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How I Learned French in One Year

kuro5hin.org

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Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#31

Post by MikeCapone »

a-priori wrote: post #15
jleyank wrote: post #8

If you're planning to live in Quebec, then French skills are critical. Lots of points for immigration/selection, and things just aren't in English outside of Montreal. If, however, you're trying for someplace like Vancouver, French is less important. I think various websites publish the skill set(s) the country and/or provinces are looking for. It's trivial for a US-ian to get work here, and it's a 3-6 month process…

I'm from southern Ontario, in Canada. Right now I'm living in Lausanne, Switzerland, which is a French-speaking city. Knowing French is absolutely critical for living here, and English is almost useless. Thankfully, I speak a bit of French from school... it's not much, but I can get by, and my girlfriend speaks it quite well. It seems that most Swiss speak at least two languages well, but these two are usually Swiss…

Malheureusement, c'est bien vrai. Je parle d'experience...

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#32

Post by menloparkbum »

ivankirigin wrote: post #25

Any recommendations on learning to speak and understand japanese without learning kanji? I hated studying kanji while taking japanese language courses in undergrad.

Get a Japanese girlfriend.

If that's not possible, sounddust's method seems the most likely for a hacker with limited access to Japanese people.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#33

Post by pradocchia »

thras wrote: post #22
unconed wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mnemonic methods where you remember elaborate stories using your own language are actually kind of a bad idea, though the intent is good. The idea is that you remember a concept better when there are plenty of connections with other things in your head. This is true, and this is why mnemonic methods work very well for beginners, especially people who are getting nowhere on their own. However, in order to become fluen…

The mnemonic method being referred to is aimed as specifically learning written Japanese. It is not about learning words. It's about learning kanji . The problem is that Japanese has the most complicated written language in the world. It has two alphabets and a set of many thousands of symbols ( kanji ) borrowed from Chinese. Learning spoken Japanese is an entirely different undertaking than learning written Japanese…

I learned Kanji (or Hanzi, as it were) by rote practice and careful attention to the calligraphy of each stroke. It turns out each stroke has a rhythm, and the sequence of strokes have a composite rhythm unique to the character.

Rhythm is an important mnemonic aid. The Homeric epics are poems because poetry has meter and rhyme, and people needed that to remember the whole thing. Same thing with Kanji.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#34

Post by pradocchia »

granular wrote: post #28
akamaka wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree more about learning the correct pronunciation first. I spent some time tutoring students learning English, and many of them had spent years learning to read without any training on pronunciation. They end up speaking English using the sounds from their own language, and will never recover from it without massive relearning effort. The two takeaways here are: learn pronunciation first, and learn the scri…

> learn pronunciation first, and learn the script of the new language immediately What does "script" mean in this context? What is the "script" of a language?

the writing system, be it alphabet, syllabary or character system.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#35

Post by eguanlao »

Wow! Fabulous link. Thank you. It just so happens that I am in Montreal at this very moment. I came here for the weekend to get away from Chicago. I am thinking seriously about moving out of the United States to either Montreal or Paris. I have decided to start taking French lessons at Alliance Francaise de Chicago (http://af-chicago.org/) this summer, and I have "acquired" MP3 albums of French lessons from the Interwebs. I will try the methods suggested in the article and in the comments here. Thanks again.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#36

Post by radu_floricica »

bemmu wrote: post #3
jibiki wrote: post #2

From http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about "In June 2004, at the ripe old age of 21, all post-pubescent and supposedly past my mental/linguistic prime, I started learning Japanese. By September 2005, I had learned enough to read technical material, conduct business correspondence and job interviews in Japanese. By the next month, I landed a job as a software engineer at a large Japanese company in Tokyo" Ba…

Oh man, I wish I could advance at such a pace. Sometimes I doubt these fast-learner stories, but I guess different people just have different abilities. I lived in Tokyo for 2 years, studying Japanese full-time, and completed several courses in Finland before that. Speaking came pretty easy and I am quite fluent in normal conversation, but learning kanji has proven to be a real time-sink and a source of frustration,…

