Learning a new language

[Eco]

14 minutes ago, Grizzly21 said:

Does anyone know any language learning websites besides Duolingo? That application is great and all but it doesn't have the language I'm looking for  

First off - What language are you looking for. 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Eco said:

First off - What language are you looking for. 

Malay. I'll explain why them in particular some other time, but that's what I am looking for.

[Eco]

1 minute ago, Grizzly21 said:

Malay. I'll explain why them in particular some other time, but that's what I am looking for.

That's an odd languages and not a 'common' one, so I'd stick to  YouTube Videos and look at iTalki and see if there are any teachers there. 

[Eco]

So - There are two good resources that have helped me - 

https://www.fluentin3months.com/ - While the name seems to misleading, Benny is a major advocate of learning a little of whatever language you want to learn, and then immersing yourself in that culture and speaking it with natives as often as possible. This is very do-able here in the States as we have just about every different culture and they have their own places to hangout. 

And then this book - Which goes over a method of using pictures to learn words, and it also has some great resources in the back, which lists all the major languages, and the best books to use when learning said language, as well as a pretty comprehensive table showing what is believed to be the amount of quality hours needed to become fluent in a language. 

[Toinho]

On 13/05/2019 at 20:25, Eco said:

So - There are two good resources that have helped me - 

https://www.fluentin3months.com/ - While the name seems to misleading, Benny is a major advocate of learning a little of whatever language you want to learn, and then immersing yourself in that culture and speaking it with natives as often as possible. This is very do-able here in the States as we have just about every different culture and they have their own places to hangout. 

And then this book - Which goes over a method of using pictures to learn words, and it also has some great resources in the back, which lists all the major languages, and the best books to use when learning said language, as well as a pretty comprehensive table showing what is believed to be the amount of quality hours needed to become fluent in a language. 

May look into that book..

[Eco]

9 hours ago, Toinho said:

May look into that book..

www.thriftbooks.com

It's probably $4-5

[Toinho]

8 minutes ago, Eco said:

www.thriftbooks.com

It's probably $4-5

$10USD like new, didn’t check the postage... seen one locally for $24 so like 5 American cents the way our dollar is! Haha 

[Eco]

3 minutes ago, Toinho said:

$10USD like new, didn’t check the postage... seen one locally for $24 so like 5 American cents the way our dollar is! Haha 

I bought mine used and abused, just to get it cheaper, but it's a quality book. 

[Toinho]

12 minutes ago, Eco said:

I bought mine used and abused, just to get it cheaper, but it's a quality book. 

Yeah I’m pretty far from the US, so will look at second hand here.

[nudge]

If you hate flash cards/Anki like me though, then you can skip 90% of it...

[Eco]

Just now, nudge said:

If you hate flash cards/Anki like me though, then you can skip 90% of it...

True - it is based on the notecard formula, and while I also am not a fan of Anki, I usually end up making my own flashcards. 

[nudge]

1 minute ago, Eco said:

True - it is based on the notecard formula, and while I also am not a fan of Anki, I usually end up making my own flashcards. 

I highly dislike flashcards altogether (including apps like Memrise); it's just not my language learning style at all and thus feels highly unnatural to me... Just wanted to give heads up in case Toinho or anyone else feels the same...

[Eco]

Just now, nudge said:

I highly dislike flashcards altogether (including apps like Memrise); it's just not my language learning style at all and thus feels highly unnatural to me... Just wanted to give heads up in case Toinho or anyone else feels the same...

Fair enough. 

I much prefer the Benny Lewis system of learning a little, and then integrating yourself into a scenario where you speak like. So if I'm learning Spanish, then I need to go to popular hangouts of Spanish Speakers and just...speak. 

There is some good information though in the book in regards to systems for studying and approx. a time frame for how long it takes to learn a language. 

[nudge]

18 minutes ago, Eco said:

Fair enough. 

I much prefer the Benny Lewis system of learning a little, and then integrating yourself into a scenario where you speak like. So if I'm learning Spanish, then I need to go to popular hangouts of Spanish Speakers and just...speak. 

There is some good information though in the book in regards to systems for studying and approx. a time frame for how long it takes to learn a language. 

Intensive learning by immersion has been there for thousands of years... Benny Lewis certainly didn't invent it but he's definitely good at selling it as his own and marketing and promoting himself as a "polyglot" despite not being able to demonstrate a high level of fluency in most of the languages he claims to be fluent in haha. Just another guru-style bullshitter selling a product with a catchy slogan. 

 

[The Artful Dodger]

Now I've hit 30 I really want to give this a go, I learnt basic Spanish at school and think it would give a decent basis to go for that. I did want to do German but people have put me off it saying it's too difficult, despite it being arguably the most similar to English?

