inthe00s
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Subject: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: mxcrashxm on 10/20/17 at 12:14 am

I speak two so far which is English and some Spanish; however, I'm willing to learn more because learning is fun! :)

How about you?

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: CatwomanofV on 10/20/17 at 4:03 pm

English (of course).  I took French in school-not saying that I could really speak it but I know un peu.  Now that we go to Puerto Rico every year, again, I don't REALLY speak Spanish but I do know un poco.


Cat

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: annimal on 10/20/17 at 4:18 pm

right now I'm speaking Queen

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Howard on 10/20/17 at 5:25 pm

English

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: mxcrashxm on 10/20/17 at 5:31 pm


English (of course).  I took French in school-not saying that I could really speak it but I know un peu.  Now that we go to Puerto Rico every year, again, I don't REALLY speak Spanish but I do know un poco.


Cat
Do you learn more Spanish when you're in PR?


right now I'm speaking Queen
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D


English
Since you're from NY, have you tried to learn Italian?

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: annimal on 10/20/17 at 5:44 pm

now I'm speaking Weird Al       

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: 2001 on 10/20/17 at 6:02 pm

English, Punjabi, Hindi, French and Korean in that order of fluency. I think my spoken/listening Korean is better than my spoken/listening French, but my reading/writing skills in French are better (since it's mostly the same as English).

I can understand a limited amount of Japanese. I dabbed in it as a teenager, but I never went the whole way, and it's been a long time now.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: annimal on 10/20/17 at 6:16 pm

Annican

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: violet_shy on 10/20/17 at 7:26 pm

English is my primary language. But I also speak Spanish, even though it isn't perfect Spanish lol. I can understand a little bit of French because I took a French course in High School.

If I had the time I would improve my French.  :)

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: annimal on 10/21/17 at 11:47 am

I know some English French 

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Howard on 10/21/17 at 2:30 pm


Do you learn more Spanish when you're in PR?
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Since you're from NY, have you tried to learn Italian?



No I haven't.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: CatwomanofV on 10/21/17 at 3:49 pm


Do you learn more Spanish when you're in PR?




When we are down there, I really don't have to speak it-I have two of my own personal interpreters-Carlos & his sister. His sister speaks Spanish fluently and Carlos can hold his own-but not as fluently as she is. As for me, I can't help picking up on things. I find reading it is easier than speaking it. When we bought our house down there, I was reading the deed (which is in Spanish) and I was pretty much able to follow it. There may have been one or two words that I needed help with. I'm sure it was my French studies that helped.

I do know how to order a white wine or a pina colada with rum. After drinking a few, I know how to ask where the bathroom is. Unfortunately, I don't understand where they tell me it is.  :-\\ ;D ;D ;D ;D



Cat

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Elor on 10/22/17 at 11:44 am

German and English. I've had Latin in school but sucked at it and forgot everything by now. I picked up a few words of Dutch when working for the German department of a Dutch company but I can not really speak it (let alone understand when people talk at full speed :D).

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: mxcrashxm on 10/22/17 at 8:20 pm


English, Punjabi, Hindi, French and Korean in that order of fluency. I think my spoken/listening Korean is better than my spoken/listening French, but my reading/writing skills in French are better (since it's mostly the same as English).

I can understand a limited amount of Japanese. I dabbled in it as a teenager, but I never went the whole way, and it's been a long time now.
Damn, you're multi-lingual arent you ya? ;). That's fantastic! Are you still wanting to learn more Japanese?


Annican
Is that your own language?


English is my primary language. But I also speak Spanish, even though it isn't perfect Spanish lol. I can understand a little bit of French because I took a French course in High School.

If I had the time I would improve my French.  :)
Nice! :)

What type of Spanish do you speak? I'm asking because there are words in that language that mean the same thing.



When we are down there, I really don't have to speak it-I have two of my own personal interpreters-Carlos & his sister. His sister speaks Spanish fluently and Carlos can hold his own-but not as fluently as she is. As for me, I can't help picking up on things. I find reading it is easier than speaking it. When we bought our house down there, I was reading the deed (which is in Spanish) and I was pretty much able to follow it. There may have been one or two words that I needed help with. I'm sure it was my French studies that helped.

