How did you go about learning your languages?

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How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby הענט » 2017-04-27, 9:51

[flag=]en-US[/flag] I learned my first words from a bootlegged NES video game. (Lift, octopus, apple etc.) Then I learned easy stuff from Game Boy Pokemon games (give, take, toss) After that I got infatuated with Hip Hop and Rap music and I wanted to translate every song to understand it. The fact that there was a substantial amount of slang words, idioms and cultural references in addition to having a lots of lyrics ( instead of knock knock knockin' on heaven's door 500 times) was amazing to me. I used to listen to NWA, D12, Eminem, The Game, Nas, Tupac and many more and was really happy to see my English had gotten so much better. After that I read different articles about things I loved, watched movies and TV shows and now I'm pretty comfortable with my current level. I just wish I could go to Canada or the US and improve my diction and everything. So basically it was reading articles and "clearing" words (as Scientologists call it - Lol) and translating songs which are pretty awesome to practice a language since the words and sentences are catchy, altough not useful if the language is too coarse.

[flag=]de[/flag] Mostly elementary school. I was compelled to learn it so I never really liked it that much until recently. How I wish I could turn back time and start all over. What made me dislike it was probably the Czech accent and my mother forcing me to learn it.

[flag=]es-MX[/flag] 2-3 months of Pimsleur with some additional self-study.

[flag=]sv[/flag] 1 month of Pimsleur, watched a couple of movies and learned some words from my ex-girlfriend. I wanted to move to Örebro back then and live there.

[flag=]ru[/flag] 2 of 3 Glossika Fluency modules and some practice with my friend Anya. Finally it sounds like Russian (not perfect though)

[flag=]fr[/flag] Mostly self-study. On and off. Je t'aurai Fantomas!!

[flag=]it[/flag] Ditto. My weakest language if I don't count Portuguese, Arabic (MSA + some Syrian), Vietnamese, Japanese, Mandarin, Turkish, Croatian, Polish etc. This is a funny case, because I can't speak it much, but sometimes I understand more of it than European Spanish, because of the phonology.

Special Case : [flag=]sk[/flag] Understand 100%. Can speak, but pretty slowly to make sure every word is Slovak. I want to reach a fluency in it, because so many Slovak and Slovak-Hungarian actors and other people learn Czech, but not many Czech people learn Slovak (cause it's kind of "useless").

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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-04-27, 12:32

Sasabasa wrote:I want to reach a fluency in it

You mean you want to reach some level of fluency in it?

I learned all of my languages through self-study at home; I took classes for some of them but had always studied them to some extent on my own first. In seventh grade (middle school for me), I had to get my dad to help me convince the counselor to let me take both French and Spanish at the same time because even though I already spoke both pretty well, she was convinced that you would have to have an IQ of 1000 in order to be able to take two languages at the same time and thus wouldn't let me. (I guess Europeans are just so much smarter than us then because it's pretty common for them to take two or more foreign languages at a time! :roll:). She reluctantly agreed eventually but only on the condition that I made As (average grades of 90-100%) in both classes, which for me was such a piece of cake it was laughable.

The next year, I tested out of the first level of German (normally taught in 7th grade) and started taking German as well (again after having studied a good deal of it on my own). Then I went to high school and stuck with these languages but added a college-level (AP) Latin course in my second year of high school (I graduated in three years though it normally takes four) after testing out of the level just before it (2nd-year Latin). In my first semester of college, I took Italian and Japanese, then dropped Italian the next semester in favor of (Mandarin) Chinese due to pressure from my dad despite already knowing Mandarin much better than either Italian or Japanese. In my third, fourth, and sixth semesters, I took only Chinese (i.e. no other languages) and ended up minoring in it.

(I think I'll post some more about how I learned other languages, or at least Malayalam, later).

הענט

Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby הענט » 2017-04-27, 12:46

Cool.

Well learning Slovak is more like putting on an accent rather than learning a language from scratch. But it's fun. For example the word for camel is ťava and I instantly thought it was a Hungarian loanword, but eventually traced it further back to Turkish deve.

Velbloud in Czech.

IpseDixit

Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby IpseDixit » 2017-04-27, 12:48

Sasabasa wrote: This is a funny case, because I can't speak it much, but sometimes I understand more of it than European Spanish, because of the phonology.


