[HN Gopher] Struggling to learn a new language? Blame it on your... ___________________________________________________________________ Struggling to learn a new language? Blame it on your stable brain Author : hhs Score : 48 points Date : 2021-08-30 19:47 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.ucsf.edu) (TXT) w3m dump (www.ucsf.edu) | GameOfKnowing wrote: | [speaking in tongues] | holoduke wrote: | Learning a language requires a lot of motivation. A few hours a | week is not enough. In my case I started studying russian one | year ago. I promised myself to spend at least one to two hours | per day on learning new words and grammar. I watch YouTube videos | of random russian people. Write down all sentences and repeat | them till I fully understand them. I don't use any apps. But I do | have two times per week a session with a private teacher. She | pushes me to the limit. Without her I would have given up long | time ago. She gives me the essential motivation to practice the | language practically every day. Now after this year I am able to | hold basic conversations at a B1-2 level. By far not enough. But | slowly getting there. Another 3 years and I would be at a similar | level of my English (not native as well) | actually_a_dog wrote: | I don't think that's a bad level of proficiency after one year | of self study. Sure, you'd do better if you were in an | environment where you had to listen to and speak Russian all | day, but, that's not practical for everyone. | cletus wrote: | So here are two things I believe to be true: | | 1. Learning a language is not an academic exercise, it's a social | one. If you're an introvert, learning a second language is (IMHO) | going to be extremely difficult because the activities most | likely to make that happen aren't ones you're likely comfortable | with. Worse, you'll be less inclined to do those activities | because you'll feel hamstrung by your inability to communicate. | It's difficult to get to a point where you have a sufficient | vocabulary to understand what's said or say what you want; and | | 2. This is particularly difficult for English speakers for two | reasons. First, so many speak English or are learning that it's | hard to be in a situation where you can't revert to English. This | makes progress more difficult. The second reason most other | languages will have integral concepts that will be difficult for | you to acquire because there's no English equivalent. Some | examples: | | - Gender of (non-person) nouns; | | - Declension of words by gender, case, article and/or number; | | - Agreement of adjectives; | | The above is rather Indo-European centric of course. Asian | languages tend to have different characteristics that make them | difficult: | | - The writing system; | | - The importance of tone; | | - Replacing grammar with context. | | Nowadays most native English speakers do not know any grammar. | Like at all. Ask the average high school graduate what a noun is | and you're more likely than not to get a confused look. | | To me this is a strength of English because you can obviously | learn the language, including reading and writing, without | "cruft". For example, word order in English is stricter than, | say, German because in German you can denote case by declension | and you can't do that in English. Likewise Spanish typically | drops the subject because it's obvious from the conjugation of | the verb. | actually_a_dog wrote: | So, what happens if you destabilize your brain a bit via | psychedelics? There is some good research out there showing that | certain psychedelics increase neuroplasticity, so it would be | interesting to see what the effects on language learning would | be. | ngokevin wrote: | That's a reason why many language learning apps or methods | recommend a period of "immersion" (i.e., just watching shows or | listening to music) and no speaking. Just listen and get used to | the sounds before trying to produce it awkwardly yourself. This | is popular in the https://refold.la language learning community | where they don't even recommend to speak until you can fully | understand an entire TV show without subtitles (which sounds a | bit extreme to me). https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com is | commonly used. | | I'm going to shamelessly plug my project in case it might be | useful for anyone here. A webapp to learn a language if you're in | a relationship and learning it because you have a partner or | spouse that speaks that language. It's still early, but I've been | learning a third language as an adult for a while, and it helps | to make use of a native speaker who is around you all the time. | They can help train the ear as well. https://learncoupling.com | dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: | Awhile back on here someone made a good point that if you learn | a language via an opposite sex partner, you generally end up | learning a manner of speaking that is typified by that sex. | | So relational training does work to a point, but if you want to | be a man who speaks immersively and culturally like a man (and | so forth) it's worth remembering that digesting telenovelas and | practicing with your Colombian girlfriend will train you in a | certain direction. | yosito wrote: | I learned Spanish with a combination of Google Translate and | Spanish language music. People often tell me that I speak | Spanish like I'm singing and that my grammar seems like | Google Translate. | mc32 wrote: | This is true, from my experience. Natives of the language | will clue you in too that you're doing it. | ngokevin wrote: | That's a good point. It's not necessarily learning directly | 100% from a partner, but more using them for feedback, | reinforcement, and motivation. I'm curious what the context | of that conversation was! | _jal wrote: | I learned German as a 16-17 year-old exchange student, and | haven't had cause to use it super regularly since then, aside | from talking to people there. | | They tell me I still sound a bit like an extremely out-of- | date teenager. | ttesttom wrote: | I would kindly disagree and say that it's better to learn the | pronunciation rules and practice _producing_ them. There is a | lot of research around learning that production and testing are | better for learning (and also why is easier to understand than | speak). Specifically, to train pronunciation, the anki decks | from