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How much time to learn a language? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 17 of 23 11 March 2014 at 11:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Prepare for a long rant!
According to his statements here at HTLAL and the video about his daily routines ProfArguelles works with languages almost all day long, and he works according to a schedule which makes it easy to quantify exactly what he has done in each language. For somebody with a fulltime job, a number of non-linguistic hobbies and a work schedule based on applied chaos theory the evaluation can't be nearly as neat and precise. Besides you have to take into account what your background for learning a certain language was, and what you achieved within the stipulated time frame. Take for instance my German. I do pretend that I can speak it fluently, but sometimes I have forgotten a gender or an expression, so strictly speaking I haven't finished learning it - and since I started learning it in the beginning of the 60s and we have 2014 now the process has so far taken 50 years. Which should be enough to scare anyone away from following in my footsteps. On the other hand I knew enough German to understand German TV after just a few years of classes in school, and in 1972 I travelled around in Germany on Interrail without major language related problems. And later in my time at the university I read Kant and Hesse and other scary authors with just the same few years in public school as my formal background. I have no idea how to quantify that, except that it took at least 4 years of classes plus TV before I first had a chance to test it in real life. Or take Dutch, which I didn't really study until a few years ago. But it shared so many words with German that I have been able to get the gist of ordinary texts since at least 1972, where I first stepped out of a train in Amersfoort. However in this case I can say exactly how long time it took me to go from basically not being able to understand spoken Dutch to understanding documentaries: 5 hours. Before those 5 hours I could read it and - with a dictionary and some grammar studies - even write it. Then one day I sat down to listen to internet TV and hit upon something called AVRO Museum TV - and after 5 hours at the screen I could understand what they said. Since then I have passed my own personal test in vocal fluency: a monolingual trip to the Netherlands, but I still don't claim to speak Dutch fluently or perfectly. I started out with French in school and Spanish and Italian through homestudy (without audio!) in the mid 60s, and I know that I could use them in practice during travels in the 70s, so for these languages the lapse between start and practical test during a monolingual travel was something like 10 years - but I could definitely say something in all three languages long before. With Romanian the process is easier to quantify: we had a native teacher at the Romance institute at the university in Århus for exactly three years, and out of those I was the only student to follow the classes for the last two years (with 2 hours per week). When I became alone with the teacher after a year I asked him only to speak Romanian to me, but then a 25 year long hiatus followed where I forgot it totally again. So in this case I positively know that less than 3 years was enough to learn a fairly obscure language well enough to follow a university course with a mixture of literature and grammar on the agenda purely in the target language. But also that a language can become inoperative in just a few years if you don't use it. I also followed short courses in Catalan, Old French, Old Occitan, a comparative pan-Romance course and of course Latin, but we were not expected to learn any of these as active languages. I only activated them in recent years during my time here at HTLAL. Actually I became a member here because I prepared a trip to Romania and Moldova in 2006 and by chance found this place. It took a month not to revive Romanian sufficiently well to do a monolingual trip (the idea that this was a goal in itself had not really occurred to me back then). But even at my dismal level back in 2006 I had at least one long conversation of an hour or so in Romanian with a museum employee in Chisinau. And since then I have passed the test twice. With Portuguese there is also a fairly clear time frame: my background was that it ressembled Spanish, and due to travelling I could muster some simple tourist Spanish in 2006. That's all. Then I bought a trip to the Cape Verde Islands, and in one month I got far enough to be able to have at least basic conversations in Portuguese - mainly thanks to grammar and textbook studies plus TV Ciencia. And already in 2007 I could manage a fully monoglot weeklong holiday in Portuguese. With Greek and Russian the situation is different. I bought some books in the early 80s, but put them away in 1982 where I gave up looking for a job based on my university exam. And then I have taken up the study of both in the late 00s, but in both cases mainly based on written sources and materials. I could do simple shopping in Russian after a couple of years during a visit to Moscow, Minsk and Vladimir/Suzdal, but I have hardly worked with the spoken language since then. It would probably take a booked tour to Russia to force me to do something serious about this problem. As for Greek the situation is more or less the same, except that I have started out earlier and can read it more fluently - and that I don't need a visum to get to Greece or Cyprus. On the other hand it will probably be harder to convince people in the tourist industry to speak Greek to me. I actually spent 4 days in Northern Greece a few years ago (on my way to Albania), and on the fourth day I was almost ready to start speaking Greek. But since then I have had zero minutes of conversation training. And then there is of course Esperanto, which I could write and read after a couple of months with a minimal time expenditure. And Bahasa Indonesia, which like Russian and Greek also mainly has become a written language for me due to a minimal amount of listening and a total lack of speaking opportunities. Plus Irish, which I don't even plan to learn to speak - but I do plan to learn to read and write it. With my current working schedule it will however take at least a year or two before I can sit down and read a normal text without a dictionary. Btw. there will be one positive change in my study situation for me in the immediate future: my cable TV provider has announced that it will be possible to choose most of their channels freely - and that means that I can kick out my deadweight of rotten pop, youth, children, sports and coach potato channels and instead get more documentary and 'language' channels - including programs in some Slavic languages like Polish, Serbian and Croatian. But as far as can see not in neither Greek nor Russian. Edited by Iversen on 13 March 2014 at 1:35pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4306 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 18 of 23 11 March 2014 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Iversen, thanks for your response and I hope I didn't spur you to rant by