Just out of curiosity, what aspect(s) of Italian phonology makes the language easier for you to understand than European Spanish?
Last edited by IpseDixit on 2017-04-27, 13:19, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby voron » 2017-04-27, 13:08

It looks like I learnt all my languages differently.

English: I just picked random stuff from songs and films, then I started reading stuff, and wow, at some point I realized I could speak it as well.

Serbian: I chatted a lot (on the internet mostly), and listened to a lot of songs. Chatting right from the start was possible because it's close to my native Russian.

Italian: I wasn't really willing to learn it but since I stayed one year in Italy, it was useful. I watched tons of films with both the sound and the subtitles in Italian, and it helped my listening comprehension skyrocket. I can still understand nearly everything, although my speaking is very mediocre and full of grammar mistakes.

Turkish: I guess this is the only language I learnt more or less systematically. I even did a whole book for it from cover to cover (Assimil Turkish), the only case in my language studies. Then I spent two years in Turkey and voila, my level is pretty decent.

Kurdish: While in Turkey I made some Kurdish friends, I started picked words here and there, then I got addicted to Kurdish songs, read a grammar book, and then finally signed up to a Kurdish class which was a lot of fun and from which I learnt a lot.

My only universal rule which I have worked out over time is, don't be a perfectionist. Perfectionism is harmful, especially for languages with no defined standard or few resources.

One recent example: I am doing Pimsleur for Arabic and since the length of a lesson is 30 mins I kept postponing listening to new lessons until I could devote 30 uninterrupted mins to it, which basically only restricted it to the weekends. What a lame excuse... my walk to work lasts 15 mins and now I listen to half of a lesson on my way there and another half on my way back, and of course I am now progressing at least somewhat instead of not progressing at all. So that's my general rule: Don't be afraid to forget. Don't revise old lessons from which you remember a big chunk anyway. Don't try to memorize your lesson up to perfection. Expose yourself to new materials whenever you have time.

This works better for me, but of course people differ.

הענט

Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby הענט » 2017-04-27, 13:37

IpseDixit wrote:
Sasabasa wrote: This is a funny case, because I can't speak it much, but sometimes I understand more of it than European Spanish, because of the phonology.


Just out of curiosity, what aspect(s) of Italian phonology makes the language easier for you to understand than European Spanish?


I'd say the phonology of Czech and Italian are very similar. Excluding the gl sound (which is very often pronounced as y as far I can tell) and some vowels ( two e's and o's like in French). I used to attend a chatroom on Paltalk and we would read texts in Italian and despite not understanding much my pronunciation was on spot (most of the time) except for using the penultimate stress even in cases like rivolgono. Some native speakers said I sounded like someone from Venice or North Italy in general, probably because of merging the r and rr sounds etc.
I can watch Superfantozzi and understand a lot, but I wouldn't be able to use the right tenses etc.

On the other hand, European Spanish can become puzzling at times with sounds that that don't exist in Czech so Italian has more of a "clear" sound to me. But that depends of course. Clear pronunciation of rigsdansk is still mess to me. :)

I think phonological distance is an interesting factor. I can repeat Hungarian sentences without understanding them in the first place.

Voron: yes. Like I said I used Pimsleur for Spanish, but when I tried to use the same approach for say Japanese, I got bored around lesson 10. Too much redundant stuff in those lessons.

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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby linguoboy » 2017-04-27, 13:53

Sasabasa wrote:Velbloud in Czech.

Wiktionary wrote:From Proto-Slavic *velьb(l)ǫdъ, vъlьb(l)ǫdъ, from Gothic ulbandus, from Latin elephantus, from Ancient Greek ἐλέφας (eléphas).

Now that is one for the Cognates thread!
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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby IpseDixit » 2017-04-27, 14:10

@Sasabasa, I see. Though nobody pronounces <gl> as [j], only the Roman vernacular known as romanesco has [j] in place of [ʎ].

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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby Prowler » 2017-04-27, 21:02

Heh I'm surprised a thread like this didn't exist already.

Lemme try...

