
Foreign Language Learning Hacks - kumarski
http://www.thangudu.com/post/37252447326/language-hacks
======
tokenadult
Number 2, number 4, and number 9 of the suggestions in the blog post kindly
submitted here are all well worthwhile. As my user profile discloses, I am an
American native speaker of General American English (originally part of a
monolingual household in a basically monolingual neighborhood of native-born
Americans) who acquired various second languages. I have reached a high enough
proficiency in Modern Standard Chinese to make my living for several years as
a Chinese-English, English-Chinese interpreter and as a Chinese-English
translator. I know maintain a bilingual household. I still enjoy language
learning as a hobby, and my children attempt learning various human languages.

One old webpage I like with language-learning advice

<http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html>

lists some helpful books with a lot of research-based advice on learning new
languages.

~~~
j_s
Is your partner also 'an American native speaker of General American English'?
I would be interested in learning more about households where both parents
learned additional language(s) to raise their children bilingually.

------
gingerjoos
Learning words != learning a language.

Most of the posts I see on HN mostly revolve around learning languages. In my
opinion that's only part of the problem. It's more difficult to get the
structure of sentences and tenses correct. I personally know words in 2 - 3
languages which share a root with my mother tongue, but it doesn't mean that I
can speak those languages because I often don't get the way a single word
transforms based on the tense, part of speech etc. For eg. merely knowing the
word "smile" would only take you so far. Knowing the difference between "He is
smiling", "He smiles", "He keeps smiling at me" is the tricky part.

Perhaps we are obsessed with learning words because it's the easier problem to
solve. Learning sentence structure and grammar takes time and effort.

~~~
mootothemax
_Perhaps we are obsessed with learning words because it's the easier problem
to solve._

I think that depends on the person and/or language.

My Polish grammar knowledge is now pretty impressive, but I'm having a
terrible time trying to remember words, so spend the majority of my time
attempting to force memorisation with flash cards.

In a way it's kinda fun - I can go through pages of grammar exercises,
conjugating and declining correctly, but with no idea of what Marta did in the
past with 101 of somebody's somethings.

~~~
benthumb
I'm delving into learning Polish myself but have been taking mostly a whole
language, immersion approach. For example, when I was in Krakow I bought
myself a book on CD and the book itself, so I can 'read' along as I listen. I
use translation tools to put selected passages into English. I also spend time
listening to Polish radio. I know at some point I will have to develop some
discipline about tackling grammar in a systematic fashion the way you are
doing, but for the moment I guess I'm content to as much as possible to get a
feel for the language. Japanese is my second language and its challenges are
almost completely different... anyway, good luck!

------
antirez
If you are trying to learn Italian, the good news is, there are a number of
outstanding movies that are not famous outside Italy. I'm talking about
masterpieces here. One for all:

"Indagini su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto"

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065889/>

~~~
haukur
Thanks. Can you name more?

~~~
antirez
Sure:

"Amici miei" (1, 2, 3... there are many sequels)

"Un borghese piccolo piccolo" (Mario Monicelli)

"La dolce vita"

"Il Gattopardo" (Luchino Visconti)

"Travolti da un insolito destino nell’azzuro mare d’agosto" Lina Wertmuller

"Le fate ignoranti" (Ferzan Ozpetek)

"Il Marchese del Grillo" (Mario Monicelli) // I love this

"Le conseguenze dell'amore"

And a lot more.

~~~
kumarski
I love this list. I've seen most of these.

------
cpfohl
My favorite hack: talk to kids. They will do two things that adults won't:

1\. Laugh at you, so you know when you're wrong. 2\. Patiently "teach" you
things over and over and over again.

~~~
kumarski
Very true.

------
planetjones
Why no mention of duolingo.com ?

Their iPhone app is driving an immense improvement in my German.

Living in Switzerland I also like to watch shows e.g. on MTV in English but
with German subtitles on. Then I can pause the live TV and rewind to match
English spoken expression to German translation. This helps too.

~~~
greenmountin
Is there a service out there that includes the generation of vocab review
sheets (many words, defined in one viewspace)? I find duolingo (and Anki,
other web services) unsuitably slow for learning vocab.

------
_delirium
> Grammar is always the toughest.

