Comment by pooriaazimi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pooriaazimi | Hacker News Reader

> ... as I’ve already read all 7 books in 2 languages before - I could pick up a lot just from context...

That's what I've always said to my friends, but they insist on learning grammar, which of course they'll forget after a few hours/days. Three years ago I could hardly read anything non-technical in English, now I can understand Lolita - which is a hard novel to read for a non-native. All thanks to audiobooks.

I found that audiobooks are the most fantastic way of learning a new language... I couldn't have possibly read Lolita or Silmarillion before - They're just too hard for someone who is trying to learn a new language. Long sentences full of new/invented words - It's easy to lose the thread. But listening to a skillful reader reading them aloud, you can understand even the most complicated words and sentences just from the context, and the reader's tone and emphasize...

If you want to learn a new language, do yourself a favor and listen to some audiobooks. Pick a book you've already read in your native language (preferably more than once) and you'll be amazed how easy it is to understand and learn new words (you must have a basic understanding of that language of course).

Audiobooks are great for learning the spoken part of a language but I would guess that most of us "technical people" need and want to learn things from the bottom up. That's the only way we feel that we really know something.

It's true that grammar can be very complicated and will be easily forgotten without practice. A good practice is reading a book and trying to see not only if you can understand what is happening but also analyze each sentence and see if you can understand which grammar rules are used in its construction and why.

That may be why technical people might have a hard time learning languages.

That's right. But you don't necessarily need to know what a word means (its exact meaning) in order to understand a sentence. You only have to feel what it means. For example, for a long time I didn't bother to look up the exact meaning of words like 'ruminate', 'agitated', 'incredulity', 'ilk', 'perpetual', 'stagnant' and dozens of other words. I could feel what they meant, and that was enough. Just like when a 4-year old knows what 'tomorrow' means without understanding the complexities of life and time. He doesn't need to know about Earth orbiting around the Sun; tomorrow means 'sleep once, and when you wake up, that's tomorrow'. I think you can learn a new language just like children learn their mother tongue.

I've much improved my English because I've wanted to read Harry Turtledove sci-fi novels (about UFO invasion during WW2 :) ). Only few first novels (2 IIRC) were translated to Polish. I started reading next novels in English, at first it was hard, but I just ignored unknown words, and guessed what they mean from the context (often it became clear what some word had to mean a few paragraphs down, or from the context of the next use of this word). It was much faster that way and easier to remember typical use of words, than if I would check dictionary every time I see a new word.

I understood "computer English" before just good enough to read documentation, tutorials, and play most games :), but I've had problems with complex sentences, idioms, etc. Now it's much better, and I'm reading a lot of English literature.

That is amazing advice that I will take up later this year. Thank you.

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