
I Learned French in 12 Months - ingve
http://www.runwes.com/2020/02/11/howilearnedfrench.html
======
BTBurke
I don't believe there is a shortcut for "hacking" languages. I'm a diplomat,
and currently learning my fourth language to the C1+ level.

When we learn languages, it's a full time job. It was 9 months to learn
Mandarin to a B1, 6 months to a C1+ in Spanish, and I'm currently at a B1 in
Estonian after 5 months.

There are several things I think are crucial after years of full time study
(note: this assumes you're going for professional fluency, not just touring
around the country where interactions are largely scripted and predictable):

* There is no substitute for production - you must speak the language with a native speaker (not an app) and talk about topics that are relevant to the kind of scenarios you anticipate. We spend the first several months discussing current events in target language - at first scripted, then later free form. This builds vocabulary and helps fluency. This is quickly expanded to discussing current events in depth and participating in mock debates.

* Give mini presentations - target 3-5 minutes of talking about a relevant topic with little prep time. The difference between intermediate and advanced is the ability to move from discussing only facts to making a coherent argument. Native speakers will often not be able to follow your train of thought without learning to connect cause and effect using structures appropriate for your language.

* Interview native speakers - prepare 2-3 questions about a particular topic and check your comprehension by translating their answers to English. This obviously helps build your comprehension, but also helps to learn to "automate" comprehension while you are thinking about something else. If you can take notes in English while a native speaker is talking at normal speed (and achieving 90%+ accuracy), it will make it easier for you to participate in normal speed conversations.

* Read target language news - this is critical for expanding vocabulary and learning colocations - knowing what verbs are used in particular contexts (e.g., do they say "I talked _with_ X" or "I talked _to_ X". Do they say country X shot, launched, or threw a rocket?)

Bottom line - language learning is not just about the number of hours you put
in. The quality and type of practice you do matters a lot. You aren't going to
be fluent via Duolingo alone. You need to put in the time using structured
practice with native speakers to really learn anything.

~~~
animalnewbie
I've seen computational biologists , mechanical engineers , non-programmjng
entrepreneurs but what does a diplomat do on HN?

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Alan Mustard, former US ambassador to Turkmenistan and trained in agriculture,
is a well-known OpenStreetMap geek and quite familiar with GIS issues.
Diplomats can have hobbies, you know.

I myself am a linguist and translator, no professional background in the hard
sciences or IT at all, but I have still been involved in Free Software for
many years and so HN is a natural news channel to read.

~~~
rmc
And Allan Mustard is now Chairperson of the OpenStreetMap Foundation Board of
Directors

[https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Board_Member_Bios](https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Board_Member_Bios)

------
tmountain
I've been hacking language learning for about five years, and I've spent
ridiculous amounts of time trying and reading about different strategies. I've
been to Cuba, Mexico, Spain, and Puerto Rico to try immersion in different
settings.

Getting to a solid level of competency in a language actually is not that
hard. It just requires dedication and consistent practice.

That said, native speakers operate on a different level entirely. In my recent
visit to Barcelona, I had no problems asking for directions, talking to the
hotel staff and people in bars, chatting it up with friends in Spanish, etc.
However, walking into a noisy / crowded restaurant where the language is going
100 miles an hour is a totally different scenario.

As much as I want to believe otherwise, I'm of the opinion that getting to a
level of "automatic" response where you can fluidly handle any situation
requires living in a country where the language is in your face all day every
day--and even then it still takes real effort.

A friend of mine, who's a US ex-pat living in Madrid is of the same opinion.
After three years living there, he still doesn't feel 100% confident;
although, he admits that he has spent most of his social time around English
speakers.

None of this is intended to discourage anyone at all. In fact, learning
Spanish ranks as one of the best decisions I've ever made; however, I think
it's important for folks to go in with realistic expectations, as there's big
difference between functional competency--with a language and fluency with
fluency being a "white whale".

~~~
hombre_fatal
> Getting to a solid level of competency in a language actually is not that
> hard. It just requires dedication and consistent practice.

Though that's why it's hard. Just like eating healthy and exercise isn't hard,
just requires dedication, yet notice how few people have a particularly good
looking body.

The opportunity cost of learning a language is also immense. I've spent an
incredible amount of time listening to and reading Spanish. It just isn't for
everybody. It has to be something that makes you happy.

~~~
abnry
I am of the opinion that many people who want to learn a language don't have
any real reason to learn a second language other than to say they know two
languages.

Unless you have extended family or somehow became smitten with a foreign
country, I am almost certain this is the case. So any attempts are really
halfhearted and very little progress is made because the commitment is so
large.

This is why, if I ever get around to learning a second language, it will be
Esperanto. It takes an order of magnitude of less time to learn and gives you
the accomplishment of knowing another language. (Plus uniformity in language
is cool.)

~~~
jacquesm
> I am of the opinion that many people who want to learn a language don't have
> any real reason to learn a second language other than to say they know two
> languages.

Your opinion is a pretty localized one. For many people learning a second
language is not an option, it is a must. I would have a very hard time
functioning in my field without access to a second language.

~~~
oblio
Agreed. If you work in high level tech, for big companies, possibly with
international companies, if you want a decent career, your English better be
awesome.

You can make do with less, but it's probably going to have an impact on your
career, at some point.

------
ourmandave
They went from a non-speaker (A0) to a B2.

According to CEFR link in article, a B2 level:

Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract
topics, including technical discussions in their field of specialization.

Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular
interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either
party.

Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a
viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of
various options.

CEFR Estimated time required to _academically_ learn B2 level French: 560-650
hours

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages#Common_reference_levels)

~~~
loeg
For a frame of reference, I also started doing DuoLingo daily about 12 months
ago and am still at ~A1 proficiency, as far as speaking or writing. I might be
at A2 listening, or even B1 reading comprehension. I definitely spend less
than two hours a day on it and don't converse with native speakers, which
doesn't help.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
Duolingo is useful for memorizing vocab, but you'll never get anywhere near
fluency with it. The possible space of interactions is just too limited.

------
shmat
I studied French from 7th-12th grade in an American High School. After that, I
could not understand any French beyond "bonjour". I could not have a
conversation in French. I could conjugate verbs and I could read some. Fast
forward 45 years and I retired and decided to actually learn French. I
followed a very, very similar method and after 9 months of self study took a 2
week intensive course in France where I was told I was at B2 level. Obviously
I didn't start at A0 but when I first started with Duolingo, I remembered
nothing. 45 years is a long gap. What he describes works. Even an old fart
like me can get to B2 level with self study if they are motivated and use good
resources. It's never been easier to learn a language with all the excellent
resources available.

~~~
alexis_fr
> I studied French from 7th-12th grade

As a French, I’ve lived a few years in Australia. A lot of people there can
only say “Bonjour” and keep a bitter memory of their lessons. It feels like
learning German for the French people, also a difficult (albeit more regular)
language. It is merely necessary for political cohesion but not at an
individual level; As such German lessons are... not designed for the students.
If I had to believe the lessons, there are only two topics that Germans talk
about: The Wiedervereinigung (reunification) and the war. All their movies are
black and white with yellow subtitles. That’s how I imagine the French
language in the Australian culture ;) Something you gotta learn at school,
like se hazing or something.

It really feels like we haven’t mastered teaching, as a civilization. Our
teaching works for pupils who have an interest; but for the others, it’s like
signing for a mortgage and hating the house from the day you move in.

In fact, a lot of Ozzies I’ve met told me they went to Paris and felt hated by
parisians. This testimonial was so frequent (dozens of times) that I led my
little survey. On Twitter and among friends, all French people love
Australians, between surfing and Crocodile Dundee, we have good conversation
starters ;) Some may dislike some British but I don’t think there are many,
let alone many who would act it out on the street. I just think parisians
behave like stressed people behave in very stressful cities. So, no, we don’t
hate English-speaking people, and I’m sorry that my language is so hard and so
required in your curriculum ;)

Good day everyone!

~~~
schoen
> If I had to believe the lessons, there are only two topics that Germans talk
> about: The Wiedervereinigung (reunification) and the war.

According to my lessons, they also talk about Umweltschutz (environmental
protection), especially Mülltrennung (garbage sorting).

~~~
jowdones
As a Romanian who had to study German in school, I testify to that. I still
remember the word "Umweltverschmutzung" but no idea if it's der, die, das, dem
or des umweltverschmutzung :P

~~~
jamil7
A small trick with the words ending in "-ung" is they're often feminine so
"die" in nomanative.

~~~
jowdones
I would have bet on "die", just coze it "sounds right".

------
raphaelj
As a French native speaker, I'm a little bit surprised by the corrected text
OP posted in her/his article
([http://www.runwes.com/images/learningfrench/image1.png](http://www.runwes.com/images/learningfrench/image1.png)).

