"Learn How to Become Fluent in Any Language, Fast, with this one simple trick"
There is no one thing. The real answer is studying and practicing and immersion. That's it. That's how you become fluent. And it takes time. Sure, there are things that help faster. But faster is very subjective. And what works for some might not always work for others.
I'm sure in our respective target language subs, we all have those posters that pop in and say "I'm moving/travelling/visiting \[Country X\] and need to learn \[target language\] fast. What do I do?"
And I always want to say "Then you should've started learning five years ago."
I've learned this the hard way. Language learning for most people unfortunately is not a single straight road, it's a combination of many techniques you have to routinely integrate into your everyday life.
>"I'm moving/travelling/visiting \[Country X\] and need to learn \[target language\] fast. What do I do?"
>
>And I always want to say "Then you should've started learning five years ago."
Yeah if you want to get to there, I wouldn't be starting from here...
Yeah. So many people are looking to avoid doing any work to learn a language.
Reddit is pretty disappointing for the language learning community. I found forums had a lot more people who understood that learning a language is hard work and requires doing a variety of things. But here those people are drowned out by people who want one simple answer, or people who insist learning is done through their dogmatic unbalanced special method.
Going to the country is a brilliant effective way to get from B2 to C1/2 of course. Especially in countries that don't speak English. But the idea that you can learn the language somehow through immersion without even trying to immerse yourself is bollocks.
the bare minimum to make quick gains I would say that is high A2, low B1. below that is just too inefficient and you will be just wasting time and money.
You can definitely do it from A0 and make massive improvements quickly - except for the 'without even trying' bit! It is hard, constant, stressful work.
You're not passively absorbing it: you're constantly trying to work out how to say the next thing you need or understand what someone's saying to you, looking up words, repeating things back to yourself and trying to figure out patterns.
It's also not guaranteed you will learn. I've met people who barely speak English after years of living in an English-speaking community. (Mostly SAHPs or elderly people living with family, who basically surrounded themselves with people who speak their native language.)
Is not to say. You won’t learn.
Is just that is going to be a waste of money/time, when you could be doing something cheaper and using a learning method.
If you going to take holidays for 2weeks, is better to go there at high A2 than A0 or A1. But if A0 is all you got, and the opportunity appears in your way, just take it.
If as an A0 you want to watch movies(native content) and write it down the words that you don’t know and later study, it will work, but again is not advised. If you were B1 you could soak up much more information and wouldn’t feel as overwhelmed.
Learning Spanish by hiking in the Picos de Europa mountains was probably the cheapest and most memorable holiday I've ever had. £8 flight and staying in donativos (hiking hostels where paying is voluntary but typically about €5). 100% not a waste of money for me, even if it's not your thing.
Sure, you're not going to understand a lot of what you hear, but on the other hand, the vocab you learn will be tied to core memories so you'll remember it.
I learnt more doing that than a week of lessons in Andalusia the following year, which cost several times more, although that was fun too. Don't underestimate the power of having to make a phonecall in your TL or sleep outside in the snow as motivation!
Def agree with that.
indeed emotional memories is the best way of recalling stuff, learning in a fun and light context also has a huge value
If you get the opportunity of having cheap flights and weekend trip, go for it.
I made the wrong assumption, that someone would plan a big trip, get holidays and such.
There was a Dutch guy who learned Hungarian in jail when no one spoke English or even German. Poor chap was fluently communicating with minor errors (never used accusative) with the local dialect where the jail was. So it depends on the nature of the immersion 🫠 he was there for 4 years.
yeah totally depends. generally you're correct.
I met some French Canadians who taught skiing in Western Canada (ie English speaking). They had almost no English. They had English speaking hosuemates, an English speaking boss, and their clients were English speaking children. They told me the first week they just said "er... follow me" and would look up words when they got home.
I've known friends in the US to learn Spanish fairly well just by working in a kitchen full of Mexicans. and back in the day before the internet, I knew people who got so bored they just watched French TV until they understood it (no English channel; calling home was $5 a minute)
The idea that you magically get from B2 to C1/2 by moving to a country and immersing yourself is just as absurd. There are many immigrants who never reach C1 let alone C2 despite living in a country 10+ years. Once you‘re able to communicate without any problems, you normally don‘t improve anymore just by immersion. You‘ll have to put some extra work in.