I do know how to order a white wine or a pina colada with rum. After drinking a few, I know how to ask where the bathroom is. Unfortunately, I don't understand where they tell me it is.  :-\\ ;D ;D ;D ;D



Cat
That's great! I think it's good to have interpreters so one would not pronounce the word wrong, and it's easier to learn that way.

Do PRs speak Spanish differently compared to Mexico and Spain? 



No, I haven't.
Do you plan to?


German and English. I've had Latin in school but sucked at it and forgot everything by now. I picked up a few words of Dutch when working for the German department of a Dutch company but I can not really speak it (let alone understand when people talk at full speed :D).
Do you plan to learn more Latin and Dutch?

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: 2001 on 10/22/17 at 9:22 pm


Damn, you're multi-lingual arent you ya? ;). That's fantastic! Are you still wanting to learn more Japanese?


After French, I'm going to go back to perfecting my Korean. After that, I want to learn Mandarin. My city is ~30% Chinese (albeit mostly Hong Kong Cantonese speakers, but there are Mandarin speakers too) and a lot of my friends speak Mandarin. There's also some restaurants I want to try that only have their menu in Chinese, and I'm really fascinated by Chinese tech culture, so there's quite a few adventures to he had. It should be a fun language to learn. :D

I'll see about Japanese in 10-15 years time when I'm done with the other three. :P I do want to go back to playing Japanese '80s/'90s video games (that was my hobby as a teenager) but a lot of them don't have much text to begin with, especially the '80s ones.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I did learn a little bit of Swedish when I was a teenager listening to Swedish metal music. I've forgotten virtually all of it a long time ago. I met a Swedish exchange student a few years ago, and I told him about my Swedish skillz, and he asked me to say something in Swedish, and the first thing that came to my mind was "Jag äter barn" which translates to "I eat children". He had a laugh at my expense. :-[ ;D

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Howard on 10/23/17 at 5:27 am


Damn, you're multi-lingual arent you ya? ;). That's fantastic! Are you still wanting to learn more Japanese?
Is that your own language?
Nice! :)

What type of Spanish do you speak? I'm asking because there are words in that language that mean the same thing.
That's great! I think it's good to have interpreters so one would not pronounce the word wrong, and it's easier to learn that way.

Do PRs speak Spanish differently compared to Mexico and Spain? 
Do you plan to?
Do you plan to learn more Latin and Dutch?


No I have no plan to.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: CatwomanofV on 10/23/17 at 12:42 pm



Do PRs speak Spanish differently compared to Mexico and Spain? 




Not really knowing how they speak Spanish in Mexico and/or Spain, I can't answer that question. But, many Puerto Ricans speak "Spanglish."

There are many times when we are sitting around with a bunch of Carlos' cousins and they are going on in Spanish and I'm just sitting there not having a clue at what they are talking about. Then one of them will throw in a word of English here or there and then I will get a gist of what the conversation is about. Sometimes, SIL will turn to me and tell me what people are talking about knowing that I don't have a clue-which I do appreciate her doing that. It really is a good thing that I am not paranoid otherwise I would think that they were talking about me.  ;) :D ;D ;D ;D



Cat

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: annimal on 10/23/17 at 1:00 pm

I can tell you that my brother John left for Mexico a long time ago and has learned three languages. 

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Elor on 10/25/17 at 6:21 am


Do you plan to learn more Latin and Dutch?
Nope. Latin was really awful and I have no reason to learn Dutch anymore (besides most Dutch people do speak English and/or German).

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Philip Eno on 10/25/17 at 6:26 am

Only one true language: English

I know some French, as learn when at school.

I can understand Tagalog (the language of the Philippines)

Currently learning (on and off): Sign Language

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: CatwomanofV on 10/25/17 at 12:20 pm


Only one true language: English

I know some French, as learn when at school.

I can understand Tagalog (the language of the Philippines)

Currently learning (on and off): Sign Language



I learned a little of that.



Cat

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Philip Eno on 10/25/17 at 12:28 pm



I learned a little of that.



Cat
It seems easy to learn, but I am taking my time with it, I do not wish to learn the wrong actions for the words or phases concerned.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: nally on 10/25/17 at 1:32 pm

Of course English is my first language, but in school I have taken classes in Spanish, which I seem to speak pretty well (although when someone talks fast in Spanish I cannot make out what they are saying; conversely I do not know ALL the words).