I think this depends somewhat on the language. For some, grammar is the first
major bottleneck to get to a usable beginner level, but for others, it's
pronunciation. For example, Danish grammar is relatively simple (which is one
reason Google Translate is very good translating it), but it's quite difficult
for non-native speakers to pronounce it intelligibly. I've also heard second-
hand that pronunciation is a bigger problem than grammar for beginning
Mandarin Chinese speakers.

~~~
benthumb
It turns out that the obstacles are the same for both: tonal inflection. Most
people are familiar with this fact as it pertains to Chinese and many of the
languages of southeast Asia (Thai, Vietnamese, Cantonese et al) but remain
completely unaware that it also a core feature of the languages of
Scandinavia, Danish included. btw, Google translate does an excellent job
translating Chinese (but a pretty terrible job with a superficially related
language like Japanese). It turns out Chinese and English word order are the
same.

------
rubyrescue
The biggest one is missing. Why do you remember every line of every funny
movie you've ever seen, but can't remember a single, excruciating, boring,
mind numbing moment of Rossetta Stone ("el gato....snore....la
mesa..snore...etc"). Because it's not engaging your brain in a lasting way.

I built this app (and download) w/ a business partner (and it's a side
business as my main business is consulting), and people love it. We have
Spanish and English and we're planning more languages (probably English for
Mandarin and Cantonese speakers next)... <http://www.buenoentonces.com/>

Full disclosure - it's kind of randy so you need to be OK w/PG-13 humor. But
that's why you learn it. If you do every class, and you already have a bit of
Spanish, you WILL come out with a signifcantly greater grasp of conversational
skill.

Email me (it's in my profile) and i'll send a coupon code for free classes to
HN folks.

------
moconnor
If you can, the very best way is simply immersion.

Move to the country and live there. Live with people, make friends with them.
Ask them to speak to you only in their native language. Listen to their music
and watch their TV and films. Read their books - above all children's books.

In my first four weeks in Germany I did a 4-week 'intensive' course that
covered enough basic grammar and vocabulary to stumble through a one-on-one
conversation with a lot of pointing.

After that I never looked at another vocab sheet. I could feel my brain
soaking up the language day after day; I'd reach out for a word I'd never
learned or a phrase I'd never used and find one waiting.

Obviously not everyone has the opportunity to immerse themselves in a foreign
culture for twelve months, but if you do then just take it - time spent
learning the language before you go is probably inefficiently spent if not
outright wasted.

~~~
purplelobster
It's not impossible to learn a language in your home country, but it's damn
difficult. Most English learners reach a pretty good level even in their home
country, but English is unprecedented in it's universality, usefulness,
availability of TV, movies, books, everything.

For example, living in Sweden I was fairly fluent by the time I was 18 without
ever having had a single conversation with an English speaker. I did what most
people do, watch a lot of TV, then TV without subtitles, play games, write
posts on online forums etc. The first time I had to actually speak it, I was
21 and taking care of an exchange student from the US. That year was what made
me truly comfortable speaking English for days, without having to struggle for
words and expressions.

It's that experience, and also spending 2 years at a US university and then
working here, that made me a 98% native speaker. It's to a point where people
can't tell that I'm not native now unless they spend a day with me. Some
people sense that there's something a little off perhaps, still. I think the
last 10-15% is extremely difficult to get for most people, without living in
the country. A lot of that last 10% is cultural as well, there are still many
cultural references that fly past me.

------
chalst
Kindles support good foreign-language dictionaries, allowing you to look up
unfamiliar words as you read. This has massively improved my reading speed in
German, and made reading less frustrating by making it faster.

~~~
hmbg
I've been working on a variation of this with a connection to a flashcard app
[<http://www.vocabulous.net>]. Basically whenever you look up an unfamiliar
word you can tap "add" and it ends up among your flashcards.

Now I just need amazons book catalog, and it'll be awesome...

------
a_bonobo
FYI:

>das ist nicht gut

is also perfect, normal, modern German

~~~
Paul_S
I was about to point out the same thing, also "tak tak" means "yes, yes".
Also, learning from "meme posters" is a bad idea. They often intentionally
misuse the language in a non-obvious way, especially if you've just started
learning it.

I don't think breadth first works well with learning many languages at once.
What's the point of being able to recall a few phrases in each language. Learn
one until it's at a usable level.

One important thing I wanted to add that helps me a lot is: use Anki! It's the
most time efficient way to memorise information.

Also, advice like this is specific to a family of languages.

~~~
kumarski
Yeah. Very true. I guess memes should be taken in context with the help or
under the tutelage of a native speaker.

------
lewispollard
My favourite technology for memorizing vocabulary is definitely memrise[1]. It
actually combines a lot of these things together so it becomes more than just
a flashcard site, it has a wiki-like community format so people can add
'meme'-based mnemonics, usage examples, etc. Really smart stuff.

[1] <http://www.memrise.com>

~~~
klez
<useless_rant>

Why are all those sites english->whatever-language and not whatever-
language->whatever-other-language?

