proceed to learn Arabic.

Good Luck

[1] http://www.aljazeera.net/livestreaming/pages

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

#58

Post by vellum »

WildUtah wrote: post #54
mshafrir wrote: post #26

If you need help deciding which language to learn, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_...

That list is misleading. 1. Mandarin Lots of people, but spoken in only two countries (China and Singapore) and essentially nowhere else. 2. Spanish With only half the number of speakers of Mandarin, Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the world. The people of over twenty countries on three continents prefer it. 3. English Only third in speakers, but the most widely spoken language, number one in bot…

If you're going to use Arabic to pick up women in conservative Middle Eastern countries, you need to: 1.) buy a phone with bluetooth [1], 2.) learn the Arabic chat alphabet [2].

Links: 1: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8916890/ns/world_news-mideast_n_...

2:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_chat_alphabet

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

#59

Post by smackfu »

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 thought Pimsleur was pretty good, but I hit a pretty big brick wall at one point. I was saying things properly accented, and I was doing really well in the prompted exercises. But I wasn't really getting any real understanding... I was just getting very good at memorizing whole-sentence responses. And at some point, they try to mix things up and I just had no idea how to go from what I "knew" to what they wanted me to say.

So I was very, very good at my canned sentences, but had no real language ability.

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

#60

Post by wisty »

Jun8 wrote: post #44

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 ex…

Good luck learning "spoken" anything without any decent texts to read. You could listen to the radio / watch movies, but you'll find the dialogue is way too fast and not very coherent (dialogue isn't structured very nicely, it's more free form, so you can't follow it as easily).

You won't catch many words.

If you have a tutor, they might be able to gradually build you up, but you won't have the hours with them. Reading at your own pace is a better way to build your vocabulary and grammar.

You're right about the "thousands of characters" thing - a lot of Chinese writing is pretty simple (in terms of character use - simple characters are usually combined to form longer words, the first thousand goes a looong way), as long as you stay clear of classical Chinese literature (at which point, even some Chinese give up).

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