Most of the corrections she/he received are not justified at all. Like using
the work "crédits" is totally fine in this context. I can't get why they
corrected some connectors like "à" or "pour", as the usage of these in the
text seem at least as correct to me.

~~~
mytailorisrich
I'm also a native speaker (France's French if that makes a difference).
"Crédits" was replaced by "bons", which means vouchers. In the context that
would indeed be the likely correct option (and I never heard "crédits" used
that way...)

It's grammatically incorrect to write "s'inscrire à une salle de sport" and
should indeed be "dans une salle de sport" and so it was warranted to correct
that.

The other corrections are similarly warranted.

I'm a bit worried if you guys all think the original text was fine... ;)

~~~
clemParis
Interesting points! Thanks. I didn't know "inscrire" is a transitive verb, so
indeed "s'inscrire à" is grammatically incorrect. As often with french it
raises the question of "does this rule make sense regarding usage". A quick
google search for "s'inscrire à une salle de sport" shows a lot of results,
even from people specializing in sport. And many native speakers were fooled
by this rule.

As for the "crédit", the dictionnary definition seem to state it is correct
(even though "bon" would be a bit better).
[https://larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/cr%c3%a9dit/20314...](https://larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/cr%c3%a9dit/20314?q=cr%c3%a9dit#20203)
Crédit: Autorisation de dépenses accordée par les autorités qui établissent,
votent ou règlent les budgets ; somme ainsi allouée : La bibliothèque dispose
d'un crédit de dix mille euros.

~~~
astrobe_
Transitivity is not an issue: "obéir à ses instincts" and "suivre ces
instincts".

So "s'incrire à" is not incorrect _per se_ , e.g. "s'inscrire à des cours de
danse". Even, you must say "s'inscrire à la mairie" (e.g. for poll lists) and
not "s'inscrire dans la mairie".

I think that what is technically correct is to use "à" when you talk about
_where_ you sign in or register (usually a one-time action) and "dans" when
you talk about signing in to perform a recurring activity.

That little _à_ word derives from the Latin words "ab" and "ad", which you can
find in words ("adjacent", "adverb", "addition", "adventure"... hemmm I mean
*aventure"; sometimes English is more Latin than French) which tell the idea
of proximity or direction.

------
iandanforth
This is an awesome post. The one thing I wish it included was context around
their lifestyle during this time period. How many hours a day did they devote?
Were they working full time? If so doing what? What other responsibilities /
life things got in the way.

It's one thing to imagine yourself doing this given six months of dedicated
time (not that they claimed to have had this) and another to get a real sense
of how one might fit this into one's life. Anyway, great, detailed article and
an impressive accomplishment.

~~~
wes1350
Author here. I don't work full time but I'm a master's student. I had a decent
enough chunk of free time to dedicate to this without too many serious
obligations. It's hard for me to estimate time per day, as there were some
week-long periods where I did very minimal study when particularly busy, and
other periods where I'd spend 20+ hours a week of solid effort on it. I think
achieving this is probably outside the scope of someone who isn't extremely
abnormally self-motivated and efficient and who has a family, long working
hours, etc. That being said, I think most people can find the time to reach a
moderate conversational level in a year without too much trouble, assuming
they work efficiently.

------
throwaway41968
Couple remarks on the author's alleged "weaknesses":

>Understand strongly accented speech. I understand essentially all the
“standard” French without subtitles, but very little of the Quebecois.

Most European French speakers have trouble understanding Québecois as well,
especially if it delves into slang, so I wouldn't fret much. High level (and
written) speech should be ok though.

>Understand very slang-heavy speech. I know a good chunk of argot but there
are still plenty of informal vocab words and expressions I don’t know.
Especially that damn verlan.

Again, seeing how most people over 35 don't understand any of that stuff
either I wouldn't worry too much. Especially because this stuff evolves like
crazy and new slang/verlan words keep popping up all the time. I'm in my late
20s and can already feel the divide in the slang I and friends in their early
20s use.

>Write error free text. I can get the message across pretty well without
relying on a dictionary, but I often phrase things a bit unnaturally and make
minor grammatical errors.

Like I and another poster said, most of the mistakes aren't really mistakes.
Only the most extraordinary pedant would object to these.

>Quickly use less common verb tenses. While I know how to construct the past
conditional and future perfect, I still can’t use them very fluidly.
>Recognize all the weird literary tenses. Imperfect subjunctive? Yuck.

Yeah no one uses these. In fact if you _did_ attempt to use these in a normal
conversation there's a good chance you wouldn't be understood. Even in
writing, modern authors are more and more switching to present and past
perfect. Even tenses like the future are getting increasingly uncommon, people
instead use the present and rely on contextual clues or markers, like in
German (" we'll meet tomorrow" -> "we meet tomorrow").

What I mean to say from all of this is that even native French speakers are
not completely at ease with these pain points so it's no use worrying about
them too much.

~~~
mytailorisrich
The future perfect is very much used both orally and (especially) in writing
and so is the past conditional.

The passé simple is almost never used orally these days, and in writing mostly
only in literary texts.

I've noticed that the subjunctive is used less in writing since some change to
'simplify' (i.e. dumb down) the language.

Exotic forms of subjunctive (imperfect subjunctive, anyone?) are hardly used
anymore even in contemporary literary texts.

~~~
throwaway41968
> The future perfect is very much used both orally

The past conditional, maybe. The future, really? Do you actually say things
like _nous nous verrons demain_ or _il l 'aura fait avant_ in casual speech?
Well I don't know if _you_ do, but the vast majority of French speakers would
say something like _on se voit demain_ et _il l 'a probablement fait avant_.
Instead of using specific verb forms to convery meaning people instead rely on
context and adverbial cues, as do the speakers of the dozens of languages that
do not use the byzantine tense and mood system of the Romance languages (see:
Japanese, Chinese, etc.) and are certainly not the worse for it.

>I've noticed that the subjunctive is used less in writing since some change
to 'simplify' (i.e. dumb down) the language.

You're aware that the argument you're making about the language getting
"dumbed down" is literally millennia old, right?

~~~
Raphmedia
> nous nous verrons demain or il l'aura fait avant

I am a french speaker from Québec and hear both of those often.

------
burlesona
I find the timeline believable but I’m impressed (and happy!) to see this
worked with self-study. I lived abroad for a while and found I was able to
pick up the local language pretty quickly because I was fully immersed in it,
by 6 mo. I was comfortably conversational for day to day things. However, I
would also caution for anyone wanting to learn a language at home, it’s a
muscle and it does fade when you don’t use it. After a decade back in the
states I’ve lost the majority of the language I learned since there’s no one
around to use it with.

~~~
Brakenshire
You could just watch French TV, films or podcasts, there's more access to that
material now than there ever has been.

~~~
karatestomp
It’s still much tougher to come by that one might think. For one thing,
European networks don’t care about distributing their content outside of
Europe, even in exchange for actual money. For another, a huge proportion of
the content is dubbed from English, which isn’t ideal. Even pirating the
stuff’s pretty hard, since there’s (apparently) little interest in it.

Japanese may be a pain in the ass to learn but it’s hard not to be jealous of
the resources and media available to Japanese learners, as someone learning
most any other language (though, in the US at least, Spanish media’s pretty
easy to get ahold of)

~~~
narag
Youtube will give you as many videos in any language as you want.

~~~
bluGill
IF you can find them. Also you have no idea about quality. I've watched
several videos in my TL where the plot was 1 here is what I'm going to do,
then 10 minutes silently doing it, then 1 minute of reflection. There are a
lot of videos of one guy doing something without talking. Note that the above
is probably a reflection on my tastes.

I've also watched several videos and concluded after a while that it wasn't my
TL but a related language.

~~~
narag
Heh, YouTube is such a big place!

Best way to start is watching tv news. Hosts have very clear pronuntiation,
it's their job after all.

I first research what tv channels are more popular in the country, then search
YouTube with that info. YouTube doesn't seem to offer a lot of search options,
but it's possible to do the search from Google or DuckDuckGo and later select
"videos" tab.

DuckDuckGo has a dropdown menu that allows search localization, so the first
results are the most relevant to the selected country. Once you find a handful
of interesting channels, you're set up.

~~~
bluGill
The only thing I disagree with is best. Best is subjective, I find most news
boring an irrelevant (a lot of gossip about people I don't care about) so
while it is great if you can stand it, I tend to get mad about the subjects
they consider worth covering and turn it off.

This is a reflection on me of course - you should have your own opinions.

~~~
narag
OK, let's say that it's a good way to learn the language, not so much as
entertainment. Actually I agree with you about how little of what we see in
the news is worth covering.

Anyway, if there's a channel with lots of contents, it's still possible to
select only interesting topics. Maybe it's easier for me, because the language
I'm most interested in is English :) Usually I don't even need YouTube, just
setting Netflix language to English.

For other languages, I'm mostly interested in listening to specific words
pronuntiation, usually names.

