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Just out of curiosity, how did you manage to learn 9 languages (and how long did it take you, if you actually "studied" them explicitly somehow)? I'm trying to learn French and it still sucks, after almost 3 months in Paris (but not much social contact, admittedly, as I came here without knowing any people). Any tips from an actual doer? Anything that is possible to do by oneself (i.e. not the standard "get a French girlfriend")?

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I am Dutch so I learned English, French and German at school, but actually those are my worst languages. I really started to learn languages with Esperanto. The first merit of Esperanto was to show me that I actually am capable of learning languages (because at school, languages were my worst topics, as far as that I could conditionally go to the next class with a task for French...) Then I started to discover that really the only thing that matters with learning languages is to have fun and to speak, and Portuguese, which I learned last, I speak actually better than practically all other languages, I studied least grammar for it and I use it with my fiancee daily. http://fi3m.com describes mostly how you can actively start learning languages quickly, although details can differ with my path.

I am 21 now, I learned Spanish and Portuguese about a year ago, and most languages earlier.

I speak 2 languages natively, but have recently studied a third (Spanish) and speak it at a beginner, but passable level. I really recommend the Pimsleur method for learning languages. It's a set of audio lessons, where the basic principle makes a lot of sense: learning the same way you learned your native language. Simply by hearing things said, over and over, and taking part in mock conversations. There is exactly zero time spent on teaching you rules, it's all taught by actual talking.

Link to wiki for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pimsleur_method

On the one hand, there's been research showing that people who move to a foreign country and explicitly learn the grammer learn the language faster than those who only learn naturally.

On the other hand, I think both methods can get at the same aim: massive memorization of both new material and the natural use of patterns.

When we learn a language "from birth" (of course it is more of a 6-year full-time immersion program, which isn't all that amazing in itself than something that happens the day you're born) do we learn the patterns without realizing, or do we literally have to memorize each new adjective ending for nouns in different cases and genders (eg, in German)?

I assume our brains pick up on the patterns, hence why kids make cute mistakes like "I'm the goodest". BUT, as an adult, why not just learn the pattern explicitly AND listen to and participate in lots of conversations AND memorize a lot?

They ALL help. Do as much as you can as often as you can and your learn will spiral out of control awesome ;-)

EDIT: I'm also not sure whether only-memorization to learn patterns works or not. When people say they're "conversational" in 3 months, how much can they achieve in 3 more months? It's a question of whether memorization or whatever process they're using is exponentially scaling. I think that most grammer patterns can be made clear with 3-50 examples, so in the end that doesn't seem that difficult. But I've only had experience memorizing grammer first, with the help of hundreds of examples at the same time, and then producing hundreds of examples myself to become fluid.

Try watching familiar movies that are dubbed into French _and_ have French subtitles. "Children's" movies may be best for this. One caveat is often the audio and subtitles will vary (e.g. tu vs vous); I'm not sure why they do this.

Anyway, watch the movie, and pause it whenever something comes up that you don't understand. You can also try watching English movies with French subtitles but it doesn't develop your French ear. Also Google Translate is good practice. Write something in one language and translate back and forth--it does a pretty decent job. Writing in French will force you to use the proper grammer and vocabulary to make the translation come out OK.

I've in my mid 30's and have learned French fluently and advanced Spanish in the past 6 years. Aside from being immersed in the language, finding a girlfriend definitely helps... :)

Finally Meetup.com and Couchsurfing.org can be good resources to meet locals (of both sexes...).

Good luck!

> One caveat is often the audio and subtitles will vary (e.g. tu vs vous); I'm not sure why they do this.

I'm not sure of the reason behind this, but there are also often minor differences in the English audio and subtitles of films, even when the film was originally recorded in English.

Same-language captions are often taken from the script, which often varies from the final cut. If you have a copy of the dialogue already in-hand, why go to the trouble of doing a transcription from scratch?

Check out the audio cd's by michel thomas. I was trying to learn french a few years ago and this was the best learning aid I found. It's entirely conversatinal - listen and speak along; you never have to write stuff down or try to memorise things.

The best thing, imo, about this system is that you can forget about it for a month and then, when you try it again, you get back into it in no time. It definitely seems to have the edge over other systems I've tried in getting things into your permanent and automatic memory.

what were your end results for the amount of time you invested? are you conversational? fluent? can you read news articles or fairy tales (many languages are quite different when casually spoken versus formally written....usually there are more tenses for verb past-tense conjugations)

(what does "conversational" even mean? that you've memorized common stranger-conversations, or that you know how to conjugate all present tense verb forms?)

  > I'm trying to learn French and it still sucks, after 
  > almost 3 months in Paris (but not much social contact, 
  > admittedly, as I came here without knowing any people).

Well get to know some people! Drop by my office in Suresnes :)

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