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Nobody Knows How to Learn a Language

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Re: Nobody Knows How to Learn a Language

#31

Post by lordnacho »

wickerman wrote: post #26
lordnacho wrote: post #20

I grew up with four languages around me and am currently learning another, having also added a couple of others before. Here's my take on it: - For a child, every lesson in everything is a language lesson. Everyone you come across will correct you. Everyone will add to your vocabulary. Say you're cooking, or going to the zoo. You'll learn what pots and pans are, all the animals in the zoo, some verbs that are relevan…

As a non native english speaker, I don't agree that english has relaxed pronunciation rules. People have trouble understanding english coming from, say, spanish, because english has around 20 vowel sounds whereas spanish has 5. So for any spanish speaker starting to learn english, the differences between, say, cut & caught in spoken english are not evident at all. And this is going to happen to any speaker jumping to…

But it does have more relaxed pronunciation. Talk to someone from Liverpool, Newcastle, Bristol or Glasgow. They're noticeably different.

Sometime the voices in the BBC are different too now that they've loosened the standard.

Re: Nobody Knows How to Learn a Language

#32

Post by kstenerud »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #2

The answer is no secret but it's hard to achieve. The fastest way to learn a new language fluently is to speak it, constantly. Yes, it's easier for children to acquire a new language but they learn it because they are constantly forced to use it. I've known a number of people that have lived in a foreign country yet they did not learn the language. Why? Because they could get away with using English most of the time.…

Confirmed learning Japanese, and now learning German. Being in a situation where you need it for everyday life causes you to pick it up by osmosis. You get a feel for it after a couple of months, and then it just builds organically, exactly the same as how a child picks it up.

It also helps to get drunk from time to time, because your inhibitions drop and you practice better uninhibited (like a child does).

Re: Nobody Knows How to Learn a Language

#33

Post by huffmsa »

I don't support the argument here that Fluency == Knowledge of parts of speech.

I don't think of English as a formal structure except for when I'm editing a written document.

Fluency is the ability to carry on an uninterrupted conversation with another fluent speaker.

Immersion (true immersion, where you don't try to cheat) is the best way to become fluent.

You've gotta be Daniel Day Lewis.

Re: Nobody Knows How to Learn a Language

#34

Post by uncle_d »

radicalbyte wrote: post #25
lordnacho wrote: post #20

I grew up with four languages around me and am currently learning another, having also added a couple of others before. Here's my take on it: - For a child, every lesson in everything is a language lesson. Everyone you come across will correct you. Everyone will add to your vocabulary. Say you're cooking, or going to the zoo. You'll learn what pots and pans are, all the animals in the zoo, some verbs that are relevan…

> If you're British, "scarf" and "giraffe" rhyme. > In American English, they don't. They don't rhyme in British English either. Maybe in one of the regional dialects - I think that you could probably force it in a scouse (Liverpool) accent.

Perhaps they do in old-style Received Pronunciation, like wot the Queen speaks.

But yep if you go oop North then A's become short and giraffe will rhyme with gaffe (like bath and laugh will).

Re: Nobody Knows How to Learn a Language

#36

Post by modernerd »

radicalbyte wrote: post #23
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #2

The answer is no secret but it's hard to achieve. The fastest way to learn a new language fluently is to speak it, constantly. Yes, it's easier for children to acquire a new language but they learn it because they are constantly forced to use it. I've known a number of people that have lived in a foreign country yet they did not learn the language. Why? Because they could get away with using English most of the time.…

It took me about 18 months to learn Dutch and I both speak and write it better than my 5 year-old. Listening to the radio, reading one newspaper article a day whilst following an intensive language course helped the most.

Which language course?

Re: Nobody Knows How to Learn a Language

#38

Post by pm215 »

lordnacho wrote: post #31
wickerman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non native english speaker, I don't agree that english has relaxed pronunciation rules. People have trouble understanding english coming from, say, spanish, because english has around 20 vowel sounds whereas spanish has 5. So for any spanish speaker starting to learn english, the differences between, say, cut & caught in spoken english are not evident at all. And this is going to happen to any speaker jumping to…

But it does have more relaxed pronunciation. Talk to someone from Liverpool, Newcastle, Bristol or Glasgow. They're noticeably different. Sometime the voices in the BBC are different too now that they've loosened the standard.

That's not 'more relaxed' pronunciation, it's a set of different accents (not a phenomenon unique to English). People don't arbitrarily mix and match between them, and any particular accent preserves enough vowel distinctions to largely keep different words distinct. That's different from a learner using the wrong vowels randomly.

The underlying linguistic issue here is that when we're young our brain trains itself to classify speech sounds into categories based on the speech we hear around us -- so sound differences that matter in our native language(s) go in different buckets, but differences that don't matter in that language are ignored. That makes it harder to learn a different language later where the bucketing is different because our brains naturally ignore sound changes that should be significant, and need retraining.

Re: Nobody Knows How to Learn a Language

#39

Post by geomark »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #2

The answer is no secret but it's hard to achieve. The fastest way to learn a new language fluently is to speak it, constantly. Yes, it's easier for children to acquire a new language but they learn it because they are constantly forced to use it. I've known a number of people that have lived in a foreign country yet they did not learn the language. Why? Because they could get away with using English most of the time.…

I found it immensely useful to speak English with my Thai tutor in the beginning when I was trying to get the pronunciation correct and train my ear to hear tones. When I listened to four different words that sounded the same to me but actually have different tones and meanings it would been totally baffling if my tutor did not point out the (to me) subtle tonal differences. I doubt I would have made much progress otherwise. After that, of course, force yourself to stay in the target language and not fall back to your native language.

Re: Nobody Knows How to Learn a Language

#40

Post by viraptor »

> Less than 1 percent of American adults today are proficient in a foreign language that they studied in a U.S. classroom.

Is this really as notable as the author suggests? Are there more people proficient in other subjects learned in the classroom? I don't think more than 1% of people from my classrooms are proficient in maths / chemistry / physics to a "fluent adult language" degree.

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