------
bucket2015
> 11/18: Started going through the French Duolingo tree

> 3/19: Reached the end of the Duolingo tree (level 1 in all skills, but most
> were level 3+)

This is pretty impressive. I've started French Duolingo around the same time
and have been doing 30 min per day every day; 14 months later I'm about
1/2-way down.

This must have taken ~3h/day of Duolingo.

~~~
abecedarius
I went through the early parts of French Duolingo pretty intensively, but gave
it up around the end of level 1, because it seems far too grindy -- not a good
use of time. The part I did was good for bootstrapping to the point where you
can start profiting from more real-life sources like the Harry Potter books.

~~~
ip26
How do you make the jump and apply the real life sources? A dictionary and a
lot of free time? Two copies one in each language? Kindle French?

~~~
abecedarius
The best setup I know of is an e-reader with a good dictionary configured to
pop up on tapping a word. You can also select a passage for auto-translation,
which is usually better than nothing. I use the Kindle reader on the iPad the
most.

(Although it's good enough, it could be much better: the French dictionary
lookup consistently swaps accented with nonaccented e's, the translator goes
to Bing instead of deepl.com, the French->English lookup (which pops up in
parallel) forgets at least half the time that the source is French and
displays a useless null English->English translation of an actually French
word. Going beyond the minimum, why couldn't we align a human-translated
edition if you've bought one, or found a public-domain one? And the same for
an audiobook of the same text? There's so much room to do these things better,
not just for Duolingo. I blame DRM and the intellectual-property status quo to
a considerable degree. I'm a little ashamed to be plugging a DRM-promoting
setup here.)

There are some webapps and iOS apps for parallel-text reading, but last I
looked the execution wasn't very compelling to me, and for me the time when
parallel texts made the most difference is past. (Also, you learn that
translators often seem to want to exercise excess creativity, or misunderstand
things. This counterbalances their still-better-than-Bing general skill.)

To make the jump early, assuming you can enjoy them, see if you can find a
wide selection of children's books from the library. It was kind of a
nostalgic experience -- I'd forgotten what it felt like to be running into
puzzling words and expressions all the time. This way is not so quick for
dictionary lookup, though.

------
jackschultz
Whenever I read posts like this I'm much more impressed with the person's
desire, motivation, determination, and strength to go an entire year focusing
on one a single goal, not necessarily their learning ability.

So many people, me especially, go through spurts of wanting to learn something
new or complete a project, reach a goal, and yet I always seem to fizzle out
because in the end, why bother?

I'll argue it's incredibly rare for people to set goals, work continuously
towards them, and consider it a success more so than what they can now do.

~~~
hycaria
He never touches on the why

~~~
sjf
I feel like the number one motivating reason is having a significant other who
has a different native language. This also makes it a lot easier to make
progress because you basically have your own tutor who is also motivated to
patiently listen to your struggles.

~~~
hombre_fatal
There's a Spanish saying that goes something like: the best way to learn a
language is in the bed or the crib.

Nothing is quite as motivating to learn a language than dating someone (or,
more likely, trying to) who doesn't speak English very well or is willing to
refuse to speak it.

------
loufe
I had the good luck of getting hired into a job in a 100% French environment
here in Quebec just out of school almost 2 years ago. I started with just an
intensive 6 credit French course in university and grade 11 English-Canada
high school french as a background which conversationally accounted for very
little.

I understand feeling as though your structured grammar classes in school
failed you when you first went to X country and spaghetti came out your mouth.
However, that grammatical framework served me incredibly well as time went on.
I found it filled in holes of knowledge without need to go back and correct
them later. IMO, it is not a bad place to start, a traditional grammar focused
class.

If you're looking for tips, the biggest is to maximize exposure - speaking,
reading, writing, hearing the language. It is simply a matter of time if you
force yourself into it. In addition to everyday language practice with my
colleagues to do my job (don't let them speak your native tongue with you,
ever!), I hosted french movie nights, read in french, and installed Antidote
for my emails (seriously - if you're learning French, buy Antidote).

Seriously, don't let them speak your native tongue with you, ever, for any
reason. Force the language you want to learn without exception - conversation
language patterns are very, very hard to undo once set.

Last point: Contrary to the author, "heavily accented French" to me is France
French, I am far less fluent with it. Choose your teachers based on what
accent you want to have, yourself.

------
knubie
Very impressive progress. I think it speaks to the author's commitment and
dedication, as adding 50 _new_ cards per day is a _lot_. Most people will burn
out pretty quickly at that rate. I recommend something like 10-20 per day. I'm
also one of those people that say you should make your own cards from material
you're immersing in. When going through a predefined list of words like that I
think you're bound to end up learning a bunch of words that you'll never
encounter (at least not for a long time), and a bunch of words that you'll
have no idea how to use correctly.

I wrote an article[0] about my own method for language learning, focusing
mainly on the spaced repetition aspect.

[0] [https://mochi.cards/blog/using-spaced-repetition-to-
learn-a-...](https://mochi.cards/blog/using-spaced-repetition-to-learn-a-
language/)

~~~
wes1350
Author here. It was a lot, but seeing the number go down rapidly was a nice
motivator. Keep in mind that these are just pre-made 1-word cards, so they're
much faster than the full-sentence cards people suggest, which are likely more
effective though also more time-consuming. Furthermore, French has an
unexpectedly (for me) large number of cognates with English, so many of those
words were freebies for me. If I was learning Mandarin, for example, 50 cards
a day would require an absolutely enormous amount of effort, most of which
would likely be wasted.

You are correct in that a decent chunk of the words are relatively useless,
and I forgot many of them already after stopping Anki for a few months. There
were also some words that I had no idea how to use, as you said. However, I
did some extra looking-up of difficult words, and the deck included example
sentences for many of the words. Also, I definitely claim that your method is
more effective, but clearly this one at least worked well enough to do what I
did.

------
risos
> no immersion

I see this somewhat frequently among some parts of the online language
community. For some reason people seem to think that you're not immersing in a
language unless you're in a country where that language is frequently used.
They somehow equate being immersed in a language with physically being in a
country where that language is frequently used.

Don't get me wrong, being in a country is a great way to immerse yourself in a
language, but it is by no means a requirement.

In terms of exposure to content in the language you're learning, what's the
difference between someone who is living in a country where they see that
language on TV, in the newspapers, hear it on the radio, and speak it with
native speakers, versus someone who watches content in that language on
youtube, reads articles/newspapers online in that language, talks online with
people who speak that language, but lives somewhere where they don't speak it?
Not much.

Setting up a "local immersion environment" requires putting effort into
finding native resources and trying to reduce your exposure towards your
native language. It's certainly more effort than being in a country where you
can't help but be surrounded by your target language, but it's definitely not
impossible.

The idea that listening to music, listening to podcasts, watching youtube
videos and reading articles in your target language is not immersion is silly,
since this is what native speakers living in their country experience on a
daily basis. Environment is everything, not location.

~~~
wes1350
Author here. I see your point but I still prefer to say I wasn't "immersed"
because I think actually living among native speakers and using the language
carries an enormous advantage over what I did, a sort of "pseudo-immersion."
This pseudo-immersion isn't 100% equivalent to typical immersion, but as you
say, captures at least a significant part of it. Trying to imitate the
immersion environment is the best I could do, and clearly is enough to get to
a pretty decent level.

Regarding differences between this pseudo-immersion and "true immersion", I
think there are a ton of things that I never picked up that I would receive
had I lived in the country, which is a big reason why I still make this
distinction. For example, I haven't shopped at a French grocery store and
asked for help, and while I could do so, I'd probably use some uncommon
wording. Or, for example, IIRC French people say "I'm having X" in restaurants
instead of "I would like X", as all the online resources tell you to do, but I
would have never picked up on this if I hadn't read it in a random article
once. This sort of expression-mimicking you get from interacting daily with
native speakers is, I imagine, hugely important in actually becoming natural
in a native environment and is completely lacking with what I did.

I've never been to a French hospital, or complained about cigarette butts on
the sidewalk, or explained how I stepped in dog poop on my way to work this
morning, or told anyone how sweaty I became after rushing to catch the train.
I could say all these things, but they'd all be new situations and there would
be unnatural wording and a distinct lack of common expressions and idioms in
my speech. Theoretically, I could watch enough movies or read enough books to
catch a decent chunk of this, but in my immersion method I read 1 book and 0
movies or tv shows, (aside from a kid's cartoon for a bit.) This doesn't even
include the massive amount of slang and idioms that are only said among very
informal friends that I've never used with my Italki teachers. Perhaps
including a lot more media in my method would be significantly more
"immersive", but in any case I think the distinction is warranted. That being
said, immersing yourself as much as possible, even at home, is definitely a
very useful and effective way to learn a language.

