
Ways to learn a language as an adult? - kintamanimatt
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-ways-to-learn-a-language-as-an-adult/answer/David-Bailey-7?share=1
======
fivedogit
I've said this before on HN, but it's worth repeating. I want a Warcraft-style
MMO that immerses me in a foreign language. Instead of "Go kill 8 dragons" the
questgiver tells me to "Mata a 8 dragones verdes" and it's up to me to figure
out he said _green_ dragons, not just any dragons.

I would play the hell out of that game and I'd be fluent in like 8 languages
after a few months. Please, somebody with access to like $10 million of funny
money, build this.

~~~
GuiA
Similarly, movie subtitles specifically for language learning could be
devised.

For example, you'd have 3 lines: the original line, a translated line, and a
"learning" line in between that would have the verbs in their non conjugated
form, etc.

Example with your sentence:

 _Mata 8 dragónes verdes_

 _Matar 8 dragón verde_

 _Kill 8 dragons green_

This probably isn't the ideal configuration, but I think the general idea has
a lot of potential and would greatly help with language learning. It would
also really shine for languages with different alphabets - eg for japanese the
top line could use kanji/hiragana/katakana, and the middle line romaji.

I thought of this recently while watching a Japanese movie- my Japanese is
very rudimentary, and having romaji+English subtitles while listening to the
movie in Japanese would make me learn super fast.

~~~
sho_hn
From what I recall, subtitles were indeed tremendously helpful when I was
learning English - English subtitles only, though. Being able to read along
took the stress out of having to cope with enunciation and understanding
meaning at the same time. Translated subtitles on the other hand were just a
distraction. My brain would end up reading them and start ignoring the
English, rather than make any connections.

So I don't think trying to have two languages active concurrently and
constantly translating forth and back works well. However, having audio and
text in the same language active concurrently helps with instilling an audio
representation of the language in your head, which is crucial in e.g.
improving reading speed, because you really need to be able to actually _speak
in your head_ instead of working with abstract symbols.

~~~
zzzcpan
Yes, you need an effort-reward loop to learn something.

------
readme
Learn programming in 24 hours!

This is just fluff. Sure, the guy probably learned some French, but it's
anecdotal. To assess proficiency he needs to be tested by native experts in
all the modalities of language: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Not
by the opinion of some girl who probably liked him at a coffee shop.

Where I am we take 6 months to get a student from 0 to basic proficiency in
french: i.e. able to read/listen to news and discuss advanced topics, like
economics. That's with 6 hours of class a day, M-F all with native speakers.

If you really want to learn a language efficiently, I'd recommend this ted
talk:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0)

BTW, I doubt his 6 month mark applies to harder languages like chinese.

~~~
foobarqux
He was specifically talking about his experience with Mandarin.

~~~
readme
Yeah, that's where I disagree with him.

------
seanoliver
I wouldn't call this the "secret" to learning a foreign language as an adult.
Obviously immersion in a language is ideal, and the fact that he had already
learned Spanish is even more ideal.

I'm currently 2 years into my attempt to learn Chinese and I can say that many
of these tips don't apply to all languages:

1\. Listening to music won't help with comprehension of tonal languages like
Chinese because songs will usually ignore the tones so that they sound better
set to music.

2\. Reading children's books in character-based languages like Chinese will
only be helpful if you're already proficient in a few hundred basic
characters. Since there's no alphabet, there's no way to sound out words the
way we can in English.

Otherwise, there are some great tips here. I agree that listening to classroom
discussion and hearing others' mistakes is a great way to learn. It's also
important to do daily, focused practice in the mornings when your mind is
fresh and not muddled by other things.

Overall I think it's a good Quora answer but not necessarily a "secret" to
learning a language.

~~~
hackerboos
Thai is tonal and they mostly keep the tones when singing. Music is a
recommended way of learning Thai.

~~~
seanoliver
Ah good point. I'm not very familiar with Thai. I'll also say that many
Chinese songs try to retain the tones as much as possible, but they're
generally a lot harder to make out in music, so it's usually not the most
useful learning tool. I do think listening to music is important for cultural
immersion in any language, though.

------
hackerboos
Let's face it learning a foreign language is one of those things that everyone
would like to do but are either too busy, or not committed enough to do it.

Similar to fitness, those 2 barriers have spawned an industry of 'learn in
your car', 'French in 30 days' and videos by polyglots who sell the idea that
language acquisition is easy.

Now I'm going to tell you the hardest part of learning a foreign language.

There are no shortcuts. It takes time, it takes dedication and it will most
probably cost money.