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Philip Eno on 10/25/17 at 1:35 pm

When traveling, or in a position of where I can hear foreigners speaking their native language, I always (in my mind) try and guess what the language is.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Howard on 10/25/17 at 2:46 pm


When traveling, or in a position of where I can hear foreigners speaking their native language, I always (in my mind) try and guess what the language is.


I'm always surrounded by foreign languages.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: violet_shy on 11/04/17 at 4:19 pm


Nice! :)

What type of Spanish do you speak? I'm asking because there are words in that language that mean the same thing.

Do PRs speak Spanish differently compared to Mexico and Spain? 


I speak modern Spanish language, but I sound awful when I speak it lol. Spanish in Puerto Rico is a lot "spicier" than the Spanish spoken in Mexico or Spain.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: nally on 11/04/17 at 10:03 pm


I speak modern Spanish language, but I sound awful when I speak it lol.

hey that's alright



Spanish in Puerto Rico is a lot "spicier" than the Spanish spoken in Mexico or Spain.

I actually hadn't known that. But I do know that there are some variations between Spanish spoken in Mexico and that of Spain, from having learned about it in one of my high school Spanish classes.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Captain_Nostalgia on 11/04/17 at 10:05 pm

English (duh), Norwegian (and as a result, Swedish and Danish).  I can also conversate in German.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Rosequartz2000 on 02/07/18 at 4:21 pm

English, Japanese, and Spanish. あたしの本と名マールザ。

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Redhairkid on 02/17/18 at 1:05 pm

6. English, Irish, Gaelic, French, Italian and Spanish.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: annimal on 02/17/18 at 1:21 pm

uuh

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: SpyroKev on 02/21/18 at 9:41 pm

All I need is English. I'm already less motivated so I doubt I could put energy into learning a different language. I generally like capitalized Ancient Greek words though. They look mysterious.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Jessica on 03/01/18 at 3:12 pm

English, with some Spanish thrown in. Starting to learn Japanese again.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: 2001 on 03/01/18 at 5:39 pm


English, with some Spanish thrown in. Starting to learn Japanese again.


Nice. I want to start learning it again too.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Jessica on 03/02/18 at 10:26 am


Nice. I want to start learning it again too.


Yeah, I started approximately 300 years ago (1999-2000), but gave it up when I got to verbs. Such a quitter. Anyway, I'm trying to pick it up again. There is a pretty decent app for smartphones called Human Japanese. There's a lite version that is free, and a bigger one that's like ten bucks. The reviews say it is worth it to get the paid one, and I'd have to agree from just fiddling with the lite version. I'll probably buy it when I have a bit of extra cash.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: 2001 on 03/02/18 at 10:56 am


Yeah, I started approximately 300 years ago (1999-2000), but gave it up when I got to verbs. Such a quitter. Anyway, I'm trying to pick it up again. There is a pretty decent app for smartphones called Human Japanese. There's a lite version that is free, and a bigger one that's like ten bucks. The reviews say it is worth it to get the paid one, and I'd have to agree from just fiddling with the lite version. I'll probably buy it when I have a bit of extra cash.


I'm not sure it's humanly possible to learn all the 600+ verb endings, but we'll have to try ;D

I tried learning it one or two years back (2007-2009). I learnt it to a decent enough level to play some video games and understand a little bit of dorama, but it was really difficult.  :-\\

I used Heisig's book to learn how to write the Kanji (but not read them), then I used a website called iKnow (I believe it's called smart.fm now) to learn vocab. iKnow was really good, I'd recommend checking it out, if it's still free ;D (it's more intermediate-level though).

I'll check out Human Japanese. Sounds really good from the reviews. :)

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Redhairkid on 03/02/18 at 11:44 am

I'm also working on constructing my own language.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: 80sfan on 03/02/18 at 12:51 pm

Two?  ???  ???

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Lyndialy on 03/11/18 at 3:56 pm

English and a little bit of Spanish...My mother is of Hispanic descent and my dad is from America

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: TheReignMan99 on 03/11/18 at 4:00 pm

Only one and that's English.

However, I took Spanish for almost 7 years in middle school and high school (September 2010-June 2017). Unfortuantely, I only can speak a little bit of Spanish.

I want to learn other languages but I just can't grasp fully learning another language. I don't know why? :-\\

Does anyone have any suggestions for me? :)

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: mxcrashxm on 03/11/18 at 4:07 pm


Only one and that's English.

