How I Learned French in One Year • Hacker News Board

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#11

Post by akamaka » Sat, Jun 13, 2009, 7:34 PM UTC

russell wrote: post #6

The Peace Corps of my youth taught the volunteers to speak the new language by 3 months of total immersion, then threw them into the wild. My friends who had gone through the process said that they could get by, but it took a year to become totally fluent. I picked up enough Portuguese to fumble along in Brazil by taking 40 hours of lessons from Berlitz, 2 hours per day twice a week, just me and the teacher. That was…

I can't agree more about learning the correct pronunciation first. I spent some time tutoring students learning English, and many of them had spent years learning to read without any training on pronunciation. They end up speaking English using the sounds from their own language, and will never recover from it without massive relearning effort.

The two takeaways here are: learn pronunciation first, and learn the script of the new language immediately (or you'll just mentally transcribe the sounds using your first language)

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#12

Post by xiaoma » Sat, Jun 13, 2009, 7:40 PM UTC

samuraicatpizza wrote: post #4

bemmu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, I wish I could advance at such a pace. Sometimes I doubt these fast-learner stories, but I guess different people just have different abilities. I lived in Tokyo for 2 years, studying Japanese full-time, and completed several courses in Finland before that. Speaking came pretty easy and I am quite fluent in normal conversation, but learning kanji has proven to be a real time-sink and a source of frustration,…

If you use Firefox, the gTranslate extension is pretty good for looking up words/phrases quickly. All you have to do is highlight the word, right click, and there's a translation menu item that has the translation. It might not be the best for individual characters, but it's quicker than going to the dictionary every five seconds.

The peraperakun plug-in gives pop-ups for words and phrases and it was written specifically for students of Japanese and has been around for a long time.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3343

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#13

Post by fb » Sat, Jun 13, 2009, 7:53 PM UTC

If you want to learn to speak French and use it actively, not just to prepare for some exam, I can recommend French In Action from my experience. It is a base for a 2-year course at Yale University. The whole course revolves around a story about an American student on vacation in France, a French girl, and their families. A complete multimedia course consisting of 52 30-minute video episodes with commentaries, 2 textbooks (500 pages of transcripts, visual aids and readings), 2 workbooks (1000 pages of exercises), 1700 audio files aiding the workbook and 2 study guides (400 pages). There is material for roughly 2 hours a day study for year and a half, but it'll get you to the level where you can easily live in France (or Quebec :).

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#14

Post by trevelyan » Sat, Jun 13, 2009, 7:58 PM UTC

myth_drannon wrote: post #7

Language learning is such a VAST and ignored area in start-up community. I'm also learning French and while Rosseta Stone is the mainstream software it's practically a wasteland with small occasional gems like http://babbel.com ( which is very nice Adobe Flex application). Anyone finding a quick and a fun way to learn a language will become an instant billionaire :) But I guess it's the general problem of knowledge l…

http://www.frenchpod101.com/

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#15

Post by a-priori » Sat, Jun 13, 2009, 8:05 PM UTC

jleyank wrote: post #8

If you're planning to live in Quebec, then French skills are critical. Lots of points for immigration/selection, and things just aren't in English outside of Montreal. If, however, you're trying for someplace like Vancouver, French is less important. I think various websites publish the skill set(s) the country and/or provinces are looking for. It's trivial for a US-ian to get work here, and it's a 3-6 month process…

I'm from southern Ontario, in Canada. Right now I'm living in Lausanne, Switzerland, which is a French-speaking city. Knowing French is absolutely critical for living here, and English is almost useless. Thankfully, I speak a bit of French from school... it's not much, but I can get by, and my girlfriend speaks it quite well.

It seems that most Swiss speak at least two languages well, but these two are usually Swiss German and either French or Italian. Those working touristy jobs usually know enough English to take orders and direct tourists to bathrooms, but that's about it.

