Several ways to learn new languages

[American dreamParticipant 51]

Good day everyone! Please tell me which ways or steps do you use to discover new language and learn it? Reading, listening, speaking, grammar rules and including practice? To my mind language is some kind of tool math tool-similar to this. Several words plus algorithm and logical are equal to sentences. Am I right? I use transformation way to use new language all of this? Share your innovations in this sphere please.
Best regards
Lex.

Out of the rules and system-follow your own way!

[Anonymous 42]

I practiced Spanish using the CD player on long road trips, I figured it was the only time I had to learn another language, and it pays off big in Miami! Most the merchants don’t speak English!

And Mexico? I was the go to guy, the group interpreter, the guy asking all the questions, everything from directions to car rentals, I figured learning Spanish was the best logical choice only because it’s second to English geographically speaking…

Plus it f~~~s people up to hear a gringo speaking Spanish! Especially when there’s no Latino’s around!

[Anonymous 12]

A useful way to learn the basics is with pictures like you learned your first language growing up.

So a picture of a tree with the word under it, I don’t know the technical terms but the pictures help your brain remember the words better.

[HitmanParticipant]

Anonymous wrote:

Plus it f~~~s people up to hear a gringo speaking Spanish!

yo tambien,..lo mismo !
lo mejor via es practicar .
poco a poco es muy facil por aprender espanol..
porque en 20 anos en el futuro,
LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS !
yo soy preparando !!!

[Tiga KParticipant 1693]

Lang8.com, Anki, good grammer reference books, music in the target language, reading, reading, and more reading.

That’s what helped me teach myself some Japanese.

Anonymous wrote:

A useful way to learn the basics is with pictures like you learned your first language growing up.

So a picture of a tree with the word under it, I don’t know the technical terms but the pictures help your brain remember the words better.

Amen to this. Unless you have a freakishly good memory, rote memorization is inefficient and inferior to this type of learning.

[hollowtipsParticipant 681]

2 best ways you can learn.

The first is known as boosting, it can be applied to pretty much everything in life. If you try something very advanced, something more basic becomes extremely simple quite quickly. If you for example visit a country for a month you’ll learn more than you could learn in 2-4 years of books and practicing starting from the basics. Babies learn language from fluent speaking adults, not other babies.

The second is ironically similar, watch tv shows in a particular language you’re trying to learn. It take a while for your brain to even understand the flow and nature of other languages but eventually once it becomes second nature your comprehension will rapidly improve.

[MattNYCParticipant 2329]

I’ve had success learning Spanish by thinking of situations where i want to use it. So i don’t try to just “learn some Spanish” – to me that’s too vague to study, or to practice, or to measure my success.

I know in my travels i want to talk to men about how they dress, what brands of formal clothing are well-known in their countries (men’s style & fashion is a hobby of mine). I want to open a conversation w/well-dressed guys in Spanish. So i need to know how to say:

1) Excuse me sir
2) I like your suit/tie/shoes/whatever
3) Can you tell me the brand of it/them?
4) Do they have a store in this city?
5) It looks very stylish; i could wear that in New York City and fit right in.
etc.

Ditto for salsa or bachata dancing.

Point is, if i learn another language so i can use it to communicate & be successful in situations that i *want* to be in, i’m more likely to study, and improve, and enjoy what i’ve learned.

[RoyDalParticipant]

I have been told the secret is total immersion in the language and culture you want to learn. That said, if I have any talents, then learning languages is not among them.

I do know, the US military uses the total immersion method in their language schools. If it works for a bunch of military guys, it should work for a civilian.

Society asks MGTOWs: Why are you not making more tax-slaves?

[Ned TrentParticipant 4894]

Great topic here. Thanks for posting this, alimovlex.

And well, all of you up to now have made very valid points (+ 1 to each of you).

From my own experience in that regard (being a native German speaker): Whilst it’s being rightly claimed that you should try to learn another language at a preferably very young age, because to start at an older age it is quite a bit harder to learn it properly, I would still say to start (or at least lay the foundation) at a later age beyond early childhood and then carry on with much more dedication only into later adulthood and beyond, even then it is still not impossible to learn the other language towards very high levels as in my case almost native foreign language speaker-like and this notion somehow kept fascinating me to no end and it still does to this day, because believe it or not for a while in middle school roughly at the age of say between 12 and 15 I actually had a really bad mark in English at school, but then in retrospect I blame that onto our back then Australian female teacher.

Now despite this alleged temporary linguistical failure of mine I still never really lost all the fun about learning the language, which is probably in part due to having another better teacher again towards the end of my school life.
By which time my skills improved again a lot, which ultimately brought all the fun factor back into it. So it was from that point forward that I actively wanted to learn further and further just by speaking the language as often as I could or had opportunities to culminating in my stay for several years in the UK for the ultimate final touch up to it towards almost native speaker status (now).
So it really was when I made the decision to live abroad there in UK for a while when I not only adapted to the local accent but like you said RoyDal I immersed myself fully in both the language as well as the local culture also obviously watching UK TV reading the newspapers and so on and so forth and ultimately starting to even think and dream in the other language. After a few years of my stay I finally was eventually able to switch my thinking patterns between both of the languages consciously back and forth.

The benefits of being very fluent in English as a second language to me is an obvious one: being able to work together with any international people from all over the world and therefore it far outweighs the effort and dedication of learning it in the first place and I hope that I’ll hardly never lose that or get too “rusty” through old age dementia or something but I don’t intend to let that happen…

Like you said MattNYC to learn another language is by and large driven by the success of doing so effectively for the purpose of
successful communication abroad. Then again anyone who wants to do this should never put too much ambitious pressure on himself to succeed but rather keep it real and fun even whenever making mistakes at first since it is clearly those from what you learn best.

@ hollotips : Of course when I first arrived abroad I tended to do that boosting you mentioned a lot but over time it more and more eased off quite naturally in my case and meanwhile it is virtually no longer there with me.

@ Morlock : Yes, images certainly can help quite a bit especially at the early stages of learning.

Or like MG-Tower stated immersing yourself in learning CDs on long trips can also help a lot, sure thing.

And nowadays there is also youtube that one can even refer to when it comes to learning a new language. There is this one guy who I discovered by chance an American who lives in Germany for quite a few years now having his own youtube channel for teaching English native speakers to learn not only German (plus its culture) but other languages as well. Since I can only judge his ability to teach German I albeit have to say that he is doing a good job.

And here are two samples (language/culture) from his channel:

Finally @ Hitman : Although me being only armed with my very basic and meanwhile yet way more rusty French (from school) I still understood pretty much everything you said there in Spanish…

I'd rather die a natual death with a clear MGTOW conscience somewhere off the grid than one within "modern" civilisation with a big stress mark on my forehead and a couple of dozen tubes plugged into my body. Back to the plantation..? Me..? Hey, literally: I won't ever fucking kid myself...YZERLMNTSIC

[Author]

Posts