[HN Gopher] Becoming an Amateur Polyglot
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Becoming an Amateur Polyglot
Author : canthandle
Score : 102 points
Date : 2024-05-12 18:55 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lesswrong.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lesswrong.com)
| jll29 wrote:
| I would suggest to drop "Amateur" from the title in the sense
| that languages are useful both professionally and privately - you
| never know in what language your next deal will be signed, your
| next networking acqaintance bumps into you to make you the next
| job offer etc.
|
| Besides, as a professional (computational) linguist, I have met
| many trained/professional linguists that know only one language -
| typically English - well - I think that is professionally totally
| unacceptable when your mission is to study language (in abstract,
| intentionally without article here => linguistics); the way a
| language structures the world for you in the way its vocab
| influences the way you think in concepts (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,
| AKA linguistic relativity =>
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity ) is
| something that you should at least occasionally step out of, so
| that you don't take it for granted, and for that, you need to
| master a second language.
| ajuc wrote:
| > the way a language structures the world for you in the way
| its vocab influences the way you think in concepts
|
| You can even see it in this article :)
|
| "Learn only 4 tenses. Past for one time events, past
| continuous, present, future. These are enough to go by and
| explain yourself."
|
| Some lanuages don't even have 4 tenses. Polish has 3. And Past
| Continuous isn't a thing, we have aspects instead.
|
| BTW I don't intend to criticize the author, they're far more of
| a polyglot than I am (I only speak 4 languages, and only 2
| well). It's just funny how we take some things for granted.
| enkid wrote:
| Some languages are tenseless.
| betaby wrote:
| > Polish has 3.
|
| Native speakers of slavic languages tend to believe that
| there are three tenses. Try asking that someone who learned
| it as a second language and you'll realize that native
| french/english speakers think that slavic languages have 6+
| tenses to them. Aspekt dokonany i niedokonany basically
| doubles number of tenses.
| XajniN wrote:
| Serbo-Croatian has 4 past tenses, plus the aspect that
| applies to two of them.
| ajuc wrote:
| Polish technically has past perfect, but I've never heard
| it used in real life and most Poles wouldn't know what it
| is if you used it :)
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| In some analyses, english only has two (past and present).
| mtalantikite wrote:
| After many attempts to learn different languages (Spanish,
| Arabic, German, Bengali) and having mixed results over the years,
| I started using Assimil courses and I've been very pleased with
| them. Going through Assimil French along with some comprehensible
| input on YouTube and I got to a high B1 reading/listening in 3-4
| months. After that you can jump into tutoring on italki/Preply
| for speaking and then find other native content that interests
| you. I just wish I had found Assimil courses years ago.
| mettamage wrote:
| What helped so much with them that other attempts/methods
| lacked?
| onemiketwelve wrote:
| The biggest resource I've ever stumbled upon was discord
| servers for specific languages.
|
| During the pandemic when everyone was trying to learn languages
| they were popping off. Like thousands would be in servers and
| you could just chat with people whenever you wanted. I would
| spend every minute commuting, cleaning, or any time I would've
| usually listened to podcasts bullshitting with random people
| and learning how to actually speak.
|
| I've tried italki I've tried other platforms where it's bumble
| for language learning. They didn't even come close to how
| quickly I learned there. And you can't beat free.
|
| I joined one for Spanish and French. I'm sure they exist for
| others.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| Very interesting,can you post links to those servers? Was it
| also audio or mostly text based.what was the ratio of native
| speakers?
| Havoc wrote:
| Easy head start is to learn multiple as a kid. Finding it
| incredibly hard to learn a 4th as adult
| betaby wrote:
| It's mostly input. Kids have more time. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis
| __experiment__ wrote:
| you probably just lack time
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| I must say, I'm really skeptical of all these apps. I've tried
| pretty much all of them (well, not literally all of them, but a
| lot). I've had to move/travel quite a lot in my life, and I tried
| to get a "head start" on learning the language, with a different
| app. Every time, going to the country, I quickly realized that I
| could _not_ speak the language. At best I could read it and
| produce with effort some sentences that natives have trouble
| understanding themselves. And then, after immersing myself in the
| language for a couple of weeks, I was much, much better than
| anything I could have achieved with the app.
