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Bull you believed starting out | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4664 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 41 of 94 23 June 2015 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I have always wondered how that style would work for me. Weight my time spent learning a language about 95% toward reading, slipping in just enough listening to ensure that my inner representation of pronunciation didn't fly totally off the rails. Get all the way up to reading complex novels and philosophical books, then finally let myself loose on films and conversations and see how long my ears take to "catch up." Could be interesting.
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| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5981 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 42 of 94 23 June 2015 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Here's a few things I once believed, but probably shouldn't have:
Speaking is the only skill that matters I could become fluent in Japanese in 18 months (I'm sure some people are able to do this, but not me) The more hours studying I can fit into one day the better (it's true to an extent, but depends on what stage I am in learning the language, and even then there is always a limit to how much I can learn in a day) I hate listening, it's too hard (now there was a time in my life when "listening" involved worn out French audio cassettes in classrooms with no curtains and high ceilings surrounded by 30 disinterested 15 year olds, and that really was rather unpleasant, but things have moved on since then) I can learn a language with textbooks alone I can learn a language with input alone I can learn a language with Anki alone After a break of several years I would have to restart French from scratch There is no point reading/listening to something unless you can understand everything perfectly There is a point reading/listening to something when you can't understand a single word Everyone who can speak any degree of English as a foreign language will automatically be more comfortable in English than I am in their native language Textbooks are bad for you (no, only the bad ones) Learning grammar is bad for you Translating is bad for you (it might not be necessary to learn a language, but it's a useful skill to have) I need to make a firm plan through all the levels and stick to it If something works well at one level of progress, it will work well at all levels I shouldn't read ahead in my textbooks (I blame this one on a few difficult schoolteachers who didn't appreciate students showing initiative) Learning noun genders (in applicable languages) is unnecessary and pointless Native speakers have all the answers You can't learn a language without living in the country If you live in the country, you'll pick up the language easily Learning a language will finally prove to the world how awesome I am Edited by g-bod on 23 June 2015 at 10:04pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4520 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 43 of 94 23 June 2015 at 10:14pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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"When you learn Norwegian, you can automagically understand Swedish and Danish too"
It's true to some degree, but it depends on your interpretation what "understand" entails. Naive me used to think I could watch movies without subtitles... 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5344 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 44 of 94 23 June 2015 at 10:58pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Well, I've done it here repeatedly without issue, since what I have described in previous posts is largely the manner by which I learned English. I would even venture to say, my English is better than that of most, despite me not having had more than three or four conversations in the language in the last fifteen years and never having actually been to an English-speaking country. Perhaps a more remarkable occurrence would be someone like you trying to read an important book in your target language written two or three hundred years ago and coming across an overwhelming amount of unknown words and complex syntax that don't occur in the popular entertainment and everyday conversations that make up your exposure to the language? Edited by Juаn on 23 June 2015 at 11:00pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 45 of 94 23 June 2015 at 11:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Do you think you'd not be able to learn Dutch with input? (I'm not saying it's the fastest or easiest or best way)
How about Danish for German speakers?
They're not bad for everyone but they can be bad, especially if you translate with a L1->L2 dictionary or grammar kills your motivation. I'd say your actual mistake was simply that you thought what is true for others would be true for you as well. It doesn't mean they were wrong. On a similar note, I used to think that previous experience only matters when you've reached "fluency", when you've "really learned" the language. I started Esperanto mostly to have one more language under my belt. I've since realized that while Prof Argüelles was probably right that it gets different after about four languages, this mostly applies to those who want to learn them one or two at a time. Any experience is important, including dabbling. Edited by Serpent on 23 June 2015 at 11:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 46 of 94 23 June 2015 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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By the way I loved g-bod's list :-) Quite all the extremes (and we tend to hear many anywhere we go) are bull, very true.
I remembered another load: -You cannot forget a language once you know it. Yes, I trully believed that. -basically most definitions of "speaks" and "fluent" were bull. And I believed many -Language X is the hardest/easiest language to learn. I stopped believing this bull after I heard it being said about several different languages. -Language Y is useless. (Y being usually French). I'm glad I didn't believe them. -You can't learn the French pronunciation. I believed when I was 9. Edited by Cavesa on 23 June 2015 at 11:40pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5981 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 47 of 94 23 June 2015 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Once my German is a bit more solid I think I could probably get into Dutch input comparatively early on, but if I wanted to learn Dutch properly, it wouldn't be the only thing I'd do. I'd need a bit of a hand with pronunciation for a start.
I was thinking more along the lines of Japanese for English speakers. I'm not sure German speakers would ever be in a situation where they can't understand a single word of Danish.
Yes. I think maybe the source of a lot of bull is when you hold onto ideas in absolute terms (X is good, Y is bad) whereas it is often a case of different tools being appropriate for different people / problems / situations. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4289 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 48 of 94 24 June 2015 at 12:03am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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This is a bit specific, but I have been told several times when I was a teenager that
for Spanish that "no one uses vosotros/vosotras", therefore it is useless to learn it. Well given that I learnt using Peninsular materials and mostly interacted with Spaniards that was a bit rich. But apparently my American friends have told me that sometimes in their classes they go through all of secondary school without learning vosotros, which to me is weird as hell. I am not sure about AP level though. When I started interessing myself in Argentina I was told in general terms about Spanish that not only do people not use vosotros, people do not use voseo, so no need to learn "vos" conjugations. Well that was also quite funny. A few years ago someone from Portugal told me that understanding "Brasilian" was hard, like how, as he lived in the UK, understanding "American" and "Canadian" languages was hard. Although it does not help that my grandmother still says, "What they speak in Canada and America takes me a long time to understand. I need a translator if an American or Canadian speaks to me." As a European Portuguese learner, it takes a bit of acclimatisation to a Brasilian accent, but it is definitely not as big a difference between for example, French and Cantonese. Although a few years ago when we had a family member from Burnaby, BC visit us, my grandmother said, when he was in another room, "Do you have any idea what the hell he is saying? It might as well be German or Spanish to me." Another thing is that constant speaking/conversation practise is necessary to get to a high speaking level. I do not have very many Hispanophones right now for practise other than going to Hispanophone restaurants with Hispanophone staff, but other than reading aloud news articles and doing mock conversations with myself, my thinking in Spanish allows me to break out in conversation at any time if I need to. Neither have I been to a Hispanophone country in years (for financial reasons). No meetups or whatever necessary. Maybe it is specific based on person, and sounds like someone who does not do maths often, and suddenly can be called to solve 5-page long problems Navier Stokes with 0 real practise in years. But for me as long as one does some sort of regular private mind-stimulation on the subject it is very possible. Edited by 1e4e6 on 24 June 2015 at 12:16am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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