I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by nik_0_0 » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 2:05 PM UTC

reneherse wrote: post #122

nik_0_0 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only a few lessons into Pimsleur but it is quite interesting. I understand the concept of speaking out loud, but I hope normal conversational tone is not required! I do these on the bus, which means I can mouth the words and speak in a quiet voice, but talking makes me look like a crazy person!

Just get a pocket dictionary of the language you're studying with the subject printed large on the cover. Headphones on, same mouth movements, but now you've gone from crazy to studious! It's a great conversation starter, too, which might land you a conversation partner if you're in a multicultural city.

That is actually an excellent idea, thanks!

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

#162

Post by pothibo » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 2:16 PM UTC

personlurking wrote: post #65

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…

I'm with you on the bombardment method. In terms of fluency, my Portuguese is 95%, my Spanish is 85%, my Italian is 50% and my French is probably 20%. Of course, these percentages would be best if broken down into reading, writing, etc, in order to get a clearer picture. I don't consider myself to be a quick language learner (ie, with a 'gift' for it) but I do believe that being passionate goes a long, long way and t…

Accent in foreign language is a very complex thing. Germanic languages shared same tone. So I would agree that an english speaker could _manage_ the german accent and vice-versa.

The #1 problem with accent is that in order to master a foreign accent you have to be 1. Young, 2. Gifted.

It's impossible for someone who's over 18 years old (arbitrary) to master a different accent (French from english speaking, Cantonese from French/English, etc.)

That's why 6-8 years old who learn a foreign language are so good at it, they have the brain set for learning accents.

You only kid yourself if you believe that you don't have an accent in xyz language and you started learning it past your 20s.

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

#163

Post by reneherse » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 2:50 PM UTC

nandemo wrote: post #129

reneherse wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamentally, it's just a result of picking up certain attributes of the language more quickly than others. That could be a result of the particular teaching method that Pimsleur uses, or just the natural abilities of the student. I've had a similar experience to the grandparent while learning Mandarin (not through Pimsleur), where my pronunciation has far outstripped my progress in listening, grammar, and vocabular…

Still, I don't see it as downside of the method at all. If Joe learns how to say "Excuse me, where is the Hilton Hotel?" in Chinese with really good pronunciation, and some Chinese people go on to assume he speaks really well, then that means to me: (i) Joe used a method that teaches good pronunciation from the start, (ii) those Chinese people are overestimating Joe's ability, they're simply wrong. On (i): any method…

I agree that it's not a downside. It's just an interesting effect and experience! As far as Pimsleur, from people's comments here I'd certainly consider using their materials.

Regarding your experience in Japan, I think that's a demonstration of why learning foreign languages (and traveling)is so significant: It creates new cultural ties and has the power to jolt people out of their preconceptions and prejudices (both for learners and native speakers). It opens minds on all sides.

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

#164

Post by Jun8 » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 3:30 PM UTC

gurkendoktor wrote: post #117

w1ntermute wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I am not sure if Chinese and Japanese can be equated like that. I find Chinese much easier to learn than Japanese because Chinese characters have plenty of built-in pronunciation mnemonics that don't help as much with the Japanese pronunciation. When I studied Japanese, I wasted lots of time coming up with stories to remember complex characters. Maybe it also depends on whether you have good pictorial memory or need…

You're right, I think the consensus is that the Japanese system is much harder than the Chinese (i.e. Mandarin). The reasons are:

1. it consists os three different systems side by side with complex and sometimes arbitrary rules of switching between:

2. Japanese and Chinese are totally unrelated languages, so the Chinese characters were bolted on due to cultural reasons (similar to how Turkish was written with the Arabic alphabet previously). Chinese characters evolved naturally and are suited with Chinese, since many words were single syllable. They are ill-suited for writing languages unrelated to Chinese.