|
| Most apps focus too much on impeccable grammar (even if they
| usually restrict you to a few tenses/moods) and rote, non-
| contextual vocabulary learning. Both are, well, useless. Having
| perfect grammar but not knowing when to use which verb in which
| context won't get you far. It's like trying to learn how to code
| in some programming language by studying the formal syntax and
| rote memorizing a bunch of core functions from the standard
| library. You miss out on everything that actually makes a
| language.
|
| All in all, it feels like this post was written by someone who
| mainly communicates (or learns to communicate) in foreign in
| writing.
|
| > Forget intonation if it's not entirely necessary. Especially in
| French, there is no need to learn if a word takes a ` or '.
|
| I can't let that one go, sorry. You don't need to learn perfect
| spelling, but it's going to be obvious most of the time if it's e
| or e when you hear the word. And if you pronounce it weird, you
| _will_ get confused looks. In English, do you "need" to learn if
| a word takes "o" or "u"? People who were raised with certain
| native languages cannot even hear the difference anyway, so why
| bother, I guess? I hope this makes my point clear.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Glad I'm not alone, have thought the same thing.
|
| Having taken some French in high school, formally learning
| grammar and such seemed more useful than what the apps do. Of
| course, doesn't make for high entertainment.
|
| I feel the apps only try to sell the idea of learning a
| language, not the actual ability to do so.
| OJFord wrote:
| Yeah that's a bizarre (or non-) example for a point that
| might be otherwise sound.
|
| Accents aigu et grave sound _completely_ different, and stand
| in for a variety of disambiguating spellings you might use
| (including the grave even for non loanwords: 'bless-id' vs
| 'blesst', for example) you could never confuse the
| pronunciation, they serve the opposite purpose.
|
| In fact that example makes it seem more like a point about
| _spelling_ , don't worry about writing the wrong accent.
| (Yeah, people will figure it out I'm sure; in English too
| 'bless-ayed' is nonsense, so the presence of any accent would
| look like 'bless-id' was intended.)
| arisAlexis wrote:
| I'm OP. I am not communicating mostly in writing. I think that
| most people memorize the sound of the word. Ecole is the first
| word I learned in French and to this day I forget is it's a
| grave or aigu. What I realized with your comment and thank you
| is that I didn't mean intonation! I got confused because and I
| meant the type of accents and I meant spelling. Thank you
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Ecole is the first word I learned in French and to this day
| I forget is it's a grave or aigu.
|
| What I've noticed with most French words is that initial-e
| seems to be phonotactically disfavored if not outright
| forbidden. A quick scan of my dictionary suggests the only
| word with initial-e is es which is archaic. In general, I
| associate e with a sort of final position, using je prefere
| as the mnemonic (since it has both the accents in that
| conjugation).
| Smaug123 wrote:
| > In English, do you "need" to learn if a word takes "o" or
| "u"?
|
| English semi-famously remains comprehensible if you replace
| every vowel with a schwa. So sure you'll have an extremely
| weird accent, but this is acceptable according to the OP's
| definition of "speaking a language" from the first paragraph of
| the article.
| delduca wrote:
| I am on this path, after English I am learning Spanish (from same
| teacher!)
| __experiment__ wrote:
| i have learned many language (german, english, french, japanese,
| korean).
|
| i have used Anki, Supermemo, Flashcards, Watched Series, Read
| Books and the only thing that seems to work is:
|
| - Spaced Repetition - Something you actually enjoy(learning
| should be fun) - Comprehensible Input
|
| anything else has not worked for me.
| ix101 wrote:
| The limitation with flashcards is that you get the entire
| answer, not sure if there are flashcard apps with a hint
| function? I experimented with vocab training where you can peek
| the first two letters which helps jog the memory.
| kebsup wrote:
| I've created a flashcard app with a hint function. I mention
| it in another comment.
| zerof1l wrote:
| I'm currently actively learning my 5th language and passively
| learning the 6th one. There's no universal way to learn a new
| language. What works for one doesn't work for another. Also, a
| big factor in how hard it will be to learn a new language are the
| languages you know already. If the new language is similar to the
| one you know already, i.e. is in the same language family, you
| will have a much easier time learning it. Languages are not just
| words, they are a way of thinking. You may find yourself having
| to learn to think in a new way literally.
