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I Learned French in 12 Months

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Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#271

Post by Goz3rr »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #267
namelosw wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree on there is no shortcut for "hacking" languages. But at the same time "The quality and type of practice you do matters a lot" as you've said. And also, for learning languages, one way could be significantly less painful than others. I grew up in China, where almost every student struggles so much on English learning, every day. I found myself very easy to pass every exam and beating the average, without…

I grew up in Eastern Europe and had the same experience, ending up speaking English near natively as a kid thanks to watching undubbed cartoons on BBC, Cartoon Network and Fox Kids, Hollywood movies and playing video games. I thought this was the case across all of Europe but found out that in the rich part of Europe all entertainment is dubbed in the local language so youngsters there had worse English skills than I…

Many movies and series we get in the Netherlands are not dubbed either, only subbed. Whenever I catch a glimpse of TV in Germany I'm always bothered by the horrible dubs.

Dutch, English, French, and German are also all mandatory subjects in school for us.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#272

Post by bluGill »

tsukurimashou wrote: post #237
hombre_fatal wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting to a solid level of competency in a language actually is not that hard. It just requires dedication and consistent practice. Though that's why it's hard. Just like eating healthy and exercise isn't hard, just requires dedication, yet notice how few people have a particularly good looking body. The opportunity cost of learning a language is also immense. I've spent an incredible amount of time listening to a…

I think the best way to learn a language is to move to a country that speaks that language. You'll learn without realizing it, because you HAVE TO learn in order to be able to communicate with others.

That depends on where you move. If you move to any big city odds are you can get by in English. If you move to a small remote village you have no choice.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#273

Post by ryanmercer »

animalnewbie wrote: post #210
BTBurke wrote: post #182

I don't believe there is a shortcut for "hacking" languages. I'm a diplomat, and currently learning my fourth language to the C1+ level. When we learn languages, it's a full time job. It was 9 months to learn Mandarin to a B1, 6 months to a C1+ in Spanish, and I'm currently at a B1 in Estonian after 5 months. There are several things I think are crucial after years of full time study (note: this assumes you're going…

I've seen computational biologists , mechanical engineers , non-programmjng entrepreneurs but what does a diplomat do on HN?

>but what does a diplomat do on HN?

Learn things? I'm none of the things you listed, nor do I do anything remotely related to computer sciences, but I still frequent HN.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#274

Post by tartoran »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #267
namelosw wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree on there is no shortcut for "hacking" languages. But at the same time "The quality and type of practice you do matters a lot" as you've said. And also, for learning languages, one way could be significantly less painful than others. I grew up in China, where almost every student struggles so much on English learning, every day. I found myself very easy to pass every exam and beating the average, without…

I grew up in Eastern Europe and had the same experience, ending up speaking English near natively as a kid thanks to watching undubbed cartoons on BBC, Cartoon Network and Fox Kids, Hollywood movies and playing video games. I thought this was the case across all of Europe but found out that in the rich part of Europe all entertainment is dubbed in the local language so youngsters there had worse English skills than I…

I think the intent was to preserve ‘national’ culture but perhaps it was also thought out with brain drain in mind. At an individual level, knowing english fluently is quite empowering, your work opportunities expand greatly. At a wider level this could be quite devastating for a country and its economy if the smartest folks find work elsewhere.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#275

Post by dwnvoted2hell »

BTBurke wrote: post #182

I don't believe there is a shortcut for "hacking" languages. I'm a diplomat, and currently learning my fourth language to the C1+ level. When we learn languages, it's a full time job. It was 9 months to learn Mandarin to a B1, 6 months to a C1+ in Spanish, and I'm currently at a B1 in Estonian after 5 months. There are several things I think are crucial after years of full time study (note: this assumes you're going…

And probably if there was an effective hack, then immersive language schooling, which is something many diplomats encourage, at least through the IB program, probably would have never been developed.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#276

Post by mytailorisrich »

sacado2 wrote: post #261
mytailorisrich wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a native speaker (France's French if that makes a difference). "Crédits" was replaced by "bons", which means vouchers. In the context that would indeed be the likely correct option (and I never heard "crédits" used that way...) It's grammatically incorrect to write "s'inscrire à une salle de sport" and should indeed be "dans une salle de sport" and so it was warranted to correct that. The other corrections a…

> It's grammatically incorrect to write "s'inscrire à une salle de sport" and should indeed be "dans une salle de sport" and so it was warranted to correct that. I'm not even sure. If you consider a "salle de sport" is an activity rather than a place, it becomes correct. You would say "s'inscire à la piscine" (for swimming-pool) for instance because "piscine" is considered an activity rather than a place, in this con…

Except, of course, "salle de sport" is not an activity, and if you want to be perfectly correct about activities you should say "s'inscrire à la natation" not "à la piscine". "Piscine" (swimming pool) is the place, "natation" (swimming) is the activity.