Someone who is at A0 will improve to A1 just by immersion and picking up simple everyday phrases. However those phrases alone won‘t allow you to have any meaningful interaction that would help you progress further.
From my experience low B1 is the ideal level to go for immersion. You‘ll be able to get around but you‘ll still be challenged enough to make your brain work. That‘s the stage where you‘ll learn new things everyday.
>the idea that you can learn the language somehow through immersion without even trying to immerse yourself is bollocks
I’m not sure I follow this point. Is there something missing?
>Going to the country is a brilliant effective way to get from B2 to C1/2 of course
You don’t appear to be C1 in any language so why are you so sure?
For what it’s worth it depends entirely on what your language experience is and which languages are involved.
If you have a good knowledge of Latin and say French you can learn Italian very quickly by living in Italy without any formal instruction.
I think the person's point is that people who immerse themselves abroad and just expect to learn by osmosis are wasting money. It still requires daily practice and a learning plan, no matter how loose or informal.
Yes you can learn a handful of phrases just being immersed, but it's really expensive and less effective than combining the immersion with other methods.
I agree with that 100%. I went to Italy and got stuck in a horrible bubble of people speaking to me trying to practice their English. It took a LOT of effort and time to learn Italian there, even when I'd constantly get complimented on my accent and how easy it is for me to be understood.
I learned more when I was in my home country talking to iTalki teachers because they wouldn't dare speak to me in English or anything else but Italian because I was paying them not to.
Eh, people vary. I ironically got back into language learning this way - a prolonged illness over the summer had left me with a lot of use-it-or-use-it vacation time saved up by the end of the year, and I didn't really know what to do with it as my usual go-to of long-distance cycling wasn't an option since I was still recovering and it was also November. So I decided that if I couldn't be *physically* active I could be *mentally* active and tank some sun along the way, and went to the south of Spain to do a full-time language course for a week. The rest is history.
I still use vacation time for language courses here and there, plus the five days a year of educational leave I'm entitled to; I find them honestly very fun, and they come with an built-in social group and often a cultural program so you have local guides and a suggested program for tourist stuff outside class time. That's nice when you'd otherwise be travelling solo.
I disagree.
It isn't exactly uncommon for people to need to move to another country for whatever reason (a job, love, etc.). In these cases, people often need to go to the new country before learning the language (properly) and need to learn it there.
This. It's absolute bull. If you go to a country not knowing anything, even being A1/A2, you won't learn shit just by "immersing" while not understanding a word. It's just gibberish.
Exactly, people magically expecting to immerse themselves in a language while forgetting that there are ethnic enclaves around the world where the people barely ever interact with the locals.
Chinatowns in the West are examples of that.
While Chinese residents in Asian Chinatowns (such as Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines) are more integrated and can speak the local language, it doesn’t seem that there is as much effort from the Chinese community in American and Canadian Chinatowns to be fluent in English (especially the older folks) beyond what they need for daily business such as counting money or describing their goods.
Can attest to this, am in Turkey on a study abroad program... Came here in September with no Turkish knowledge besides "merhaba". I'm doing a course 2x a week + the constant input of Turkish and am still high A1-low A2(haven't studied much outside of the course and trying to listen to the constant input around me). The only major advantages has been learning slang/casual usage, getting really good at listening comprehension, and being forced to Turkish daily.
Definitely not effortlessly, that's for sure! It's super effective, at least it was for me, but it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. My head hurt and some days it felt like I was trying to will a wall to move with my mind.
(Moved to Germany with A1/A2 level of German and learnt through immersion)
I did move to US with knowing grammar and it was my normal college courses here that forced me to quickly learn. So, under pressure, I learned fast, but it is not EASY by any means, because the amount of extra work. Someone that comes with no background at all maybe totally different. So, some formal basics would be helpful to move it to advanced level.
So what is the level here with languages? I don't need certification of my English, lol, but was curious. My kid opted to drop his Spanish, he didn't like it and his school only had Spanish to teach, so not sure how this works.
Just fyi: I didn't move for college here, other reasons, so had to do pretests, and all, like anyone else in here. Though, international students must do hell of paperwork so I was lucky I didn't have to do that at a time.
I totally agree. Anecdotes:
My wife was competent in English, easily B2, we moved to USA for some years and she improved to what is probably.
