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Comment by why-el | Hacker News Reader

I speak three languages fluently (Arabic, French, and English), and I have the same advice for anybody who wants to learn a new language:

- Watch their news media. For instance, if you are learning Arabic, then watch Arabic media. It might be tough at first, but just go at it. Be a baby. Babies bombard their minds with input and eventually patterns form.

- Pick a TV show you saw and watch the whole thing again using language-you-want-to-learn subtitles. This can be fun, and well things will be mentioned so often they will stick. This is extremely effective, and my English vocabulary improved dramatically this way. I prefer this to carrying cards and trying to memorize them. Its unnatural.

- Go to a country that speaks it.

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I'm with you on the bombardment method. In terms of fluency, my Portuguese is 95%, my Spanish is 85%, my Italian is 50% and my French is probably 20%. Of course, these percentages would be best if broken down into reading, writing, etc, in order to get a clearer picture.

I don't consider myself to be a quick language learner (ie, with a 'gift' for it) but I do believe that being passionate goes a long, long way and that bombardment and immersion are key. It's not about the time it takes, it's about your drive to reach the right level for you. Being a language lover, I never just want to "get by", I'm looking for near-fluency or fluency. It took me a good decade and a lot of commitment to reach the levels I've reached in the languages mentioned.

Btw, the OP is right about getting the accent down. To me this is just as important as any other aspect of the language.

Accent in foreign language is a very complex thing. Germanic languages shared same tone. So I would agree that an english speaker could _manage_ the german accent and vice-versa.

The #1 problem with accent is that in order to master a foreign accent you have to be 1. Young, 2. Gifted.

It's impossible for someone who's over 18 years old (arbitrary) to master a different accent (French from english speaking, Cantonese from French/English, etc.)

That's why 6-8 years old who learn a foreign language are so good at it, they have the brain set for learning accents.

You only kid yourself if you believe that you don't have an accent in xyz language and you started learning it past your 20s.

I am actually in Brazil right now and I just started learning Portuguese a week ago. I am basically just watching How I Met Your Mother with Portuguese subtitles. Such a beautiful language. My French helps a lot though.

After teaching myself Brazilian-Portuguese at home in California over a good 5 year period, I moved to Brazil to perfect the last stage, speaking. After half a year, I moved back to the States. A few years later, I moved again (to Brazil) for a few months and last year I moved here once more. Now I've been here for almost a year this time around.

So I've climbed this mountain and found myself wondering what is next. Seems I'm going to take another stab at Italian since it's been several years since I first got into it. That's what's great about language learning, if you consider yourself a lifelong learner, you can 'bookmark' your learning process for later.

I know right? I reserve a fixed time for each one of the languages I speak and find myself learning few more words every day. I dont know about you, but I see a lot of similarity between the human languages I speak and the computer languages I use. They both require life long commitment. Isn't that interesting?

I know you're already an accomplished language learner, but why bother listening to English audio if you're learning Portuguese in Brazil? If you really need subtitles, at least it should be the other way round: Portuguese audio with English subtitles (readily available in DVDs, and maybe some cable channels too).

Another way is watching dubbed movies on (non-cable) TV. If you've already seen the movie, then you don't care if you miss 80% of the dialogue.

Good point. Part of the reason really is that I couldn't find any Brazilian TV shows that I liked (Movies are better). And second, this phase is really for vocab and not pronunciation, so when I hear a English sentence and read its translation in the subtitles, I tend to remember the structure and some of the words. It just works for me.

As a fluent speaker of Russian, and to some extent English; having Ukrainian and Hebrew do well enough for business conversations – I can confidently second that.

Babies have a unique way to acquire languages that we don't have as adults. However i find that reading newspapers and understanding the basics is quite easy (mostly because you already know most of the facts mentioned). But the stuff written in newspapers is not the language you would use in a normal conversation. The TV subtitles thing really works, especially when watching reruns of shows you like.

Movies, too. When I was learning Russian in college, we'd be assigned a 5-10 ten minute segment of a movie and have to transcribe it for homework. It took forever at first, but it really helped my listening comprehension improve quickly.

Yes, movies too. I just liked TV Show more because they last longer and they provide a lasting context.

Comprehension exercises using foreign music videos and magazines can be good too, for the less formal stuff.

Can you recommend a good Arabic TV show?

Oh I don't know. I am actually a native Arabic speaker so never needed TV shows for that purpose. And there is one issue you will face if you want to learn Arabic watching Arabic TV Shows: Any show you pick will be in some colloquial form of Arabic and not Classic Arabic. The most popular ones across the Middle East now are in Turkish dubbed in Lebanese Arabic (Yeah :p), and seconds are Egyptian TV shows, so you will have to choose. Pretty much any country makes TV Shows in its own version of Arabic, except in Syria where they used to make historical TV Shows in Classical Arabic. What I suggest is to watch news outlets like Aljazeera, which you can watch online for free [1]. Don't pay attention to the existing perception of Al Jazeera; they are very professional. And, relevant to our discussion, their Arabic is the best around. If in doubt, get a feeling of their editorial policies watching Al Jazeera English, then proceed to learn Arabic.

Good Luck

[1] http://www.aljazeera.net/livestreaming/pages

For Arabic I also recommend learning songs. I learned to read and write (but not understand anything) but the phrases I remember best are Wael Kfoury songs.

Also check out Abdel Halim Hafez

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2toXE3c7was

Great arabic, easy to hear what he's saying and simple songs. Classic.

Ah famous fella. :) and shares my first name.

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