Ask HN: Most effective way to learn a new language (not the programming kind)? - philippnagel
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stevekemp
Honestly the only way that things stuck with me was when I was forced to use
the language (i.e. immersion).

Previously I persuaded my wife to only speak to me in her native language
every Thursday afternoon/evening. That helped a little, but only when I moved
and was surrounded by the new language did I really get better.

It took me months to learn to hear AND pronounce the difference between "o"
and "ö", and still I get it wrong at times.

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chowraid
I'm also curious about this. To my knowledge I managed to learn a good amount
of Japanese by literally studying every day for 1-2 hours, listen to a good
amount of Japanese music. Rented Japanese books to see if I could recognize
any symbols and try to figure out what the book was about. I hope this helps.

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quickben
How many hours did it take for the approach to work?

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chowraid
I committed to this for 6 months. Also I studied around the same time every
day. What also helped me was that on the course of the day I would force
myself to count in Japanese and to try to think in Japanese. Sometimes I would
be so distracted that I would catch myself actually thinking in Japanese for a
good amount of time.

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s4vi0r
How far would you say you got at the end of 6 months? I took a Japanese 101
class a couple years ago and still remember some basic phrases/verbs/etc and
how to read katakana and hiragana as well as probably 50 or so kanji. Been
thinking about getting back into it so that I can at least use it at some
semi-basic conversational level for my trip.

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chowraid
I would say that I got to the point that I was able to understand the majority
of the words on Japanese songs and movies. The reading part on the other hand
was another story. Talking I was at a elementary level. I was able to defend
myself somewhat.

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ian0
As stevekemp mentions immersion is a surefire method.

When learning Indonesian my sole company for most of the day was my korean
flatmate, who had no english. We evolved through some hilarious pidgins to
fluency pretty fast.

Necessity is the mother of invention