3. Finally, Japanese has a complicated honorifics system which is hard for foreigners to grasp.

The super complicated Japanese writing system is to be contrasted with the Korean system, which although it uses many Chinese characters (again die to cultural reasons) has a system that is ideally suited to its phonology. I think the difficulty of learning spoken Japanese and Korean would be on par; the writing system makes learning Japanese really hard.

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

#165

Post by Jun8 » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 3:34 PM UTC

melvinmt wrote: post #136

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…

The reason why Turkish is in the same group as Japanese is probably because of the subject-object-verb [1] order they have in common (vs SVO in English). This is why even spoken Japanese is difficult to master for English speaking people. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject–object–verb

Turkish (not just the language spoken in Turkey but spoken on a large swatch of Asia, including Kazak, Ozbek, etc.) was perviously grouped with Korean, Japanese and some other local languages as the Altaic group. They are quite similar. This grouping is no longer widely accepted. I've read that Japanese academics want their language to be treated as an isolate and certainly not grouped with, e.g. Korean, because of nationalistic reasons.

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

#166

Post by brianobush » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 5:04 PM UTC

nandemo wrote: post #101

xiaoma wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 couldn't understand. I don't see how that's a downside of Pimsleur...

agreed. This is a good thing. It puts you on the spot and you are forced to try to comprehend what is being said. Even if you only understand a word, you have consumed all and found the one word or phrase you do know.

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

#167

Post by dalke » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 9:05 PM UTC

shuzchen wrote: post #31

eric_bullington wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my response, but I think it's possible. When I first saw this post, my first instinct as a professional (and nationally-certified) translator and polyglot (fluent in 4 languages at some point of my life) was to brush it off. But I see he places appropriate emphasis on vocabulary acquisition, which many language learners fail to do. It's possible, at the very least. I did this in about 4-5 months at age 17 while l…

I agree with the parents that doubt the veracity of these claims. There is so much more to a language than just vocabulary and grammar that I can't imagine anybody picking up on their own in 4-5 months. For example, in Japanese, there are many levels of formality that affect the vocabulary you select as well as the way you say something. And it's not just a matter of using one level with a particular person, how form…

As an example in the US, we had a co-worker who was from Cyprus but lived in the US for 5 years to get a BS and MS degree. He knew English before coming to the US and spoke fluent English, but would be lost when we talked about US popular culture. Before then I hadn't really realized how often people made allusion to old TV shows, 15 year old politics, childhood books, etc.

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

#168

Post by dalke » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 9:29 PM UTC

reneherse wrote: post #121

nandemo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 couldn't understand. I don't see how that's a downside of Pimsleur...

Fundamentally, it's just a result of picking up certain attributes of the language more quickly than others. That could be a result of the particular teaching method that Pimsleur uses, or just the natural abilities of the student. I've had a similar experience to the grandparent while learning Mandarin (not through Pimsleur), where my pronunciation has far outstripped my progress in listening, grammar, and vocabular…

On a similar note, I started learning Swedish mostly through months of self-study (reading/writing) in the US, and a private tutor every other week. She was the only Swedish tutor I could find in a 1 hour driving radius, and British. She is a professional translator and also teaches Spanish and German; I was her first Swedish pupil.

Which meant I, like you, had the strange ability when visiting Swedish, of speaking much better Swedish than I could understand.

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

#169

Post by jaredsohn » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 9:31 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #105

jardiamj wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's only one way to know if he is lying or not. A Skype call between him and native speakers in the languages he claims to master.

That only allows him to prove his abilities now; it doesn't prove how long it took him to get to this point.

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

#170

Post by w1ntermute » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 10:03 PM UTC

oohaba wrote: post #114

w1ntermute wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I used RTK as well, except with the website kanji.koohii.com instead of Anki, to learn 50 kanji a day. Did that for 2 months before moving to Japan, started using Anki for vocab / grammar, and passed the JLPT 1 examination in less than a year and a half.

Haha, was anyone surprised when they found out you knew all the 常用漢字 even though you'd just come to Japan?