However, I took Spanish for almost 7 years in middle school and high school (September 2010-June 2017). Unfortunately, I only can speak a little bit of Spanish.

I want to learn other languages but I just can't grasp fully learning another language. I don't know why? :-\\

Does anyone have any suggestions for me? :)
French, Japanese, German, and some African languages.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: TheReignMan99 on 03/11/18 at 4:16 pm


French, Japanese, German, and some African languages.

No, I meant suggestions in how to better learn a new language.

Thanks for the language recommendations though ;D.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: mxcrashxm on 03/11/18 at 4:43 pm


No, I meant suggestions in how to better learn a new language.

Thanks for the language recommendations though ;D.
Keep practicing with yourself and others. That makes it easier just than reading the text.

You're welcome! :)

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: 2001 on 03/11/18 at 6:56 pm


Only one and that's English.

However, I took Spanish for almost 7 years in middle school and high school (September 2010-June 2017). Unfortuantely, I only can speak a little bit of Spanish.

I want to learn other languages but I just can't grasp fully learning another language. I don't know why? :-\\

Does anyone have any suggestions for me? :)


I've learnt two languages to somewhat fluency (still not finished).

The first step is having an immense interest in the culture of the language you're learning. So much so that you're willing to put in thousands of hours of gruelling work and several years on mastering the language. Do you have that? Because if you don't, if it's not a necessity to learn the language, then you're going to have a bad time.  :-X

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: TheReignMan99 on 03/11/18 at 8:02 pm


I've learnt two languages to somewhat fluency (still not finished).

The first step is having an immense interest in the culture of the language you're learning. So much so that you're willing to put in thousands of hours of gruelling work and several years on mastering the language. Do you have that? Because if you don't, if it's not a necessity to learn the language, then you're going to have a bad time.  :-X

I do!

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: 2001 on 03/11/18 at 11:27 pm


I do!


Okay, I will detail my 'secrets' ;D

Warning: long post.

My style is basically the exact same as the AJATT (All Japanese All The Time) method, because that's from whom I learnt how to learn languages. The site has changed a lot over the past decade because he's tried to monetize it (which he definitely deserves to), but I'm not sure I recognize it anymore. Here's the 2008 version of the website which in my opinion was more straightforward. It starts under "0. Mental Tools"

Step 1: Have an intense interest in the language you're learning

It's vital. If you're not having fun while learning the language, you're going to have a hard time putting in the necessary time.

Step 2: Listen to the language you're learning 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

Yes, 24/7. Every walking (and non-walking) moment. He doesn't call the method All Japanese All The Time for nothing!

Okay, obviously, there are times when you physically cannot do that, if school or work doesn't allow you to put on headphones, or if you're out with your friends. But for every other second in time, you need to be listening.

The goal is to listen to your target language for 10,000 hours.

There are multiple benefits to this. You get 24/7 practice with the language, your listening skills will be up to notch (no more "you're speaking too fast!"), and you will have an impeccable accent. In the more advanced stages, it will get you thinking in the language and dreaming in the language and other things. Think about how a baby learns a language: they hear the language spoken all the time, and they pick up on it. You don't pick up on languages you don't listen to.

That's the first habit you need to establish. Stuff your phone with audio rips of movies and TV shows, listen to music, listen to the radio in your target language, download podcasts, have the TV on in the background etc. The difficulty doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter if you don't understand it, you just need to be listening to it.

As for listening in your sleep – there are no actual benefits to listening to a language in your sleep, but the idea is that from the moment you close your eyes to the moment you open them, you should be listening to the language. Not one second wasted! So buy a nice pair of speakers.

You don't have to track how many hours you've listened to, but it does keep me motivated personally. You can use the Android app TagTime, which will poll you randomly throughout the day (an average of 45 minutes, which can be adjusted) and asks you what you're doing, and you can tag it with "listening" for when you're listening. You can count all the pings at the end of the week, multiply it by 45 minutes to get a rough estimate of how much you listened to that week. Before smartphones, around 2007-2011, I used to literally carry a piece of paper and pen around with me in my pocket, and I'd write in the time I started listening, and I'd write the stop time any time I pulled my headphones out, and add it all up at the end of the day. ;D

So yes, that's first habit to establish. Listening 24/7. I'd spend one or two weeks trying to establish this habit before jumping onto the next step.

