Ask HN: Learning a foreign language

I started out with LinkWords http://www.linkwordlanguages.com/

Basically using a memeory technique to associate the foreign word with the german.

In the end I stopped using their software as it isn't so great and created my own spreadsheet with the word, foreign word and memory link. I then loaded this into some flashcard software on android. Then several times a day I would try to keep on top of my flaschards. After around 6 months I had gotten through the cards and was getting a reasonable recall rate.

Learning a language requires constant effort and practise and finding a method that works for YOU. For me what works ( I am learning Korean):

* 1 lesson a week on cafetalk.com (not related to them, great/easy website). We sometimes do grammar/vocab or just free talking

* 1 book. There is a great one for korean called: Magic Korean which has a very good learning style. I have tried another 3-4 books but they did not click

* Podcasts while at the gym . I listen to "talk to me in korean" which has over 1000 lessons recorded and still going

* 3 hours studying a week. I usually do it during commute. This includes homework for the online lesson and studying the book

* Live group lessons every Saturday morning. I did these for 10 weeks and stopped due to no availability of lessons at the appropriate level

So in total:

* 1.5 hours of podcasts at the gym

* 1 hour lesson

* 3 hours homework and learning

* (I used to do 2 hour sessions with a group but stopped)

Total: 5.5 hours a week

Also, going to Korea yearly for 1-2 weeks has helped.

Good luck!

I can tell you the steps I used to learn German -- it took about 6-8 months until my only remaining hurtles were sheer vocabulary. Granted, I have a background in Ancient languages, so learning an inflected language like German (or Russian) is much easier for me than it would have been, already understanding gender and case and such. BUT, the methods I used to learn Classical languages did not work for German. I was not a believer in the "practical methods", but they really do work if you do them right, in my opinion.

1. Started with Duolingo. I did not find it useful whatsoever.

2. Started reading Harry Potter in German. At first it took me like an hour to get through a page, I would just look at the English if a sentence was too complicated to figure out with the dictionary. I started to notice patterns, and would read grammar blogs and help sites for stuff that was reoccurring, (e.g. looking for "relative pronouns" on mydailygerman and german language stack exchange). After making it through about 20 pages in HP, the improvement was dramatic. Reading is most important for thinking in a foreign word order. Now people tell me that I use some very sophisticated words and constructions, and it's definitely because I learned German from reading. I've read three books in german now, and can read HP-level stuff without a dictionary.

Btw, I got a kindle for this purpose, but I think that part of the slowness of having to type the word out yourself in an online dictionary helps with memorization. Also, translations are never 1:1, so often the kindle dictionaries are not very helpful. I would go to the park and use my phone to look up words.

Also -- translated books are way easier to read than books originally written in a foreign language. Natively written stuff has too many idioms or strange constructions for a beginner. So reading translations of books you already know is much, much easier (you can also follow the story and not miss an important detail because you don't understand a sentence and have to skip it).

3. Did Memrise for vocab, 1000 Elementary German words. This is huge for speaking confidence (and therefore, speed) -- that you know the gender of the word you are using. They also have sets that teach you which cases and prepositions verbs take, etc. (e.g. In german, you say "I am proud ON you ". These are hard to learn from just reading) The important thing is to say it out loud, just like the example. Eventually, you'll just use the right gender without even thinking about it! (Something I thought was impossible)

4. Watched all the Harry Potter moves dubbed in German, with German subtitles. Twice. First time, I paused when I didn't know a word, and used google translate to translate the sentence. So it would take me like 5+ hours per movie. But, this was one of the most dramatic things that helped my listening comprehension. In the two week period where I did nothing but vocab and watched these movies, I would say my german understanding at least doubled. I also re-watched the movies without subtitles (understanding much less), because it forces comprehension speed and really listening. But the subs are important at first so you know how to spell things ;)

Now I watch movies in German, and always have German subtitles on if the channel has them. If there is Russian Netflix, you can use a VPN and watch your favorite movies subbed/dubbed. You just really have to get high-quality productions, or the subs are too different to be helpful. The news is good non-subbed because they enunciate very clearly. Nature documentaries are also great, because they speak slowly and clearly. Never be afraid to pause/repeat/look up a word!

5. Writing. If you can get someone to write to, it's great, because you have time to carefully express stuff you would want to say every day. So you effectively learn to write phrases that you will later want to say in conversation, but you have the time to research some more about how to do it correctly (and get in good habits).