------
dudul
It reminds me a little of how I learnt English myself. Out of high school I
was really bad and really wanted to change that. I switched all my video games
to English, started watching 4 to 5 hours of TV shows/movies in English a day,
reading books in English, etc etc. I definitely wasn't as intense as the
author, but I think it worked pretty well considering that now I live in the
US as a US citizen :)

------
fcatalan
If you just care about understanding most of the written language this can be
done a bit faster in a very similar way: A few years ago I started watching
Danish TV shows and went through a few months of "Danish obsession".

-I started Duolingo Danish, only 15-20 minutes every day, just unlocking stuff, not completing evey level. I never completed it all, but there's not much left.

-Then I followed a couple major Danish newspapers on Twitter. This is good because it is just incorporated in my couple daily sweeps through my timeline, provides a little "cultural immersion" and the translate button is sitting right there to help with those couple of words you didn't already know.

-The Twitter thing also works well to give a sense of progress: After a while you find you don't have much trouble with the tweets themselves and start clicking on some links to get a harder challenge with the articles themselves.

-When you can make out what most of the press articles say, you can start trying with some fiction: In my case I chose ebook Danish translations of the Millenium novel series, for no particular reason (just more Nordic noir). I had not read them previously.

I read them using my phone and set up the reader to provide Google translation
by selecting words or sentences. I found out I could in fact enjoy the novel
and had to use the "dictionary" less and less as I went on. I read the two
first novels and the average speed was about half of English or my native
Spanish.

\- Since my Danish reading was by now quite effortless, for an aditional
challenge I tried the third novel in the original Swedish. This was viable and
still fun, but certainly more belabored.

All this took about 3-4 months.

So now I can read Danish, Norwegian and Swedish newspapers but I can't really
understand the spoken language. (In fact spoken Danish is notoriously
difficult to understand). I can catch the drift of conversation, recognise
words and phrases but not really understand or speak myself. I can surprise
Danes by greeting them and exchanging some smalltalk, but not really keep up a
conversation. But hey... it was all pretty much effortless, so RoI is great.

Nowadays I'm doing the same with Russian. It goes slower because I'm not as
obsessed and stop from time to time, but I can understand tweets from
Komsomolskaya Pravda pretty well by now.

~~~
wes1350
Author here. I heavily concentrated on speaking, but you're absolutely right
that without that you can get quite far surprisingly quickly if you only care
about reading. I mean, look at the millions of language students that can read
complex texts in their foreign languages but can't spend 30 seconds discussing
their day.

------
no1youknowz
Reminds me of this [0].

Ikenna learned (conversational?) French in 6 months. It's quite an inspiring
video. After watching a few of his videos now, it definitely plays a part in
continuing to motivate me learning Japanese.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8gno6Uzuo8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8gno6Uzuo8)

~~~
wes1350
Author here. Indeed, I linked to this video in one of the sections. Starting
off every few weeks or so I'd watch the video again to remind myself that this
is possible and "keep my eyes on the prize." His level in the video isn't
incredible or anything but definitely something to be proud of after 6 months
of study. I can confirm such is possible because I was around his level after
6 months too, from what I can tell.

------
DiogenesKynikos
As this article shows, it is perfectly possible to learn a language to a
decent level (B2) in a year by studying at home. This is especially true if
the language you're learning is closely related to your native language (e.g.,
English and French). You just have to consistently put in the time (probably
an hour a day, at a minimum) and use a good mix of resources: a good textbook,
flashcards (e.g., Anki), Italki (personal tutoring over video chat), radio,
and some easy reading (childrens' books are great).

If you can go to a country where the language is spoken and are able to spend
all of your time working on the language, you can learn to B2 level in much
less than a year. I would say you should be able to achieve B2 level in a
relatively easy (because close to English) language like French in less than 6
months.

------
lowercased
I've done short stints in Spanish and Japanese classes, and have traveled
abroad for short periods (Spain, Russia, China). I understand short phrases
and can do very basic stuff: ask for directions, say please/thank you, get
mugged, etc.

I have some family that have done intense language study, and lived abroad for
years (mostly Russia, but other places too), one thing I've always been
curious about is wordplay.

Do non-English languages and cultures have the same amount (or potential for)
wordplay like English does? My family who've lived abroad have said 'not as
much as English', but... they only lived in non-English places for a few
years, so their experience - while valuable - may not be conclusive.

~~~
digitalsushi
I don't speak Swedish but someone told me they have their own pun Olympics
simply because of how easy the language is to mold into puns

~~~
wingerlang
Looks like it is a comedy group that is setting some competition event yearly.

------
dvduval
I have achieved the same results in Chinese (HSK 5), but it took me 5 years.
The resource I see that is missing is HelloTalk, with lots of opportunities to
converse for free, and post your writing practice to receive corrections. Can
also post your voice.

------
tacomplain
I learned french in 3 months aprox. while living in France. Ive arrived there
without much knowledge of the language. First weeks I was feeling like an
alien. Then I started to understand but couldn't speak. Then I started to use
translate and dictionary to build some phrases beforehand to be able to be
polite and ask the questions I wanted. After 3 months something clicked during
a talk I was watching, I not only began to understand without having to think
but was able to ask questions to the French guy on my side about the talk (it
was about a ML algorithm). I am a native speaker of a Latin language
(Portuguese).

------
wallflower
Congratulations to the author! They achieved a level where having a
conversation with them is not painful, for either side of the conversation.

For anyone who is bored of learning yet another programming language, learning
a human language will challenge you and humble you and reward you if you keep
going at it.

Just please give up on self-imposed deadlines, and as this article states,
there is no magic bullet, no magic method to learning a language, despite what
SEO-driven blogs and videos will tell you.

------
globular-toast
I learnt French in about six months. I was able to read the news, Wikipedia,
technical journals and and some novels (although this was by far the most
difficult). My main motivation was to be able to read French papers for my
PhD. I accomplished that goal.

However, I was not able to speak French _at all_. I actually went to the South
of France thinking I'd be able to converse but was immediately disheartened
when I couldn't understand the first thing they said and they couldn't even
understand me saying the word "tarte" in a _patisserie_.

My approach to learning to read/write French was simple. First learn the
grammar of your mother tongue. If you don't speak a second language, you
probably don't know this. Secondly, learn the grammar of the new language by
using study materials written in your mother tongue. There is an excellent
series of books that covers both of these called _English Grammar for Students
of X_ (where X is, French, for example). Thirdly, learn loads and loads of
vocabulary (including genders etc if necessary). For this I used Memrise which
was excellent at the time (but I think it has regressed since). Then just read
a lot.

Things I found not useful at all were Duolingo and Rosetta Stone. They don't
teach grammar to adults. They are aimed at babies which is fine if you have
ten years to learn this, I guess. There are no shortcuts if you want it to be
quicker.

I still know a surprisingly large amount of French after several years, but
it's fading. I'd still love to be able to speak it fluently one day. Any
advice for getting there?

------
rgovostes
I've been reading similar anecdotes lately trying to gauge whether I could
reach B1 in a Romance language in a few months of study.

What I've found is a lot of pessimism about how well Duolingo teaches you a
language, with many arguing it's a waste of time altogether.

I'm surprised that could be the case though. They have data from millions of
language learners processing through their lessons, and looking at their
making-of blog ([https://making.duolingo.com](https://making.duolingo.com)),
the product seems data-driven. They do A/B testing to see the efficacy of new
features they roll out. Aside from that, they combine reading, writing,
speaking, and listening exercises, and have made some innovative features like
chat bots. One language tree includes a few thousand words.

If anything, I would expect Duolingo to be vastly more effective than other
methods.

~~~
gibolt
Their A/B testing probably isn't testing education efficacy, but retention and
actions that lead to payment/miscellaneous business goals.

~~~
abecedarius
Ironically, as a user I'd use it more if it were more effective and less
grind-grind-grind. But I suppose you're probably right. An efficient,
effective learning process feels more challenging and frustrating, which must
drive a lot of people away. It must be a solvable problem, though.

~~~
wes1350
Author here. I agree that Duolingo is almost certainly not optimizing for
language learning effectiveness, which ends up being somewhat of a side-effect
of their business model. However, by using the desktop version and turning off
the word bank, you can better optimize for effectiveness for yourself.

Duolingo is certainly a grind, but I don't think that's 100% a bad thing. It's
far from perfectly executed, but I think you need a certain amount of grind to
really drill some of the vocab and grammatical concepts into you.

As an example, in a classroom you do some homework exercises, and maybe get
feedback the next day on however many exercises you do. You don't necessarily
get to redo the exercises you miss enough to let the concept sink in, and you
might do way too many exercises that do nothing for you as you've already
internalized the concept. With Duolingo grinding, you have to repeat your
weakest points after you get them wrong and get to drill in all the exercises
until they stick.

I estimate that each lesson of roughly 20 questions, with redoing exercises I
got wrong, takes me something like 3-5 minutes, so in an hour of focused
effort you might get 300 exercises in. That's far more exercises than I
imagine you do in school for example, and you also get to decide if a unit is
too easy and you can afford to skip it, or if it's hard enough where you have
to repeat it. Plus, each sentence has a discussion page, many of which
(especially the tricky ones) have detailed explanations about the concepts
within the sentence.

Duolingo is far from perfect, but despite all the criticism it receives
(rightly so for what it claims you can do with 5 minutes a day on the mobile
app), you can actually make it a surprisingly effective tool.

