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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

#91

Post by Aga »

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.

Sweden is a good place for speaking English, but try e.g. Japan. You won't get far with English even in IT-companies.

Even in Sweden you will miss a lot of important informal discussions if you can't speak Swedish.

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

#92

Post by virtualeyes »

DanBC wrote: post #62

This is what happens when I try to learn a language by watching movies. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-cAnFbEXY0&feature=relat... ) This is also pretty much what happens to me when I'm in the US. I think I'm talking real words, but people don't understand me.

LMAO! Thank you.

It's the same for me when I'm in England, the locals just don't understand me.

"you know what I mean, right?", I say, and they respond with, "oh, royt, e means royt!" WTF is royt, can't these people articulate themselves properly? k-rist they invented the language and we had to improve it, god bless America, rush limpbag and everything that makes the homeland free of the brave.

"ave a pint yank, ave a pint"

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

#93

Post by tagawa »

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…

I think we should cut the guy some slack, here. He's laid out a structured plan for anyone to freely follow if they wish. Even if they don't follow it step-by-step, there are still some great tips to improve language-learning efficiency.

Personally, this looks much more effective than the textbook I'm currently using so I'll give it a try. We have no idea whether his timeframe claims are true or not (in which case, how can we criticize?) but any outcome of following his advice is going to be positive.

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

#95

Post by brianobush »

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.

Not in Japan, unless you are working for a non-Japanese firm. Even then, you will be mainly surrounded by Japanese.

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

#96

Post by w1ntermute »

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…

> 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.

It's not that hard. After years of frustration at being essentially illiterate in Japanese while having a decent level of spoken fluency, I've finally buckled down and started learning the kanji using Remembering the Kanji in combination with Anki. It really is possible to learn 20 kanji a day if you dedicate about 45 minutes of time.

There's a similar book called Remembering the Hanzi (both Traditional and Simplified versions are available) that you can use to much the same effect. At 20 per day, you can learn the 5000 hanzi that are said to cover just about everything you might come across in day-to-day life in less than a year.

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

#97

Post by inspiredworlds »

Its great to see this kind of discussion on Hacker News and how people are hacking their way to learning a language. I think its kinda difficult to obtain that level of fluency without living in the country, being immersed, and communicating with other people. There are certainly tools and ways that can aid you to learn - I've done similar things to learn a language such as learning from movies/tv shows/CD's/books/mobile apps/sitting near people on the train and listening to their conversation.

I've actually made it my mission to make languages fun and easy to learn, and started a company called Native Tongue. If you are interested in learning a language check out our vocabulary mobile apps for Spanish and Mandarin. They're called Spanish Smash and Mandarin Madness.

http://nativetongue.com/

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

#98

Post by jardiamj »

tagawa wrote: post #93
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…

I think we should cut the guy some slack, here. He's laid out a structured plan for anyone to freely follow if they wish. Even if they don't follow it step-by-step, there are still some great tips to improve language-learning efficiency. Personally, this looks much more effective than the textbook I'm currently using so I'll give it a try. We have no idea whether his timeframe claims are true or not (in which case, h…

I speak three languages pretty well, two of them are of Latin origin (Spanish and Portuguese), and Spanish being my native language. I got really fluent in Portuguese in about 6 months, but those who know how close Spanish and Portuguese are, will know that that's not a hard task. But to get fluent in English it took me some years, living in the U.S. I also know enough to understand Polish, but speaking it is pretty hard for me. With that said, I can say with a lot of confidence that this guy is most likely to be lying.

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

#99

Post by drucken »

This guy's method is a very solid approach to learning languages especially for Romance and Germanic languages, even if his claimed results (C1 in 5 months) are hard to believe for ordinary people.

Two other resources which are inline with his approach are the Assimil series, which is highly regarded by non-academic linguists (and some practical academics), and the LingQ words-in-context language learning website.

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

#100

Post by Karunamon »

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.

Talking into a communications device at normal volume makes you look like an asshole? O_o
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