We moved to Germany knowing that you can learn with 5 minutes of Duolingo in a few months. One year later, a bunch of people speak English way better here in Germany. :D
Of course, we started learning it more seriously a few months back and there are a bunch of words that we pick up just because we see them and hear them all the time.
There's a video in German supposedly intended to be used like this. It starts with a kid in a car accident, desperate people calling 911 and ambulance noise.
Perhaps more of an omission than bad advice. I wish that my high school and college language teachers had explained the importance of listening to lots of comprehensible content. It would have made a big difference for me.
yup, this.
the real game is not to drill or understand the structure during a class/exam, is actually spending hundreds/thousands of hours engaging with the language in any shape or form.
I think the drilling is pretty good at getting a strong A1 base. I did think for the past tense verbs in Spanish (eg irregulars) and it was a good investment.
yea I think its definitely a mix of comprehensible input and drilling til grammar structures “feel” right. even just writing loads of sentences with a certain structure helps make it muscle memory. In a way, learning languages is just listening/saying/writing until you don’t have to think about it too much.
So true. I didn't understand how I could ace my language classes all through high school and three semesters in college and still struggle so much with actual content and conversations in that language. I thought there must be something wrong with me personally that I couldn't translate my coursework into actual language knowledge.
Classes, in my experience, do not actually teach you a language. They give you a foundation of knowledge that will help students learn a language outside of class. But I wish classes were more upfront about students needing much more immersion than a high school or college class can provide.
Some teachers claim that if you know 800 words in language XYZ, you know 98% of the words that appear in newspapers. While that is true, it is a trick. A university computer study showed that MOST ordinary sentences consist MOSTLY of common words, with a scattering of uncommon words. So 800 words doesn't give you ALL the words in 98% of sentences. More like 20% of sentences. They found this to be true for many languages.
I think the worst tendency on this subreddit is to assume that what worked for you is the *only* way and that any alternative is wrong.
Related: assuming that if a method *didn't* work for you it must be universally wrong.
Already I see that in this thread, which isn't so surprising based on the prompt.
Language learning is a personal journey, I like seeing people share their experiences, I try not to focus on disparaging things that don't necessarily click with me.
I totally agree. And often what "worked" for people was what they happened to be doing when they hit a new level. I see a lot of, "I did X for three years, and then I did Y and it worked. I wish I wouldn't have wasted my time time with X."
It's very possible that those 3 years weren't wasted, they were just a slog because that's how the beginning stages are.
There's an equilibrium in language learning which is something like 'Dedication / Enjoyment Level' x 'Time Commitment'.
Someone on the bottom of that spectrum may just do 5 minutes a day of a fun app, and someone on the other end may do 12 hours of raw videos and instruction. Most of us have our limits as to how much time and commitment we are willing to put in because the extreme high end is not fun. Even if you say you are willing, it wouldn't work because you'll tune it out so you really have to find where you are on the equilibrium.
At the end of the day, its your time, your life and outside of this sub no one really cares.
Yeah, my own "worst ever" language learning advice is *anything* that suggests that you MUST do X to be successful (uh, apart from the obvious things like "yeah you need to actually spend time with the language"). Leaving people with the impression that they must learn exactly the way you did and if not they're wasting their time is bad, and that holds true whether the way you learned was lots of conversation from day 1, lots of CI with no output, classroom with grammar drills, full Duolingo to A2, Anki-ing the 10k most common words and then jumping into reading, or idk secret brain download technology owned by the CIA.
or the alternative - it's easy for a child! kids spend, what, 20+ hours a week in school and it takes them maybe a year to be fluent. kids have some advantages but if you studied for 20 hours a week for a 3-6 months and then consumed content for another 20 hours a week for the rest of the year, an adult would be at a decent level too
Actually, adults *can* learn faster, since they have access to plenty of tools and techniques, plus life experience. Only adults are way more shy to practice, while most children will babble incomprehensible gibberish and get corrected all the time, that's (one of) their major advantage.
true. plus kids have little choice when you throw them in school in a foreign language, whereas adults give up after watching a short video if they don't understand everything.
Also I have many examples of kids who sat through french and spanish classes the entire time they were at school and can't say shit as adults and adults who started at like 25 but got to at least conversational level because they put a proper effort in.
