Language Learning

jjdebenedictis said:

I've read that listening to native speakers, even if <snip> you haven't got time to watch telenovelas <snip> turn them on in the background.

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This works.

From experience, this is a very useful method. It also works with languages you don't understand, for example, I don't understand Japanese or Korean, but occasionally have programmes or songs in those languages playing the background. Still don't understand what they're saying/singing, but can definitely pick out individual words and tones.

I got up to a 47-day streak with German on Duolingo, then missed a day while traveling. Back up to 5 days now. I'm at the point where Duolingo isn't enough--I feel like I'll retain things better if I mix things up, so have started shopping for a good basic textbook and other study aids like workbooks and flash cards.

I also added French on Duolingo, which I took all through junior high and high school. I'm both pleased that I can test out of a lot of it and frustrated at how much I don't remember.

Congrats on finishing the tree and getting the owl!

Sources for paper backs in non-English? The local POC areas / shops? E.g., Chinatown.

I'm going to get back into learning German, hopefully!

Does anyone have any tips for learning a language? I want to try and get into it. I think it'll be a great skill for prospective employers or if I want to try and work overseas.

I think different people learn languages differently. I'm also of the opinion that you absorb information differently at different ages. That's why there's an entire curricula that has evolved around adult learning theory, because adults absorb and learn differently than kids.

Kids exposed to alternate cultures and languages at a younger age are more adept at picking up languages both then and later in life. My folks made it a crucial part of our upbringing to expose us as much as possible to other languages and cultures. It helped that my father was a French professor, and later the Chairman of the Foreign Languages department.

As a result, my familial lingual skills are as follows:

Dad
English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, German, and a bit of Russian and Chinese

Brother
English, Portuguese, Spanish

Sister
English, Swedish

Me
English and a bit of Spanish and French

Mother
English, and a bit of Spanish and French

The point?
Some people have a better ability to learn new languages than others, and if you're not "programmed" that way, no modalities may be able to help. For me, the only way I was able to learn any Spanish or French was through immersion in the culture. So, by reading books, watching TV game shows, and talking to locals when visiting Mexico and France.

I took Spanish for 7 years in high school and college - I know the "shoe verb" format, and can recognize masculine versus feminine nouns, but colloquial or conversational Spanish wasn't really attainable for me until the immersion. Even after that, I am usually only able to converse for about 5-10 minutes before I start getting to the limits of my vocabulary.

I am not a linguist, no matter that the Army said I was years ago. However, at various times in my life I learned Spanish, Czech, Slovak, and Arabic (Modern Standard & Syrian dialect). Over time, I've picked up a few phrases (recognize words) of French, German, Polish, Russian, and Japanese, but in no way, shape, or form would I say I've formally studied them. (In fact, 90% of my Japanese comes from either practicing Kendo or watching Anime. *grin*)

The only ones I became semi-fluent at were Czech and Slovak. Arabic is a beautiful language with a grammar system that actually makes sense, but trying to learn it at 30 was just beyond my brain neuron's capabilities. Six hours of classroom training and two to four hours of homework a night over 52 weeks of training qualified me at at 1/1/1 level (on a scale of 5). I simply couldn't progress in Arabic to where I wasn't reading it word by word (sometimes letter by letter), and it is definitely a nuanced language where you need to be able to take in whole chunks and process them to get the actual meaning of what's being said/written. Perhaps if I had started learning Arabic at 18 like most of my classmates, I might have taken to it better, but you plays the hand you're dealt.

I generally tell people, I'm bilingual - I speak both English and Ozark. *grin*

I think I've said this before, but watching old tv shows and/or movies (that are dubbed in another language)
that I know thoroughly in English helps me a lot with modern languages.

My go-tos are Star Wars films, old American Westerns (Gunsmoke and Bonanza are in a lot of languages) and Original Series Star Trek.

DragonHeart said:

I really want to start reading some books also. Does anyone have any good sources for foreign language books? Particularly paper copies. Amazon doesn't seem to be much help here.

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First of all congratulations on your successful learning of Portuguese. You can buy all kinds of foreign books on Amazon. You need to do some research though. Amazon has "bookstores" in various countries. Instead of calling Amazon.com, you have amazon.uk, amazon.fr (France), amazon.de (Germany), amazon.it (Italy)... Since you now speak Portuguese you can do your research in this language. On Amazon.fr, I can buy English, Spanish, Italian, German books... And probably in other languages.
For Portuguese books, I found this https://www.portuguesebookshop.co.uk/

AW Admin said:

I think I've said this before, but watching old tv shows and/or movies (that are dubbed in another language)
that I know thoroughly in English helps me a lot with modern languages.

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I totally agree here: watching movies or series in another language helps a lot.

As for me, whenever I learned a language, I found that what helped the most was conversation. So, when I learned Hindi (after going to India, I felt the necessity), I found an (Urdu) professor who taught me about movies, and songs, as well as grammar. When I returned to India, I had a cooking lesson, but that's another story. I did the same when I studied Japanese: I had travelled to Japan and bought children books. I found a young Japanese woman living in Paris for a year, and I asked her if we could work on translating one of the books into French. It was very interesting and I learned all sorts of stuff that I didn't learn in university. And this is what I did again last year when I resumed Italian. I studied this wonderful language in high-school, and understand a basic e-mail and call someone on the phone for work, but when I went to Italy for holidays, I was terribly frustrated not to be able to have the simplest conversation, or just be polite. So I asked an Italian friend if she would give me lessons. And we met every Saturday morning for a year and talked for two hours on every possible subject. A good way to learn the language, the civilization, customs and everything else!

AW Admin said:

I think I've said this before, but watching old tv shows and/or movies (that are dubbed in another language)
that I know thoroughly in English helps me a lot with modern languages.

My go-tos are Star Wars films, old American Westerns (Gunsmoke and Bonanza are in a lot of languages) and Original Series Star Trek.

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You did

AW Admin said:

One thing that can really help if you're learning a living language is to listen to/watch dubbed films or tv programs that you already are familiar with. Those with actors speaking the other language dubbed over the original language.

Listen to them more than once.

Kid's shows are also helpful for basic syntax and vocabulary; your brain will start noticing and learning patterns. We're built that way.

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And fwiw, props for the go-tos, similar tastes here

I really like the idea of watching foreign TV/movies to learn a language. I feel that it would be immersive in actually hearing the words spoken, akin to being around people who speak the language, rather than reading out of a textbook.

Good insight!

It is. What I sometimes do is watch a foreign series/movies with in its original language, and subtitles in that language - mostly to be sure I understand the slang.

Jason said:

Dad
English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, German, and a bit of Russian and Chinese

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Finnish?

I already like your dad!