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How fast can you learn it? An answer. | ||
Tags: Time to learn | Software | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| litovec Tetraglot Groupie Switzerland lingvometer.com Joined 4941 days ago 42 posts - 60 votes  Speaks: German, Russian, French, English | Message 1 of 23 22 January 2011 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hello everyone!
I’ve seen here a lot of questions of the kind „How much time do I need to learn the language Z?“ and at some moment I got inspired to try to answer it in the form „You need X hours“. Preface. The Defense Language Institute published the numbers concerning the learning speed for several languages (link). These numbers reflect the time needed to be spent learning by an average american student. For example, this „average“ student needs 1320 hours to achieve intermediate level in Chinese (considered a hard language), 720 hours for the same level in Polish (considered somewhere in between) and 480 hours for Dutch (considered an easy language). In this forum there are a lot of people who are native or highly advanced English speakers. On the other side, you may have some knowledge in related language(s) that makes these „average“ numbers irrelevant for you. For example, if you have a good knowledge in Russian, for sure you need less than 720 hours to learn Polish at the intermediate level. Face. So, I tried to to build a calculator that gives you an estimate of how much time do you need to spend to achieve an intermediate level in your target language given your language portfolio, here: litvak.eu/lang Some examples of the results: 1) Input: your target is to be intermediate in Portuguese, you are lower intermediate (B1) in Spanish Output: it’ll take you 260 hours, link 2) Input: your target is to be intermediate in German, you are advanced (C1) in French; Output: it’ll take you 430 hours, link Don’t hesitate to write here if you find it useful or not. Those who have already achieved the intermediate proficiency in some language, please tell me if the numbers produced by this calculator correspond to the time you have actually spent. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| hjordis Senior Member United States snapshotsoftheworld. Joined 4996 days ago 209 posts - 264 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 2 of 23 23 January 2011 at 12:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't think it's particularly useful. I wouldn't know where to classify my language abilities anyways.
I was playing with it though. Why does having the combination of French, Spanish, German, and Japanese at any level increase the amount of time it states for Korean? When I take any one of them off it goes back to the base amount. And why does adding a high level of Khmer as a fifth language bring the number back down again? Edit: It's not at any level. It seems to be the middle levels of Japanese that are doing it. High advanced, fluent, basic, and elementary don't affect it. If I mess with the others I get varied results, but Japanese seems to have the most negative effect. But even with Japanese at intermediate if I take off any of the other three it goes back the base, as I said. Edited by hjordis on 23 January 2011 at 12:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| litovec Tetraglot Groupie Switzerland lingvometer.com Joined 4941 days ago 42 posts - 60 votes Speaks: German, Russian, French, English | Message 3 of 23 23 January 2011 at 12:46am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks for giving feedback! The explanation for the Korean is as follows. Only correlated languages diminish the amount of hours to be spent learning the target language. French, Spanish and German (for Japanese I must look up) are set to have zero correlation (relation) to Korean, so knowledge in these languages isn't supposed to make the learning of Korean easier. Take any related languages and you see the benefit )) Anyway, I'll look it up tomorrow more precisely to track a possible mistake. Edited by litovec on 23 January 2011 at 12:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5952 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 4 of 23 23 January 2011 at 12:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I agree. I tried it out for Dutch, including all of my languages and their levels and it said 1700 hours. But when I only included the assumed English and B2-level German it said half a year or less (5 hours per week). But shouldn't my knowledge of Swedish and French help me with my Dutch too? Or even Japanese or Romanian for that matter, simply because they have given me experience with studying languages.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| hjordis Senior Member United States snapshotsoftheworld. Joined 4996 days ago 209 posts - 264 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 5 of 23 23 January 2011 at 12:59am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Edited by hjordis on 23 January 2011 at 1:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| litovec Tetraglot Groupie Switzerland lingvometer.com Joined 4941 days ago 42 posts - 60 votes Speaks: German, Russian, French, English | Message 6 of 23 23 January 2011 at 11:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thank you guys, these are definitely bugs. It turns out that with many languages being marked, sometimes it goes mad. I'll fix it in the next few days.
To the most part I based upon the classification of language families and groups. For example, Hindi and German are both from Indo-European languages, so they have some correlation. German and English are Germanic languages subgroup of Indo-European, so they have a bigger correlation as German and Hindi etc. As Korean and Khmer are from distant language families, Khmer is set to be unrelated to Korean. For some European languages there are quantitative data on their distance, I used it too. I also tried to take into account some influenting languages (like Arabic had a big influence on Farsi, even though they are from different language groups). For European languages it works better, as there is more data on them. The case you've mentioned (4 languages make it harder to learn Korean than 3) is a bug that I wouldn't detect without your help! I'm working on it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Oasis88 Senior Member Australia Joined 5515 days ago 160 posts - 187 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Italian | Message 7 of 23 23 January 2011 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I followed the link and put in my stats. I'm learning Italian but am already around B1 in
Spanish. It recommended 250 hours. After 320 hours of Italian I wouldn't describe myself as B1 or B2. Maybe the recommendations are a little optimistic... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| litovec Tetraglot Groupie Switzerland lingvometer.com Joined 4941 days ago 42 posts - 60 votes Speaks: German, Russian, French, English | Message 8 of 23 23 January 2011 at 3:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Interesting! Just one question, have you been at B1 in Spanish before you started learning Italian? I'd like to precise it because the logic behind it is that you are at B1 in Spanish with no idea in Italian, then you need in average 250 hours to climb up to the intermediate level in Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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