~~~
abecedarius
Oh, I agree it's useful! I'm pretty sure it's a great improvement over my
high-school Spanish classes or my rudiments of grade-school French in Canada.

It's just that I moved on nearly as soon as I could to learning by osmosis
from reading real books; which, not being deliberate practice, is quite
suboptimal in learning rate too, but is a much more tolerable use of time. If
they were as effective as I think they could be, I wouldn't ditch them so
soon.

I have the unusual issue of being severely hard of hearing and I'm not sure
what'll be the effective way to learn spoken conversation if I do move to a
French-speaking country. Even hearing English is, uh, problematic in most
settings. So this is also an example of tailoring your own approach in view of
goals and context. I like reading books, and this most directly got me the
thing I like.

------
practice9
Does anybody here have experience of "learning" physics, electrical
engineering or material science in 12 months?

By this I mean starting from the very basics to a level where you can
comfortably talk about main concepts and start designing or experimenting
using your knowledge

------
spenrose
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/opinion/contributors/lear...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/opinion/contributors/learning-
french-in-middle-age.html)

~~~
scottlocklin
> Being a New York Times Columnist

The article (not the NYT one, which is just typical whiney urban cat lady
trash) has a lot of the components of a marketing submarine. Particularly
obviously as .... well, who is this person?

I do think apps are pretty helpful in stuffing vocab in the brain. Mixed bag
though. Duolingo is shit for me; they don't have continental Portuguese
(Memrise does). The rest of it rings true as well (I listen to Portuguese
radio at home to work on my understanding when I'm not being a slug).

~~~
andrewzah
That NYT article is an example of someone basically failing at learning a
language, to put it quite bluntly. Learning a language as an adult entails
hard work for years and years.

Living in France will not teach you French, besides "survival French" and
probably "minimal conversational French". Even having a French partner won't
help at all, unless you both commit to speaking French (and then your partner
is put into a weird position where they're your partner but have to constantly
correct you)...

Acquiring Superior/Distinguished [0] level vocabulary basically entails dense
vocabulary study, daily. And then putting it into practice with usage and
recognition (i.e. reading French books). Anything else is far too slow.

> _When I try to tell a story in French, I sense that the listener wants to
> flee._

The hardest part of learning any language is just accepting that you're going
to make mistakes. Maybe French people are more snobbish about French (I have
no idea) but generally speaking... people understand that you're taking the
time and effort to learn and speak their language.

s/French/<Your Desired Language>/g

I know people who have lived in Korea for 5, 8, 10 years and are frankly still
terrible at it. Some of these people _own businesses_ there! Having a
bilingual Korean partner is probably the worst thing that I noticed, because
you end up always speaking the language that's more convenient, i.e. English.

[0]: [https://www.languagetesting.com/actfl-proficiency-
scale](https://www.languagetesting.com/actfl-proficiency-scale)

~~~
scottlocklin
Funny, one my best friends lives in Korea and is terrible at it. I don't think
he ever put any effort into it though. I thought about joining him and put a
little effort into learning with a Korean friend: the alphabet made a lot of
sense anyway!

I have a low opinion of NYT columnists. As you say, you really have to work at
it. Reading the peregrinations of someone who admitted they didn't actually
work at it, larded with excuses from psychologists (who are measuring people
who also didn't work at it) isn't real edifying or useful; we already know how
people manage not to do it. Enough people succeed in learning new languages as
adults, I'd rather hear from them.

------
bretthopper
There's a lot of meta discussion about learning languages but I'd like to
thank the author for two great tips in particular:

* using the desktop version of Duolingo

* the shared Ankiweb decks for <x> most common words in <x> language

I've been slowly learning Spanish via a few short classes and intermittently
using Duolingo on my phone.

I'm not even sure I knew a non-mobile version of Duolingo existed until now
and it's so much better. Even though I knew that turning off the work bank was
better for learning I didn't do it because typing on my phone sucks.

And I had never used Anki before but earlier today I downloaded it and a top
5000 Spanish word deck and already went through my first lesson.

Even these two small things will help me a lot so thank you.

~~~
wes1350
Author here. Don't quote me on this, but I think something like 90% of
Duolingo users are mobile. Mobile is more "fun" and good for casual users who
want to do 5 minutes everyday to feel like they're making progress. I imagine
Duolingo's business model leads to it heavily promoting the mobile platform,
but thankfully the desktop version is quite good too.

I didn't like the Anki UI at first but I got used to it quickly. My Anki pace
of 50 new cards a day was very aggressive, but this was largely possible due
to the massive number of cognates between English and French. I imagine the
same will hold for you in Spanish, though perhaps to a slightly lesser extent.
I think Anki is wonderful for acquiring vocab though, so keep at it and you
should do quite well! Also consider making your own Anki deck or using
sentences instead of words. While this 5000 word deck was good enough to get
to B2 for me, those methods are very likely more effective for long-term
retention of more obscure words, although of course they are far more time-
consuming.

~~~
bretthopper
I don't doubt the 90%. You can tell they don't care really care about desktop
so it doesn't have the heart system.

Yeah I'll eventually build my own Anki deck. I'm spending a month in Mexico
right now so that's definitely helping too :)

------
imtringued
Honestly learning french was incredibly easy when I did it in school. I just
was too lazy to actually put in the effort. To learn vocabulary all I did was
write down the french word and based on that say the translated word and then
do the opposite. That's it. It just stuck in my head. Then when I decided to
use Anki I added 350 words it didn't even take me a week to learn them. It was
so incredibly easy that I just did 150 words per day. I can't say the same
about Asian languages. Those refuse to stick even at a moderate pace of 30
words per day.

------
Cheyana
Part of me is disappointed that there’s no link to the article in French. :(

~~~
dbancajas
Isn't the intended audience of the article non-french speakers? So he writes
it in a "universal" language so you could apply it on "how to learn <X> in 12
months" where X is your non-native tongue.

~~~
Cheyana
Yeah, and it is a very informative article. I just wanted to see him slingin’
that French. :)

~~~
wes1350
Je suis l'auteur. Je pensais à écrire une version française, mais il y a 9000
mots dans l'article ! Ce serait un tache énorme et probablement pas la
meilleure façon de passer mon temps, car j'écris bien moins vite en français
qu'en anglais. De plus, j'imagine que la grande majorité de gens qui vont lire
cet article sont anglophones.

(For those who don't (or do) speak French, I tried to write this: "I'm the
author. I thought about writing a French version, but there are 9000 words in
the article. This would be an enormous task and probably not the best way to
spend my time, since I write significantly slower in French than in English.
Furthermore, I imagine that most people who are going to read this article are
English speakers.")

------
dgudkov
I learnt French (stopped just shy of B2) in 1.5 years. My learning pace was
intensive (4-6 hours/week), but not as much as the author's. So I find the
author's statement credible.

My advise to those who want to learn French - after getting the grammar
basics, start practicing spoken French as soon as possible. I found two French
teachers online and skyped with them 2-3 hours a week. Initially with a bit of
English, then entirely in French. Also, a huge help was having a French TV
channel always on. I listened to TV5Monde.

~~~
simlevesque
Yeah, speaking french is hard. You speek with the front of your mouth whereas
english is more about the back of your mouth. Totally different muscles.

~~~
tmh88j
> Yeah, speaking french is hard. You speek with the front of your mouth
> whereas english is more about the back of your mouth.

Can you provide some examples of French words that are formed in the front of
the mouth that you find difficult to pronounce? English is my native language
and I don't speak French, but some of my coworkers do and they occasionally
teach me words and phrases. I find it to be the opposite of what you've
described in that the most difficult words for me are formed at the back of
the tongue/mouth, particularly words containing "r" like "quarante-trois" (the
number 43). I remember that word because I was out to lunch with one of my
French speaking coworkers and I asked him how to pronounce my order number in
French. We both had a good laugh as I struggled to say it without sounding
like I was choking.

However, I studied Spanish from middle school through college, and I've
noticed that English speakers tend to have difficulty with rolling their r's,
which is done in the front of the mouth. Are there French words that have this
type of pronunciation too? If so, I understand what you mean about the front
of the mouth.