~~~
jacquesm
I never spent a cent to learn new languages. Friendly strangers are really all
you need. Time and dedication are required for mastery, but if you want to
communicate with any stranger you usually can and learning is what we're built
for. It's harder to not pick up a language if you live in a place where they
speak one that you do not have under your belt yet than to pick it up.

You should be able to do the basics in a few weeks or months, mastery will
take (much) longer. If your goal is to blend in with the natives without
getting any questions about your origins after the first three sentences
prepare for a decade or more. That's a grade or two above fluency.

------
vidanay
Can we now see a similar article for how to learn a foreign language in 17
days while commuting 30 minutes each way to a 8 hour job 5 days a week and
while raising a child or two?

Seems like just about anyone can learn to speak French when given the
opportunity to immerse themselves in a bucolic French village with nothing to
do!

~~~
kenshiro_o
I am currently learning Japanese. My level would be "lower intermediate": I
can write hiragana/katakana and know about 100+ kanjis. But I am not satisfied
with my oral fluency.

What I have started doing recently is listen to a Japanese podcast on
SoundCloud ([https://soundcloud.com/senakunes/easy-japanese-
lesson-12-in-...](https://soundcloud.com/senakunes/easy-japanese-lesson-12-in-
the-taxi-3)) while doing my morning workout.

Moreover, since my commute to work is short, I have also started watching a
short 5min anime to pick up basic everyday Japanese conversational skills.

Additionally, I plan to spend at least 10 minutes chatting in Japanese
everyday to one of my colleagues who understands the language.

I'll do this for a month or two and check where I am after this period. I do
believe the key to learning any language (especially if you are not in the
country) is to practise every day and use the expressions learned on the day
in different contexts to cement them in your memory. This also means you most
likely have to find someone who speaks the language fluently or at least
understands it to an acceptable level.

Obviously, I'll have to come up with another technique if I see no progress.

~~~
glxybstr
i am also studying japanese - i'm on a similar level i would say. i know
around 150 kanji and forgotten about the same amount. my problem is finding
someone on a similar level to learn alongside - i've heard it's wise to have
not only someone above your skill level, but also someone at your equal, to
compete and learn with. if you're interested, i'd like to study together -
send me an email.

~~~
kenshiro_o
Hey - I'd be keen yes. What's your email? (I could not find it in your
profile).

------
sho_hn
Here's the secret: It's not actually that hard, you just need to work at it
consistently (some exposure every day) and be willing to put in the time
(years). Treat it as a long-term hobby.

I'm 30 and I started learning Korean in 2014, partly as an experiment to see
whether my brain is still up to learning something completely new that's non-
trivial (I had my insecure doubts). It turns out that it's really not that
hard.

It's a lot like taking on a large programming problem outside your immediate
experience base, actually: At first it can seem like an impenetrable mountain
of work, but you dive in anyway, portion it up into smaller problems (in this
case, various individual grammar forms), slowly work your way through the list
until you have a big picture overview of the problem space as a framework to
hang things on, and then you fill in the details through exposure and practice
and things slowly weave together into a confident understanding of what you're
doing - with a language, that's expressing yourself.

I feel like it's very doable now, and it's tremendous fun and immensely
stimulating along the way. Learning a new language feels like gaining access
to a new angle from which to look at the world - subtly different ways to
categorize space, new spectra of adjectives to work with (or, since Korean
uses descriptive verbs instead, new ways of working with adjectives), new
forms of absurdity (and thus humor). A better idea of where languages differ,
but also, crucially, where they are the same. It feels like getting a bit
closer to an idea of what core-humanity may be.

It will take a lot more time to become fluent, not to mention eloquent, but I
haven't had this much fun with a hobby since _programming_ used to be one.

