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I Learned French in 12 Months

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Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#311

Post by ahpearce »

knubie wrote: post #15

Very impressive progress. I think it speaks to the author's commitment and dedication, as adding 50 new cards per day is a lot . Most people will burn out pretty quickly at that rate. I recommend something like 10-20 per day. I'm also one of those people that say you should make your own cards from material you're immersing in. When going through a predefined list of words like that I think you're bound to end up lea…

There are frequency ordered decks I believe. Very useful. Top 2000 most frequently used, for example, is a good start.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#312

Post by narag »

bluGill wrote: post #307
narag wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, YouTube is such a big place! Best way to start is watching tv news. Hosts have very clear pronuntiation, it's their job after all. I first research what tv channels are more popular in the country, then search YouTube with that info. YouTube doesn't seem to offer a lot of search options, but it's possible to do the search from Google or DuckDuckGo and later select "videos" tab. DuckDuckGo has a dropdown menu tha…

The only thing I disagree with is best. Best is subjective, I find most news boring an irrelevant (a lot of gossip about people I don't care about) so while it is great if you can stand it, I tend to get mad about the subjects they consider worth covering and turn it off. This is a reflection on me of course - you should have your own opinions.

OK, let's say that it's a good way to learn the language, not so much as entertainment. Actually I agree with you about how little of what we see in the news is worth covering.

Anyway, if there's a channel with lots of contents, it's still possible to select only interesting topics. Maybe it's easier for me, because the language I'm most interested in is English :) Usually I don't even need YouTube, just setting Netflix language to English.

For other languages, I'm mostly interested in listening to specific words pronuntiation, usually names.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#313

Post by abecedarius »

ip26 wrote: post #225
abecedarius wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The best setup I know of is an e-reader with a good dictionary configured to pop up on tapping a word. You can also select a passage for auto-translation, which is usually better than nothing. I use the Kindle reader on the iPad the most.

(Although it's good enough, it could be much better: the French dictionary lookup consistently swaps accented with nonaccented e's, the translator goes to Bing instead of deepl.com, the French->English lookup (which pops up in parallel) forgets at least half the time that the source is French and displays a useless null English->English translation of an actually French word. Going beyond the minimum, why couldn't we align a human-translated edition if you've bought one, or found a public-domain one? And the same for an audiobook of the same text? There's so much room to do these things better, not just for Duolingo. I blame DRM and the intellectual-property status quo to a considerable degree. I'm a little ashamed to be plugging a DRM-promoting setup here.)

There are some webapps and iOS apps for parallel-text reading, but last I looked the execution wasn't very compelling to me, and for me the time when parallel texts made the most difference is past. (Also, you learn that translators often seem to want to exercise excess creativity, or misunderstand things. This counterbalances their still-better-than-Bing general skill.)

To make the jump early, assuming you can enjoy them, see if you can find a wide selection of children's books from the library. It was kind of a nostalgic experience -- I'd forgotten what it felt like to be running into puzzling words and expressions all the time. This way is not so quick for dictionary lookup, though.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#314

Post by BTBurke »

echelon wrote: post #293
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…

Could you expand upon this? How many hours a day do you study? Are you learning in structured classes? What curriculum are you using? Do you study while residing in a country that speaks the language? Are you saying it takes a year and a half to reach fluency if you take it on as a full time job?

We have a foreign language institute outside Washington DC where they teach about 70 languages.

It's an organized class for 5 hours a day in small groups with a native speaker as the teacher.

There is usually an additional 2-5 hours of independent study/homework depending on the complexity of the language.

Professional fluency takes between 24 and 88 weeks depending on the difficulty of the language. Spanish is 24, Mandarin would be 88. "Hard" languages like Finnish and Estonian are in the middle at 44.

We test with native speakers at the end to determine our level on a 5 point scale. Each of our embassy jobs has an associated language requirement, usually 3/3, which means professionally fluent in speaking and reading.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#315

Post by BTBurke »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #193
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…

Can you write a bit about how you found HN? It’s a source of slight fascination when non-tech people stumble into this world.

I was an engineer, served in the military, and programming is now a hobby.

Not all diplomats are political science or economics majors. Policy touches so many sectors that it's useful to have people with backgrounds in many areas.

It's not uncommon to have prior software engineers, teachers, etc in the foreign service.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#316

Post by BTBurke »

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?

Programming is now a hobby and I still do some open source stuff and push out various side projects for fun.

Eventually I'll have to retire and so I always hope some of my side projects will take off to supplement my retirement income.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#317

Post by BTBurke »

psychoslave wrote: post #244
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…

Thank you very much for this feedback. I'm estonished of the fact that you target an on the fly translation to your (presumably) native language. I mean, for me it seems like a far harder task than to note what you understand in the source language directly. Actually, I often find that I can fluently exchange with someone speaking English (which is not my native language), but if a third person ask me to translate, i…

We do a lot of on the fly translations. In meetings, we may have to translate for an Ambassador or senior official that doesn't speak the language. Depending on the topic, it may not be appropriate to bring a professional translator, so we do the best we can.

We also meet with a wide variety of people and take copious notes. I personally take notes in a mix of English and the local language, but mostly in English because I have my own shorthand to help me remember what is said. It's hard to develop that kind of shorthand in a foreign language without writing everything and that is too slow for a normal conversation.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#319

Post by Karawebnetwork »

throwaway41968 wrote: post #110
mytailorisrich wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future perfect is very much used both orally and (especially) in writing and so is the past conditional. The passé simple is almost never used orally these days, and in writing mostly only in literary texts. I've noticed that the subjunctive is used less in writing since some change to 'simplify' (i.e. dumb down) the language. Exotic forms of subjunctive (imperfect subjunctive, anyone?) are hardly used anymore ev…

> The future perfect is very much used both orally The past conditional, maybe. The future, really? Do you actually say things like nous nous verrons demain or il l'aura fait avant in casual speech? Well I don't know if you do, but the vast majority of French speakers would say something like on se voit demain et il l'a probablement fait avant . Instead of using specific verb forms to convery meaning people instead r…

> nous nous verrons demain or il l'aura fait avant

I am a french speaker from Québec and hear both of those often.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#320

Post by taurath »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #295
TeMPOraL wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've always expected an Edu-Startup to crack this problem by pairing an existing hyper-addictive game to more traditional homework. My parents used to make me do quick one page math worksheets. Each sheet which took about 60 seconds earned me 5 minutes of time with "Command and Conquer", and to this day I'm able to quickly do Math in my head that most people would need to put on paper. My abilities drastically drop o…

Typing of the dead is a great example.
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