[flag=]en[/flag][flag=]us[/flag]: Back in my childhood(90s), not many cartoons/anime were dubbed here. Let alone video games. And, needless to say,, live action tv shows and movies are not dubbed either. So I guess I had no choice but to pick up English rather quickly in order to play games and watch Cartoon Network(we got the UK version here... without subtitles), I guess. I dunno, but the language just came naturally to me. It's always been my best subject back in my school days. No idea what were the first words I've learned. I've had English classes since 2nd grade or so, I guess? Two video games that helped me with English a lot were Star Fox 64 and Pokémon Red. Star Fox 64 makes sense, since it was one of the very first game to have lots of voice acting. Ever wondered why google roll when you type in "do a..."? Well the "do a barrel roll!" quote comes from that game!

[flag=]de[/flag]: I don't think I knew a single word in this language until I first had German classes in 10th grade. So there really isn't much of a backstory here.

Well that was boring.

xBlackHeartx

Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby xBlackHeartx » 2017-04-28, 3:50

German: listened to rammstein, took 3 classes in high school. Taking those classes is the sole reason that my vocab really got anywhere.

I just don't know how to learn on my own it seems. I have language books. I once read one of those 'living language' books all the way through, and I still didn't know how to speak Japanese -.- Though I was in middle school at the time, and didn't actually have any exposure to Japanese. Literally the only place I had even heard Japanese spoken was on the cd set the thing came with.

I recently bought a set for Korean (astounding how much those books have changed over the past 10 years...I prefer the old books), but haven't really gotten far in it, mostly because I can't force myself to continue until I figure out how to pronounce those god fucking damned tense consonants right, and no one seems to be able agree on how they should be pronounced. I don't have a problem with the aspirated consonants, but I don't even know what to look for with the tense consonants...

I'm just a failure. Of the 10 or so languages I've tried to learn throughout my life (I've tried to learn Japanese, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, and Korean, and that's not counting Esperanto, Lojban, Glosa, Toki Pona, and Lingua Franca Nova), the only time I actually learned a language was when I took a freaking class for it. I was able to take 2 classes of Spanish at my local college recently, but we didn't really learn much of anything honestly. I probably only learned 200 words at best. And I can't even remember anything about it other than how to say 'hello', 'goodbye', and 'thanks'.

At least I don't have to look at a dictionary anymore to understand the lyrics to a German song...

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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-04-29, 4:52

Sasabasa wrote:Cool.

Thanks!

As promised, here's my explanation of how I learned Malayalam: I started out by learning just the script (pretty much) from exactly the same textbooks that kids back in India used for the same purpose. Learning the basics of Malayalam script was one thing; mastering it was another that took years and was very frustrating.
► Show Spoiler


But that wasn't as hard as learning the actual language, because there is basically nothing for that. I tried so hard to look for resources for learning Malayalam, and in the end, I had to start out with what you would think was the shittiest resource you could possibly think of: Learn Malayalam in 30 Days. When you consider how unhelpful basically every other option that appeared to be available at the time was, this was actually a great way to start learning Malayalam! (Of course, it was still pretty flawed. One of the first words they teach you is 'palanquin', a word that my parents knew neither in Malayalam nor in English).

Then I basically started trying to read comics (Bobanum Moliyum, to be precise) and rely on a combination of a) a dictionary and b) asking my dad questions. Once I started feeling pretty comfortable with doing that and could be convinced to move on to the next level, I moved on to a book of Russian children's stories of increasing complexity translated into Malayalam. I had tried to read out of it before. My mom used to read me the first few stories as bedtime reading or at least tell me the basic story.
► Show Spoiler

Then I moved on to short stories and eventually, my dad suggested that I was ready for my first novel, so I started with a novel about a kid that was a relatively easy (if very long) read. Somewhere in the middle, when I was a teenager, my dad bought me some Malayalam poetry and got me interested in that as well, so I memorized a bit. Now I've read six novels (or seven, if you count my grandfather's diary, which is mostly in Malayalam in the only version that's available to me) and am translating one diary and trying to memorize an epic poem.

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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby iamblu » 2017-04-29, 5:12

[flag=]es[/flag] I learned it from school as foreign language. That's actually my auxiliary language.

[flag=]it[/flag] I have Italian origins so I know a bit from family. Even grands weren't Italian-speakers, but Venetian-speakers, this gave me a base to speak it.

[flag=]pt-BR[/flag] (Brazilian sign language) I learned it at job, from deaf jobmates.

[flag=]en[/flag] First "class" were with video games, later I studied by my own.

