How I Learned French in One Year • Hacker News Board

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#41

Post by tokenadult » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 4:31 PM UTC

billswift wrote: post #37

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.

it is much easier to learn Bahasa Indonesia or spoken Japanese for an English speaker than it is to learn Russian

The United States government agencies that track this matter don't generally seem to think so. But if you have other evidence on this point, I'd be glad to hear it.

I agree in general that a grammatical feature such as minimal marking of nouns for case and verbs for person, number, or gender, making word order the main basis for grammar distinctions, makes Chinese eerily familiar for native speakers of English. But even though Chinese grammar is "easy" for native speakers of English, to the degree that some Americans say "Chinese has no grammar" (definitely a false statement), nonetheless lack of a lot of cognate vocabulary or similar phonological system usually means that the native speaker of English will thrive as a learner of any Indo-European language over almost any non-Indo-European language.

The comparisons I've seen most often assume native speakers of English learning various languages to an equal tested level of functional proficiency after government-sponsored training. Length of training to reach the required level is generally longer for the non-Indo-European languages than for the Indo-European languages. The "easy" languages for English speakers are the typically studied languages like French, German, and Spanish, perhaps because of prior exposure as well as close similarity. It would be interesting to see what studies of language learning starting from various native languages to acquire various target languages are showing these days.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#42

Post by tokenadult » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 4:33 PM UTC

tungstenfurnace wrote: post #24

tokenadult wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

learn pronunciation first, and learn the script of the new language immediately Correct, and correct. All native speakers of any language are habituated to produce the sounds and perceive the phonemes of their own language, and NOT to produce the sounds or perceive the phonemes of any other language. Acquiring an understandable accent generally takes good training at the beginning.

OK, so what's the optimum strategy? How about starting with a CD and book of nursery rhymes and then listening whilst following the text. Then eventually ditching the CD and reading/singing the rhymes from the book out loud. Then (having read the translations) doing the same whilst visualising the content.

what's the optimum strategy?

For an adult learner, CONSCIOUS awareness of the different phoneme system of the target language is almost surely necessary. For some language combinations, dictionaries with International Phonetic Alphabet pronunciation keys can help a good deal. Better quality language textbooks have a beginning section detailing differences in the sound system from the learner's native language to the target language.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#43

Post by garply » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 6:24 PM UTC

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.…

"Following such a method you can learn a language in 6-12 months"

Were you able to learn Chinese in 6-12 months? What's your mother language? I know a lot of Westerners who've learned Mandarin and no one achieved fluency in anything near a year. For someone whose mother tongue is near the Romance languages, I can see picking up another Romance language very quickly (I know Latin, Greek, and French and I can essentially understand Spanish even though I've never studied it). But I don't think an English speaker is going to pick up Arabic, Russian, or Chinese in under a year. I'm on year 7 of studying / speaking Mandarin, and I still have problems sometimes.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#44

Post by randallsquared » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 9:47 PM UTC

menloparkbum wrote: post #32

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.

With Japanese, you risk ending up speaking fluent Japanese-girlfriend, rather than what you would be expected to speak as a Japanese-speaking male.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#45

Post by pradocchia » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 10:08 PM UTC

garply wrote: post #43

pradocchia wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

"Following such a method you can learn a language in 6-12 months" Were you able to learn Chinese in 6-12 months? What's your mother language? I know a lot of Westerners who've learned Mandarin and no one achieved fluency in anything near a year. For someone whose mother tongue is near the Romance languages, I can see picking up another Romance language very quickly (I know Latin, Greek, and French and I can essential…

Mother language is English, and no, I didn't learn Chinese in 6-12 months. I studied 3 years in high school, 2 years in China, 3 years in college and another 2 years in grad school, so what's that 10 years all together.

High school was a wash, and living in China helped but I never made real progress till I hit upon this produce and repeat method. College and grad school were mostly classical Chinese and other dialects, so I'm not sure if that counts.

Were I to start Russian today, 6-12 months would be enough for a) no discernible accent and b) every day proficiency. But "pick up" is the wrong phase here. You aren't going to pick up a foreign language in 6-12 months with the immersion method. Look at what the grand OP did: 6-12 months of produce and repeat, followed by immersion. By the time he immersed himself, he had developed the faculties to process the stream of stimulus. That's a huge difference.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#46

Post by pradocchia » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 10:56 PM UTC

xccx wrote: post #40

pradocchia wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mathematic…

I used the study of grammar to help make sense of the phases and dialog I was practicing. It was explanatory, rather than prescriptive, and gave my analytic brain something to chew on while my non-analytical brain was busy digesting the language.

For example, Chinese sentence structure is Topic-Comment rather than Subject-Predicate. This little insight helped make sense of the sometimes odd phrasing that my mind had tried to cast as Subject-Predicate.

About the rest, though, I think you are trying to force good data into a broken framework. Krashen seems interested in the teaching of foreign languages. Thus the focus on student relaxation, comfort and interest--how do you ameliorate the school environment?

I'm interested in the study of foreign languages, which already assumes an interested student. Sounddust was determined to learn French. Play and safety seem beside the point.

This is the process of making a foreign language "real". It starts off like a chore and then becomes a meditation. I could have spent 3 hours per session once I got into the groove. I would have to stop myself after 60 minutes, because extra practice w/out sleep would do me no good.

I don't know how I would apply these methods to the classroom. I did TA a Chinese class once, and no I didn't try to apply the methods. Clock in, clock out. I would tell students about them, but who knows if anyone listened. It all sounded like black magic, and I sounded like a raving fool.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#47

Post by ivankirigin » Mon, Jun 15, 2009, 1:20 PM UTC

randallsquared wrote: post #44

menloparkbum wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With Japanese, you risk ending up speaking fluent Japanese-girlfriend, rather than what you would be expected to speak as a Japanese-speaking male.

I can't imagine any possible awkward conversations from speaking Japanese-girlfriend

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#48

Post by menloparkbum » Mon, Jun 15, 2009, 3:39 PM UTC

randallsquared wrote: post #44

menloparkbum wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With Japanese, you risk ending up speaking fluent Japanese-girlfriend, rather than what you would be expected to speak as a Japanese-speaking male.

This is valid, you will sound like a girl. However, it's better than not knowing how to speak at all. It isn't so hard to correct - just go drinking with some old japanese guys once a week.

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#49

Post by sounddust » Tue, Jun 23, 2009, 11:12 PM UTC

xccx wrote: post #40

pradocchia wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mathematic…

Sorry for responding so late, but I just wanted to say that you're correct on all points above about my learning experience, including (and i'm reluctant to admit this) - the fear of sounding like an idiot (although I got rid of this quickly after actually moving to France, because you don't have a choice).

Re: How I Learned French in One Year

#50

Post by pradocchia » Tue, Jun 30, 2009, 5:24 AM UTC

sounddust wrote: post #49

xccx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mathematic…

Sorry for responding so late, but I just wanted to say that you're correct on all points above about my learning experience, including (and i'm reluctant to admit this) - the fear of sounding like an idiot (although I got rid of this quickly after actually moving to France, because you don't have a choice).

Unexpected (?) but very interesting. I've poo-poo'd some of the points you've just affirmed, perhaps from selective memory, so the anecdotal evidence is welcome.

I was also scared of sounding like a fool, and need privacy to practice.