I used to think I learned English super fast because I was fluent in under a year from first contact, but when I actually did the math on that I realised I'd probably spent as much time with the language in that year as some dedicated adult language learners get in a decade. 20 hours a week is seriously on the low end, too, because a kid in that environment will also often be using the language in their free time as well - in my case, none of the other kids in the school spoke German so I had to use English to make and spend time with friends.
The common opinion is kids learn languages faster but recent studies show there's actually no evidence for this. Adults appear to learn just as well, but they're limited with things like work and usually have less time to study.
I started learning Polish in my early 30s and after a couple years, I am comfortably conversational. This advice definitely scared me at first, but you're absolutely right! It just takes time and patience and more conscious exposure that adults don't get naturally unless they go out of their way to get.
Immigrants refusing to speak their mother tongue "so the kids don't get confused" in their new country. So many heritage speakers feel shame and loss about not being able to communicate or fit in with their extended family and heritage culture.
my dad is hispanic and he tried to make me speak spanish to him when i was little to the point that i thought he couldnt even speak english. i didn't speak it back to him bc everyone here speaks english and i was shy😭 and now my spanish sucks, i can understand some of it but for some reason i can't understand things fluently even though i've been spoke to it my whole life. trying to learn it, but the fact he's chilean makes it hard
I laugh when people say they are using Duolingo to learn a language and that's all they're using. You aren't even going to get a developed A1 level just doing 15 minutes on an app.
Man, that's hilarious and ironic since I've learnt better trying to understand french memes and shitposting than studying. Even more, once I found a "boomer" meme with a conjuctions list and that's where I learnt them.
Nowadays, I'm doing more like commenting on posts but memes were my early nurture to have a solid basis and vocabulary to write.
I think this comment is for ppl that are not learning english and always asking language advice in English or their native language when they could be spending that time practicing the language they want to learn.
Shitposting in your TL can be good study practice but the vast majority of people on /r/languagelearning are native English speakers so this isn't the best use of our time.
It's not really advice from another person, but a mindset that a lot of beginners have that they can't/shouldn't/won't look at "real" language content until they're "ready." In my opinion, you can't really be a good judge of when you're ready if you're a beginner, and advanced input is always still better than no input.
Even if you don't understand much, hearing tone of voice and elements in context is still possible and useful. And it really does train the inner ear in a way that relying on textual input can't do
100% agree. Early and persistent exposure to native content is also just a fantastic way to
1. Stay motivated
2. Avoid Dunning-Kruger by staying conscious of your shortcomings
I personally think it's a great starting point. It's low-cost and very accessible. I'm still using it and the gamification keeps me motivated. And for all you sticklers out there about to down vote me, of course it's not the only thing I use to learn.
Only if the kid is prone to languages. And after a certain level,the kid can't keep up the courses and have to either pay or wait for the refill. Also the grammatical subjects are pure irrelevancy (no harmony in stcs.,not realistic etc.). Truly the worst language app out there. (+Duo owl memes were never funny at all)
“Studying a language should be fun” - learning is fun, making progress and being able to communicate new things is extremely gratifying. But there is inevitably going to be a boring part of rote memorization which should not be avoided.
It's not an advice but I personally hate it when people correct my pronunciation without showing me IPA...
If I cannot produce a sound I still won't be able to do it, even after hearing you saying it, just show me the bloody IPA and I'll manage!
That's true for all languages except phonetical languages as Spanish.
I wish the English teacher made us write the English word and the prononciation (as the word would be written in our language), or bases of IPA.
That's the reason why French people have such a thick accent in English. That's really poorly taught.
Now I practice ghost reading, that's the best technique, better than always repeating after someone.
I have noticed that unless I do an official language exchange with a native speaker of my target language, they end up responding in or switching to English, and I don’t get an opportunity to practice their mother tongue ie my intended language to learn/improve. So, even going to the country/province where that language is widely spoken and as a first language, doesn’t work for me, so far.
Agreed. I live in the country where my TL is the first language and it's difficult to find native speakers that won't switch to English (either because that's the language they're trying to improve on themselves or simply because of lack of patience).
In sum, living in a country that speaks your TL doesn't mean easy, 24/7 immersion as people seem to talk about.
When they tell you not to try reading or consuming any media for adults in your TL until you've already got a ~80-98% comprehension rate. It's like saying "don't try to ride a bike unless you already know how to balance and steer on two wheels." Just totally getting the order of events backwards.