Step 2: Pick up a beginner's textbook/app/website/podcast/class and make sure it has audio if not entirely audio-based

This is the easiest part of the process. Just try to learn most basic vocabulary, nail the grammar, or learn the writing system if applicable. If you're trying to go for Japanese/Chinese, I'd use Heisig's books and try to learn how to write the kanji/hanzi for 3-4 months, and then move onto textbooks (and try to get textbooks that use as much kanji/hanzi as possible).

Download Anki and learn how to use it, it has a bit of a learning curve. It's an electronic flashcard application. If your preferred learning method doesn't have its own way of making sure you retain the information, then use Anki. On the front of the card, have the sentence you found the word, and in the back of the card right down the definitions. Try to get a rip of the audio, or at least use a decent sounding Text-To-Speech.

Duolingo is pretty good free app for most European languages if you want a beginner's introduction, and you won't have to use Anki (for now) since it has its own retention exercises.

Step 3: Start reading children's books or children-targetted material

Get tons of books or comics or whatever reading material, and make sure it's very basic and easy to digest.

What you're going to do is you're going to read it (duh), if you come across a word you don't understand, you look it up in the dictionary***. You're going to put the sentence you found the unknown word in into Anki on the frontside, and the definition of the unknown word(s) on the back. You don't necessarily have to have an unknown word in the sentence to make a flashcard out of it, just make a flashcard out of any sentence you like or is interesting to you or you want to remember.

There's a 'principle' in the language-learning-o-sphere that each flashcard should strictly be 'i+1' (which means information plus one), in other words, each flashcard should contain only one new piece of information and not anymore than that, or else it's overwhelming. I tend to agree, but I don't think of it as a hard rule, especially not for a beginner.

***For now, a bilingual dictionary (English to target language) will do, but you're going to want to transition to monolingual dictionary later.

Try to get 700-1000 sentence flashcards this way before moving on to the next step.

Step 4: Do whatever the f*ck you want, and do it all the time

This is the hardest but the most fun part. You're more or less at an intermediate level now. Instead of reading children's material, you can read and listen to whatever you want! Instead of browsing English websites, watching English TV shows, reading English newspapers, you're going to throw all of that out and do it in your target language. You're going to want to be reading and listening to your target language as much as possible. He didn't call it All Japanese All The Time for nothing! Currently even my phone and computer's OS language is set to French. I'm half way through my playthrough of Pokémon Moon in French, I get all my news and video game news in French etc.

Basically, do whatever it is the reason you started learning the language in the first place, and make sure to do a lot of it. Make sure to get out of your comfort zone as much as possible. E.g. when I was learning Korean, it was a lot of fun reading comics and travel blogs and I could do it for hours, but reading newspapers was pure misery. But I got out of my comfort and eventually it was easy.

If you come across a word you don't know, it's the same as above. Make a flashcard out of the sentence you found it in, with the definition of the unknown words in the back. Try to use a monolingual dictionary if you can.

Try to get to 5000 sentences of flashcards or so before you start the next step. But don't stop adding sentences, keep going until you get to 10,000+

Step 5: Writing and Speaking

There are four main skills when mastering a language, and they can be divided into two groups. The first group is "input", which consists of reading and listening, which is what I've been focusing on. The second group is "output", which consists of writing and speaking, which I've neglected up to this point. The reason I left it for now is because most people jump in way too early into speaking and writing, and they create bad habits when it comes to grammar and accent that is very difficult to undo. And think about it: the vast majority of the time, when you're in your English world, you (hopefully) listen and read way more than you speak and write; yet in most language classes you would be made to do the complete opposite. It just doesn't make sense.

Now that you're a good listener and reader and you can understand what people are trying to say, it's time to be understood yourself. Find friends, join a language exchange, get a penpal and start talking to them.

I recommend the website Lang-8. Over there, you can post a journal entry, and you'll have native speakers correct it for you. And you can correct people who are trying to learn English too. I met many penpals and Skype partners on there, great place! You can also go to meetup.com to see if there's a language exchange taking place near you. If all else fails, post a Craigslist ad asking for a language exchange or a friend who speaks the language you're trying to learn.

------

And that's it. :)

Listen to the language you're learning to all the time, read it all the time, speak it all the time, and write in it all the time. Soon enough (a few years), you'll find yourself fluent.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: TheReignMan99 on 03/12/18 at 8:54 am


Okay, I will detail my 'secrets' ;D

Warning: long post.

