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

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

#131

Post by culturestate »

surferoso wrote: post #33

downvote me please, but why is this on HN? I am currently learning Swedish just because we moved here for work, but English is the language we ALL speak at work, no matter where we come from. most HNers would need to learn a language if they get a job overseas for daily survival outside of work, @ work I bet 100% will be speaking English.

This probably rings true in many European companies, but in Asia it's absolutely the opposite. I'm working for a Japanese company at their development center in Shenzhen right now - the westerners (the UI/UX team) use English to communicate with each other, but the dev team speaks only Chinese and/or Japanese.

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

#132

Post by gvido »

graeme wrote: post #5

Another great resource is Pimsleur. I've used their courses to learn Italian and German. It's a half hour of audio each day. The key is that you speak out loud. You can do it while cooking or driving, or any other activity that is routine and non-verbal. They teach you to pronounce phrases very well, and you learn the basic structure of the language. Once you can say "I would like a glass of wine", you can easily lea…

I tried using Pimsleur to learn Dutch, but I must say that I didn't like it too much. The language they used was way too formal, and people here in the Netherlands don't really speak like that too much.

Michael Thomas courses, on the other hand, have been very helpful. Instead of just drilling how to ask for directions, you get taught how to form sentences.

Then again, it probably comes down to personal preferences.

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

#133

Post by mattmanser »

shuzchen wrote: post #76
eric_bullington wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese is notoriously hard to master. It's probably not very revealing to use your experiences with Japanese as a benchmark when the blog author is talking about his experiences with French, a language very close to English, particularly in vocabulary (for obvious historical reasons).

You would have a point if the post author didn't also claim to be having the same success with Russian (also rated notoriously hard to master for english speakers). The tone of the article also implies that the same technique can be applied to any language. That said, I still doubt actual fluency is obtainable for non-mavens even in the romance languages. In my experience, all early learners have a naive view of thei…

He mentions right at the start it took longer with Russian.

RTFA.

The US Foreign Service Institute makes estimates for language difficulties for native English speakers, and they seem to be spot on in terms of comparative difficulty—Russian seems to be taking twice as long as French did for me, and they estimate languages like Chinese to take twice as long as Russian.

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

#135

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#136

Post by melvinmt »

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

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

#137

Post by virtualeyes »

jmulho wrote: post #102
virtualeyes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

absolutely agree, I would LOVE to hear the C1 French speakers demonstrate their savoir faire with la belle langue NOW, with further years of practice post-C1 mastery. I can guarantee that: 1) you will sound nothing like a native speaker 2) I will laugh

I find the doubters like yourself rediculous. Have you never emersed yourself in anything? Things that seem impossible aren't remotely when you take them seriously and let them consume your every thought. Focus 8 hours a day on memorizing the digit of pi, reading music, speed reading, multiplying four digit numbers in your head, "counting cards" in Blackjack, playing chess without sight of a board, learning JavaScrip…

uhhh, not sure what to say, I'm living in France.

In the SW part of the country, the surf region, there are loads of foreigners, many of whom have been here year-round for more than a decade; still, the accent is poor, the phrasing limited, and the non-native speaker element is absolutely evident.

You may immerse yourself in everything French, but unless you start early on in life it will be exceedingly difficult to attain native speaker type fluency. Language is not just speaking phrases, being able to read literature, etc., it's also being, language is being the being of another culture.

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

#138

Post by inkaudio »

inkaudio wrote: post #110
acqq wrote: post #16

I just don't believe his claim: "C1 fluency in French in about 5 months" if he started from 0 unless he didn't do anything but learning the language in the target country. C1 is a damn high fluency: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Re... "Can understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts, and recognise implicit meaning. Can express him/herself fluently and spontaneously without much obvi…

It does not have to be a lie, he could be a prodigious talent and not know it. Some people learn certian things much faster then the general population. He may have a naturally high amplitude for learning language, add a very efficient learning method, and it is not far fetch.

Correction: aptitude not amplitude.

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

#139

Post by shin_lao »

acqq wrote: post #16

I just don't believe his claim: "C1 fluency in French in about 5 months" if he started from 0 unless he didn't do anything but learning the language in the target country. C1 is a damn high fluency: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Re... "Can understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts, and recognise implicit meaning. Can express him/herself fluently and spontaneously without much obvi…

I sincerely question this story.

C1 requires around 20,000 words of vocabulary. That's more than 100 words per day to get there in 5 months.

I submit that's impossible, even if you do that all day.

On a more intuitive level, I'm C2 in English, and it took me 20 years to get there. I don't think C1 in 5 months is realistic.

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

#140

Post by v0cab »

ekianjo wrote: post #103
eric_bullington wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese is notoriously hard to master. It's probably not very revealing to use your experiences with Japanese as a benchmark when the blog author is talking about his experiences with French, a language very close to English, particularly in vocabulary (for obvious historical reasons).

Agree on the Japanese point. The way you build sentences is just TOO different. You can definitely learn Japanese and speak it as a "gaijin" (meaning using european-style sentences with Japanese words) but speaking Japanese like a Japanese takes tremendous efforts and a serious re-wiring of your own brain as to how you approach language. I'd seriously doubt if anyone can claim they can learn Japanese to a high level…

"Agree on the Japanese point. The way you build sentences is just TOO different. You can definitely learn Japanese and speak it as a "gaijin" (meaning using european-style sentences with Japanese words) but speaking Japanese like a Japanese takes tremendous efforts and a serious re-wiring of your own brain as to how you approach language."

I don't agree with this. The way you have to 're-wire' your brain isn't too different from what you do while learning a programming language.

The difficult part of Japanese would be all that vocabulary and all those funny symbols and combinations of symbols.

As a Korean learner, vocabulary is a mountain that I make great progress in scaling, yet my progress seems insignificant compared to the size of the mountain.

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