|
| When I start learning new language, I first focus on speech. So
| just audio until my ears can pick things like intonation, tones,
| words, and I start to grasp the sentence structure. After that,
| get my reading to a basic level and learn the alphabet (if
| necessary). Only after that do I start with some formal study to
| build a solid foundation. Usually, some kind of textbook series
| that covers reading, writing speaking, and listening. After that,
| I try to immerse myself in a language and learn as necessary.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| I can disagree about same family languages. I think the jury is
| out because you get very confused exactly because of the
| similarities and can end up speaking "itagnol" or "portunol"
| etc which is the nightmare of Italian or Brazilian immigrants.
| It can be easier in grammar for sure.
| jwrallie wrote:
| Exactly, there is a point when proximity between languages
| means that instead of acquiring a new language, one of your
| existing languages morphs into the language you are trying to
| acquire.
|
| I have seen great counter examples of people that could
| partition their mental spaces and isolate the languages
| properly.
|
| I had one Spanish teacher in Brazil that could do this. I'm
| sure she had proper training.
|
| I also had a Spanish friend and her mother was complaining
| that she was forgetting her home language because she was
| living in Brazil for some time. This is the most common thing
| to happen.
|
| Interestingly, as she was telling me this after visiting
| Spain for about a month, I was having more trouble
| understanding her than usual, it can go both ways.
| vasco wrote:
| > You may find yourself having to learn to think in a new way
| literally.
|
| I've said for a few years now my personality is slightly
| different when I speak English. I have a partner of several
| years that doesn't speak my language nor me hers and we
| communicate in English and even simple things like expressing
| affection feel different even after a decade.
|
| At some point since I speak more English every day than my own
| language when I switched to "thinking in English" (not on
| purpose) I remember feeling very sad, having almost lost a part
| of me, and I spent some time trying to think what impact it was
| having on my own actions and behaviors.
|
| Nothing major, but I am more assertive and outspoken in English
| than in my native language because things don't feel so "real"
| to say, so it's easier to not feel scared.
|
| I feel very strange sharing this because when I tried I got
| strange looks but maybe someone recognizes themselves in this
| too.
| bojan wrote:
| This certainly resonates with me. In my professional
| environment I use my third language, and, while it takes more
| thought to express myself, I am more assertive and open
| simply because the words carry "less" weight to me. Another
| positive side is that I'm more difficult to offend or upset.
|
| Sometimes I translate in my head what I just said back to my
| native language and realise that chances are I wouldn't have
| said it if I had to actually say it in my native language.
|
| It's weird. It's also not something I think about on a daily
| basis. It's simply how it works.
| nasir wrote:
| Living the same life. 10 years speaking English with a non
| English speaking partner and I can say I now fully think in
| English and in many aspects my English is better than my
| native language.
|
| Could never put words on it but things don't feel so real
| either.
|
| The funniest part is now I speak my native language with my
| small kids and have fully relapsed to my original home town
| accent. I had abolished that accent years ago to avoid
| getting bullied at high school after relocating to a big
| city.
|
| My kids are actively hearing and speaking 4 languages and one
| is with a thick accent!
| rvnx wrote:
| With English you get to lose nuances and to simplify your
| thoughts. As a result, you cannot put exact words on your
| emotions or your thoughts and you start to think and feel
| differently (and not in a nicer way).
| pawelwentpawel wrote:
| Once you learn, how do you maintain the language? I'm currently
| in Brazil speaking Portuguese a lot. I used to speak more
| Spanish. Right now, if I want to switch back to Spanish it
| takes me a lot of time. They're so similar I still keep on
| mixing them up quite often. I even started a small project
| (https://glot.space) to try to keep training vocabulary in two
| languages at the same time to keep the distinction in my brain.
| deanc wrote:
| > Learn only 4 tenses. Past for one time events, past continuous,
| present, future. These are enough to go by and explain yourself.
|
| There is no future tense in Finnish. Or gendered personal
| pronouns. Oh and there's about a gazillion words for snow. And
| god help you if you need to articulate that your spruce is
| returning.