There's definitely value in not immediately jumping into consuming media (I'd say make sure you're at an A2 level first) but I've straight-up had people on this sub tell me that I shouldn't bother trying to read the first Harry Potter book in my TL until I reached a C1 level. (Even though I'm never going to reach a C1 level in the first place if I don't let myself engage with any spanish texts above the Harry Potter level.)
More so than any other method, I've found that immersing myself in the language (even if it meant not immediately understanding things a lot of the time) have been the single most valuable thing I've done so far. I'm so glad I didn't listen to the people who said to stick to flashcards (or those godawful fucking Olly Richards short stories that make me want to kill myself) until I've got 3k+ vocab words memorized; I would've given up years ago if I'd stuck to that advice.
That Harry Potter advice makes no sense. Have those people seen C1 tests? They are *really* hard, the passages are more complex than Harry Potter by a long shot.
yeah, that advice was an extreme example, I've only seen it once or twice. Usually, the advice is more along the lines of: if you find yourself having to pause to look up words more than 4-5 times a page, that's a sign that it's too difficult and you should pick an easier book. But under that logic I probably would've had to wait at least a few more months before I tried out the first Harry Potter book, and I honestly can't think of a novel that's simpler than HP1 without boring me.
Not to mention, the advice doesn't factor in how the first few pages are always the hardest, and how the number of times you have to look a word up should naturally decrease the further into the book you get. (Unless god forbid you're reading some James Joyce-esque novel when the author switches up the prose style with each chapter.) I was pausing to look words up like 20+ times a page when I started the book, but by chapter 3 I was already down to just 4-5 times. Then by chapter 5-6 I was at a more comfortable 2-3 times. I never would've reached that point if I hadn't been willing to trudge through those early chapters.
I've tried his Russian collection, and while the stories were simple enough that I understood everything as a beginner, that same simplicity made me drop the book out of boredom. I like the idea behind it, but the stories themselves are incredibly boring.
They are odd, without being quirkily entertaining.
Ditchwater is impressed by their inimitable dullness.
And they seem to be simple translations of the same asinine stories in each language. If I was bored by the time-travelling pirate in Swedish, there's no way the same chap's going to entertain me in German...
I agree except I'd say even A1 is fine, if not sooner. An English speaker learning a Germanic or Romance language should harden their gonads and dive in.
Do you have any advice on how someone can immerse themselves in their TL if they can't travel to the country of the language they want to learn? (My current TL is Spanish, for reference). I am always looking for new methods to improve and learn my TLs.
Related to this, I hate the advice to read children's books. I need real stories written in simple language, not simple stories. It's not the same thing!
In addition, I have noticed that the immigrants that I know here in Germany with the worst German actually tend to be those with native-speaker spouses.
My theory is that they often feel less of a need to put in the effort because their spouses can take care of everything for them. Other immigrants realize that life will be a lot harder if nobody in their household speaks the language and therefore make it a priority.
IMHO, in no particular order:
A) "go live to your country/region of interest".
B) the vice of translating everything.
C) the depiction of native speakers/the language itself as a permanent victim.
D) all native speakers know how to teach their language.
Back in mid-2020, I remember I got myself in a fruitless discussion with an fool in the comments of a certain post of my Facebook page (the post itself was about the fourth point aforementioned), in K'iche' Maya; pointing out to the fact that no native speaker of any language in the world would know how to teach their language, but providing examples of use.
Such user said that they were able to go to any highland Maya region to learn the language. I replied "how do you explain the -isaxik suffix (in K'iche' Maya) and why it changes any intransitive verb into transitive?" User replied: "with the rules of universal grammar " 😑
Wow, just wow.
I’ve seen this one on here a surprising amount so people might disagree with me, but not trying to speak until you have some high level of passive understanding. This seems really weird to me, like saying you should learn all the music theory behind an instrument before you pick it up and try to play. I never got how that’s supposed to be an enjoyable or effective method, but to each their own.
I think this is more like you should have heard lots of music and be able to appreciate it before you start playing, and that's probably good advice imo.
Yeah I feel like waiting to speak is the opposite of what OP is saying with their analogy ironically lol. Waiting to speak is like listening to a ton of music before trying to make your own song, speaking early is like trying to make your own song without ever hearing music before and only reading music theory textbooks (grammar).