6. Obviously, speaking. Though I have relatively little speaking experience (my job is in English), I am very capable of expressing myself. If you don't have a native speaker to talk to every day, it also works to talk to yourself and try thinking in the language! Better if you live alone, so only you know that you're crazy :)

So, in a summary: Watch movies and read books. If you see a pattern, research it. Look it up again and again until you memorize it (by seeing it in context). Tools like memrise are great for stuff that is hard to get from movies/reading, like genders. And of course, you need to find someone to talk to! Above all, realize that you will never know what is going on with 100% confidence :D

To give you some realistic expectations: I've lived in Germany since Jul. 2013. It took me 6 months to be conversational, and 8 months to read HP/only really need to improve vocabulary/expressions/comprehension speed. Interacting with German every day cannot be understated as a motivating factor -- you should visit Russia :)

You're at the foot of Mt. Everest asking if there's a shortcut to the top. Learning a second language is like having a child. It's a life long commitment that will consume much of your time for 10 years or so, assuming you really want to be fluent, and will require maintenance thereafter. Consider learning Russian history and culture instead if it sounds too daunting. That's almost always a better choice for native English speakers, in my opinion.

I've learned several languages in my life, I'm trilingual now, and I've succeeded on some and failed miserably on others. Here's my experience and advice.

First, I guess you could say I learned Spanish, but really I was so young it never even felt like learning it, so I can't give you much advice from that account, just that speaking it was hard for me, I could literally feel things get clogged on the way from my brain to the sounds coming out of my mouth - it was wierd but went away quickly enough. The only advice here is that you should probably be speaking the language a lot to train those brain to mouth muscles :)

The language I really had to learn though was German, it was later in life at around 20 when I started learning it.

From German I think the take away is dedication. You have to be motivated and seriously dedicated in order to learn a language. I literally spent hundreds of hours absorbed in German. I would listen to Deutsche Welle radio all the time and lookup words I didn't know. I would always try to visualize everything in my head for new words and grammatical constructs and it seemed to help. When I saw people running it was "die laufen" not because I had to think about running and then translate it, it was just thats what it was. One thing I didn't do much of was learn grammar I found it terribly boring and just learned whatever people on the radio said that I didn't understand.

I also spoke a ton with native speakers my then girlfriend being one, but in the very beginning I remember that talking with native speakers was very difficult.

What helped a lot in this regard was having a friend who also wasn't a native speaker, we could both easily communicate with each other in German, we didn't use slang and didn't speak very fast, but it helped us get used to it, we'd talk about new words we learned and never spoke in anything besides German. After about 6 months of serious hardcore learning we were both able to carry on fluent conversations with Germans to the point where we didn't annoy them by being too slow and dumb. It was also around this time that things started getting enjoyable, before that it was all work and zero fun, just straining your brain to internalize grammatical rules and meanings of word sounds. After that most improvement just came through reading and learning written formulations since the everyday word-set was more or less mastered, which is another benefit of just learning to speak/understand - the language itself becomes a whole lot smaller.

Finally, much later I tried to learn Polish and spent about a month on it before giving up because I couldn't motivate myself enough to go through those grueling months again. One thing I remember thinking with Polish, which probably applies to Russian as well is that it would take longer than German did to get to that same level where you start enjoying things. The grammar was extremely difficult and its phonetical system and vocabulary much more different than the western european languages I already spoke.

So in summary, my advice would be the following:

1. Make sure you are really motivated and dedicated to learning it - it sounds like you are :). It will become fun and a really amazing thing that you can read literature and enjoy movies and a completely different culture than your own, but in the beginning its just a lot of hard work so make sure you have the internal motivation to carry you through the rough waters at the beginning.

2. Once you can carry even a broken conversation find someone who's at or slightly above your level that you can talk with and don't fallback to some other language, make yourself use Russian.

3. When you are comfortable communicating without long pauses to think about what word you want to say, find native speakers you can talk with.

4. Listen, listen, listen - radio is the best. You have to concentrate on sounds and their meanings to know whats going on and your brain isn't dumbed into just understanding the visuals like tv or movies do. Also music, especially rap is good if you can find songs you can rap along to and you memorize the words and their meanings as well.

5. Learn any grammar you need to, but don't overdo it. You'll have time later to go into the nitty gritty and all the written language literary constructs.

Best of luck