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I Learned French in 12 Months

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Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#221

Post by pieq »

realitygrill wrote: post #197
pieq wrote: post #194

Polyglot here. I'm struggling with written Chinese (traditional Chinese, as I live in Taiwan). Written (traditional Chinese) and spoken (Mandarin) forms are very different, especially in novels but even in news articles. I've got a pretty decent level in spoken Mandarin (most of my colleagues are Taiwanese, meetings are in Mandarin), I can use traditional Chinese to type when chatting with friends online, but I'm com…

Have you tried the Guoyu Ribao, or Mandarin Daily News? Seems like you need extensive reading practice, and that might be a good way to start. I've also heard excellent things about Outlier Linguistics' resources for Chinese characters, assuming you're still spending a lot of effort learning characters.

Thanks!

I'll try 國語日報, I'm not sure where to buy it though (it used to be available easily in every 7-Eleven out there but it's been a while since I've seen a copy in a convenience store...).

I already know between 800 and 1000 traditional characters. Looking at Outlier Linguistics products, it seems more targeted towards the entry level. Their Pleco dictionary is nice, though. Reminds me of the explanations one could find in Wenlai (a desktop Chinese-English dictionary with a lot of historical explanations for each characters).

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#222

Post by pieq »

tanilama wrote: post #198
pieq wrote: post #194

Polyglot here. I'm struggling with written Chinese (traditional Chinese, as I live in Taiwan). Written (traditional Chinese) and spoken (Mandarin) forms are very different, especially in novels but even in news articles. I've got a pretty decent level in spoken Mandarin (most of my colleagues are Taiwanese, meetings are in Mandarin), I can use traditional Chinese to type when chatting with friends online, but I'm com…

I doubt Chinese the written form can be learnt in 12 months... I have learnt English for at least 10 years, still take some efforts to read a novel, specially in a fantasy setting...

Sorry, my message was not very clear. I've studied Chinese in the past, and I'm using it daily. I already know a bunch of written characters, it's just that reading articles seems really out of reach...

And yes, I know what you mean with English... and yet, I'm lucky enough that my mother tongue (French) actually shares a lot of vocabulary with English!

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#223

Post by ehaliewicz2 »

thedirt0115 wrote: post #204
rajlego wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis? [1] There are a couple of parts to it but it essentially says that linguistic competence (a fancy way to say your innate knowledge of a language) only increases when you take in input. If you talk all day that doesn't really make you any better (since you don't learn anything new) unless you use a process like deliberate feedback to be corrected. Personally I thin…

What of the folks who have watched countless hours of anime, but still can't speak Japanese? Input alone is not enough, at least not for adults wanting to become fluent from what I've seen.

Most of the people who do this are reading english subtitles.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#224

Post by gpetukhov »

pieq wrote: post #221
realitygrill wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried the Guoyu Ribao, or Mandarin Daily News? Seems like you need extensive reading practice, and that might be a good way to start. I've also heard excellent things about Outlier Linguistics' resources for Chinese characters, assuming you're still spending a lot of effort learning characters.

Thanks! I'll try 國語日報, I'm not sure where to buy it though (it used to be available easily in every 7-Eleven out there but it's been a while since I've seen a copy in a convenience store...). I already know between 800 and 1000 traditional characters. Looking at Outlier Linguistics products, it seems more targeted towards the entry level. Their Pleco dictionary is nice, though. Reminds me of the explanations one coul…

800-1000 characters is not enough. Should be about 2500-3000 characters to be comfortable with reading news and random articles online. I am at this level now, but can't handle novels yet. Need to learn much more vocab for that.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#225

Post by ip26 »

abecedarius wrote: post #96
bucket2015 wrote: post #60

> 11/18: Started going through the French Duolingo tree > 3/19: Reached the end of the Duolingo tree (level 1 in all skills, but most were level 3+) This is pretty impressive. I've started French Duolingo around the same time and have been doing 30 min per day every day; 14 months later I'm about 1/2-way down. This must have taken ~3h/day of Duolingo.

I went through the early parts of French Duolingo pretty intensively, but gave it up around the end of level 1, because it seems far too grindy -- not a good use of time. The part I did was good for bootstrapping to the point where you can start profiting from more real-life sources like the Harry Potter books.

How do you make the jump and apply the real life sources? A dictionary and a lot of free time? Two copies one in each language? Kindle French?

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#226

Post by nielsole »

schoen wrote: post #209
alexis_fr wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I studied French from 7th-12th grade As a French, I’ve lived a few years in Australia. A lot of people there can only say “Bonjour” and keep a bitter memory of their lessons. It feels like learning German for the French people, also a difficult (albeit more regular) language. It is merely necessary for political cohesion but not at an individual level; As such German lessons are... not designed for the students. If…

> If I had to believe the lessons, there are only two topics that Germans talk about: The Wiedervereinigung (reunification) and the war. According to my lessons, they also talk about Umweltschutz (environmental protection), especially Mülltrennung (garbage sorting).