הענט

Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby הענט » 2017-04-29, 6:46

vijayjohn wrote:
Sasabasa wrote:Cool.

Thanks!

As promised, here's my explanation of how I learned Malayalam: I started out by learning just the script (pretty much) from exactly the same textbooks that kids back in India used for the same purpose. Learning the basics of Malayalam script was one thing; mastering it was another that took years and was very frustrating.
► Show Spoiler


But that wasn't as hard as learning the actual language, because there is basically nothing for that. I tried so hard to look for resources for learning Malayalam, and in the end, I had to start out with what you would think was the shittiest resource you could possibly think of: Learn Malayalam in 30 Days. When you consider how unhelpful basically every other option that appeared to be available at the time was, this was actually a great way to start learning Malayalam! (Of course, it was still pretty flawed. One of the first words they teach you is 'palanquin', a word that my parents knew neither in Malayalam nor in English).

Then I basically started trying to read comics (Bobanum Moliyum, to be precise) and rely on a combination of a) a dictionary and b) asking my dad questions. Once I started feeling pretty comfortable with doing that and could be convinced to move on to the next level, I moved on to a book of Russian children's stories of increasing complexity translated into Malayalam. I had tried to read out of it before. My mom used to read me the first few stories as bedtime reading or at least tell me the basic story.
► Show Spoiler

Then I moved on to short stories and eventually, my dad suggested that I was ready for my first novel, so I started with a novel about a kid that was a relatively easy (if very long) read. Somewhere in the middle, when I was a teenager, my dad bought me some Malayalam poetry and got me interested in that as well, so I memorized a bit. Now I've read six novels (or seven, if you count my grandfather's diary, which is mostly in Malayalam in the only version that's available to me) and am translating one diary and trying to memorize an epic poem.


Okay, but isn't Malayalam one of those languages where spoken and written forms differ a lot? Kind of like Welsh or Finnish? Anyway I think it must've taken a lot dedication considering the scarce resources. Kudos. :)

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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-04-29, 7:14

Sasabasa wrote:Okay, but isn't Malayalam one of those languages where spoken and written forms differ a lot?

No...?
Kind of like Welsh or Finnish?

Huh?
Anyway I think it must've taken a lot dedication considering the scarce resources. Kudos. :)

Thanks! :)

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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby Saim » 2017-04-29, 11:32

Sasabasa wrote:Well learning Slovak is more like putting on an accent rather than learning a language from scratch. But it's fun. For example the word for camel is ťava and I instantly thought it was a Hungarian loanword, but eventually traced it further back to Turkish deve.

Velbloud in Czech.


That's funny because deva (camel) is one of the few Turkish loans used in Croatia and not in Serbia, along with kat (a floor in a building; sr. sprat).

Polish (wielbłąd), Slovene (velblod), Ukrainian (верблюд; verbljud) and Russian (верблюд; verbljud) all use a cognate of Czech velbloud, in Serbian we have kamila, which was borrowed from Semitic language through Latin.

Sasabasa wrote:Okay, but isn't Malayalam one of those languages where spoken and written forms differ a lot?


It's actually AFAIK the major Dravidian language where the written and spoken forms vary the least; Tamil, Kannada and Telugu all have substantially more diglossia.

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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby Babbsagg » 2017-04-29, 12:02

[flag=]en[/flag] Started at primary school and had classes until the end of my school years (13th grade). The first time I took active interest was when I discovered Black Sabbath at age 12 and translated the lyrics (and found out they were really scary :P). I can't remember when, but at some point I was fascinated by the elegance of Oxford/BBC English and developed an ambition to learn that--at the same time I decided to stop jumbling AmE and BrE together and I've tried to get the latter one right since.

My internet communication also moved to almost exclusively English in my early twenties and I learned to know my best online friend who used to teach English and I've learned a lot from him. He's from the Hull region, I later discovered that my English has got a slight Yorkshire-like hue, especially in the A's and O's. Very most of my internet activity is on British sites, so I guess I've been pretty much assimilated by BrE. Today, sometimes language usage strikes me as a bit odd only to find out that it's AmE standard.

It's become a passion, I constantly try to improve on it. Whenever I'm not 100% certain about correct pronunciation/word usage/grammar etc. I look it up. Now I'm on Unilang and ask for people to correct the mistakes I still make. Recently I started recording and listening to myself to get rid of the traces of German accent I still have, I'm pretty pedantic about perfecting the pronunciation of a language.