| ix101 wrote:
| On the subject of tenses Turkish has a "reported past tense"
| which I haven't heard in other languages so far. It's very
| commonly used and simply denotes that someone told you of
| something that happened. I.e. you didn't witness / weren't
| present.
| cicloid wrote:
| I speak Spanish and English, but then I moved on to Japanese and
| now find myself stuck. I'm not confident in any scenario
| involving Japanese. Perhaps I should explore other languages
| (likely French, Portuguese, or another Romance language), then
| revisit Japanese. From there, I might transition to Mandarin and
| Korean.
|
| Either the path I chose is too complex, or age is beginning to
| impact my cognitive speed.
|
| Has anyone feeling this? or maybe I overestimated the time I
| should have been investing into this?
| arisAlexis wrote:
| Japanese is in the top tier of language difficulty according to
| official rankings. Don't despair because you are learning the
| most difficult language ever and you are not even Chinese or
| Korean to have familiarity with images vs alphabet.
| jwrallie wrote:
| I went from Portuguese and English to Japanese and I can tell
| you: that is entirely normal.
|
| So many words in English are from Latin origin, so you got so
| many shortcuts when learning English (and I'm sure you are
| exposed to it for more time than you realize, as time spent
| passively learning a language dominates in the end).
|
| It took me some time to realize the amount of work (in terms of
| hours put into it) that are needed to learn Japanese.
|
| But then what I look for in language learning is not what
| polyglots look for. I want to understand the language deeply to
| appreciate its beauty fully while communicating with natives in
| a deep level, so I'm OK with putting the hours and leaning it
| within many years, even if it means it is the last language I
| learn. I'm in for the depth, not for the number of languages.
| fromMars wrote:
| East Asian Languages are tough for Westerners, or at least that
| has been my experience. The biggest problem is really the
| barrier to reading especially with Chinese and a lesser extant
| Japanese.
|
| Would love any tips from someone who has mastered all those
| characters without full immersion or a structured University
| curriculum.
| felsokning wrote:
| > ...OR Series in target language and subtitles in English or
| native language...
|
| In the ever-growing geo-restrictions world, this is no longer as
| easy as it was in the days of yore.
|
| For example, if you're learning Norwegian and you want to watch
| anything on NRK, you need to get a BankId[1] - for which you need
| to be a resident _in_ Norway to have.
|
| The alternative, of course, is buying DVDs/Blu-Rays on Amazon --
| but you have to know what you want to watch and what is "good"
| before buying it.
|
| [1] - https://tv.nrk.no/direkte/nrk1
| simlevesque wrote:
| It's not a geo restriction problem. It's a distribution rights
| problem. NRK doesn't own the right to distribute what they have
| worldwide, they bought limited local distribution rights. Why
| would local broadcasters buy the worldwide license ?
|
| It's the producers of the tv shows which need to license their
| product to a worldwide broadcaster. NRK is only georestricting
| because the licenses forbids them from not doing it.
|
| I talk about this very often because I'm learning a language.
| To me the easiest and best options is to watch series produced
| by the streaming platforms. They own their worldwide rights so
| they can let anyone anywhere watch any show in any language.
|
| I'm talking about Prime and Netflix originals. But the absolute
| best streaming platform to learn a language is Disney+. Every
| content on Disney+ is available in all languages it was
| translated too, from anywhere. It absolutely changed my life.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > It's not a geo restriction problem. It's a distribution
| rights problem.
|
| This is the same thing.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| It's not the same cause but the effect is the same. It's a
| distinction with a difference, not to be confused with the
| opposite.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_without_a_differe
| n...
| felsokning wrote:
| > NRK is only georestricting because the licenses forbids
| them from not doing it.
|
| I would be more inclined to say that they're doing it to be
| "safe". For example, their immediate neighbour, Sweden, has a
| selection "Kan ses utomlands"[2] -- which, roughly, means can
| see outside of the country.
|
| Presumably, like elsewhere in the world, not everything NRK
| is showing is licensed only for Norway.