[Eco]

2 minutes ago, nudge said:

Intensive learning by immersion has been there for thousands of years... Benny Lewis certainly didn't invent it but he's definitely good at selling it as his own and marketing and promoting himself as a "polyglot" despite not being able to demonstrate a high level of fluency in most of the languages he claims to be fluent in haha. Just another guru-style bullshitter selling a product with a catchy slogan. 

 

You're such a downer, ya know? 

Certainly you could say he took a method that's been around since the dawn of man, marketed it, and has made a nice living off of it, but good for him for doing that. 

My biggest issue, is that I succumb to TMI all the time. I love to read new books on learning and whatnot, and really it comes down to same model. Use it and Study. Learning a language, from a methodology, is rather simple. But it's the dedication and commitment that separates the ones who are bi-lingual from those speaking just their native tongue. 

[Eco]

1 minute ago, The Artful Dodger said:

Now I've hit 30 I really want to give this a go, I learnt basic Spanish at school and think it would give a decent basis to go for that. I did want to do German but people have put me off it saying it's too difficult, despite it being arguably the most similar to English?

The most similar to English is not German, but Frisian, Dutch, and Afrikaans from my understanding. 

It make sense to learn a language that you'll actually use. So I don't know the demographics of Hull, but here in Atlanta, there are a ton of Spanish speaking Hispanics, and therefore it makes sense for me to learn Spanish as it's something I can easily use around town. 

Same goes for Russian as my family has ties to Russia. 

And I have thought about Hindi because my line of work, it would be a major benefit if I was able to speak Hindi. 

I would love to learn German and French, but the truth is there aren't a lot of native speakers here so it'd likely just disappear after I studied it. 

Learn something you are passionate about, and that you think you could actually use in your city.

[Eco]

@The Artful Dodger Check out this website - 

https://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/wp-content/w3tc/pgcache//language-guide/language-difficulty/_index.html_gzip

[The Artful Dodger]

12 minutes ago, Eco said:

The most similar to English is not German, but Frisian, Dutch, and Afrikaans from my understanding. 

It make sense to learn a language that you'll actually use. So I don't know the demographics of Hull, but here in Atlanta, there are a ton of Spanish speaking Hispanics, and therefore it makes sense for me to learn Spanish as it's something I can easily use around town. 

Same goes for Russian as my family has ties to Russia. 

And I have thought about Hindi because my line of work, it would be a major benefit if I was able to speak Hindi. 

I would love to learn German and French, but the truth is there aren't a lot of native speakers here so it'd likely just disappear after I studied it. 

Learn something you are passionate about, and that you think you could actually use in your city.

Well I live in Liverpool which has a growing community of Spanish/Latin Americans so Spanish would probably be useful in that regard.

[nudge]

4 minutes ago, Eco said:

You're such a downer, ya know? 

Certainly you could say he took a method that's been around since the dawn of man, marketed it, and has made a nice living off of it, but good for him for doing that. 

My biggest issue, is that I succumb to TMI all the time. I love to read new books on learning and whatnot, and really it comes down to same model. Use it and Study. Learning a language, from a methodology, is rather simple. But it's the dedication and commitment that separates the ones who are bi-lingual from those speaking just their native tongue. 

Sorry, I just can't stand people who make a living selling false promises and "secrets" that don't really exist. It's not much different from a charlatan selling snake oil or anyone offering a "get rich quick" scheme; it's just false advertising and selling a dream to naive bored people who want their "foreign language proficiency" to be a trophy displayed on their social networking profile to be able to jerk themselves off in a "polyglot" circle. He claims to have found a unique hack to enable anyone to become fluent in any language extremely fast and talks down all other learning methods as being wrong - that alone is complete bullshit as you know well that each person has different learning styles and one method doesn't fit all anyway. And unless by "being fluent" he means being able to blabber through a very basic conversation based on memorised phrases you can find in any tourist phrasebook, it's a load of bollocks. How many years does it take to be truly fluent in a language and talk almost like a native? Years, if ever. And as you said - the key to it is studying and using it. Can I have my 70 Euros now for such an enlightened advice and language learning hack?...  

[Eco]

5 minutes ago, nudge said:

Sorry, I just can't stand people who make a living selling false promises and "secrets" that don't really exist. It's not much different from a charlatan selling snake oil or anyone offering a "get rich quick" scheme; it's just false advertising and selling a dream to naive bored people who want their "foreign language proficiency" to be a trophy displayed on their social networking profile to be able to jerk themselves off in a "polyglot" circle. He claims to have found a unique hack to enable anyone to become fluent in any language extremely fast and talks down all other learning methods as being wrong - that alone is complete bullshit as you know well that each person has different learning styles and one method doesn't fit all anyway. And unless by "being fluent" he means being able to blabber through a very basic conversation based on memorised phrases you can find in any tourist phrasebook, it's a load of bollocks. How many years does it take to be truly fluent in a language and talk almost like a native? Years, if ever. And as you said - the key to it is studying and using it. Can I have my 70 Euros now for such an enlightened advice and language learning hack?...  