~~~
pithos
Do you have any specific techniques or resources that you have used while
learning Korean? I have tried learning the language a few times (Rosetta
Stone, Memrise, traditional book/audio) and have also thought it should be
like learning a new programming language but I have never been able to get
through the initial confusing period.

~~~
sho_hn
I originally started with web resources, but here's the stuff I credit with
really advancing me properly, roughly in the order I read or used it:

1\. TTMIK's _Hangeul Master_. It's really easy to pick up hangul basics so
spending $20 on a book that's superficially just about the alphabet might seem
silly. But the harder part to learn isn't really the symbols, it's the
pronunciation. You need to get to grips with the various sound change rules
that apply when various characters are adjacent to each other, and with the
pronunciation differences between the normal and tense consonants, and so on.
If you can't look at a word and confidently form its sound in your head you
can't read or write efficiently, so this is crucial. TTMIK's book is really a
solid package: You get the basics (the symbols, the stroke order, etc.) but
also a good introduction to the sound change rules, not just on paper but also
in really well-done supplementary audio resources and quizzes (where many
books fail). Finally there's a second section on various Korean handwriting
styles that I found surprisingly useful (Korean TV shows and other materials
often use pen scripts that can be hard to read without spending some time with
this).

2\. To complement the above, the Korean Wiki Project has a lot of good sound
files for various character combinations.

3\. Billy Go's two _Korean Made Simple_ books are just great. They're highly
accessible introductions to core grammar and core vocab, with short,
digestible chapters that gently build on each other (and some useful
appendices, like another very complete overview over sound change rules). This
is the sort of hand-holding you need to start to be able to find your way
around in sentences, form your own, and develop a solid basis from which to
attack more advanced areas.

4\. _Korean Grammar in Use_ is another excellent book series. It doesn't do
hangul or vocab, instead focussing on numerous grammar forms. It's well-
structured and benefits from great page layout, and is exactly what you need
after Go's books to progress further. It's in English, but written by native
authors and originates in the Korean university world. It's a bit harder to
get ahold off; I got mine from Korean sellers on Amazon without problems
though.

5\. The _Integrated Korean_ series has a deservedly good reputation as being
suitable for self-study and being well-rounded and comprehensive. I agree it's
good material that you want to look at, especially for practice (it has work
books), but I don't think they're as accessible as Go's books, and not as
well-structured as _Korean Grammar in Use_. I think it's best to start this
series as supplementary fodder after the above.

6\. I've used Anki flashcards for vocab training, but I don't feel like
flashcards work well for me. I find it hard to retain words without sufficient
context. The vocab I pick up while reading about grammar sticks much better.
To really bulk up on vocab I recommend studying enough grammar so you can
dissect even more complicated sentences, and then start reading prose with the
aid of a dictionary. Get some children's book or YA fiction and work your way
up.

7\. Make sure you listen to some audio-only resources, not just TV shows. Some
of the Korean phonemes are superficially similar to Western ones, but formed
with slightly different tongue positions, and because of the McGurk effect
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0#t=86](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0#t=86))
you can actively hear them wrong when you look at speakers' faces. Once you
know enough hangul and grammar and vocab to have a hope of keeping up with
spoken Korean, bulk up on audio. TTMIK has a lot of conversational resources.
That said, watching TV shows and stuff is of course good fun anyway, and
especially variety shows often have on-screen subtitles featuring the key
terms of what's being said, which makes for great learning material ...

8\. Subscribe to the /r/korean sub-reddit and read the questions and
answers/discussion. You'll learn a lot from that and make lots of interesting
connections.

9\. For practice, use Hello Talk (chatting with natives) and Lang 8 (write
longer texts and get corrections by natives). There's of course also "go to
Korea and immerse yourself", but not everyone has that luxury.

------
wodenokoto
This is in no way a secret to learning anything. Almost nobody will be able to
learn anything from such an intense workload of new things.

Yes, some people can work hard and retain things throughout. Beethoven could
remember an entire symphony from listening to it once, but that hardly
translate to anything useful for normal music students.

------
houshuang
Learning French while being fluent in Spanish, not very impressive.