|
| To the original point: The issue isn't that BankId is being
| used, it's saying you can just watch the originals, in their
| mother-tongue (person-tongue?).
|
| For example, NRK produces some originals, like Vikingane[3]
| that eventually became Norsemen[4] on Netflix.
|
| Clearly, that's been licensed for semi-global (if not global)
| consumption via Netflix; however, as you can see from the NRK
| link, you still need to login via BankId to watch it in it's
| original form.
|
| Again: None of this is a problem, per se, but saying that one
| can just watch original shows - in their original language -
| isn't congruent at all with reality, these days.
|
| [2] - https://www.svt.se/kontakt/anvand-svt-play-utomlands
|
| [3] - https://tv.nrk.no/serie/vikingane
|
| [4] - https://www.netflix.com/ie/title/80180182
|
| Edit: List formatting fix.
| birktj wrote:
| I'm in Norway so I don't really know how it looks like from
| abroad, but I am pretty sure a lot of NRK content is
| available globally. Under the Vikingane show you listed it
| clearly says "available in Norway". However the first show
| on the homepage "Nytt pa nytt-quiz" [1], a type of game-
| show, says that it is available globally. I am not sure
| there is a clear overview over what is available globally
| though like SVT has.
|
| I think often fiction-type shows like Vikingane has
| complicated licensing as it is normally produced by some
| sort of third-party, but other programs like news and the
| mintioned gameshow is produced in-house and NRK has all the
| rights. There is a very nice page with an archive of old
| programs [2], I think most of this should be globally
| available.
|
| I of course agree in general that geo-restrictions and
| localized distribution rights are stupid concepts.
|
| [1]: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/nytt-paa-nytt-quiz [2]:
| https://tv.nrk.no/programmer/nrk-arkivet
| schoen wrote:
| > In the ever-growing geo-restrictions world, this is no longer
| as easy as it was in the days of yore.
|
| I totally agree with despising these restrictions, but isn't it
| likely that more total material is available worldwide than
| ever before?
|
| My nephew was learning Norwegian for a while and we easily
| found Norwegian newspapers and magazines online to attempt to
| read together. It doesn't seem like finding such reading
| material would have been so quick and easy in the United States
| thirty or forty years ago.
|
| Even for video, he readily found lots of material on YouTube
| that interested him, including lots of contemporary Norwegian
| music videos. That also would probably not have been
| straightforward to find a few decades ago!
| Affric wrote:
| Yep. The internet means information can be shared almost
| anywhere on earth simultaneously, and so a great deal of human
| effort must be spent ensuring this does not happen.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| Not necessary for news broadcasts, for example:
|
| https://tv.nrk.no/serie/dagsrevyen-21/202405/NNFA21051224/av...
|
| I didn't bother looking further into it but I would expect lots
| of other programs to be available without BankId.
| ix101 wrote:
| Are there any apps specifically targetted at polyglots? It's a
| niche so I doubt it. I guess you can tell the app that you're
| native french speaker learning German if you are more proficient
| in French and picking up German. This way you are training two
| languages simultaneously.
| pard68 wrote:
| Barring English, I only speak "dead" languages. Am I a polyglot
| still? Latin, Koine & Classic Greek, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and
| am at "coffee" level in a few ANE/Semitic languages.
| richwater wrote:
| No offense, but what is the "point" in this?
| kebsup wrote:
| Shameless plug: for the past year, I've been building an app to
| help me learn vocabulary. I used to use Anki, but it was very
| difficult to keep adding new words -> word, sentence example,
| image, audio. So I've basically created a copy of Anki - spaced-
| repetition flashcards, with the generation of cards fully
| automated. Also added YouTube and website integration. [1]
|
| The problem with language learning in my opinion is, that
| learning the vocabulary just cannot be skipped. I've had German
| for 6 years (2-3 lessons per week) in highschool, just to find
| out that I don't understand words on 100th positions on the
| frequency lists. We've mostly focused on memorizing crazy complex
| grammar structures.
|
| I've also tried passively listening to podcasts and watching
| movies/series I've already knew, but that would result in at most
| 1-2 words per episode, which just wouldn't work, if you need at
| least 5000 words to understand reasonably well.
|
| [1] https://vocabuo.com
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