So far the best source I found for learning kanji is http://smart.fm/. Fits very well with my way of learning, and is also great for vocabulary.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#37

Post by billswift »

tokenadult wrote: post #18

Not to rain on his parade, and congratulations to him in achieving a personal, verifiable goal, but learning French as a native speaker of Russian who already had huge exposure to English is less remarkable than learning a non-Indo-European language for him. It is also more remarkable if a speaker of a non-Indo-European language learns English (or French), which I have seen done more than once. But more power to anyo…

Language FAMILY doesn't really make that much difference. Closer relationships like Spanish to Italian or Russian to Polish help a great deal, but it is much easier to learn Bahasa Indonesia or spoken Japanese for an English speaker than it is to learn Russian. Language relations are based on historical development, not always (or even usually) on current similarities that would help a learner.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#38

Post by eru »

a-priori wrote: post #15
jleyank wrote: post #8

If you're planning to live in Quebec, then French skills are critical. Lots of points for immigration/selection, and things just aren't in English outside of Montreal. If, however, you're trying for someplace like Vancouver, French is less important. I think various websites publish the skill set(s) the country and/or provinces are looking for. It's trivial for a US-ian to get work here, and it's a 3-6 month process…

I'm from southern Ontario, in Canada. Right now I'm living in Lausanne, Switzerland, which is a French-speaking city. Knowing French is absolutely critical for living here, and English is almost useless. Thankfully, I speak a bit of French from school... it's not much, but I can get by, and my girlfriend speaks it quite well. It seems that most Swiss speak at least two languages well, but these two are usually Swiss…

Most Swiss seems to speak at least three languages well. In addition to Swiss German most of them also know German. (And those are different languages.)

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#40

Post by xccx »

pradocchia wrote: post #30
xccx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Very useful information here. Current theory (Krashen) says output or production happens naturally only after hundreds of hours of "comprehensible input". It's great to see contrary evidence. I'd love to know more.

I had a similar experience learning Chinese. Output did not follow comprehension. The rule was never sleep without giving your brain something to work on. I spent an hour in the morning and an hour at night practicing the precise pronounciation of syllables, words and phrases, using tapes as a reference. There was little improvement during sessions, but noticeable improvement between them. Thus the rule about sleep.…

IMO English speakers don't learn other languages because they don't really need to. If they do need to, and try to learn with a weak method, then they experience frustration and emotional resistance. (Affective Filter)

For most people, analysis of how a language works is not meaningful. Just like for software users, most people don't care how a program works. They just want to use it.

For highly analytical mathematical minds, study of grammar can be effective. Krashen's research shows, however, that grammar study in classroom environments does not help the majority of students to achieve conversational fluency.

So I'm not saying you are wrong. But there's plenty of evidence to suggest that what works for you might not work for everyone.

Personally, I don't believe that human language is purely analytical framework for thinking. I do believe, strongly, that language is also physical, emotional and expressive. I mean, what is the first word out of a baby's mouth?

Just guessing, but I bet the experience that sounddust describes has less to do with grammar analysis, and more to do with personally relating to the stories in the films and songs. He gets input that A) he comprehends and B) he cares about.

Guessing again, I bet sounddust's success with early output results from practice within a safe environment, where he has no fear of sounding like an idiot. It's a much different experience that being surrounded by peers in a classroom and challenged by the teaching authority.

Further, since he's vocalizing expressions from authentic films and songs, he can mimic not only correct pronunciation, but also mimic expression with real gut feelings, like glad, sad or mad. Feelings are meaningful.

So I agree with you, pradocchia, that early output (expressive mimicry within a safe and playful environment) is useful: 1) it helps us to hear and understand the new language, and 2) it boosts our confidence so we can talk much sooner.

And to sounddust, please correct my wild guessing about what you experienced while learning French!

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