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How do you actually start a new language? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| euphinizer Newbie United States Joined 5633 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 17 of 22 27 April 2009 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am a very auditory style of learner. My entire life has been devoted to the study
of music, and my learning style reflects that. Here is my basic approach: - I first start by finding a bunch of music in the target language (I prefer rap music in this case for some reason, I normally hate rap). This way I get a "feel" for the language, I often find phrases I need will come to me as a melody would because of this. - Next, find an audio only course. Michel Thomas is what I use for German. Work all the way through that. - Find something to read in the language. Wikipedia is a quick resource. There is also archive.org where you can download old readers in the language for free. - Find somebody to talk to. Luckily, I have many friends who speak a variety of languages. For Spanish I got a job at a Mexican restaurant and went to a latin club every week. For German, I dated a German girl ... same for dutch (which I am useless in now) - News, books, music, newspapers, television, movies, etc. A sort of "at home cultural immersion" Edited by euphinizer on 27 April 2009 at 1:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| pielover24 Newbie United States Joined 5637 days ago 14 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 18 of 22 28 April 2009 at 4:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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I began with listening to Arabic music & reading about the language/culture online. When I decided I really wanted to begin learning, my aunt purchased me Teach Yourself Arabic (textbook & CD's).
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| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5865 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 19 of 22 28 April 2009 at 5:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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1. Get a MT course if there is one (if not I'll suffer a Pimsleur one).
2. Learn the pronunciation. 3. Get a list of irregular verbs. 4. Get some music in the target language. 5. Get a dictionary and devour it as if it were a novel (a la Garcia Marquez). 6. Find some native speakers. I don't write anything down. I want the language to be in my head. I know that most of what I hear, I'll remember and my synaesthesia is good for memorising vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LittleKey Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5894 days ago 146 posts - 153 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Japanese | Message 20 of 22 29 April 2009 at 8:50am | IP Logged | |||||
Overpriced plastic? When did we start talking about the PSP =P? Yeah, there are language learning games for the DS (such as: http://www.gamespot.com/ds/strategy/myspanishcoach/index.htm l?tag=result;title;3). They have a pretty good selection of languages. The most common ones really: English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, French, etc. I'm really unorganized when it comes to starting a new language (or learning it at all for that matter.) I don't really have a specific system or program which I use; I pretty much study grammar online, read a LOT of stuff, and practice writing. For vocabulary, I recently had the idea of using a learner's dictionary. I'm talking about those dictionaries that have, you know, somewhere from 6,000 to 10,000 words. This way you get to drill tons of new words, while learning mostly the ones you'll actually use. Like I said, I have no prior use of these products to verify my opinion, but it seems to me like it's better than using a real dictionary to learn vocab (A real dictionary IS important, just not for specificly learning tons of new words in my opinion.) I plan on using one to boost up my Spanish comprehension, and I'm going to buy one for use when I start seriously studying Japanese. Edited by LittleKey on 29 April 2009 at 8:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6645 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 21 of 22 29 April 2009 at 11:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm right now working hard to convince myself NOT to learn Tagalog. But that would be a good example of how I would do it.
I have already studied the morphology and some aspects of the syntax. I might write some of it down in a very concise form on some green sheets, which I later could use for reference. I would also do some word lists with the verbal roots, but apart from that the most urgent task would be to get some bilingual texts (if necessary by letting Google translate a text in Tagalog to Danish or English, but humanmade translations would be better). I would make hyperliteral translations of these texts, and all new words would be repeated in my wordlists. Soon after I would however switch to copying text by hand, even here looking words up, taking notes and incorporating the finds in my word lists, and finally I would just note down interesting constructions and unknown words. To learn the basics about the pronunciation I would listen to something using a bilingual text (= discount LR) if I could find that combination, otherwise I would try at least to find an audio source with a transcipt and then listen without understanding anything. I would try to do some extensive reading as early as possible, if necessary by rereading the texts I had used for intensive reading/hyperliteral translationg and copying. Very simple texts or texts with many loanwords could also be used. I would however not expect to understand internet TV or radio before much later, when I already could understand just about anything in written form. To become active I would try to force myself to think in the language, even if this in the beginning only would be in the form of single words and fragments. I ought to start pronuncing the language at an early stage, but in practice I wouldn't do it before I already could think in the language. For me writing in the language would certainly come before speaking it. And finally I would try to find time and money for a short trip to a relevant destination. Edited by Iversen on 29 April 2009 at 2:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5707 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 22 of 22 29 April 2009 at 1:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
After I wrote that post I looked at the DS language games on Amazon- unfortunately, all of the reviews said that the French one (and probably others) teaches vocabulary without gender, which makes it pretty useless to me. It's a shame they didn't think it through a bit better- It would be great to have an SRS programme on the DS for example, for those of us who have no other use for a palm top computer. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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