My style is basically the exact same as the AJATT (All Japanese All The Time) method, because that's from whom I learnt how to learn languages. The site has changed a lot over the past decade because he's tried to monetize it (which he definitely deserves to), but I'm not sure I recognize it anymore. Here's the 2008 version of the website which in my opinion was more straightforward. It starts under "0. Mental Tools"

Step 1: Have an intense interest in the language you're learning

It's vital. If you're not having fun while learning the language, you're going to have a hard time putting in the necessary time.

Step 2: Listen to the language you're learning 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

Yes, 24/7. Every walking (and non-walking) moment. He doesn't call the method All Japanese All The Time for nothing!

Okay, obviously, there are times when you physically cannot do that, if school or work doesn't allow you to put on headphones, or if you're out with your friends. But for every other second in time, you need to be listening.

The goal is to listen to your target language for 10,000 hours.

There are multiple benefits to this. You get 24/7 practice with the language, your listening skills will be up to notch (no more "you're speaking too fast!"), and you will have an impeccable accent. In the more advanced stages, it will get you thinking in the language and dreaming in the language and other things. Think about how a baby learns a language: they hear the language spoken all the time, and they pick up on it. You don't pick up on languages you don't listen to.

That's the first habit you need to establish. Stuff your phone with audio rips of movies and TV shows, listen to music, listen to the radio in your target language, download podcasts, have the TV on in the background etc. The difficulty doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter if you don't understand it, you just need to be listening to it.

As for listening in your sleep – there are no actual benefits to listening to a language in your sleep, but the idea is that from the moment you close your eyes to the moment you open them, you should be listening to the language. Not one second wasted! So buy a nice pair of speakers.

You don't have to track how many hours you've listened to, but it does keep me motivated personally. You can use the Android app TagTime, which will poll you randomly throughout the day (an average of 45 minutes, which can be adjusted) and asks you what you're doing, and you can tag it with "listening" for when you're listening. You can count all the pings at the end of the week, multiply it by 45 minutes to get a rough estimate of how much you listened to that week. Before smartphones, around 2007-2011, I used to literally carry a piece of paper and pen around with me in my pocket, and I'd write in the time I started listening, and I'd write the stop time any time I pulled my headphones out, and add it all up at the end of the day. ;D

So yes, that's first habit to establish. Listening 24/7. I'd spend one or two weeks trying to establish this habit before jumping onto the next step.

Step 2: Pick up a beginner's textbook/app/website/podcast/class and make sure it has audio if not entirely audio-based

This is the easiest part of the process. Just try to learn most basic vocabulary, nail the grammar, or learn the writing system if applicable. If you're trying to go for Japanese/Chinese, I'd use Heisig's books and try to learn how to write the kanji/hanzi for 3-4 months, and then move onto textbooks (and try to get textbooks that use as much kanji/hanzi as possible).

Download Anki and learn how to use it, it has a bit of a learning curve. It's an electronic flashcard application. If your preferred learning method doesn't have its own way of making sure you retain the information, then use Anki. On the front of the card, have the sentence you found the word, and in the back of the card right down the definitions. Try to get a rip of the audio, or at least use a decent sounding Text-To-Speech.

Duolingo is pretty good free app for most European languages if you want a beginner's introduction, and you won't have to use Anki (for now) since it has its own retention exercises.

Step 3: Start reading children's books or children-targetted material

Get tons of books or comics or whatever reading material, and make sure it's very basic and easy to digest.

What you're going to do is you're going to read it (duh), if you come across a word you don't understand, you look it up in the dictionary***. You're going to put the sentence you found the unknown word in into Anki on the frontside, and the definition of the unknown word(s) on the back. You don't necessarily have to have an unknown word in the sentence to make a flashcard out of it, just make a flashcard out of any sentence you like or is interesting to you or you want to remember.

There's a 'principle' in the language-learning-o-sphere that each flashcard should strictly be 'i+1' (which means information plus one), in other words, each flashcard should contain only one new piece of information and not anymore than that, or else it's overwhelming. I tend to agree, but I don't think of it as a hard rule, especially not for a beginner.

***For now, a bilingual dictionary (English to target language) will do, but you're going to want to transition to monolingual dictionary later.

Try to get 700-1000 sentence flashcards this way before moving on to the next step.