how idiotic the question was. I do think that given a consistent history of habit of study (something I doubt is only limited to Deka Glosai, Arguelles and others), it would be possible to retroactively calculate some idea of an objective ball-park figure, but I also see that your experiences have far too much depth and complexity to warrant the attempt. Edited by Retinend on 11 March 2014 at 10:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 19 of 23 11 March 2014 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I will try to come up with some numbers for my languages:
French - I went through an old Teach Yourself French and reached A2. Then I took 1 year and a half of classes for 2 hours a week and was maybe at B1 passive/A2 active. In 2012, I decided to resume studying, this time on my own. I studied French for about half an hour, starting January 2012. In February 2012 I went to Paris, but I still wasn't fluent. I came back, kept working on textbooks and in September 2012 I moved French to my 'Speaks' status at the forum. I was at a B1 active/B2 passive that time. After I finished textbooks, I started watching TV series in French as well as reading books. Now I might be B2 active/C1 passive. I currently read 20 pages and watch 10 minutes of films a day. More at my French Business but not only log. Papiamento - I started it in April 2013 when I decided I'd visit Aruba and Curaçao. I did a multitrack approach because there weren't that many textbooks. I worked with two of them and started reading 1 news article, 1 short fable and eatching 1 video daily, as well as SRS. When I came back from the islands in late September, I realized I was already fluent so I changed its status at my profile. More at my Papiamento cuts in line log. Norwegian - I dabbled at it some 10 years ago and reached some A1 level. I resumed it in August. I'd study it for half an hour daily till I ran out of textbooks 14 months later. I haven't reached basic fluency yet, but I'm at a B1 reading/speaking, A2 writing/listening. More at my Endelig norsk log. German - I learned it up to A2 twelve years ago, through 2 halves of Assimil books and the course Deutsch: Warum Nicht from Deutsche Welle. I resumed it in January this year (after 16 months of Norwegian, while I've been also doing SRS and occasional reading in German as a source language for Georgian for about six months total) and I'm progressing much faster this time. I might be at the same level of Norwegian now, it's just that the gaps are different for each language. I'm using SRS, Duolingo and Assimil (3 beginner's and now an intermediate one). More at this year's Expug's All at Once log. Apart from a few major western languages and perhaps Chinese, I don't aim for active fluency in most of my languages. I'd like to enjoy the work in the native language even with translation/subtitle. When I watch a movie or read a novel and I can get the gist of the native content while checking the subtitle or the translation in English (or in the language itself) it is already a victory for me, it's enough for myself to feel connected to that culture somehow, not as a total strange, ansd that's what I have in mind for upcoming languages. That means I'll keep studying my list of some other 15 languages even if I won't have any specific goals for them. I plan just to enjoy the trip and allow myself some great works of literature and cinema (as well as some funny mass culture products which often give me better insights into life in a given country). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 20 of 23 12 March 2014 at 8:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I think the question of time to learn is inseparable from the opportunities to use. The biggest problem for many of
us is simply attempting to learn a language outside of an environment where we can use it regularly. The internet has changed this considerably but the fact remains that active contact with the language makes all the difference, If I look at my Spanish, for example, I can't count the number of hours that I've spent on it but what is lacking is a couple of months in a true Spanish-speaking environment. I have found that the odd week here or there does wonders for speaking ability. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6059 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 21 of 23 12 March 2014 at 4:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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I studied Management, and we learned early on that the right answer to most questions was "it depends". In here, it's the same, and then some.
Here are my main factors: 1. Ease: if you have an ear for languages and a good memory, the results will be better. 2. Age: as a kid, things stick better than later on; it's as simple as that. 3. Need (real motivation): if you need to learn English in six months so that your family doesn't starve, you will do it. It won't be Shakespeare, but you will do it. 4. Willpower and hard work: not the same as the above, but close. 5. Closeness: I never learned Spanish formally, but I have it in my "speaks" section (and it's not Portunhol) without a problem; I learned German for many years (finished C2) and still feel a pinch of shame for having it in the "speaks" section. By the way, language family is important, but the alphabet is a whole different thing. 6. Access: you can have all of the above but, if you can't access the materials or natives, it's useless. My experience: French: 7 years at school + 1 year Alliance Française => fluency English: 4 years at school => fluency Spanish: nothing formal; lots of reading, listening, speaking to natives => I can easily hold a conversation German: 6,5 years Goethe-Institut => I can hold a conversation Italian: 3 years (so far) Istituto Italiano di Cultura => I can hold a conversation Arabic: 5 years formal study => work in progress, always Sanskrit: 3 months => doesn't really count - yet Last comment: maybe I'm just ignorant, but I don't know any case of someone saying "I'm going to learn 'X' languages, starting from scratch" and actually doing it. For me, it's like saying "I don't know how to swim, but I'm going to be a lifeguard". In most cases, successful stories begin with one or two languages in school (not by choice, really), and then things just happen. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 22 of 23 12 March 2014 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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It seems that in fact most of us spend several years on each language, which may be a guide also for those
who want to learn 8+ languages, knowing one or none to begin with. I have a lot of sympathy for their dream, and try to be supportive, but I think it would be useful for them to see how long most of us actually use. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 23 of 23 12 March 2014 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||
The good news is that intermediate levels are pretty fun. So you can still get mileage out of your imperfect Twi :D 1 person has voted this message useful |
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