Edit: The irony of this article is, of course, that this guy probably now has a better understanding of French than most Canadians outside of Quebec.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#16

Post by tokenadult » Sat, Jun 13, 2009, 8:32 PM UTC

myth_drannon wrote: post #7

Language learning is such a VAST and ignored area in start-up community. I'm also learning French and while Rosseta Stone is the mainstream software it's practically a wasteland with small occasional gems like http://babbel.com ( which is very nice Adobe Flex application). Anyone finding a quick and a fun way to learn a language will become an instant billionaire :) But I guess it's the general problem of knowledge l…

Anyone finding a quick and a fun way to learn a language will become an instant billionaire :)

The emphasis would have to be on fun in that formula for making a fortune.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#17

Post by tokenadult » Sat, Jun 13, 2009, 8:33 PM UTC

akamaka wrote: post #11

russell wrote: post #6

The Peace Corps of my youth taught the volunteers to speak the new language by 3 months of total immersion, then threw them into the wild. My friends who had gone through the process said that they could get by, but it took a year to become totally fluent. I picked up enough Portuguese to fumble along in Brazil by taking 40 hours of lessons from Berlitz, 2 hours per day twice a week, just me and the teacher. That was…

I can't agree more about learning the correct pronunciation first. I spent some time tutoring students learning English, and many of them had spent years learning to read without any training on pronunciation. They end up speaking English using the sounds from their own language, and will never recover from it without massive relearning effort. The two takeaways here are: learn pronunciation first, and learn the scri…

learn pronunciation first, and learn the script of the new language immediately

Correct, and correct. All native speakers of any language are habituated to produce the sounds and perceive the phonemes of their own language, and NOT to produce the sounds or perceive the phonemes of any other language. Acquiring an understandable accent generally takes good training at the beginning.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#18

Post by tokenadult » Sat, Jun 13, 2009, 8:36 PM UTC

Not to rain on his parade, and congratulations to him in achieving a personal, verifiable goal, but learning French as a native speaker of Russian who already had huge exposure to English is less remarkable than learning a non-Indo-European language for him. It is also more remarkable if a speaker of a non-Indo-European language learns English (or French), which I have seen done more than once.

But more power to anyone who takes the time and effort to learn another language well.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#19

Post by unconed » Sat, Jun 13, 2009, 8:46 PM UTC

bemmu wrote: post #9

w1ntermute wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried using Heisig's Remembering the Kanji?

For those that don't know, the Heisig method is a very famous mnemonic method for remembering the kanji. According to some people with brains apparently wired differently than mine, you can learn all kanji in a few months with this method. The method starts with giving each compound part that appears in more complex characters an English language name. These names are then used to create stories that tie the more com…

Mnemonic methods where you remember elaborate stories using your own language are actually kind of a bad idea, though the intent is good. The idea is that you remember a concept better when there are plenty of connections with other things in your head. This is true, and this is why mnemonic methods work very well for beginners, especially people who are getting nowhere on their own.

However, in order to become fluent in a language, you need to think in that language, which means you need to build up concept associations in that language. By teaching yourself e.g. English mnemonics when learning Japanese, you are irreversibly tying your Japanese knowledge to your English, and giving yourself a handicap in acquiring fluency.

If you instead remember a word by memorizing a specific use / context of that word in the target language (and add some visual imagery to that for good measure), then this gives you memory associations that will actually remain useful as you become a better speaker. This is why immersion works so well: your entire learning is grounded in the necessity of speaking with and understanding the culture you are living in. If you need to eat, you will develop a food vocabulary very rapidly.

Mind you, I speak about four languages, am fluent in three and grew up naturally speaking two, so maybe my brain is also wired differently than most.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#20

Post by LogicHoleFlaw » Sat, Jun 13, 2009, 8:54 PM UTC

bemmu wrote: post #9

w1ntermute wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried using Heisig's Remembering the Kanji?

For those that don't know, the Heisig method is a very famous mnemonic method for remembering the kanji. According to some people with brains apparently wired differently than mine, you can learn all kanji in a few months with this method. The method starts with giving each compound part that appears in more complex characters an English language name. These names are then used to create stories that tie the more com…

A friend of mine used RtK and spaced repetition to learn those 2000 kanji. The key to his mind was to practice every day without any skips, otherwise he would backslide several days for every day missed. It seems to have been effective for him at least.