~~~
graeme
This is an important point. I recently learned portuguese with a 45 hour
course and five weeks in Brazil. But I'm fluent in Spanish, so it was not
hard.

I certainly couldn't have done the same thing with Mandarin.

~~~
ecspike
Agreed. When I did my semester abroad in France, the French kids regarded the
ones who took Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese and coping out and taking "easy"
languages.

I'm at the advanced intermediate level in French and have only lightly studied
Spanish. I can follow many conversations in Spanish that happen around me.

------
Jihoon
Much of how quickly you learn a language depends on what languages you've had
prior exposure to. So, depending on the language you choose to learn, YMMV.

Total immersion, at least in the beginning, is only useful when your language
of choice has linguistic similarities to what you already know. Otherwise, to
get to a level where immersion even makes sense comes only after hard
studying. Without this base knowledge, everything you hear will sound like
complete gibberish...not really an efficient way to learn.

As someone who is fluent in Korean, I'd presumably have an easier time picking
up Japanese here in the US than a foreign exchange student in Japan who only
knows English (given similar levels of dedication/work ethic). That's because
Korean has many similarities to Japanese.

------
dergachev
Different techniques work well depending on your current level. Immersion
always helps, and for me recently that meant diving into reading online news
articles in French, which really helped with expressions, idioms, and jokes. I
tried a few "Google Translate" chrome extensions but none were good for
looking up just a phrase effectively, so I wrote my own, BabelFrog. It has
almost no options (just From and To languages) and instantly displays of the
translate of the word or phrase you selected. Give it a try maybe.
[http://babelfrog.com/](http://babelfrog.com/)

------
Lucadg
After learning 6 languages and teaching some, I came to the conclusion that
what works for me doesn't work for everyone. It's very subjective. There is no
secret way. There's your own secret way. It's up to you to find it out.

My personal trick is comics. Asterix and Tin Tin were great for me.

It's spoken language written down with drawings to help along the way.

All you find there will be needed on a daily basis so it's very efficient.

------
dghughes
Calling it a 'foreign' language sounds odd to me.

As a Canadian French is not foreign as in not a language of this nation even
though I don't speak it. Maybe foreign to the person not to your nation is
what's meant.

Even in the US Spanish wouldn't be even though English is the only unofficial
official language. Even French is part of US languages from parts of Maine to
my Acadian neighbours who went to Louisiana.

------
simonswords82
Yet another "article" that is just a copy/paste of a Quora post. Seems to be
happening with more frequency.

