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I Learned French in 12 Months

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Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#71

Post by yorwba »

tayo42 wrote: post #43
jackschultz wrote: post #3

Whenever I read posts like this I'm much more impressed with the person's desire, motivation, determination, and strength to go an entire year focusing on one a single goal, not necessarily their learning ability. So many people, me especially, go through spurts of wanting to learn something new or complete a project, reach a goal, and yet I always seem to fizzle out because in the end, why bother? I'll argue it's in…

> yet I always seem to fizzle out because in the end, why bother? This has frequently been my problem. I think maybe I'll learn enough to know it's not relevant or helpful outside some curiosity. Languages are really hard. As an American speaking English I really get no use from knowing another language. Over my life I've learned, Spanish, Hebrew, French and Japanese. Enough to make sentences, and I forgot them all a…

> Everyone in foreign countries speaks English anyway.

Maybe you'll find an interesting travel destination where that's not the case by sorting this list by percent English speakers, ascending: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#72

Post by tayo42 »

viseztrance wrote: post #65
tayo42 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet I always seem to fizzle out because in the end, why bother? This has frequently been my problem. I think maybe I'll learn enough to know it's not relevant or helpful outside some curiosity. Languages are really hard. As an American speaking English I really get no use from knowing another language. Over my life I've learned, Spanish, Hebrew, French and Japanese. Enough to make sentences, and I forgot them all a…

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 good use of time.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#73

Post by tayo42 »

yorwba wrote: post #71
tayo42 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet I always seem to fizzle out because in the end, why bother? This has frequently been my problem. I think maybe I'll learn enough to know it's not relevant or helpful outside some curiosity. Languages are really hard. As an American speaking English I really get no use from knowing another language. Over my life I've learned, Spanish, Hebrew, French and Japanese. Enough to make sentences, and I forgot them all a…

> Everyone in foreign countries speaks English anyway. Maybe you'll find an interesting travel destination where that's not the case by sorting this list by percent English speakers, ascending: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...

Its an interesting idea, ive actually been to two in that top 20, morocco and costa rica. I did know a little bit of spanish for the costa rica trip, my high school spanish came back slightly and google translate was helpful enough. Moroccan arabic is really a niche language and found english took me pretty far, i actually didn't bother to learn any arabic for that trip.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#74

Post by gbrown »

burlesona wrote: post #13

I find the timeline believable but I’m impressed (and happy!) to see this worked with self-study. I lived abroad for a while and found I was able to pick up the local language pretty quickly because I was fully immersed in it, by 6 mo. I was comfortably conversational for day to day things. However, I would also caution for anyone wanting to learn a language at home, it’s a muscle and it does fade when you don’t use…

You should check out services like iTalki - it's very affordable to get conversation practice.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#75

Post by electriclove »

ngngngng wrote: post #67
hrktb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you see this quote relative to your real life observation ? I always wonder why people post out of context quotes without commentary, when arguably their interpretation is the most interesting part. I care a lot more about what you think than what that religious leader says.

That's fair. My Dad always taught me that life is a series of distractions. A few years ago when I was single and college age I would always approach him with opportunities to change my major or accept some cool job. He'd never tell me what to do, but instead would have me write down (or review) my goals in life. And then ask myself, "does this fit within my goals?" In following this philosophy I turned down many opp…

What are/were your life goals? How did you come to discovering/defining them? I find that to be quite difficult.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#76

Post by gbrown »

rgovostes wrote: post #54

I've been reading similar anecdotes lately trying to gauge whether I could reach B1 in a Romance language in a few months of study. What I've found is a lot of pessimism about how well Duolingo teaches you a language, with many arguing it's a waste of time altogether. I'm surprised that could be the case though. They have data from millions of language learners processing through their lessons, and looking at their m…

I feel like Duolingo is a good "in": something to give you enough of a foothold in a language to start learning in other ways. The barrier to entry is nonexistent, but it does become hard to progress past a certain point.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#77

Post by pzumk »

Interesting! Just today I thought about learning french or spanish with Duolingo. I started with spanish because it seems to be easier to learn. The article was really inspiring tbh, now I really want to stick to it for a year or so.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#78

Post by dang »

mythrwy wrote: post #47
hrktb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you see this quote relative to your real life observation ? I always wonder why people post out of context quotes without commentary, when arguably their interpretation is the most interesting part. I care a lot more about what you think than what that religious leader says.

I personally suspect it's an attempt to "sell" the religion. Someone can google Ballard and find out all about Joseph Smith! But the quote is sort of bland and not that insightful anyway.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#79

Post by neom »

andrewzah wrote: post #50

> Started consistently covering 50 new words a day on Anki For anyone here who has used anki, that's a huge number. This person is really dedicating their time at this point, because 50 new cards/day very quickly snowballs and you're doing 300+ reviews daily. I did 20 reviews/day for ~6 months straight for Korean, and that took me 30-60 minutes, every day. Thinking about 50/day sounds utterly exhausting. It's a good…

How's your Korean now? Any other tips for Korean? I spent 4 months in Korea and really want to learn the language, but it seems impossibly difficult. 감사합니다 :(

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#80

Post by dgudkov »

I learnt French (stopped just shy of B2) in 1.5 years. My learning pace was intensive (4-6 hours/week), but not as much as the author's. So I find the author's statement credible.

My advise to those who want to learn French - after getting the grammar basics, start practicing spoken French as soon as possible. I found two French teachers online and skyped with them 2-3 hours a week. Initially with a bit of English, then entirely in French. Also, a huge help was having a French TV channel always on. I listened to TV5Monde.

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