Step 4: Do whatever the f*ck you want, and do it all the time

This is the hardest but the most fun part. You're more or less at an intermediate level now. Instead of reading children's material, you can read and listen to whatever you want! Instead of browsing English websites, watching English TV shows, reading English newspapers, you're going to throw all of that out and do it in your target language. You're going to want to be reading and listening to your target language as much as possible. He didn't call it All Japanese All The Time for nothing! Currently even my phone and computer's OS language is set to French. I'm half way through my playthrough of Pokémon Moon in French, I get all my news and video game news in French etc.

Basically, do whatever it is the reason you started learning the language in the first place, and make sure to do a lot of it. Make sure to get out of your comfort zone as much as possible. E.g. when I was learning Korean, it was a lot of fun reading comics and travel blogs and I could do it for hours, but reading newspapers was pure misery. But I got out of my comfort and eventually it was easy.

If you come across a word you don't know, it's the same as above. Make a flashcard out of the sentence you found it in, with the definition of the unknown words in the back. Try to use a monolingual dictionary if you can.

Try to get to 5000 sentences of flashcards or so before you start the next step. But don't stop adding sentences, keep going until you get to 10,000+

Step 5: Writing and Speaking

There are four main skills when mastering a language, and they can be divided into two groups. The first group is "input", which consists of reading and listening, which is what I've been focusing on. The second group is "output", which consists of writing and speaking, which I've neglected up to this point. The reason I left it for now is because most people jump in way too early into speaking and writing, and they create bad habits when it comes to grammar and accent that is very difficult to undo. And think about it: the vast majority of the time, when you're in your English world, you (hopefully) listen and read way more than you speak and write; yet in most language classes you would be made to do the complete opposite. It just doesn't make sense.

Now that you're a good listener and reader and you can understand what people are trying to say, it's time to be understood yourself. Find friends, join a language exchange, get a penpal and start talking to them.

I recommend the website Lang-8. Over there, you can post a journal entry, and you'll have native speakers correct it for you. And you can correct people who are trying to learn English too. I met many penpals and Skype partners on there, great place! You can also go to meetup.com to see if there's a language exchange taking place near you. If all else fails, post a Craigslist ad asking for a language exchange or a friend who speaks the language you're trying to learn.

------

And that's it. :)

Listen to the language you're learning to all the time, read it all the time, speak it all the time, and write in it all the time. Soon enough (a few years), you'll find yourself fluent.

Thank you very much!


ありがとうございました

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: 2001 on 03/12/18 at 11:54 am


Thank you very much!


ありがとうございました


いいえ.

Are you going to be learning Japanese?

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: TheReignMan99 on 03/12/18 at 1:07 pm


いいえ.

Are you going to be learning Japanese?

No.

I want to learn one if not all of these languages: Italian, Arabic, Korean and maybe...maybe Amharic (primary language of Ethiopia).

Italian is the ONLY relatively easy one to learn on the list :P :-\\.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: mxcrashxm on 03/13/18 at 12:03 am



I want to learn one if not all of these languages: Italian, Arabic, Korean and maybe...maybe Amharic (primary language of Ethiopia).

Italian is the ONLY relatively easy one to learn on the list :P :-\\.
Oh that's pretty fantastic! I hope do you learn them one day

And I agree with the Italian one. It's actually somewhat similar to Spanish, so learning that language should be easy for you.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: aja675 on 03/21/18 at 8:18 am


I'm also working on constructing my own language.
http://aveneca.com/cbb/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6033

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: graciee on 04/07/18 at 8:21 pm

English, Korean

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: TheReignMan99 on 04/07/18 at 8:43 pm


English, Korean

You're a Korean-American?

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Wobo on 04/07/18 at 8:46 pm

English,English,English,English and English.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: 2001 on 04/07/18 at 8:59 pm


English,English,English,English and English.


Space after a comma.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Wobo on 04/07/18 at 9:03 pm


Space after a comma.

Oh,Well, :P

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: Rainbowz on 04/07/18 at 9:05 pm


You're a Korean-American?

Yeah, she is. I'm close friends with her.

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: GH1996 on 04/07/18 at 9:12 pm

English along with a little bit of French, German and Spanish

Subject: Re: How many languages do you speak?

Written By: TheReignMan99 on 04/07/18 at 9:42 pm


Yeah, she is. I'm close friends with her.

Cool.

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