I know it can be long to translate everything, but once you have a
English->French course and an English->Italian course, why can't we have a
French->Italian one (and vice versa)?

</useless_rant>

~~~
anonymous
Because going between any two languages is a separate task. Unless you have a
universal language that contains every linguistic feature everywhere and can
achieve lossless transition, using X->Y and X->Z to make Y->Z will introduce
an unacceptable level of error. English is not a universal language.

~~~
elisehein
My Natural Language Systems professor just went through that topic yesterday
-- that in the case of all machine translation applications, the ultimate goal
is to get as high up in a 'natural language pyramid' where the tip is a single
universal language. So we get the most use out of elements of any two given
languages that have as much in common with each other as possible; these
common elements could then be applied to other similar languages.

Interestingly, he also proposed that the closest thing we have right now to
that 'tip' language is sanskrit.

------
ttty
Learn the verbs at simple present like in the target language: I am, you are,
she is, he is.... I have, you have, she has...

Every time you want to say something and you cannot find out how to say and
write down in your paper.

And keep them in a a4 page in some place and take it with you everywhere you
go. When you speak and you don't remember a word, quickly check your page.

------
gingerjoos
How does learning pangrams help? I don't get how the author has benefited from
learning all the letters of German when they mostly correspond to the English
alphabet. It does sound like a cool thing to learn, but I can't think of any
use beyond that. What am I missing?

~~~
kumarski
Good point. I should have been clearer.

The german pangram I cited happens to be my favorite, but in some sense
provides less utility than a Russian or Arabic pangram. In the early days of
learning a new language, sometimes people forget the letters or pronunciation,
but a pangram can help.

------
AlexanderZ
Shameless plug: two years ago I created <http://nabbber.com> to help me learn
English. Basically, it's like Twitter, but instead of tweets you post words
that you've recently learned. You can follow other people and see their new
words on your home page (just like tweets).

I'm in Bali now and I'm using Nabbber to learn Indonesian. Whenever I see an
unknown word (in a shop, at a gas station, etc) I save it and then revise from
time to time.

Here's how my profile page looks like:
<http://nabbber.com/AlexanderZaytsev/words/id:en>

I find this method (just got out in the wild and write down unknown words) the
most efficient one.

------
kitx
Not a bad list, but I've never understood the reasoning behind frequency word
lists. The 5,000 most common words in a new language are the ones that I need
to worry about least, simply because I'm going to be encountering them so
frequently.

For the record, I've found that very little can match forcing yourself to
speak your target language with native speakers. Back this up with studying
vocabularly and grammar on your own. Hard work, but incredibly effective.

~~~
mediascreen
I think learning the top 3000 words makes it easier to get more passive help
from books, newspapers and television. For me, there is a threshold when I
improve without really trying, just by reading and listening. It's not the
most efficient method, but I don't have to sit down and study.

~~~
cgag
Yeah, establishing that baseline of 2-3k works is what makes most of what you
read comprehensible, and allows you to pick up more vocabulary and
understanding through context, which I think is pretty much the key. I
actually do think it might be the most effective method once you're at that
level.

------
ivancdg
"Learn the top 1000 spoken or written words of a language"

Is there a resource that provides a list of the most frequent words for a
given language?