If you are a guest, sentences like: "Wo ist der Verpackungsmüll?" And "Trennt ihr Biomüll?" Can definitely land you plus points

Everyone below 50 speaks B1 or better English anyhow.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#227

Post by jacobolus »

thedirt0115 wrote: post #204
rajlego wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis? [1] There are a couple of parts to it but it essentially says that linguistic competence (a fancy way to say your innate knowledge of a language) only increases when you take in input. If you talk all day that doesn't really make you any better (since you don't learn anything new) unless you use a process like deliberate feedback to be corrected. Personally I thin…

What of the folks who have watched countless hours of anime, but still can't speak Japanese? Input alone is not enough, at least not for adults wanting to become fluent from what I've seen.

The key is that the input needs to be comprehensible.

If you bootstrapped those people with a month or two of 1:1 lessons with a native speaker and then started them watching anime aimed at young kids with no subtitles, slowly moving them up to more complex examples, still without subtitles, they would end up learning to understand Japanese passably well after enough hours of it.

If you just dump them “countless hours” of complicated Japanese which they can ignore while reading English subtitles, then they’re going to end up learning a few words and phrases but not really becoming fluent.

If they started with poor English reading skill it’s not a completely useless way to practice that though. (Reading books would be better, but reading anime subtitles is better than nothing.)

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#228

Post by jacobolus »

thedirt0115 wrote: post #211
Ghjklov wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s more of a lack of initiative to learn. They may not know how to speak Japanese, but they can listen to it and be able to discern words from each other and be able to grasp ongoing conversations. After years of watching anime and learning kana and even a number of kanji, Japanese doesn’t seem hard at all anymore. I just lack the initiative or immediate need to advance my skills since I live in America.…

I agree about lack of initiative, I just don't want people thinking if they just listen to enough music/TV/whatever they'll magically be able to speak and understand. That only seems to work in children (at least to seem like a native speaker to other native apeakers). It takes work for is adults! For French, it will seem slower after time, don't worry! French in particular has a lot of slurring, but it is predictabl…

> That only seems to work in children [...] it takes work for us adults!

It takes a lot of hard work for children too. They just have no other choice, and usually some adults going way out of their way to help as much as they can.

> beginner book/audio recommendations if you want

Please! Anything with an easy level but appropriate subject matter for young kids?

I studied French in high school and would like to start reading some French kids books to my 3.5 year old, but I haven’t made the effort to find any yet.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#229

Post by satanspastaroll »

bemmu wrote: post #214
viraptor wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's still no great way to avoid steadily losing it if you ever leave That applies even to your original language. ~15 years after moving away, talking to family and friends at home feels... awkward. I can still do it easily, but honestly, sometimes I wish I could use English, even if that's not perfect either. It's so much easier with friends who also moved out. We can switch to a more comfortable language for…

I've been in Japan for 10+ years and only speak my mother tongue of Finnish while talking on the phone with my parents. Very little loss, doesn't feel awkward, but I sometimes forget very rarely used words. If I have a half an hour conversation, there might be one word that a normal person should know, but that I've forgotten. Comes as a bit of a shock to me when this happens.

You've been maintaining the language by calling your parents every now and then

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#230

Post by Broken_Hippo »

mumblemumble wrote: post #125
shmat wrote: post #101

I studied French from 7th-12th grade in an American High School. After that, I could not understand any French beyond "bonjour". I could not have a conversation in French. I could conjugate verbs and I could read some. Fast forward 45 years and I retired and decided to actually learn French. I followed a very, very similar method and after 9 months of self study took a 2 week intensive course in France where I was to…

I'm convinced that a classroom is the worst possible environment for actually learning a 2nd language. There are just so many reasons why. Probably the most insurmountable one is that the pace at which the class can move is limited by the pace at which the least motivated student is going to learn. But I also think that it's just a structurally bad environment for efficient language learning. Since everyone needs a c…

I moved to Norway as an adult and took classes meant for adult learners. And honestly, there were things I might not have grasped otherwise. Of course, I was in class 15-18 hours a week, was surrounded by Norwegian to a point (English is used a lot: Norwenglish is a thing). I had speaking practice in a nursing home two days a week for some months. Our teacher was a native speaker.

It is honestly helpful to have other learners to practice with: They, in general, have the same knowledge base as you do. Workbooks give repetition, and is helpful with things like grammar and word placement. (I only used a workbook with the first 2 books in the first year). The textbooks had common-sense dialogs and things: These focused on everyday situations (small talk, apartments, speaking about one's background, basic job stuff, and so on). A lot of reading introduced these things or made sure to include information about culture or civics.

And honestly, if one only went to school, participated, and did the homework when we had it, one would learn some language. You were simply better off if you worked on it yourself. I'd certainly not have as much understanding of dialects or grammar trying to learn Norwegian on my own.

This was completely different than the classes most folks had back in the US, generally in high school. I got more instruction as an adult in a day than we usually would get in a week back in high school. I had native speakers teaching. The class was taught in the target language from the first day.

Not all class is the same, and some are very beneficial.

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