I'm also interested in dialects such as Yorkshire and Scottish English, tried to learn them but recently let that rest because a foreigner trying hard to speak a dialect instead of standard English is a bit silly. I once was enthusiastic about AAVE mainly because I've been a passionate blues fan/player for years, but I stopped trying to speak that too because A) again, silly and B) I've heard that African Americans aren't too fond of white people trying to speak AAVE because they'll assume you're mocking them.


[flag=]no[/flag] At about age 15, I became passionate about True Norwegian Black Metal (duh) and achieved a basic understanding autodidactically, and took a class at the adult education centre before going on vacation to Norway twice. After that I lost interest and let it rest, but just recently I became interested again and am now trying to learn it, this time thoroughly and not caring about black metal nonsense. It's a very easy language to learn if you speak German and English, except for the accent/melody/prosody thing. That's something entirely absent from any language I've ever used and thus an alien concept to the language centre of my brain, so it's not going to be easy. But I'll happily take the challenge.


[flag=]la[/flag] Learned Latin at school for 9 years. Afterwards I abandoned it so I've forgot most--but it still helps a lot to understand Romance languages. Sometimes I think I shouldn't have abandoned it because it's a badass language. But it's too difficult to get into again and there's no real life utility.


[flag=]el[/flag] Learned Ancient Greek at school for 5 years.


[flag=]es[/flag] Learned Spanish on a very basic level when I was passionate about Flamenco guitar, abandoned it since.


I also tried a few other languages (Italian, French, Japanese, Chinese) at some point but gave up very early on.
Last edited by Babbsagg on 2017-04-29, 12:25, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby Babbsagg » 2017-04-29, 12:15

Sasabasa wrote:
IpseDixit wrote:
Sasabasa wrote: This is a funny case, because I can't speak it much, but sometimes I understand more of it than European Spanish, because of the phonology.


Just out of curiosity, what aspect(s) of Italian phonology makes the language easier for you to understand than European Spanish?


I'd say the phonology of Czech and Italian are very similar.

To me (German) Italian phonology also is a bit easier than Spanish. Aside from the R, right now I can't think of any Italian sound that isn't there in German too--if you don't count "long consonants" or whatever that's called. Spanish has the θ, and S and D are slightly different. That, and Italians tend to pronounce very clearly in my experience.

It's interesting because I have to learn new sounds for other Germanic languages (don't know about Dutch, never tried that), but not for Italian.
Thank you for correcting mistakes!

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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby linguoboy » 2017-04-29, 14:33

Babbsagg wrote:It's interesting because I have to learn new sounds for other Germanic languages (don't know about Dutch, never tried that), but not for Italian.

Do you have [ɣ] in Hessisch?
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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-04-29, 14:56

Saim wrote:
Sasabasa wrote:Okay, but isn't Malayalam one of those languages where spoken and written forms differ a lot?


It's actually AFAIK the major Dravidian language where the written and spoken forms vary the least; Tamil, Kannada and Telugu all have substantially more diglossia.

Yeah, probably because it has the smallest population confined to the smallest land area and has the shortest history and highest literacy rate of all four. There is some dialect variation that can hinder mutual intelligibility, but it's not huge except up in the mountains in Eranad and across the sea in Lakshadweep. Incidentally, it so happens that the population in both areas is overwhelmingly Muslim.

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Re: How did you go about learning your languages?

Postby Babbsagg » 2017-04-29, 15:05

linguoboy wrote:
Babbsagg wrote:It's interesting because I have to learn new sounds for other Germanic languages (don't know about Dutch, never tried that), but not for Italian.

Do you have [ɣ] in Hessisch?

Does Italian have it? Never occurred to me, and I can't find any trace of a velar fricative in Italian on the net.

As for Hessisch, I'm not 100% sure but I think it actually does, since it jumbles up voiced and voiceless consonants like there's no tomorrow. In "So mache mer des", the "mache" may be realised as ['maɣə] (sorry for simplified IPA).

However while researching I was reminded that Italian has the [ʎ] which is absent in German. German doesn't have every sound, but very most of them.
Last edited by Babbsagg on 2017-04-29, 15:50, edited 3 times in total.
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