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Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

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Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#11

Post by onemiketwelve »

mtalantikite wrote: post #3

After many attempts to learn different languages (Spanish, Arabic, German, Bengali) and having mixed results over the years, I started using Assimil courses and I’ve been very pleased with them. Going through Assimil French along with some comprehensible input on YouTube and I got to a high B1 reading/listening in 3-4 months. After that you can jump into tutoring on italki/Preply for speaking and then find other nati…

The biggest resource I've ever stumbled upon was discord servers for specific languages.

During the pandemic when everyone was trying to learn languages they were popping off. Like thousands would be in servers and you could just chat with people whenever you wanted. I would spend every minute commuting, cleaning, or any time I would've usually listened to podcasts bullshitting with random people and learning how to actually speak.

I've tried italki I've tried other platforms where it's bumble for language learning. They didn't even come close to how quickly I learned there. And you can't beat free.

I joined one for Spanish and French. I'm sure they exist for others.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#12

Post by betaby »

ajuc wrote: post #7
jll29 wrote: post #2

I would suggest to drop "Amateur" from the title in the sense that languages are useful both professionally and privately - you never know in what language your next deal will be signed, your next networking acqaintance bumps into you to make you the next job offer etc. Besides, as a professional (computational) linguist, I have met many trained/professional linguists that know only one language - typically English -…

> the way a language structures the world for you in the way its vocab influences the way you think in concepts You can even see it in this article :) "Learn only 4 tenses. Past for one time events, past continuous, present, future. These are enough to go by and explain yourself." Some lanuages don't even have 4 tenses. Polish has 3. And Past Continuous isn't a thing, we have aspects instead. BTW I don't intend to cr…

> Polish has 3.

Native speakers of slavic languages tend to believe that there are three tenses. Try asking that someone who learned it as a second language and you'll realize that native french/english speakers think that slavic languages have 6+ tenses to them. Aspekt dokonany i niedokonany basically doubles number of tenses.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#16

Post by __experiment__ »

i have learned many language (german, english, french, japanese, korean).

i have used Anki, Supermemo, Flashcards, Watched Series, Read Books and the only thing that seems to work is:

- Spaced Repetition - Something you actually enjoy(learning should be fun) - Comprehensible Input

anything else has not worked for me.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#17

Post by XajniN »

betaby wrote: post #12
ajuc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the way a language structures the world for you in the way its vocab influences the way you think in concepts You can even see it in this article :) "Learn only 4 tenses. Past for one time events, past continuous, present, future. These are enough to go by and explain yourself." Some lanuages don't even have 4 tenses. Polish has 3. And Past Continuous isn't a thing, we have aspects instead. BTW I don't intend to cr…

> Polish has 3. Native speakers of slavic languages tend to believe that there are three tenses. Try asking that someone who learned it as a second language and you'll realize that native french/english speakers think that slavic languages have 6+ tenses to them. Aspekt dokonany i niedokonany basically doubles number of tenses.

Serbo-Croatian has 4 past tenses, plus the aspect that applies to two of them.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#18

Post by ajuc »

XajniN wrote: post #17
betaby wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Polish has 3. Native speakers of slavic languages tend to believe that there are three tenses. Try asking that someone who learned it as a second language and you'll realize that native french/english speakers think that slavic languages have 6+ tenses to them. Aspekt dokonany i niedokonany basically doubles number of tenses.

Serbo-Croatian has 4 past tenses, plus the aspect that applies to two of them.

Polish technically has past perfect, but I've never heard it used in real life and most Poles wouldn't know what it is if you used it :)

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#19

Post by arisAlexis »

onemiketwelve wrote: post #11
mtalantikite wrote: post #3

After many attempts to learn different languages (Spanish, Arabic, German, Bengali) and having mixed results over the years, I started using Assimil courses and I’ve been very pleased with them. Going through Assimil French along with some comprehensible input on YouTube and I got to a high B1 reading/listening in 3-4 months. After that you can jump into tutoring on italki/Preply for speaking and then find other nati…

The biggest resource I've ever stumbled upon was discord servers for specific languages. During the pandemic when everyone was trying to learn languages they were popping off. Like thousands would be in servers and you could just chat with people whenever you wanted. I would spend every minute commuting, cleaning, or any time I would've usually listened to podcasts bullshitting with random people and learning how to…

Very interesting,can you post links to those servers? Was it also audio or mostly text based.what was the ratio of native speakers?

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#20

Post by arisAlexis »

yau8edq12i wrote: post #5

I must say, I'm really skeptical of all these apps. I've tried pretty much all of them (well, not literally all of them, but a lot). I've had to move/travel quite a lot in my life, and I tried to get a "head start" on learning the language, with a different app. Every time, going to the country, I quickly realized that I could not speak the language. At best I could read it and produce with effort some sentences that…

I'm OP. I am not communicating mostly in writing. I think that most people memorize the sound of the word. Ecole is the first word I learned in French and to this day I forget is it's a grave or aigu. What I realized with your comment and thank you is that I didn't mean intonation! I got confused because and I meant the type of accents and I meant spelling. Thank you
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