Hacker News Reader

Comment by zumu | Hacker News Reader

Please excuse the rant, but as an avid language learner, this type of approach bothers me to no end.

Learning a language is _not_ like learning math. Yes, there are rules, and if you learn enough of them you can construct valid sentences by translating words from your native language and adding in the necessary syntactic filler, but you will not actually learn that language. Languages are greater than a sum of their syntax and grammar.

If you really want to learn a language, you need to listen to A LOT of source material and start speaking it with real people and forming relationships in that language and its cultural context.

View on HN

I definitely agree... but it's funny you say that.

I helped tutor a Japanese couple (grad students) when I was an undergrad. They both spoke very passable english, but wanted to improve, and I was happy to cover the many cultural, pronunciation, and listening challenges that Japanese face. When I started to discuss the difference between Urban and Rural America... they at first refused to believe that Rural was a word. I learned some Japanese history/culture (one of the only times I've ever been invited into a Japanese couple's home!), how to pronounce a few phrases, and tried Japanese food (natto and nankotsu) that I wouldn't have otherwise.

However, after about 6 months the wife (who had studied English literature) asked me for help with a test she was (re)taking on English grammar. It was multiple choice English and about half the problems she asked for help on were impossible for me. Often, all of the choices seemed wrong, but I knew at least one must be right!

In the end I apologized humbly, and said that there were many things that were correct by the rules, but native speakers would find them so strange that they would likely be misunderstood. Also, something which apparently was not being taught (and needed to be) was ordering of adjectives in a description (e.g. fat bald white guy), which I made up on the fly (increasing order of permanence). Changing the order implies emphasis... but I had never noticed it as part of the language before, and neither had they.

opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun

https://qz.com/773738/how-non-english-speakers-are-taught-th...

This kind of thinking bothers me to no end.

Not because it's necessarily incorrect but because it makes a huge assumption that all people learn in the same way.

I am fluent in 3 languages, have a decent grasp of another 2 (although cannot really speak much of either for lack of practice), and have picked up basic grasp of a couple others.

Most things I learn through extensive practice using theory on top to help me understand my practical results. Programming, engineering, robotics, electronics, physics, etc. Even much of mathematics!

With languages, the only way I start to truly grasp them is by analysing grammar, syntax and etymology, then starting to match those to pronounciation, and then I can go from there.

The idea that everybody should learn a language in way you deem better has hindered my ability to learn many, and has slowed me down a lot. I wonder how many other people learn like me and are currently out of options when it comes to language courses because of this kind of one-size-fits-all approach to teaching.

Honestly the emphasis on over optimization and the idea of finding the right way of learning something has wasted me so much time and lost me countless opportunities. I'm not the average person. I need a solution that works for myself and sometimes that means the method only works for me.

The most important thing is to just start and stick with it, no matter how meaningless or small the thing you are doing is. You will jump onto something better as soon as you find it. However, if you haven't even started then you will always look for something that's even better than the best thing you already know about. i.e. you will do nothing even though your methodology or the instructional material you found is already more than good enough.

> this kind of one-size-fits-all approach to teaching.

It's not so much that there's a one size fits all learning method, but rather that there are certain constants in language learning. Namely one must actually hear and speak the language.

Learning the grammar and syntax of the target language entirely in ones native language may provide some value for some people, but in and of itself doesn't teach anyone a language and is entirely optional. In general formal study of grammar is an advanced topic.

Perhaps! Adult language learners don't have the luxury of reliving a baby's existence in their target language, however.

> Yes, there are rules, and if you learn enough of them you can construct valid sentences by translating words from your native language and adding in the necessary syntactic filler, but you will not actually learn that language

You will learn the language's grammar, which can be very helpful in understanding sentences as well as creating sentences which are grammatically correct.

Once you learn adequate vocabulary as well as correct grammar and correct usage, you can make some pretty respectable sentences.

I believe in practice you learn how to speak by listening (input learning) and only use grammar in a post-facto fashion to check your phrases. So grammar is just a critic, not an artist.

I read that Japanese sentence structure is different and always wanted to learn more about that. German is also interesting in how it makes large constructions that resolve at the end. I finally discovered that Japanese and Korean have similar sentence structures and having learned Korean as a child can understand and speak it at a basic level without any comprehension of its structure.

> Learning a language is _not_ like learning math.

I disagree. As a mathematician, looking at the language learning problem from a very "structural" perspective helped me a lot to grasp languages much better. Unluckily, most language learning textbooks are written by people who are not very "mathematically-minded", thus making their method of teaching overly complicated for me.

PhD students in mathematics told me that my explanations of languages make so much more sense than how the foreign language is taught at the language course at the university. On the other hand, from people who are more "humanities-minded", I often get reactions that my way of explaining languages is deeply confusing and has no value.

One keen insight I have had recently into the stratification between mathematics and language is that language immediately presents the 5 or 6 main "Who, what, when, where, how," as we introduce more language. Mathematics can start with few axioms or many. Taking those points in mind, I think there can be a lot of similarity when thinking around an equals sign and the verb is/to be.