It's fine to say "s'inscrire à la salle de sport/piscine" if you are talking about a specific one.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#277

Post by bluGill »

narag wrote: post #42
karatestomp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still much tougher to come by that one might think. For one thing, European networks don’t care about distributing their content outside of Europe, even in exchange for actual money. For another, a huge proportion of the content is dubbed from English, which isn’t ideal. Even pirating the stuff’s pretty hard, since there’s (apparently) little interest in it. Japanese may be a pain in the ass to learn but it’s ha…

Youtube will give you as many videos in any language as you want.

IF you can find them. Also you have no idea about quality. I've watched several videos in my TL where the plot was 1 here is what I'm going to do, then 10 minutes silently doing it, then 1 minute of reflection. There are a lot of videos of one guy doing something without talking. Note that the above is probably a reflection on my tastes.

I've also watched several videos and concluded after a while that it wasn't my TL but a related language.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#278

Post by bluGill »

tayo42 wrote: post #72
viseztrance wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone speaks English, far from it, but I totally understand the sentiment. In any case, even if you're visiting a place and you're awful at a language, it still means a LOT to the native speakers.

Yeah that's true it might be appreciated, though i'll add on and say i think its unreasonable to expect Americans to learn the local language when they travel. If i wanted to visit europe and go to 3 countries in 10 days, (i dont think thats an unreasonable trip) It would be crazy to do dedicated months of learning for that. Anything beyond, hello, good bye, excuse me and thank you is really too much and not a real g…

There is a the real problem. There are too many languages in the world. All are nice in their own way, but nobody knows even 1% of all languages that are currently spoken. When I was in Germany nobody tried to talk to me in Spanish, if I met somebody who didn't speak English I just assumed communication was impossible even though Spain was only a couple hours drive away. I probably came off as a mono-lingual American even though I knew some Spanish.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#279

Post by TeMPOraL »

ryanmercer wrote: post #270
namelosw wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree on there is no shortcut for "hacking" languages. But at the same time "The quality and type of practice you do matters a lot" as you've said. And also, for learning languages, one way could be significantly less painful than others. I grew up in China, where almost every student struggles so much on English learning, every day. I found myself very easy to pass every exam and beating the average, without…

Quickly, make a language teaching startup that does so by creating a few genres of video games (that are comparable to others in those genres but also prioritize language acquisition) and actually lure good game designers over. Then tell me when the product is ready so I can use it.

Having played some of the educational games as a kid, my Theory of Edutainment is: you have to make it a good game first, educational second. And then don't market the educational aspects at all. If the game is no fun, or playing it becomes a prescribed activity, it'll achieve no results.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#280

Post by loufe »

I had the good luck of getting hired into a job in a 100% French environment here in Quebec just out of school almost 2 years ago. I started with just an intensive 6 credit French course in university and grade 11 English-Canada high school french as a background which conversationally accounted for very little.

I understand feeling as though your structured grammar classes in school failed you when you first went to X country and spaghetti came out your mouth. However, that grammatical framework served me incredibly well as time went on. I found it filled in holes of knowledge without need to go back and correct them later. IMO, it is not a bad place to start, a traditional grammar focused class.

If you're looking for tips, the biggest is to maximize exposure - speaking, reading, writing, hearing the language. It is simply a matter of time if you force yourself into it. In addition to everyday language practice with my colleagues to do my job (don't let them speak your native tongue with you, ever!), I hosted french movie nights, read in french, and installed Antidote for my emails (seriously - if you're learning French, buy Antidote).

Seriously, don't let them speak your native tongue with you, ever, for any reason. Force the language you want to learn without exception - conversation language patterns are very, very hard to undo once set.

Last point: Contrary to the author, "heavily accented French" to me is France French, I am far less fluent with it. Choose your teachers based on what accent you want to have, yourself.

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