------
pieq
Polyglot here. I'm struggling with written Chinese (traditional Chinese, as I
live in Taiwan). Written (traditional Chinese) and spoken (Mandarin) forms are
very different, especially in novels but even in news articles. I've got a
pretty decent level in spoken Mandarin (most of my colleagues are Taiwanese,
meetings are in Mandarin), I can use traditional Chinese to type when chatting
with friends online, but I'm completely lost as soon as I open any news
articles shared by my Taiwanese friends.

Any recommendations?

~~~
realitygrill
Have you tried the Guoyu Ribao, or Mandarin Daily News? Seems like you need
extensive reading practice, and that might be a good way to start.

I've also heard excellent things about Outlier Linguistics' resources for
Chinese characters, assuming you're still spending a lot of effort learning
characters.

~~~
pieq
Thanks!

I'll try 國語日報, I'm not sure where to buy it though (it used to be available
easily in every 7-Eleven out there but it's been a while since I've seen a
copy in a convenience store...).

I already know between 800 and 1000 traditional characters. Looking at Outlier
Linguistics products, it seems more targeted towards the entry level. Their
Pleco dictionary is nice, though. Reminds me of the explanations one could
find in Wenlai (a desktop Chinese-English dictionary with a lot of historical
explanations for each characters).

~~~
gpetukhov
800-1000 characters is not enough. Should be about 2500-3000 characters to be
comfortable with reading news and random articles online. I am at this level
now, but can't handle novels yet. Need to learn much more vocab for that.

------
jason0597
> Started consistently covering 50 new words a day on Anki

That's a lot! I could never do that... I'm learning Japanese, and I could
never imagine myself doing more than 10 words a day.

~~~
laurieg
The author definitely benefits from French and English being related
languages. Remembering that "interesting" is "intéressant" takes a lot less
effort than remembering it is "おもしろい".

I studied Japanese full time for a year and would probably average something
like 20 word a day but even that was pushing it. I advise people to aim for
3-5 words a day and be consistent. Adding huge amounts of words very quickly
and then giving up on reviewing them is all too common.

~~~
wes1350
Author here. You're absolutely correct. Make that deck 5000 non-cognate words
and 50 words a day quickly becomes unsustainable. Not to mention the
alphabet(s) required for a language like Japanese. French is a language I
think any decently well-read person (so as to recognize many of the cognates)
can learn vocabulary in surprisingly quickly, considering how much of English
vocabulary is derived from French.

------
kripy
"The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has created a list to show the
approximate time you need to learn a specific language as an English speaker."
[0] French ranks in Category I: you wonder if the same method would apply for
a Category V language.

[0] [https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-
guide/languag...](https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-
guide/language-difficulty/)

------
dghughes
I've always been interested in languages and over the years I've tried many.

Apps certainly help but I find nothing sticks. I can easily read words of the
language in front of me. But I can't think of example sentences on my own.

For French I was amazed at how much of it is condensed. Like English some
people jokingly may say "jeet" for "did you eat". In French there are a
surprisingly large amount of examples like that.

------
hyakosm
French here. If you travel to a French-speaking country, don't hesitate to
speak french, even if it's not perfect. Priority is to be understood. For an
english-native, the temptation is probably to speak english because « everyone
speak english in the world » (wrong), but generally people prefer listen a
foreigner speaking their language with errors than perfect english.

------
OldFatCactus
I've been using Babbel to learn Spanish. Anyone have suggestions for where to
go after maxing resources like Babbel and Duolingo? I feel like I hit a wall
somewhere and the next steps aren't so clear. Some of the steps the author
used look helpful like changing phone language and heavy use of anki

~~~
HuShifang
Lingvist [0] has been useful to me for vocab building post-Duolingo. The
mobile apps are thoughtfully designed -- you can use text or speech input
fairly easily -- and they're rolling out (for Spanish and French so far; I'd
expect German will come soon, but Russian seems to be a ways off) the ability
to generate domain-inspired personalized courses using sample text you input.
I'm mainly practicing my German right now, so I haven't tested it much, but
this might be very powerful in combination with Project Gutenberg texts, etc.
I also appreciate that they have Spanish courses for both Latin America and
Spain.

[0]: [https://lingvist.com/](https://lingvist.com/)

------
38911BBF
Nice article, but just a headsup: The website certificate of runwes.com is
only valid for the following names: www.github.com, * .github.io, *
.githubusercontent.com, * .github.com, github.com, github.io,
githubusercontent.com.

Everyhing is alerts and warnings when clicking the link.

~~~
wes1350
Author here. I have never configured a website like this so I wasn't aware of
these problems. Any tips for fixing this?

~~~
yorwba
The problem is because you're using GitHub Pages to host your website on a
custom domain. When someone accesses your website via HTTPS, they get a
certificate that is only valid for GitHub domains. Of course the HN submission
is an HTTP link, so the person you're replying to probably has their browser
configured to use HTTPS everywhere.

You can fix this by enabling HTTPS in GitHub pages, so that a valid
certificate is served. See GitHub's troubleshooting information:
[https://help.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-
pages/...](https://help.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-
pages/troubleshooting-custom-domains-and-github-pages#https-errors)

------
mrfusion
In my opinion he’d have done even better throwing away anki and watching way
more kid shows. Languages aren’t supposed to be memorized. If you’re
communicating with it, it just sticks in your brain.

When learning to ride a bike You don’t memorize when to move your legs.

~~~
throwaway41968
The way you learn as an adult is very different from the way you learn as a
child. There's nothing compelling about kid shows. I don't know what drives
your efforts to learn a language but, mine are about having access to
_interesting_ media, literature, conversations, etc. Speaking like a 4 year
old only gets you so far.

And if you want to do it, and do it _quickly_ , you've got to do your Anki
reps. Acquire lots and _lots_ of vocabulary so you get through the boring part
and start enjoying the use of the language.

------
thedirt0115
Excellent collection of resources! I'd like to add one:
[https://forvo.com/](https://forvo.com/) Forvo is a free site where you can
look up words and hear them spoken by native speakers.

------
pzumk
Interesting! Just today I thought about learning french or spanish with
Duolingo. I started with spanish because it seems to be easier to learn. The
article was really inspiring tbh, now I really want to stick to it for a year
or so.

------
leke
This person has a lot of will power, and I think that is the secret here. I'm
pretty weak on will power, which is why I'm not yet B2 level in Finnish after
nearly 20 years living in Finland.

------
205guy
The OP did a lot of work learning French, it’s always interesting to get a
peek into someone’s process for something impressive and out of the ordinary.
So thanks for the long and detailed write up.

I wanted to point out that the limitations that were encountered are normal.
The OP learned 95% of what can be learned without living in the culture
itself. Sure, you could learn all these extra details by chatting online, but
it’s not until you need the vocabulary to get something from the French
bureaucracy or to do your job that it all sinks in.

1\. Don’t worry about Québécois, most French cannot understand it either. I
once saw an interview on French public television that subtitled the French
(Québécois) in French. To the French from France, it’s a very heavy and rustic
accent, such as an Irish or Scottish brogue to an American English speaker.
And it has its own local variations, such as between urban and countryside,
with all its own idioms as well. The subtitled conversation was an old person
in the country, young urban dwellers know to speak slower and clearer on
purpose, unless they get familiar with slang and cussing.

2\. Verlan is also just slang, interjections, and cussing, what the young and
hip youth speak to be unintelligible on purpose. It also has overtones of
poor, working-class, and immigrant identity, thus many layers and uses. Many
words have made it into mainstream speech, though never into formal or
newscaster speech. And when verlan words became mainstream, the original
speakers just flipped the words again and kept on going (not sure if there
have been 3 reversals yet). Like in any language, familiar speech can be a
minefield: what’s used and appropriate depends on whether you are speaking to
friends, homies, co-workers, managers, shop-keepers, bureaucrats, family,
children, etc,

3\. Phrasing just takes time and exposure to native speakers. All languages
have these subtleties, such as gynmase <-> salle de sport and how they are
used, so you can only learn them through exposure, not vocabulary decks. Plus
the concepts are cultural as well, sometimes we don’t have the equivalent
concept in American culture, and vice-versa, the concept you want to convey
isn’t apparent in French culture (for example, membership gyms with weight
rooms and such are relatively new in France). The salle de sport might be
closest to a rec center or the Y, but both have slightly different cultural
connotations in American English as well. This sample also shows how you
are/were translating phrases and ideas from English. They sound vaguely off to
a French speaker because they would approach the whole topic with different
concepts and constructs. That level of expression cannot come until you live
in the culture for years and interiorize it’s thought patterns.

4\. Verb tenses have rules and everything, but they later just boil down to an
extensive vocabulary: you just memorize the words for each case, in the sense
that your brain just knows the words for each subject-verb combination. We do
the same in English for a few remaining times we use complex tenses: would you
have known, what could you have done, etc.

5\. All languages blend and trim words, dontcha know? The French do have a
tendency to speak quickly, and compress some of the extra wordiness of the
language—so it happens even more than in English.

6\. For complex or technical topics, again it’s just about learning extensive
vocabulary and word combinations. French isn’t that difficult a language to
learn (compared to others) but both English and French have some of the
largest vocabularies meaning there is a huge mapping from one to the other.
French also has centuries of cultural expression and academic publication, and
has thus developed both a special style and vocabulary for many domains.