~~~
refurb
Is this how Quora is trying to create revenue? Doesn't seem like it's going to
get them very far.

~~~
simonswords82
Interesting point! I hadn't thought of that, I simply put it down to lazy
journalism.

------
tokenadult
I've been developing a FAQ on language learning as this interest is mentioned
on Hacker News from time to time. The article kindly submitted here mentions
learning French in France by a (native?) speaker of English who had previously
learned Spanish. All of those are Indo-European languages, more or less
cognate with one another. I've taken on some tougher language-learning
challenges over the years. As I learned Mandarin Chinese up to the level that
I was able to support my family for several years as a Chinese-English
translator and interpreter, I had to tackle several problems for which there
is not yet a one-stop-shopping software solution.

I hope the FAQ information below helps hackers achieve their dreams. For ANY
pair of languages, even closely cognate pairs of West Germanic languages like
English and Dutch, or Wu Chinese dialects like those of Shanghai and Suzhou,
the two languages differ in sound system, so that what is a phoneme in one
language is not a phoneme in the other language.

[http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/Wha...](http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneme.htm)

But a speaker of one language who is past the age of puberty will simply not
perceive many of the phonemic distinctions in sounds in the target language
(the language to be learned) without very careful training, as disregard of
those distinctions below the level of conscious attention is part of having
the sound system of the speaker's native language fully in mind. Attention to
target language phonemes has to be developed through pains-taking practice.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10442032](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10442032)

It is brutally hard for most people (after the age of puberty, and perhaps
especially for males) to learn to attend to sound distinctions that don't
exist in the learner's native language. That is especially hard when the sound
distinction signifies a grammatical distinction that also doesn't exist in the
learner's native language. For example, the distinction between "I speak" and
"he speaks" in English involves a consonant cluster at the end of a syllable,
and no such consonant clusters exist in the Mandarin sound system at all.
Worse than that, no such grammatical distinction as "first person singular"
and "third person singular" for inflecting verbs exists in Mandarin, so it is
remarkably difficult for Mandarin-speaking learners of English to learn to
distinguish "speaks" from "speak" and to say "he speaks Chinese" rather than *
"he speak Chinese" (not a grammatical phrase in spoken English).

Most software materials for learning foreign languages could be much improved
simply by including a complete chart of the sound system of the target
language (in the dialect form being taught in the software materials) with
explicit description of sounds in the terminology of articulatory phonetics

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulatory_phonetics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulatory_phonetics)

with full use of notation from the International Phonetic Alphabet.

[http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/ipachart.html](http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/ipachart.html)

(By the way, the International Phonetic Alphabet was invented by language
teachers in Europe to help native speakers of English learn French and native
speakers of French learn English, so it could help the author of the article
submitted to open this thread. The International Phonetic Alphabet was
eventually extended to be useful for writing down any human language.) Good
language-learning materials always include a lot of focused drills on sound
distinctions (contrasting minimal pairs in the language) in the target
language, and no software program for language learning should be without
those. It is still an art of software writing to try to automate listening to
a learner's pronunciation for appropriate feedback on accuracy of
pronunciation. That is not an easy problem.

After phonology, another huge task for any language learner is acquiring
vocabulary, and this is the task on which most language-learning materials are
most focused. But often the focus on vocabulary is not very thoughtful.

The classic software approach to helping vocabulary acquisition is essentially
to automate flipping flash cards. But flash cards have ALWAYS been overrated
for vocabulary acquisition. Words don't match one-to-one between languages,
not even between closely cognate languages. The map is not the territory, and
every language on earth divides the world of lived experience into a different
set of words, with different boundaries between words of similar meaning.

The royal road to learning vocabulary in a target language is massive exposure
to actual texts (dialogs, stories, songs, personal letters, articles, etc.)
written or spoken by native speakers of the language. I'll quote a master
language teacher here, the late John DeFrancis. A few years ago, I reread the
section "Suggestions for Study" in the front matter of John DeFrancis's book
Beginning Chinese Reader, Part I, which I first used to learn Chinese back in
1975. In that section of that book, I found this passage, "Fluency in reading
can only be achieved by extensive practice on all the interrelated aspects of
the reading process. To accomplish this we must READ, READ, READ"
(capitalization as in original). In other words, vocabulary can only be well
acquired in context (an argument he develops in detail with regard to Chinese
in the writing I have just cited) and the context must be a genuine context
produced by native speakers of the language.

I have been giving free advice on language learning since the 1990s on my
personal website,

[http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html](http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html)

and the one advice I can give every language learner reading this thread is to
take advantage of radio broadcasting in your target language. Spoken-word
broadcasting (here I'm especially focusing on radio rather than on TV) gives
you an opportunity to listen and to hear words used in context. In the 1970s,
I used to have to use an expensive short-wave radio to pick up Chinese-
language radio programs in North America. Now we who have Internet access can
gain endless listening opportunities from Internet radio stations in dozens of
unlikely languages. Listen early and listen often while learning a language.
That will help with phonology (as above) and it will help crucially with
vocabulary.

The third big task of a language learner is learning grammar and syntax, which
is often woefully neglected in software language-learning materials. Every
language has hundreds of tacit grammar rules, many of which are not known
explicitly even to native speakers, but which reveal a language-learner as a
foreigner when the rules are broken. The foreign language-learner needs to
understand grammar not just to produce speech or writing that is less jarring
and foreign to native speakers, but also to better understand what native
speakers are speaking or writing. Any widely spoken modern language has thick
books reporting the grammatical rules of the language,

[http://www.amazon.com/French-Grammar-Complete-Reference-
Guid...](http://www.amazon.com/French-Grammar-Complete-Reference-
Guide/dp/007144498X/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-French-Grammar-
Glanville...](http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-French-Grammar-Glanville-
Price/dp/1405153857/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Chinese-Functional-
Reference-...](http://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Chinese-Functional-Reference-
Grammar/dp/0520066103/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Comprehensive-Grammar-
Grammars...](http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Comprehensive-Grammar-
Grammars/dp/0415150329/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Grammar-English-
Language...](http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Grammar-English-
Language/dp/0582517346/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English-
Language/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English-
Language/dp/0521431468/)

[http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-French-
Learni...](http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-French-
Learning/dp/0934034370/)

and it is well worth your while to study books like that both about your
native language(s) and about any language you are studying.

A special bonus for learners of French (which I have used) is that many
classic French literature books (novels, collections of short stories,
collections of essays, etc.) are now in the public domain, and are available
as free-of-charge ebooks. You can practice a lot of reading French with
resources like that, and relearn classic tales you knew in youth. Similarly,
today there is boundless free audio, for example in the form of online movies
and streaming news broadcasts, in all of the major world languages. Take
advantage of that as you learn.

Bonne chance. 祝

好运。