~~~
lewispollard
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists>

------
keikun17
watch shows in your favorite genre, in (target) foreign language + eng (or
your native language) subtitles.

~~~
lewispollard
I found this didn't help me much beyond picking up the odd word I'd learned in
context. Switching to target language subtitles and using VLC to slow down the
playback slightly has done wonders for me.

------
vmanju
I've been learning Spanish for about 3 weeks now. I use a combination of
Duolingo (highly recommended!), memrise.com (nice way to retain words) and
Coffee Break Spanish podcast on iTunes. Can someone suggest Spanish
movies/shows I can watch?:)

------
diasks2
That's a good list. I think the most important first step is to find what
really interests you (whether that be comic books, TV shows, movies, music)
and use that as a starting point. For example, a lot of people I know learned
Japanese because they were interested in anime. If you are studying something
that truly interests you, it is much easier to stay motivated.

In my opinion, there is still a lot of room for innovation in the online
language learning space. It is a very tough problem to solve and it is one
that I am currently working on with my startup - BiFluent[1]. Our thesis is
that one thing that is really missing for people learning a foreign language
is metrics. If you are running a startup, I'm sure you could immediately tell
me how many new users signed up today, what your current conversion rate is,
etc. But can you do the same thing if you are learning a foreign language? Can
you tell me what your level was 1 year ago, 6 months ago, 1 month ago? Can you
tell me (precisely) what your strengths are, and what your weaknesses are
(speaking, pronunciation, vocabulary, idioms, grammar, etc.)? Can you tell me
which words you should be studying next, based on frequency analysis and
tailored to fit your study goals? I believe that if you truly know your level,
and if you are able to measure your improvement over short term periods (every
month), it becomes much easier to stay motivated and stay on track.

One tool we are hoping to ship in the next week or so is a vocabulary
assessment tool. Historically, the only way people have measured vocabulary is
by the number of words you know. For example, "I know 5,000 words". In my
opinion, this is a vanity metric. It doesn't really tell us any useful,
actionable information. Our new tool reports what we call your Vocabulary
Coverage Ratio. This is the percentage of the total vocabulary of a language
that you will know or understand (analyzed on a frequency basis). So, for
example, if your Vocabulary Coverage Ratio is 85%, this means that you will
understand 85% of the vocabulary in any given situation. After we ascertain
your level with our tool, we can also break out your coverage ratio across
different mediums (TV, newspapers, magazines, fiction) using the data in our
corpus. Also, once we know your vocabulary coverage ratio, we can use the
frequency analysis in our database to give you tailored study lists. These
study lists will show you the next 50 most frequent words you should be
studying based on your current level and interest (we have different lists for
medical, business, SAT, GRE, TOEIC, etc.). If you choose the right words to
target, you can quickly improve your coverage ratio.

So in conclusion, I think the best "hack" is a mix of two things. 1) You need
to find what interests you and use that as a jumping point 2) you need to use
science and tools to accelerate your progress (just like we use analysis tools
in every other aspect of our lives).

[1] <https://www.bifluent.com>

~~~
xiaoma
A common problem for tech-minded people when approaching human languages is to
equate learning words with learning a language but it doesn't work that way.

The two big reasons are differing division of word boundaries and
collocations. The second half of this 2 minute video explains both:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cjnP6mogEU>

~~~
hmbg
Very true. One way around that is to put more than one word on your flashcard;
a phrase of five-ish words enough to study in that way, but long enough to
show some grammar and context ("the elephant has a long trunk").

------
polskibus
I'd add two of mine to that list: try thinking in foreign language and
calculating in it.

------
kevinAlbs
Great tips, but if I remember correctly the Italian movie is called La Vita e
bella.

~~~
Spittie
It's called "La Vita è bella"

------
nico
I would love to see something like this but for learning programming
languages.

------
dedsm
And everybody searching for Aleksandra Kozuszek

------
indiecore
I find mixing tasks helps me out. I use duolinguo at home and I have a bunch
of Pimsleur tapes (old method but still great for basics) on my phone for
various languages that I listen to when I walk home from the gym and I'm still
excited from working out.

Of course I seem like a madman walking down the street still flushed from the
gym muttering to myself in french or german but hey, that's how it goes
sometimes.

I really do think immersion is the best way to master a language but you still
need a basic proficiency in it. Then just walk around speaking like an idiot
and asking for corrections until you don't sound like an idiot anymore.

~~~
_delirium
The last part is a little easier if you're in a context where other people
either don't speak English or are unconfident in it. Many Spanish people will
be okay interacting with your broken Spanish, for example, but many (most?)
Scandinavians will immediately switch to English. I've also had better luck
with languages which have more speakers, since they're more used to hearing
non-native accents: French or Spaniards or Italians can accept a pretty wide
range of pronunciations, but mispronounced Danish ends up completely
unintelligible to many people.

~~~
indiecore
mm, the only place I've put this into practice was when I was learning French
and living in Quebec, I'd simply say that I was trying to practice and most
people would go along with it. I can see it being a problem if your bad accent
makes the language unintelligible though.

------
nerdfiles
I recommend using <https://github.com/antijingoist/AlphaSymbolic> as a means
of distilling the cultural/economic/historical/etc unnecessary typographic
biases/information latent in current font libraries. At least for Latin-based
systems; these biases may distract the reader from developing extensible
representation models of the text itself; thus, they distract the reader from
more immediately perceiving the "stress" or density of text, since the
characters are each so "unique" in terms of glyphs, etc.

