[HN Gopher] Struggling to learn a new language? Blame it on your...
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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.
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(page generated 2021-08-30 23:00 UTC)