~~~
sho_hn
Personally I prioritize learning grammar over vocab. I feel it's a lot easier
to acquire vocab once you have a decent grammar framework to slot words into,
because it means you can practice and retain words much more effectively. For
example, you can then start reading prose much earlier, because all you need
to do is look up words in a dictionary - since the grammar training has
equipped you to glean tense, relations, and so on the two combine to give you
the meaning, so once you have grammar down you can read almost anything with
the aid of a dictionary. And when you learn new words you will know
immediately how to use them (e.g. conjugate them) correctly, and the immediate
application will make them stick better.

(I'm currently learning Korean, where e.g. properly conjugated verbs are
immensely powerful information encoders, and also serve as adjectives. Grammar
is indispensable there.)

------
GoofballJones
Cool, so I'll just find a French friend in a tiny village in the Beaujolais
region of France where I can just go stay for two weeks doing nothing but
learning French. SO easy to learn French!

~~~
sethrin
It was described as the best way to learn, not the easy way. There are
probably more accessible French speaking regions, if that's an issue. It is
possible to learn languages without being immersed in them, but immersion is
better for a number of different reasons. You learn how people actually speak,
rather than what gets committed to a textbook. You may or may not memorize
words any faster, but you will be continually absorbing speech patterns. You
also are forced to speak and to try to communicate. That is both one of the
most critical factors in learning, and the easiest to avoid, and the
psychological pressure to do so can be intense. It is so much easier to fall
back to a language of which you are master. The easiest way to learn a
language, in point of fact, is to not learn it at all.

I spent three years in Central America, mostly hanging out around gringos, and
six months immersed in the language. The difference was incomparable. I don't
consider myself fluent, but I think I can say with some authority that the
more exposure to native speakers that you have, and the more that you force
yourself to express yourself in that language, the easier it will be to learn.
There aren't many people for whom learning languages is actually easy, but
there are easier and harder ways to go about it. The important point is that
it is something that is possible for anyone, with sufficient effort: It's
wired into our brains.

As an aside, I would like to recommend the app Duolingo. I haven't used it
much; it was a little embarrassing to be using it around a bunch of native
speakers, but I do think it helps to gamify the experience.

------
laacz
The only way to learn a language not by memorizing it is listening, reading
and talking. There are no shortcuts.

------
spupy
Really, this web page is not even scrollable without JavaScript enabled...

------
spupy
Really, this page is not even scrollable without JavaScript enabled...

------
sparkzilla
Step 1: Get a girl/boyfriend who is a native speaker.

~~~
sho_hn
This can lead to amusing results in languages where enunciation, word choice
or even choice in grammar forms are more strongly biased by a speaker's
gender. Not that breaking down those barriers a little isn't interesting in
its own right, of course, but depending on the language you should expose
yourself to speakers from either gender to get the full range.

~~~
sparkzilla
Especially true in Japanese, where the difference between male and female
speech is distinct.

------
totoroisalive
The author got bullied in France, but he have not realized yet.

 _I had lunch with my friend and her French friends everyday. As they refused
to slow down when speaking to me in French, it was learn or starve!_

