News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How. Parent comment

Re:I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How by shuzchen on Thursday April 19, 2012 @03:59PM (#3864803)
I agree with the parents that doubt the veracity of these claims. There is so much more to a language than just vocabulary and grammar that I can't imagine anybody picking up on their own in 4-5 months. For example, in Japanese, there are many levels of formality that affect the vocabulary you select as well as the way you say something. And it's not just a matter of using one level with a particular person, how formal you are is very dynamic, and can change back and forth in the same conversation. Also, it's pretty much impossible to reach a native level productiveness of giseigo and giongo (different types of mimetic words) without being born and raised there.

However, if you're a language maven, then I can see how you can obtain high fluency in a short amount of time (although even the mavens I came across had issue with giseigo/giongo production, figure that out). But don't assume the same technique a maven uses will apply to your everyday person. I've studied Japanese for going on 14 years now (8 of those years being intense study: masters program, study abroad) and the more that I learn the more that I realize that I don't know.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How by eric_bullington on Thursday April 19, 2012 @06:36PM (#3865543)
Japanese is notoriously hard to master. It's probably not very revealing to use your experiences with Japanese as a benchmark when the blog author is talking about his experiences with French, a language very close to English, particularly in vocabulary (for obvious historical reasons).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How by shuzchen on Thursday April 19, 2012 @06:46PM (#3865583)
You would have a point if the post author didn't also claim to be having the same success with Russian (also rated notoriously hard to master for english speakers). The tone of the article also implies that the same technique can be applied to any language.

That said, I still doubt actual fluency is obtainable for non-mavens even in the romance languages. In my experience, all early learners have a naive view of their own ability, no matter what the target language is.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How by mattmanser on Friday April 20, 2012 @05:08AM (#3867093)
He mentions right at the start it took longer with Russian.

RTFA.

The US Foreign Service Institute makes estimates for language difficulties for native English speakers, and they seem to be spot on in terms of comparative difficulty—Russian seems to be taking twice as long as French did for me, and they estimate languages like Chinese to take twice as long as Russian.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How by ekianjo on Thursday April 19, 2012 @09:49PM (#3866152)
Agree on the Japanese point. The way you build sentences is just TOO different. You can definitely learn Japanese and speak it as a "gaijin" (meaning using european-style sentences with Japanese words) but speaking Japanese like a Japanese takes tremendous efforts and a serious re-wiring of your own brain as to how you approach language.

I'd seriously doubt if anyone can claim they can learn Japanese to a high level of fluency in a matter of months or even a few years.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How by v0cab on Friday April 20, 2012 @07:15AM (#3867354)
"Agree on the Japanese point. The way you build sentences is just TOO different. You can definitely learn Japanese and speak it as a "gaijin" (meaning using european-style sentences with Japanese words) but speaking Japanese like a Japanese takes tremendous efforts and a serious re-wiring of your own brain as to how you approach language."

I don't agree with this. The way you have to 're-wire' your brain isn't too different from what you do while learning a programming language.

The difficult part of Japanese would be all that vocabulary and all those funny symbols and combinations of symbols.

As a Korean learner, vocabulary is a mountain that I make great progress in scaling, yet my progress seems insignificant compared to the size of the mountain.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How by ekianjo on Saturday April 21, 2012 @01:02AM (#3870948)
No, the difficult part of japanese is not about vocabulary or funny symbols. I have a JLPT level 2 certification in Japanese and at this stage, the wording and kanjis is just about memory and practice. What's harder is to learn expressions, idioms, how to use them and how to understand them in different contexts. What you are saying is just like : "as long as you know words and alphabet, then you know the language". There's no way it is that simple.

And human languages are way more complicated and contrived than programming languages. I don't think you can make a reasonable argument to support that it's the same thing.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How by v0cab on Saturday April 21, 2012 @04:08PM (#3872860)
> What's harder is to learn expressions, idioms, how to use them and how to understand them in different contexts.

Well, that's hard too. But knowing all the words involved makes it a whole lot easier.

I haven't had much success with SRS for Korean vocab. There are so many words that are just too similiar to each other.

> human languages are way more complicated and contrived than programming languages. I don't think you can make a reasonable argument to support that it's the same thing.

I don't claim it's the same thing; I'm just making a comparison. Something like switching from SVO to SOV order isn't particularly difficult for the average programmer. Idiomatic expressions with irregular grammar are going to be problematic, granted.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How by w1ntermute on Wednesday April 25, 2012 @09:21AM (#3888977)
> I haven't had much success with SRS for Korean vocab. There are so many words that are just too similiar to each other.

Are you studying words in isolation or in context? The latter approach makes things much easier.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How by v0cab on Friday April 27, 2012 @06:14AM (#3898376)
The SRS words were mostly in isolation. I agree now that studying in context does make it easier, but in that case how is an SRS useful?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How by w1ntermute on Sunday April 29, 2012 @08:21PM (#3907548)
Why do you feel that the SRS's utility is determined by whether the words are in context or not? In fact, the people over at AJATT[0] have recommended using sentences and never using individual words. You want to practice in the types of situations you're actually going to encounter the language in. And in almost all cases, you'll encounter Korean (and any other spoken language) in the form of whole sentences, or at least phrases.

0: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How by dalke on Friday April 20, 2012 @05:05PM (#3869774)
As an example in the US, we had a co-worker who was from Cyprus but lived in the US for 5 years to get a BS and MS degree. He knew English before coming to the US and spoke fluent English, but would be lost when we talked about US popular culture. Before then I hadn't really realized how often people made allusion to old TV shows, 15 year old politics, childhood books, etc.
[ Parent | on HN ]