[HN Gopher] How to learn a new language like a baby
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How to learn a new language like a baby
Author : rwmj
Score : 28 points
Date : 2025-03-15 21:34 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| windowshopping wrote:
| I think this is a really interesting and counterintuitive
| suggestion that potentially makes a lot of sense. I'd never
| considered this. I always assumed the difference was just that
| babies' brains are different, but it's true....as an adult most
| language learning centers heavily on the written word, and that
| was not how we learned to speak our first languages. We learned
| to speak and listen, then to write. Adults do it mostly the other
| way around. Very interesting idea. I'll try this with my next
| language.
|
| Anecdotally, I'll say I've been learning a second language for 20
| years by myself in a place where that language isn't spoken by
| anyone, and I've made more progress in the past 2 years than the
| preceding 18. What I changed:
|
| - 15 minutes on anki vocab flashcards every night
|
| - reading books in that language daily instead of english (my
| native language) and making flashcards for every word or phrase I
| didn't know
|
| - listening to videos and podcasts in that language aimed at
| native speakers, NOT learners, and watching them REPEATEDLY until
| I could understand as close as I could get to 100% of it without
| subtitles. I try to spend 20-40 minutes a day listening. I
| especially put on podcasts in the car, but I have to be at home
| on my pc to rewatch with subtitles or a transcript to get the
| parts I couldn't understand initially.
|
| It takes a lot of patience. There's no way around that.
| Alex-Programs wrote:
| I built a system for this! Or, well, comprehensible input more
| broadly - it mostly uses text. Dreaming Spanish sorta takes this
| more audio-based approach.
|
| I do question whether it's helpful to focus on audio without
| text. They're focusing on melody and rhythm, and it seems that
| listening without subtitles is better for that, but that doesn't
| get you understanding, while listening to comprehensible input
| with subtitles lets you get melody, rhythm, and actual vocabulary
| and grammar at the same time. It also lets you stretch
| "comprehensible" a bit further, since you have an extra source of
| contextual input.
|
| Babies also have a lot of context for what the words they're
| hearing actually mean. I suppose there's the "watch translated
| peppa pig" approach for that.
|
| My project (https://nuenki.app) translates appropriate-difficulty
| sentences into your target language as you browse, so you
| casually pick it up over time through comprehensible input.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Dreaming in Spanish itself is a good example of a program that
| doesn't rely on text to make its audio comprehensible. Their
| lower level videos include a lot of context that make it
| possible to understand the speech without written words.
| treetalker wrote:
| Separate but related, a plug for Glossika (www.glossika.com),
| which primarily uses a listening and speaking approach to
| language learning. (I'm just a happy user.)
| bobajeff wrote:
| This study reminds me of the Automatic Language Growth method. I
| can't remember all the specific but it was created by some guy
| long ago in like the 70s or 60s and tested it in Thailand.
| Basically, it was an approach that had the students listen to
| guides talk for like about a year before they before ever
| speaking. According to what I heard, people who went through it,
| would be able to speak fluently, as though it was their first
| language, no accent or anything.
|
| Sadly, there are not a lot of comprehensible input based learning
| courses out there as most focus on speaking early.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| There are a number of programs that use a purely audio-lingual
| approach with translation, like Pimsleur or the
| <language>pod101 series. In both cases, when I tried them as a
| short term tourist, people were surprised how well they could
| understand me for the short time I'd been learning. These were
| tonal languages very few tourists tended to learn, so local
| expectations were low and just being comprehensible was a win.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Another hackernews article where the title is clickbait and the
| experiment doesn't really honor the title implication.
|
| Language learning is not easy nor effortless nor "just a few
| minutes per day" endeavor. Babies had 24/7 immersion and a
| completely different context.
|
| You can do experiments and try certain things but the framing
| needs to be honest and not "we tried this thing in a very small
| environment and extrapolated like mad".
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