HN: Quick tips for learning a foreign language quickly? | Hacker News Reader

HN: Quick tips for learning a foreign language quickly?

3 pointsekpyrotic9 comments

HN,

How have you - as a hacker - learned new foreign languages quickly?

I'm trying to pick up some of the foreign languages I learnt at school, but have long since forgotten.

I wanted to quickly share what I am doing right now - which seems to be going okay - and ask for additional tips & suggestions about how to relearn a language quickly.

I want to improve my current system.

=== GRAMMAR ===

1. Read a quick overview of basic grammar, i.e., noun genders (if relevant), word order, basic pronouns

2. Memorise the patterns for 5 basic tenses first, i.e., present, perfect, imperfect, conditional and future

3. Practice conjugating verbs

4. Identify common prefixes and suffixes. For example, in French - ment for -ly

5. Print off a short, very condensed cheat sheet of basic grammar and conjugations for future reference

6. Start reading basic texts, i.e., children's books, as soon as possible so you can learn the use of grammar implicitly - obv. using your cheatsheet

=== LANGUAGE ===

1. Learn the 100 most commonly used nouns, verb, adjectives, adverbs, etc - memorise them

2. Expand your vocab learning to common classes of words, i.e., work, animals, foods, hobbies, etc.

=== GENERALLY ===

Get reading basic texts quickly accompanied by your common words list, your grammar cheatsheet & a dictionary.

I try to find a trick that gets me up and speaking to people as quickly as possible.

In Spanish, for example, if you can conjugate poder, you can say pretty much anything. It's a get-out-of-conjugation-free card because it flips the rest of your sentence into the infinitive. "Is it possible to pay?", "Is it possible for us to go to the beach?". You can structure most any sentence this way and avoid having to deal with tense, subject, conjugation, etc.

I'm learning French now, and getting a ton of mileage out of je voudrais. For the same reasons. The infinitive helps a lot too. "It is very important for me to..."

Naturally, you sound a bit foolish speaking this way, but it gets your point across and gets you talking to people. Think of all those eastern Europeans you meet with their crazy sentence structure, word choice, tenses, etc. But you understand what they're saying, right?

That's the way forward, I think. Just get to the point where you're saying things and being understood. Conjugation, tense, grammar, etc. don't necessarily move the needle there, and can thus be skipped and left for the "polishing" stage that comes later.

I have studied about 4 foreign languages (about because of varying levels of effort and involvement). I have found that the only real differentiator in terms of retention and progress (as measured by the likelihood that a native speaker would mistake me as such in person or over text) was the quantity of time that I spent speaking to native speakers. This improved not only my spoken abilities but also my reading abilities, although there is no clear reasoning for why the latter occurred.

If at all possible, go to barbers that speak your target language. If you're old enough to drink (or have a good fake) go to bars where your target language is spoken, start listening to news in the target language. Hell, if you're single or have a particularly liberal significant other start dating a guy/girl in your target language. Audio and social exposure can be fantastically productive, as much as reading/writing is good for language acquisition.

Memorising lists of words is counter-effective - I am opposed to flashcards, because meaning is always created by the context.

The methods presented by Steve Kaufman seem interesting to me http://www.youtube.com/user/lingosteve I used Lingq for some time and it was good value for money.

But there is really no easy/quick way. 3 years should be enough to learn any language if you're committed. There are bad ways, though. You have to get a decent exposure to the language, and learn every single day, the more the better.

Try to use the langueage you are trying to learn. Talk to yourself - who are you, where are you, what happened 2 days ago, what do you want to achieve, describe your job, your hobby, your famili. Read stuff that you are really interested in. Find someone who could offer you conversations. Describe your life and the world around you, like a little child.

Don't confuse good methods with hard work.

Are flash cards placed on actual objects any good? Putting the word for lamp on the lamp?

Flashcards are not enough to make a linguist, however I doubt that you would hire a developer who said that they didn't need to know what parameters were necessary/accepted for common functions in their language(s). While it's not enough it is certainly a requirement that there be some memorization in terms of vocabulary in order to hit the point where context starts to be informative as opposed to a crutch.

My all-time best-liked comment here (judged by karma) has advice about this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302816

I am a native speaker of English who has learned Chinese well enough to work as an interpreter and translator in that language, and I speak and read other languages.

This will hardly work out. By reading only, you might (re)learn some things but with time, it will fade away again. To quickly learn a language and make it stick, you need to speak it and have real-life situations using it. No wonder that going to a foreign country is the best way to learn its language.

Yes I agree, I'm going to be on the receiving end of this myself. I am traveling to China/Vietnam later this year so as much as trying to learn before I go, I know I won't truly get it till I arrive and start using it.

Go to Odesk and hire someone to talk to you for an hour a day.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com