~~~
ghaff
>We do the same in English for a few remaining times we use complex tenses

Which we mostly try not to overuse because of the cognitive load it places on
the listener. It's also the case that, as a native English speaker, I have no
idea what any of the less common cases are even called and would have trouble
explaining why they're structured the way they are. I just know the words to
use for a given purpose.

------
andrewzah
> Started consistently covering 50 new words a day on Anki

For anyone here who has used anki, that's a huge number. This person is really
dedicating their time at this point, because 50 new cards/day very quickly
snowballs and you're doing 300+ reviews daily.

I did 20 reviews/day for ~6 months straight for Korean, and that took me 30-60
minutes, every day. Thinking about 50/day sounds utterly exhausting.

It's a good thing a french 5k deck exists also, as they saved a lot of time on
not having to make cards manually. On average a word entry takes ~1-2 minutes
(I have to query 3 dictionaries), so that comes down to only ~45 words per
hour...

\---

> _I firmly believe that learning languages in school, especially in the
> United States, is generally extremely inefficient._

This, so much this. Classes provide rigidity but having a tutor + finding
people to talk with helps you out significantly more. I went to a language
exchange that wasn't bad* where I was able to speak for 1 hour with 1 korean
person, a teacher, who would point out my mistakes and write down words when I
had to dip into English. My conversational ability improved dramatically after
doing that for ~1 month.

* Most language exchanges are shit. Because they're unstructured. People randomly filter in/out and a lot of people are shy or aren't sure what to do. It often devolves into a) "Any korean questions??" or just general conversation. Great for making friends, terrible for seriously practicing Korean.

\---

> _As much as Duolingo likes to tell you this, 5 minutes a day of fumbling
> around with the mobile app isn’t going to make you fluent._

I get why duolingo does this. At the same time, I hate them for advertising
themselves as "the world's best way to learn <Language>". Not only is this not
true, their Japanese and Korean courses were (still are?) notoriously terrible
compared to their Spanish and French courses. Not that a language can be
learned from 1 resource, anyways.

\---

> _On the other hand, since I spent so many hours just casually talking with
> people, I got pretty good at having generic conversations._

This is where I got after ~12-15 months as well. I can quite easily converse
about basic things like me, my hobbies, work, etc for hours but as soon as the
conversation delves into a niche like politics or just more advanced
discussion, I falter pretty hard. Also describing things beyond a basic level
is rough: "I like this, that" vs "The mood of the film was twisted but
exhilarating".

\---

What I find interesting here is how far one can progress in only 12 months
with a language like Spanish or French (with a mother tongue of English). For
Korean, I wasn't even remotely close to understanding things like news
articles at 12 months of study. I'm still not, because that vocabulary is
quite advanced and not really used in regular conversations that much.

The simple truth for learning a language is as the author here mentioned:
consistent and diligent studying, with humility. There is no shortcut, no one
app that does it all. You just have to study, and be able to honestly evaluate
yourself and your mistakes. (Recording yourself speaking the language greatly
helps here).

~~~
neom
How's your Korean now? Any other tips for Korean? I spent 4 months in Korea
and really want to learn the language, but it seems impossibly difficult.
감사합니다 :(

~~~
andrewzah
Well, the good news is that its not impossibly difficult! Just very difficult.
;-) As the Koreans say, 화이팅! (Fighting!)

Korean isn't that different from other languages, really. It's difficult for
English speakers because there aren't really any commonalities besides random
loanwords. And it uses the SOV (subject object verb) pattern instead of SVO.
Hangeul was designed to be easy to learn, so unlike Japanese, you'll always be
able to read/pronounce any Korean text... even if you don't know what it
means.

In some ways Korean is actually easier than, say, German (der/die/das tables,
anyone?). The only thing I would say is make sure you focus on good
pronunciation. Korean is very particular about mouth shapes and tongue
positions. Many Americans especially come off with an accent because they
neglect to put their tongue in the right spot. TalkToMeInKorean has a video
course for ~$10, highly worth it.

Also, do not romanize! Only use 한글. For example, ㄱ is NOT g/k, it's simply ㄱ.
Those are only meant as reference points for brand new learners. Romanizations
will only impede your progress for pronunciation.

\---

I would say I'm intermediate in speaking, high intermediate in
writing/reading, low intermediate in listening. That is to say, I can converse
in Korean somewhat easily for a few hours as long as the topics are relatively
basic. Like my occupation, hobbies, what I like, and so on. Listening is still
very difficult for "real" conversations, because of dialects,
abbreviations/contractions, slang, etc. I can listen to textbook conversations
and drama dialogues much more easily. I pretty much only text my friends in
Korean.

\---

There are 3 major players for korean learning resources right now, and a few
smaller ones:

1) Go!Billy Korean. This guy is really good at korean and IMO is the best at
explaining things in a clear manner. He has a youtube channel [0] as well as a
website [1] with free PDFs of his lessons. He does a livestream every sunday,
but he takes those ~2h videos and condenses them into shorter videos as well.
He also has a textbook series which many people like.

2) HowToStudyKorean.com. This is mainly what I used when I started. This guy
(over)explains sometimes but there is an incredible amount of material here.
The only issue is the lesson order is kinda wack sometimes. I followed it
linearly, but I read ahead if I wanted to learn that specific grammar point.
I.e. how to say "because", etc.

3) TalkToMeInKorean.com. They have a youtube channel [2] and publish books. I
have spent like $130+ on their books so feel free to ask a question about a
particular one. The Beginner/Intermediate Korean Conversations books are
really good.

Aside from these main resources, I recommend the Korean Grammar In Use
textbooks. The beginner one has a good selection of grammar points. However,
the main resources I mentioned pretty much cover the same beginner grammar
points for free, so this book isn't strictly necessary. IMO the advanced one
is worth it.

Other youtube channels I like: Dingo Story [11] has drama clips, around 10-15
minutes. WBKT Yujin [12] does lessons and listening practice, around
intermediate+ level.

Apps: ignore duolingo/lingodeer, they have issues with spacing and teaching
formality levels. Sejong Beginner Grammar (세종 문법 초급) is good, it has audio as
well [3]. It supports android & ios.

\---

Dictionaries: endic.naver.com and krdict.korean.go.kr are the main
dictionaries. krdict is better but a bit slower.

There's also a hanja dictinoary at hanja.dict.naver.com, but as a beginner do
not start studying that stuff. It'll only complicate things. Once you're at
least intermediate or so, howtostudykorean also has a hanja course [17].

\---

Vocab: use Anki [4]. Anki is a spaced repetition flashcards app. The
pc/mac/android apps are free, the ios app is $20, which supports the
developer. I cannot recommend anki enough for brute-forcing vocab acquisition.
I have written about anki here [5] [6], but the manual [7] is also good.

Evita's Korean Deck [8] has almost 6k words, sorted by usage. I highly
recommend using this deck, at least for the first ~5-6 months of study. The
main issue with this deck is it starts to put multiple definitions on one
card, which is a no-no for spaced repetition. There is also a grammar deck
with sentences+audio [9], which may be of use once you study a bit more.

At some point you'll want to start maintaining your own deck, inputting
vocabulary that you discover from Korean tv shows, books, webtoons, etc.

\---

Native Media: there are plenty of korean dramas. These are recommended because
the actors usually focus on clear pronunciation and standard language. There
are a lot of comedy/variety shows like Running Man (런닝맨), Knowing Bros. (아는
형님), New Journey to the West (신서유기). Even if you can't follow along much, you
can still watch them and write down words you see. I bet you probably know
this but Korean tv shows put text on the screen about once per second, so its
a good way to pick up random vocab words.

Webtoons [10] are also great, once you are around high intermediate /
advanced. Webtoon authors frequently use nonstandard language, dialects, or
make mistakes so I don't recommend it for beginners.

\---

Practice: Hello Talk [13] is pretty good for finding people to talk to.
However the real selling point is facebook-like posts: You can post longer
stuff and Koreans can correct it! My Korean friends literally never correct my
Korean (it gets awkward) so I have to use this to practice longer writing.

Just be mindful that some people do try to date on there. As a guy I don't
really face that but some of my friends have to block people.

Tandem [14] also exists but I haven't tried it.

\---

Tutoring: Many people recommend tutors from italki [15]. I'm going to try it
soon. My friend has a tutor that types up transcripts of their conversations
and points out errors, etc. I feel that at some point, you need a personal
tutor to help you fix personal issues that you may not notice.

\---

Language exchanges: They're not that good for actually practicing Korean, as
most of them are not structured. So people just show up and just end up having
conversations in English.