Again - no arguments here, but I can't really fault the guy too much as he's making a good living, and (hopefully) helping people learn another language. He has marketed himself to a certain type of individual, and even I have used his website as it has good, and FREE, resources tailored to whatever language you are wanting to learn. 

I know there isn't a 'hack', but I'm 100% positive that you, @The Artful Dodger, and myself could all learn Icelandic, using 3 VERY different methods. That's just how the adult brain is, and the difference in how it retains information. 

I never care about saying I'm a polyglot, but it's more about the impact I have on a [insert nationality] when I can communicate to them in THEIR language. Each of us have our own reasons, but I still enjoy reading an learning about other's route to learning one or more foreign languages, even if it's an Irish guy who can just have basic conversations in 5 languages. 

[Inverted]

4 hours ago, The Artful Dodger said:

Now I've hit 30 I really want to give this a go, I learnt basic Spanish at school and think it would give a decent basis to go for that. I did want to do German but people have put me off it saying it's too difficult, despite it being arguably the most similar to English?

The grammar isn't too bad until you start getting into more extended sentences and how to inflect words based on gender and case. It's very easy to make small mistakes which just don't happen for native speakers.

But to get to a level where you can make your meaning known, it's not too hard on your own. Particularly in terms of speaking where you can hide little mistakes more easily. 

I can read German very well, and have conversations without a huge amount of hassle, but my writing is still absolutely shit. 

[carefreeluke]

9 hours ago, nudge said:

If you hate flash cards/Anki like me though, then you can skip 90% of it...

 

9 hours ago, Eco said:

True - it is based on the notecard formula, and while I also am not a fan of Anki, I usually end up making my own flashcards. 

I went through a good period of using Anki but the effort to make all the new flashcards was a bit too time-consuming for me. I also have tried in the past other ways of doing flashcards but I couldn't be bothered with the maintenance of it all. 

Instead for the last two years or so, I've had a little notebook (a nice one) where I put all my vocabulary in for Spanish. The vocabulary is always categorised so an example could be one page is parts of the body, another could be sports etc you could get the idea.

Complain ____________________________ Quejarse 

I do this going down the page and cover the Spanish with a card and try to remember the word. I do a page until I remember them all. The words I just look up myself and I choose particular vocab that I need to improve on. I also have another little notebook for grammar and do the same procedure as above.

Through repetition, you start to remember things. It's also important that the vocabulary and grammar are categorised and this allows your mind to remember things more easily. This procedure has honestly been one of the main reasons why my Spanish is what it is today, combined with putting into practice these things which is a bit easier for me as I live in Spain. You definitely don't have to be in a country to put a language into practice though.

If people are wondering where to start you should look at the European framework for languages which has different levels. You start at the beginning, A1, and learn all the grammar for that level and start building up your vocab, then move onto the next level. The framework helps you to see where you are and helps to show you what you should know.

[CaaC (John)+]

@nudge @Eco

Why not try learning this ancient language 

 

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-48284012

The text is written in Proto-Romance, belonging to today's Romance languages including Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, Catalan and Galician.

The language was commonplace in the Mediterranean during the medieval period but was not used in written documents as Latin was the language of royalty, church and government.

For this reason, it got lost.

Dr Cheshire said of the manuscript: "It uses an extinct language. Its alphabet is a combination of unfamiliar and more familiar symbols.

"It includes no dedicated punctuation marks, although some letters have symbol variants to indicate punctuation or phonetic accents.

"All of the letters are in lower case and there are no double consonants."

[nudge]

1 hour ago, CaaC - John said:

@nudge @Eco

Why not try learning this ancient language 

 

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-48284012

The text is written in Proto-Romance, belonging to today's Romance languages including Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, Catalan and Galician.

The language was commonplace in the Mediterranean during the medieval period but was not used in written documents as Latin was the language of royalty, church and government.

For this reason, it got lost.

Dr Cheshire said of the manuscript: "It uses an extinct language. Its alphabet is a combination of unfamiliar and more familiar symbols.

"It includes no dedicated punctuation marks, although some letters have symbol variants to indicate punctuation or phonetic accents.

"All of the letters are in lower case and there are no double consonants."

Naaah I don't like learning dead languages... There's no point if I can't order a beer using it