the author of the book Fluent Forever are incredible. | | Source: Learned a romance language for my SO and everyone I've | met in the native country tells me I have a very natural accent | and clean pronunciation. | | https://fluent-forever.com/product/fluent-forever-pronunciat... | ngokevin wrote: | Yeah, I wouldn't go as extreme as refold's 100% comprehension | before even speaking. Just noting what's become popular | recently. | | Personally, a two-week period or so just absorbing and | practicing pronunciation by yourself sounds good before | trying with other people. | | Congrats on successfully learning your SO's language! | nextaccountic wrote: | Hey, thanks for the refold link, it was helpful. | diskzero wrote: | Your app looks interesting. I'll check it out! | | I learned conversational French, German, Russian and Spanish as | an adult. The method that worked best for me is similar to what | you mentioned. I watched as many shows as I could in the | various languages. I listened to native language programming | and attempted to read as much material in the languages as | possible. While I was doing this, I was also working through | Rosetta Stone, which worked well for me. I also went to | language MeetUps and just absorbed the sounds and patterns of | conversation. | | When I did decide to join the conversation, I took on a | philosophy of fearlessness and just went for it. Sure, many | mistakes were made, but I had zero negative feedback from my | attempts. When I later travelled, I adopted this same attitude. | I knew I was going to make mistakes, but I generated a lot of | goodwill for my attempts. Sometimes I got corrections, | sometimes I had to repeat myself, sometimes I would get an | answer back in English, whatever! No one ever shamed me and my | skills continued to improve. | ch4s3 wrote: | > Sometimes I got corrections, sometimes I had to repeat | myself, sometimes I would get an answer back in English, | whatever! No one ever shamed me and my skills continued to | improve. | | Whenever I'm traveling abroad I always make an attempt to | learn a few hundred words, some phrases, and how to sting | together simple sentences. With very few exceptions, the | attempt is usually greeted with amusement and a polite | response. People were down right thrilled in Hungary, and the | Portuguese are in my experience quite happy to suffer through | you attempt. | ngokevin wrote: | Interestingly in Hong Kong, they will go to hell and back | to divert the conversation to English if they see you | aren't a native speaker. You literally have to say "I can't | speak English" if you want to keep it in Cantonese. | diskzero wrote: | Yeah, sometimes that will happen in countries where | people have strong English language skills. I'll respect | their wish to speak in the language they want to | communicate in. | ch4s3 wrote: | Yeah Holland is like that. | ngokevin wrote: | Yeah, the method is very appealing because speaking requires | interaction with other people. People are very content to | learn passively via watching movies because speaking does | require that fearlessness. | dark_glass wrote: | Your project looks amazing. I am in the same situation where I | am learning Cantonese because my partner and her family speak | it (actually Taishanese, but Cantonese is close enough). | | Love the Yale romanization for your included Cantonese flash | cards! Definitely going to check this out. | | As for listening before speaking: It has been incredibly hard | for me to pick out specific vocabulary with colloquial | Cantonese in movies and other videos. Native speakers talk too | quickly for me right now. I did watch a lot of French movies | when learning French and that seemed to help more with | comprehension later. I likely just need to spend more time with | Cantonese since it is more different to my native tongue than | French. | ngokevin wrote: | Yeah, very hard to learn Cantonese since it's tonal, but you | can do it! For movies, I find it a lot easier to reinforce | once I've gotten used to the language a bit. Lot of good | Stephen Chow and Jackie Chan films to learn with. | | There are podcast packs in the app to get you introduced to | Cantonese. I'll keep in touch to see how it goes! | mynameisash wrote: | > the age-old question of why it's so difficult to learn a second | language as an adult | | This immediately jumped out at me, the rest of the article | notwithstanding. My hot take is that there are at least two | strong reasons why it's so difficult: | | 1. You're not serious about it. | | There's a man in my weekly French meetup who when I joined was a | little bit better than me (which wasn't saying much -- I was | horrible). Since then, his French has improved almost none. He | can't conjugate, he can't pronounce, he can't even stay in the | language: stumbling halfway through a simple sentence, he just | gives up and switches to English. He's not serious about trying | to improve. For him, I think, he just likes the social aspect of | the group. | | 2. You worried about failing. | | Far too many people I've seen want to be fluent to the detriment | of _becoming_ fluent. When in conversation, they think very | carefully about what they say, practice pronunciation in their | head, etc. Saying something embarrassing or even just slightly | off is seen as a hindrance to their goals, but it 's just the | opposite: you have to make mistakes in order to get better. | | Not to say that it's not hard to learn a language, but I've | talked with so many people who just say, "Learn Spanish? At my | age?! Impossible." But I can get by pretty well by myself in | France with patient native speakers, and I'm self-taught. It's | not as hard as people think. | DoreenMichele wrote: | Children aren't trying to learn a language. They are trying to | communicate their needs and language is the way you do that. | | If you need to communicate in a particular language, you learn | it. If you just kind of think it would be nice to know another | language, you probably won't really become fluent. | | Of course, there will always be exceptions. | | Having said that: Any tips for brushing up on my college French? | "Beginner" stuff is too basic but I'm very rusty and the internet | decided for me that one of my forums is a bilingual forum. I'm | happy to embrace that but my French needs work. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-30 23:00 UTC)