They are good for making korean friends, though. Just be mindful to
communicate that you want to practice Korean specifically, and that might mean
you guys swap from English (30 mins) to Korean (30 mins), etc.

I just text all my korean friends in Korean unless they specifically ask to
split. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

For Seoul specifically, there is a GREAT exchange near 이대역 called MingleCup
[16]. This one is highly structured, and you can get 1-on-1 with a korean
teacher for 1 hour! The tradeoff is after that hour, you speak English with
different rotating groups of people. (The koreans are coming there to learn
English, after all). Its a super fun way to meet people and make friends.

\---

This is all I can think of off the top of my head. Feel free to email me with
further questions. I'm also part of the Let's Learn Korean! discord:
[https://discord.gg/e3H9Pde](https://discord.gg/e3H9Pde)

There are a lot of knowledgeable students and native speakers there, and its
where I got most of these resources from.

I'm also working on a website that compiles all these resources + a grammar
search tool into a one stop shop.

\---

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/GoBillyKorean](https://www.youtube.com/user/GoBillyKorean)

[1]: [https://gobillykorean.com/](https://gobillykorean.com/)

[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/talktomeinkorean](https://www.youtube.com/user/talktomeinkorean)

[3]:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.org.kingse...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.org.kingsejong.grammarbasic&hl=ko)

[4]: [https://apps.ankiweb.net/](https://apps.ankiweb.net/) (Be careful, there
is a copycat at [https://www.ankiapp.com/](https://www.ankiapp.com/) which is
NOT the same).

[5]: [https://andrewzah.com/posts/things-to-avoid-with-
anki/](https://andrewzah.com/posts/things-to-avoid-with-anki/)

[6]: [https://andrewzah.com/posts/better-anki-usage-
guide-2019/](https://andrewzah.com/posts/better-anki-usage-guide-2019/)

[7]:
[https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual.html](https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual.html)

[8]:
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/4066961604](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/4066961604)

[9]:
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3614346923](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3614346923)

[10]: [https://comic.naver.com/index.nhn](https://comic.naver.com/index.nhn)

[11]:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/moncastwebdong](https://www.youtube.com/user/moncastwebdong)

[12]: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-
SYbQJvveakVdU36w2kIcg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-
SYbQJvveakVdU36w2kIcg)

[13]: [https://www.hellotalk.com/](https://www.hellotalk.com/)

[14]: [https://www.tandem.net/](https://www.tandem.net/)

[15]: [https://www.italki.com/](https://www.italki.com/)

[16]: [http://minglecup.com](http://minglecup.com)

[17]: [https://www.howtostudykorean.com/hanja-
unit-1-lessons-1-20/](https://www.howtostudykorean.com/hanja-
unit-1-lessons-1-20/)

------
commondandy
If you enjoyed this post, you will also like this one:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22344602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22344602)

------
Denzel
Just in case the author stops by HN: I want to echo the sentiment that this
post was awesome, informative, and motivating. Thank you for posting, and
please continue with your blog!

------
k__
Pretty good!

I tried to learn Spanish with DuoLingo only, and I couldn't motivate me to do
the whole tree. I only did 1/3, but everything to level 5.

~~~
gramie
I found DuoLingo interesting, but it didn't really help me to learn Spanish. I
had a lot more success (I just came back from a trip to Panama where I had to
interact with people who spoke little no no English) using
[https://www.languagetransfer.org](https://www.languagetransfer.org) (it also
has courses for Greek, French, German, Arabic, Turkish, Italian and Swahili).

The courses are sets of MP3 tracks that are free to download, but if you find
them useful, please donate!

~~~
k__
Thanks for the link. I'll look into that.

------
eximius
I learned Toki Pona in a few hours. Highly recommend if you need a language
'win'.

------
grayed-down
Why learn another language when you can just talk louder?

------
mmhsieh
I’m from the future, you should learn Chinese.

------
boring_twenties
Uh huh. And I taught myself C++ in 21 days.

------
la_baguette
Native French speaker here... (this is a throwaway account)

I am not judging the overall ability of OP to actually speak French or its
methodology but I got triggered by the embedded French text and "correction"
[1].

Neither the original text nor the correction make any sort of sense.

Here is the original text :

Je vous propose une deuxième solution : des credits pour s’inscrire à un
gymnase proche. Il est évident que faire du sport nous aide beaucoup à bien
gérer le stress et améliorer la santé. Cependant, il est parfois difficile de
trouver le temps pour s’inscrire à un bon gymnase et se dédier à l’assister,
particulièrement quand on est tout seul. Si on donne aux employés des credits
pour faire du sport, il sera probable qu’ils se motiveront et ils iront le
gymnase ensemble. Cela pourrait beaucoup réduire le stress parmi nos employés
et faire en sorte que notre entreprise trouve toujours le succès.

In a conversation, French-speaking people would probably get the general idea
if they were to try hard enough but it is at the frontier between gibberish
and (young) child level of French.

Let me break it down :

> Je vous propose une deuxième solution : Perfectly fine.

> des credits pour s’inscrire à un gymnase proche “crédits” is an unrelated
> term ; “gymnase” is the old-fashioned name for a place where all kinds of
> indoor sports take place. If the the idea here is “vouchers for gym
> subscription”, the closest in French would be “des abonnements à des clubs
> de fitness/salles de sport”.

> Il est évident que faire du sport nous aide beaucoup à bien gérer le stress
> et améliorer la santé. You can improve _your_ health, not _the_ health.
> Given that he used “nous”, that would be “… améliorer notre santé”.

> Cependant, il est parfois difficile de trouver le temps pour s’inscrire à un
> bon gymnase Same comment as above regarding “gymnase”.

> et se dédier à l’assister Literally translated “dedicate yourself to assist
> the gym [the building]”. A correct wording would be “et y être régulier”.

> particulièrement quand on est tout seul. Perfectly fine.

> Si on donne aux employés des credits pour faire du sport, Same comment as
> above regarding “crédit”.

> il sera probable qu’ils se motiveront et ils iront le gymnase ensemble.
> Here, the conjugation (the tenses) are plain wrong – it’s really obvious yet
> whoever did the correction didn’t have a clue. And it lacks a preposition
> and a grammatical article. Literally translated “it is going to be likely
> that they will be motivate themselves and they would go to the place where
> all sorts of sports take place together”. Properly translated “il est
> probable que cela les motive et qu’ils participent à cette activité
> ensemble”.

> Cela pourrait beaucoup réduire le stress parmi nos employés Ok.

> et faire en sorte que That’s perfectly fine and the “correction” isn’t any
> better. They are synonyms.

> notre entreprise trouve toujours le succès. That’s fine from a grammatical
> point of view but that is not a wording that would be used in that context.
> Once again, the “correction” isn’t better. The general idea of the text is
> that, in the context of a fictional company, providing employees with
> vouchers for gym subscriptions could help reduce their overall stress, have
> a positive effect on their health and, at the end of the day, contribute to
> the success of the company. The last sentence would be used by a sect and
> would roughly translate to “our company will always manage to find success”.

[1]
[http://www.runwes.com/images/learningfrench/image1.png](http://www.runwes.com/images/learningfrench/image1.png)

------
justlexi93
Studying French with audio is a must if you want to learn French to
communicate: understand spoken French and speak French yourself. Absolutely.
One year is quite enough time to learn a language reasonably well if you put
in necessary amounts of daily hours and disciplined study.

------
redis_mlc
If you live in Canada or Quebec, it makes sense to learn French. Note that
conversational French only uses half of the 14 or so verb tenses, and people
expect you to use the correct grammar and gender.

If you plan to write French for a living, that will be tough for a non-native
writer.

But if you live in the USA, Spanish is more useful and you'll have the
opportunity to practise it.

~~~
Antoninus
Am I missing something? The author doesn't state where he/she lives.

------
DmitryOlshansky
I misread it as 12 minutes, and got really alert for a moment imagining some
spooky mind-altering procedures.

Damned age of velocity.

------
Mikeb85
French isn't that hard. Lots of words are the same as English, grammar is a
bit different but once you 'get' it, it's way more consistent than English
which makes it easier for the most part.

~~~
Antoninus
How long did it take before you were comfortable speaking french?

~~~
Mikeb85
I learned it at school as a kid. Not long. But I've taught others, seen adults
pick it up. Like most other skills, it just requires work and practice.
Immerse yourself in it, want to learn and you will. Most people simply take an
intro course, don't talk to anyone then complain it's hard.

~~~
la_baguette
I am a native French speaker.

French is hard even for people who speak it on a daily basis.

I am neither a linguist nor an historian (so google it and find reliable
sources for more information) but AFAIK, it was designed and reformed to be an
"elitist" language (for political reasons), there are gazillions of special
cases that do not make any sense (both in the written and spoken language) and
there are heated debates about what should be kept or removed (in the
perspective of teaching it for instance).