> Taking those points in mind, I think there can be a lot of similarity when thinking around an equals sign and the verb is/to be.

I am cautious about this: In Spanish and Portuguese, there exist two "to be": ser and estar, which roughly refer to "general situation" vs. "current state".

For European Portuguese, pedrocr gave a nice explanation on HN in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879529

So, don't confuse

  (Spanish)
  Tú eres linda.
  Tú estás linda.

  (Portuguese)
  Você é linda.
  Você está linda.

("you are gorgeous" (referring to a female person)). The second means that she is currently beautiful with a possible hint that she might normally be ugly.

But it's still good for a step, no? I definitely agree that one cannot learn a language to the point of fluency from just studying rules like this, but the material is helpful I believe.

> But it's still good for a step, no?

No. The site here is advocating a non-standard method of parsing and understanding Japanese sentences. In the long run, that will be counter-productive because the method is counter to standard grammatical parsing used by virtually every other textbook and dictionary.

The author also mixes up the standard grammatical terms for two types of adjectives, 形容詞 and 形容動詞, which suggests the author doesn't understand standard Japanese grammar very well.

I don't know why you got downvoted. If the grammar is misrepresented as you suggest, then I'm inclined to agree with you. That's unless it's not so much a misrepresentation, but rather a non-standard presentation with pedagogical benefits. It doesn't seem like you believe that's the case, though.

It's an idiosynchratic system which deviates from traditional grammar. That's a strong reason not to use it.

The author claims pedagogical benefits, but provides no hard evidence or even endorsement from educational authorities. The only endorsements appear to be from beginning learners, who by definition don't know enough to make an informed endorsement.

I don't follow this complaint at all. Sure, talking with native speakers is important, but what good will it do if you haven't first learned the basics of how verbs and particles work?

There are very many people who have learned to speak foreign languages while never reading any material about the grammar of the language. (In fact the vast majority have learned this way, since the vast majority of languages in history have been unwritten and uncodified.) But there are very few people who can read a grammatical description like this one and speak fluently.

While I agree with OP that you need to listen to a lot of source content, a reasonable amount grammatical understanding can definitely speed up your comprehension. This is a lot of what gives adult learners an advantage to learn quickly over infants.

Sure, lots of people learn verb conjugation rules without a textbook. But they still needed to learn the rules. Having a textbook just makes it easier.

I don't think TFA is claiming to be the only thing anyone needs to reach fluency. It's clearly just meant to be a learning aid. Unless you believe it's counterproductive, and that lists like that actually make it harder to learn a language, then I don't understand the complaint here.

There's something called the input hypothesis that's trending upwards in language learning. More input is basically a substitute for studying grammar, or even superior, because the brain is phenomenal at pattern matching. Bad grammar will sound "off" well before you understand the rule in your own language, same thing happens when learning new languages, given sufficient input.

It takes a leap of faith but learning grammar almost exclusively through example sentences is actually really efficient.

Krashen, Khatzumoto, Matt vs. Japan, and Antimoon are all worth reading if you want to go down this rabbit hole.

How you absorb the grammar of a language is a separate question from when you should do conversations though.

Some folks advocate conversation day one, but most pro-input folks do recommend waiting until you have a sense of how things work and can make fewer mistakes.

EDIT: One of the best articles explaining this anti-rule view: http://www.antimoon.com/how/input-gramrules.htm

> input hypothesis

Definitely seems to be the case in machine learning. Flexible models trained on huge amounts of data beat older hand tuned grammar rule models every time.

Thanks for this explanation. I'd not heard of the debate before, but now that you describe it I find I've been a fan of input learning for a long time.

With that said I still find GP's complaint pretty weird, since TFA strikes me as being in the "beginning stuff that even advocates of input learning would teach out of a book" category.

I mean, if I was teaching somebody Japanese then I'd probably cover how particles work on the first day. Surely only a madman would expect someone to absorb that organically.

Particles are the hardest parts of the language, often untranslatable by themselves. I have a 100 page booklet about these words which are so few they can sit on one or two rows.

Can confirm. I studied grammar through Anki deck of about 2000 sentences and a tonne of native content. It took my about a year to truly internalize に to the point it became second nature and I could understand it intuitively.

Passed JLPT1 after a couple of years, and had the time of my life learning Japanese. Particles are the glue that holds it all together but they are deceptively simple on the surface with an ocean of complexity lying underneath.

What good is knowing how verbs work, if you don't know any of them? Vocabulary is the corner-stone of learning a language.

You can make yourself understood using simple sentences and botched grammar, if the key words in them are the right ones.

You can't even study grammar without vocabulary, because grammar study uses examples. Examples loaded with words you don't understand are poorly conducive to learning.

The best resources for Japanese grammar assume that you can read. You get some furigana over some of the kanji and that's it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com