Language Learning Miscellany Thread

[dɮ the phoneme]

Well, there's a linguistic miscellany thread, but as every linguist is all to painfully aware, language learning and linguistics are not the same thing. And a lot of people here (myself including) seem to be very interested in language learning in addition to just linguistics and conlanging. So having a thread about it seems like a reasonable idea. Also, most online discussion of language learning is atrocious and completely unhelpful. I suspect the people here will have significantly more insightful commentary than the median r/languagelearning poster, so I have a vested interest in encouraging you all to talk about it more.

[Kuchigakatai]

well i sure like me some of the language learning


I'm rather surprised you didn't open the thread with a particular topic or question.


marg bar Anki

[Linguoboy]

Yeah, I'm really not sure what it is you wanted to discuss here that couldn't be discussed in the existing Miscellany thread or in a thread on a more specific topic.

[dɮ the phoneme]

I'm rather surprised you didn't open the thread with a particular topic or question.

If I recall correctly, I was going to but then got distracted and forgot. I'm not sure what it was but I have a different one now.

As I mentioned in another thread, I've had a lot of trouble keeping up my Japanese skills after college, because evidently I'm not good at self-study. I'm curious what other people's learning trajectory has looked like, in terms of classes vs. self-study vs. interaction with the target language that is not explicitly study (e.g. extensive reading). For languages that you all consider yourself at least moderately competent in: did you start off by taking a class, or did you start off studying on your own? When did your move past explicit study to more passive learning methods? etc.

marg bar Anki

Yeah.

[Linguoboy]

It’s different for every language.

My trajectory for my best language (German) goes: self study > formal study (two years university) > study abroad > intensive reading/occasional oral practice/occasional travel. I think the year abroad was crucial for cementing it in my head and I’d like to do study abroad courses for all my other languages, too.

[Nortaneous]

my trajectory looks like giving up.

in the course of my researches i have had to develop basic reading comprehension in technical french, but it doesn't seem like a useful enough language to take the time to learn beyond that

[Moose-tache]

I found, to my eternal frustration, that my language learning displays a strong Kissinger Effect. I can retain Japanese words and parse Japanese sentences far better than Korean, despite living in Korea for the better part of a decade, simply because I started younger.

[zompist]

For languages that you all consider yourself at least moderately competent in: did you start off by taking a class, or did you start off studying on your own? When did your move past explicit study to more passive learning methods? etc.

I've done classes (French, Russian) and no classes (Portuguese, Spanish, Mandarin, Quechua). The effectiveness of classes depends a lot on the teacher, but they have the great advantage of forcing you to make time for the language.

Try to marry someone who speaks the language(s) you want to learn. This isn't foolproof, but it's a big help. Travel helps, but not that much if you don't spend a lot of time with monolinguals.

It can help in motivation if there's something you like that's only available in the target language. E.g. I can't read Mafalda in English, or most French comics. A lot of people have learned Japanese to get more or earlier access to anime/manga.

These days, it can be hard to buttonhole a native speaker, but easy to find one on Youtube.

[Linguoboy]

Try to marry someone who speaks the language(s) you want to learn. This isn't foolproof, but it's a big help. Travel helps, but not that much if you don't spend a lot of time with monolinguals.

I was keenly aware of that and quite deliberately chose a smaller programme (30 students) that spread us out among several towns and allowed us to take ordinary university classes. In the same city there was a much larger programme that required students to take half their instruction in courses organised by their home institution. You generally saw them around town in clumps of three or four and while the ones I spoke to were mostly competent in the language after a year you’d never mistake them for fluent speakers. (In particular, their accents were atrocious.)

After coming back to the States, I dated a German professor for several years. The main advantage of that is that it provided other opportunities to use the language. (E.g. if we traveled abroad or met German speakers in Chicago, I didn’t have to default to English for his benefit.)

[Ares Land]

As I mentioned in another thread, I've had a lot of trouble keeping up my Japanese skills after college, because evidently I'm not good at self-study. I'm curious what other people's learning trajectory has looked like, in terms of classes vs. self-study vs. interaction with the target language that is not explicitly study (e.g. extensive reading). For languages that you all consider yourself at least moderately competent in: did you start off by taking a class, or did you start off studying on your own? When did your move past explicit study to more passive learning methods? etc.

I generally suck at language learning. That's kind of ridiculous, given the whole conlang thing, but so it goes.
I need formal classes, because while I can pick up quite a bit through self-study I'm too lazy on my own, and nowhere near as persistent enough.

The only foreign language I'm actually competent in is English. I generally had good teachers, but the deciding factor is that I was really into computers as a kid, so I tried my hand early on at technical English as soon as I could sort of follow along.

