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Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

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Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#21

Post by zerof1l »

I'm currently actively learning my 5th language and passively learning the 6th one. There's no universal way to learn a new language. What works for one doesn't work for another. Also, a big factor in how hard it will be to learn a new language are the languages you know already. If the new language is similar to the one you know already, i.e. is in the same language family, you will have a much easier time learning it. Languages are not just words, they are a way of thinking. You may find yourself having to learn to think in a new way literally.

When I start learning new language, I first focus on speech. So just audio until my ears can pick things like intonation, tones, words, and I start to grasp the sentence structure. After that, get my reading to a basic level and learn the alphabet (if necessary). Only after that do I start with some formal study to build a solid foundation. Usually, some kind of textbook series that covers reading, writing speaking, and listening. After that, I try to immerse myself in a language and learn as necessary.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#22

Post by deanc »

> Learn only 4 tenses. Past for one time events, past continuous, present, future. These are enough to go by and explain yourself.

There is no future tense in Finnish. Or gendered personal pronouns. Oh and there’s about a gazillion words for snow. And god help you if you need to articulate that your spruce is returning.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#23

Post by cicloid »

I speak Spanish and English, but then I moved on to Japanese and now find myself stuck. I'm not confident in any scenario involving Japanese. Perhaps I should explore other languages (likely French, Portuguese, or another Romance language), then revisit Japanese. From there, I might transition to Mandarin and Korean.

Either the path I chose is too complex, or age is beginning to impact my cognitive speed.

Has anyone feeling this? or maybe I overestimated the time I should have been investing into this?

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#24

Post by felsokning »

> ...OR Series in target language and subtitles in English or native language...

In the ever-growing geo-restrictions world, this is no longer as easy as it was in the days of yore.

For example, if you're learning Norwegian and you want to watch anything on NRK, you need to get a BankId[1] - for which you need to be a resident _in_ Norway to have.

The alternative, of course, is buying DVDs/Blu-Rays on Amazon -- but you have to know what you want to watch and what is "good" before buying it.

[1] - https://tv.nrk.no/direkte/nrk1

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#25

Post by arisAlexis »

zerof1l wrote: post #21

I'm currently actively learning my 5th language and passively learning the 6th one. There's no universal way to learn a new language. What works for one doesn't work for another. Also, a big factor in how hard it will be to learn a new language are the languages you know already. If the new language is similar to the one you know already, i.e. is in the same language family, you will have a much easier time learning…

I can disagree about same family languages. I think the jury is out because you get very confused exactly because of the similarities and can end up speaking "itagnol" or "portunol" etc which is the nightmare of Italian or Brazilian immigrants. It can be easier in grammar for sure.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#26

Post by arisAlexis »

cicloid wrote: post #23

I speak Spanish and English, but then I moved on to Japanese and now find myself stuck. I'm not confident in any scenario involving Japanese. Perhaps I should explore other languages (likely French, Portuguese, or another Romance language), then revisit Japanese. From there, I might transition to Mandarin and Korean. Either the path I chose is too complex, or age is beginning to impact my cognitive speed. Has anyone…

Japanese is in the top tier of language difficulty according to official rankings. Don't despair because you are learning the most difficult language ever and you are not even Chinese or Korean to have familiarity with images vs alphabet.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#27

Post by ix101 »

__experiment__ wrote: post #16

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.

The limitation with flashcards is that you get the entire answer, not sure if there are flashcard apps with a hint function? I experimented with vocab training where you can peek the first two letters which helps jog the memory.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#28

Post by jcranmer »

arisAlexis wrote: post #20
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

> Ecole is the first word I learned in French and to this day I forget is it's a grave or aigu.

What I've noticed with most French words is that initial-è seems to be phonotactically disfavored if not outright forbidden. A quick scan of my dictionary suggests the only word with initial-è is ès which is archaic. In general, I associate è with a sort of final position, using je préfère as the mnemonic (since it has both the accents in that conjugation).

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#29

Post by simlevesque »

felsokning wrote: post #24

> ...OR Series in target language and subtitles in English or native language... In the ever-growing geo-restrictions world, this is no longer as easy as it was in the days of yore. For example, if you're learning Norwegian and you want to watch anything on NRK, you need to get a BankId[1] - for which you need to be a resident _in_ Norway to have. The alternative, of course, is buying DVDs/Blu-Rays on Amazon -- but y…

It's not a geo restriction problem. It's a distribution rights problem. NRK doesn't own the right to distribute what they have worldwide, they bought limited local distribution rights. Why would local broadcasters buy the worldwide license ?

It's the producers of the tv shows which need to license their product to a worldwide broadcaster. NRK is only georestricting because the licenses forbids them from not doing it.

I talk about this very often because I'm learning a language. To me the easiest and best options is to watch series produced by the streaming platforms. They own their worldwide rights so they can let anyone anywhere watch any show in any language.

I'm talking about Prime and Netflix originals. But the absolute best streaming platform to learn a language is Disney+. Every content on Disney+ is available in all languages it was translated too, from anywhere. It absolutely changed my life.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#30

Post by schoen »

felsokning wrote: post #24

> ...OR Series in target language and subtitles in English or native language... In the ever-growing geo-restrictions world, this is no longer as easy as it was in the days of yore. For example, if you're learning Norwegian and you want to watch anything on NRK, you need to get a BankId[1] - for which you need to be a resident _in_ Norway to have. The alternative, of course, is buying DVDs/Blu-Rays on Amazon -- but y…

> In the ever-growing geo-restrictions world, this is no longer as easy as it was in the days of yore.

I totally agree with despising these restrictions, but isn't it likely that more total material is available worldwide than ever before?

My nephew was learning Norwegian for a while and we easily found Norwegian newspapers and magazines online to attempt to read together. It doesn't seem like finding such reading material would have been so quick and easy in the United States thirty or forty years ago.

Even for video, he readily found lots of material on YouTube that interested him, including lots of contemporary Norwegian music videos. That also would probably not have been straightforward to find a few decades ago!

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