Seriously thoughtful Learning a new language

[Loose_Appeal]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Even at school, reading was a major part of learning a written language. Only pronunciations you must learn in a class.

I must be some autistic erudite or something (whatever that is) because I still can't speak or read French with even some level of competence, even after 3 years of classes.

If you can't speak or read French, I'm surprised you managed to get three consecutive years of classes without being found out.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by jumpjack

I didn't read the whole thread, but I think this is the right thread where to post this question into.

Does it exist any bilingual ebook? Does it exist any bilingual e-book generator? There are plenty of novels out there available in multiple languages, and reading a novel in two languages at same time is a nice method to learn languages.

I think this is a cool idea. I'd like to have the target language (the one I'm trying to learn) display most of the time, but be able to pop up the matching paragraph text in my primary language if I get stuck.

I did create a system like this for my Sanskrit class, long and long ago. I used Hypercard (this was before the internet, kids) and had hot links to dictionary and grammar entries for each line of a segment of the Mahabharata, along with a show/hide translation to English. I seem to recall that I had to develop my own font variant, though now I don't remember what was inadequate about the Devanagari font I had. (This was also before Unicode. You know, the Dark Ages. )

[EowynCarter]

My main obstacle to learning to write better French is the incredible tediousness of producing accented characters on non-French keyboards.

Yeah. When i went to Danemark, i changed my keyboard to the french layout. (Though it was anoying when I needed to type danish characters).

I speak french, my native langage, english (obviously), some german (long forgotten).
And well, save for the peaple in the uk , most europeans learn english in addition to thier native language. Though we french tends to be bad a it.

[lene1949]

I'm from Denmark... I came here when I was 32... My default keyboard is English, but I still remember, where all the 'odd' Danish letters were, so I can change my keyboard to Danish, and speak to my friends over there...

My French was much better than my English, when we moved to Australia, and I would have loved to move to a french speaking country, such as Canada, but my 'then' husband refused..

Now I have spent so much energy learning English, I have completely forgotten my french and of course german (We had a lot of programs in german, and that way really 'forced' to learn the language.

[Mobile Mason]

I've taken French in High School for the past two years, and I'm fairly decent at it. I've been teaching myself Hebrew independently, and I find it incredibly easy once you get passed the alphabet and the grammar system. I'd also like to have a go at learning Irish Gaelic, for no other reason than enjoyment.

[LDBoblo]

My native language is English, and I've dabbled, with various levels of obligation, in Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Latin. Always considered myself inept, and always blamed my rather idiosyncratic short-term memory. Japanese and to a lesser extent Spanish were beaten into me the hardest, so my memory for those is probably the best.

When I was in technical college for Computers/Networking, I decided I wanted to challenge myself by overcoming one of my lifelong weaknesses, rather than relying on my strengths. After some serious contemplation, I came to the conclusion that I should endeavor to study either a difficult language or mathematics. It did not take long to say "[censored] mathematics", so I applied to a university to focus on Chinese and Chinese literature (at the time, I thought Chinese would be hard).

I went through most of the same gimmicky phases a lot of people go through when learning Chinese, such as using flash cards or computer programs. I probably spent more time looking for an "easy way" than I spent studying the stupid language itself. I kept trying to address my selective memory as either some learning disorder, or more commonly as a fault of method, rather than a perfectly natural process in adult language acquisition.

I moved to Taiwan to study very seriously (not some half-assed approach like most people do where they study occasionally and illegally teach English on the side for extra cash). Was put at a serious disadvantage from the beginning (some of my classmates had studied for 8-10 years) and had to really make a fool of myself for the first month or so due to my complete ineptitude at anything more complex than "I like play basketball! Eat food! Do you like dance?", while everyone else was discussing early modern Chinese politics.

Studied a lot. More than was healthy. I tried to find "language partners", but quickly discovered that that was just the popular euphemism for casual sex partners. I held out hope and met over a hundred people who had replied to me (103 women and 3 men IIRC), but in the end did not study or sleep with any of them, and just became bitter on a social level. That bitterness (and corresponding suspicion) still lingers with me even today.

Anyways, after 6-7 weeks, I discovered my Chinese was pretty good overall. I never noticed the improvement before, but it had been there. It's like losing or gaining a lot of weight and not noticing it in the mirror, since you are seeing only tiny increments.

I had given up on flashcards and gimmicky methods, in particular since I didn't have time (usually well over 10 hours of homework per day), and because they were based on low-level passive language development. Granted, if I were vocabulary-oriented, I would have probably used them a bit longer as memory aids, but vocabulary does not language ability decide. I had a lot of material in front of me in the form of essays and speeches and discussions, and I would satisfy the passive grammar with reading and listening, and then active performance with speaking and manipulating sentences that I hadn't already mastered (knowing and mastering are very different of course). I took all my notes in Chinese when I could, and did lots of transcriptions. Forced my brain to avoid word-to-word memorization, but structure/purpose relationships instead so I could create something myself when the same purpose enters my thoughts.

Active language usage does not always mean talking to other people. Due to the amount of studying I had to do, I rarely had time for much of a social life (and certainly didn't want one with other foreigners and the Taiwanese who love them), I probably spent more time talking to trees, rocks, microphones, and the mirror than I did to any real person. Did a lot more good for me as well, since I could reflect much better on mistakes and consider circumlocutions that would more easily accomplish what would otherwise be awkward and unwieldy, without the pressure of another sentient being becoming impatient with my experimentation. I'm sure lots of people thought I was schizophrenic, but that's easy enough to handle. Of course, some human engagement is useful, but can be just as useless on the whole.

I later spent most of my time studying classical Chinese poetry and literature, as well as linguistics (adult language acquisition in particular) and translation. Went back to the USA after a year in Taiwan to finish my university program.

Nowadays, I'm living in Taiwan again, and my Chinese is fine. On the phone, I'm frequently mistaken for Chinese/Taiwanese. I don't think in Chinese (nor do I think in English), I don't dream in Chinese, and I don't fart in Chinese. None of those are real tell-tale signs of language competence. It's hard to see improvement at all for most people, which is why it's so easy to become discouraged at the beginner-intermediate levels.

[Moejoe]

I speak English and gibberish. Of the latter, I'm fluent.

[kindlekitten]

I have found that pillow and beer tutoring have been the most effective language learning skills for me. I'm reasonably fluent in German after 2-3 days re-imersion (before that I'm just passing), and I'm passing in Spanish, understand a lot, have a damn hard time speaking it because for whatever reason my brain insists on translating German to Spanish... and I'm a native English speaker. go figure

[Latinandgreek]

Some friends and I (we are all classical philologists) have recently formed a study group for Sanskrit; most of us are total beginners as far as Sanskrit is concerned. We are using Macdonell's "Sanskrit Grammar for Students", and his "Vedic Reader" as study material. Can anyone here suggest any other books that could be of help?

[kindlekitten]

hats off to you for tackling such a language!