[Kuchigakatai]

As I mentioned in another thread, I've had a lot of trouble keeping up my Japanese skills after college, because evidently I'm not good at self-study. I'm curious what other people's learning trajectory has looked like, in terms of classes vs. self-study vs. interaction with the target language that is not explicitly study (e.g. extensive reading). For languages that you all consider yourself at least moderately competent in: did you start off by taking a class, or did you start off studying on your own? When did your move past explicit study to more passive learning methods? etc.

English:
classes (basics) > single-player videogames (it was the early 2000s; didn't have Internet) > language forums (which made me abandon videogames) > living in English-speaking Canada

Yeah, I found videogames so compelling as a kid that I'd play them in spite of not really understanding much, or having to take a lot of guesses about what the in-game text said. I had enough context it just about worked!


French:
classes (beginner and intermediate) > pretty comfortable in it but I mostly just use it to read linguistics stuff (notably the DÉRom publications) and use Latin resources (notably the Latin-French Gaffiot dictionary)

Do intermediate classes count as a passive learning method, if the teacher speaks a lot in the target language, and you're learning more from that than whatever grammar point is being discussed?


Latin:
self-taught with textbooks > live text chat, and more textbooks > bilingual readers > random stuff, including bilingual readers if available (it's pretty useful to see what another person has thought about specific passages in old texts, no matter how advanced you may or may not be!)

marg bar Anki

Yeah.

I totally grant some people seem to really like it though. My main problem with it is I don't like spending time making cards, and I tend to find pre-made decks disappointing.

Try to marry someone who speaks the language(s) you want to learn. This isn't foolproof, but it's a big help.

How do you think this helps exactly, by the way? Like Linguoboy, I've found dating native speakers of a target language mostly helps in opportunities of use. E.g. a given girlfriend might know the best language we have in common well, and of course it's very hard to resist the temptation to use it... but she might make Facebook posts in my target language, and (as Linguoboy mentioned) have friends who don't speak the language in common, which forces the situation to be in the target language. Have you actually managed to converse in Spanish about usual matters with your wife at least some of the time?

[Travis B.]

My German is now significantly better (even though it could obviously be much better overall) than my (now largely nonexistent) Japanese, despite the fact that I started learning Japanese at a much younger age (middle school) than German (college), and spent much more time studying Japanese (six years) than German (one semester in college). Of course, the fact that German is related to English (and both have loaned vocabulary from Latin, French, and Greek), unlike Japanese, and I can actually attempt to read German (whereas I practically only know kana these days) is likely part of it.

[zompist]

Try to marry someone who speaks the language(s) you want to learn. This isn't foolproof, but it's a big help.

How do you think this helps exactly, by the way? Like Linguoboy, I've found dating native speakers of a target language mostly helps in opportunities of use. [...] Have you actually managed to converse in Spanish about usual matters with your wife at least some of the time?

Creating opportunities of use is my biggest self-study tip! The brain prefers not to learn languages, but makes an effort when it feels surrounded by the new language, and you can create that situation.

When we met, I didn't know Spanish, but we both knew Portuguese. We would alternate English and Portuguese, since the first was tiring for her and the second for me. We still use Portuguese as a secret language.

After we married, I learned Spanish. We did practice a lot, and she explained all the jokes and constructions in Mafalda (and later, Fontanarrosa) that I didn't get. We visited South America a few times, where I had to interact with people who spoke no English.

As I said, it's not foolproof. I knew a girl who married a Frenchman; he wanted her to speak French but was terrible at teaching. So she had to take a class.

[hwhatting]

As I said, it's not foolproof. I knew a girl who married a Frenchman; he wanted her to speak French but was terrible at teaching. So she had to take a class.

That's similar to what happened with my wife and me. I already was fluent in Russian when I met her, and while we tried to alternate between speaking German and Russian for a time, we almost always defaulted back to Russian when we had to express more complex things than "pass me the salt, please". My family talked English to her. So, in the end, she took courses to get a basic grounding in German, and now she's been living in Germany on and off for 20 years and is quite fluent. But we still mostly speak Russian between the two of us.
My trajectories for the languages I'm fluent in:
English - formal instruction at school, plus reading books / magazines and listening to songs, then travelling and working in environments where English was the working language.
Russian - self-study until advanced level, then formal instruction at University, afterwards immersion working in an Environment where I was surrounded by Russian speakers who didn't know any or almost any German or English.
Of my less-than-fluent languages, I had formal school instruction in Latin and French, and Polish at university. I use them mostly for reading, like the other languages I have taken up learning with varied success over the years in self-study.