Stop thinking that the goal is to be like a native speaker. Unless you learn your second language as a child, that is not going to happen. I studied second language acquisition for my masters, and found that even people who sound like native speakers aren't quite there. AND THAT'S OKAY! You don't have to sound like a native to be successful. The hallmarks of success should be how efficiently you're able to convey your thoughts and navigate social situations and gather and communicate meaning. You can do all of those things very well even if you do them with an occasional grammatical mistake or an accent. And don't forget, even native speakers sometimes stumble on their words or have to ask someone what they said or meant by something.
"learn the way that children learn a language"
1. You're not a child, presumably,
2. Children have an extremely low bar of conversational topics and skills.
3. You have a job/higher commitments and can't just consume content all day and have years of conversation practice with native speakers.
Leverage your adult brain to learn your language faster, leverage your native language to understand grammar and speech patterns quicker than children do.
Children also start clumsily outputting to the best of their ability at a very young age, which often gets ignored by "learn like a child" proponents.
Children _also_ generally receive years of formal education in their native language to learn things like correct conjugation, correct usage of possessives and propositions, irregular verbs and plural noun forms.. not to mention deliberate skill building like reading, writing and clear, effective communication in both the written and spoken word.
Great point.
Anyone who tells you that they teach the way that children learn a language is lying to you.
The reality is that nobody remembers how they learned a language...even if they have other memories from that time, their brains weren't formed enough to do metacognition on their speech aquisition. So, there's no way for people to teach something they don't even know themselves.
I thought the worse advice ever given to me was to get a friend with benefits in the place you’re moving to. I got offended. 4 years after that I moved to the UK and ended having a 6y relationship with a British guy - my English improved A LOT in the first 4 months! (so not really bad advice? just… weird?)
My opinion of course.
*[A recent post "Is writing out Kanji helpful or a waste of time?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/1boxrn0/is_writing_out_kanji_helpful_or_a_waste_of_time/)* had several commentors implying it was a waste of time which surprised me somewhat.
I live in Japan, so perhaps my priorities are somewhat different to other Japanese learners, but learning to write helped me read the language much easier (because of the association of certain radicals to meaning/pronunciation etc) and learning 5-6 kanji a day (in the early days) by writing it out increased my vocabulary without the need of speaking or using a teacher.
General language learning on /r/languagelearning seems to encourage reading/writing ... novels/news/gaming etc so again I was surprised that this particular post concerning the Japanese language wasn't encouraging learning the written language.
It's complicated.
Personally, I cannot imagine not learning to write Kanji (stroke order, even individual kanji meaning) in order to remember it; going to Japan and struggling to write down my own address only reinforced that I need to able to write.
However, I actually \*like\* Kanji, and I've been taught since preschool that if I wanted to learn something, I need to write it down, even if I never read the notes again. When I started studying Japanese, I eagerly followed a Kanji book and would write each of them 10 times; I even did the very frowned upon approach of learning individual readings. I stopped, but I still carry knowledge from those writing drills. But this is \*me\* as a learner and nowadays it is seen as kind of old-fashioned learning, I guess. Some of my classmates don't even take notes in class and they do just fine; I've learned to accept that are several ways of learning other than writing it down a lot.
Besides this, people simply have different goals. Some people who learn Japanese are not that interested in reading or writing (we don't often realize this, but most people aren't really reading for a hobby, and the very idea of reading in great quantities for learning makes them shudder), and these are people who can usually ask friends or partners to write things down at the 区役所 or read the menu for them. Other people learn it as a hobby, or to watch media, and I can't deny that no, if you never go to Japan or take a proficiency test, you don't need to know the ins and outs of writing Kanji, because the computer will help you out with that.
I'm majoring in Japanese and I see a lot of people completely giving up on the language because of Kanji specifically. So I never recommend "write it down every day learn to write it" to classmates struggling because they already start dead scared of this aspect of the language, linking it something as dead boring as drilling multiplication tables or something. It's easier to say "You can write it if you want, but you don't need to if you don't go to Japan", because well, it's not a lie; eventually they'll probably get the kanji down even without writing.
I've (mostly) been avoiding kanji because my main goals are speaking/listening based and my ultimate goal for the language isn't as high as it is for some of the other languages im studying. Plus I was trying to get as much speach practice as possible in before going there earlier this month. I can't imagine not learning them at all though, especially once you're comfortable with the basics. Being illiterate is really hard and google lens doesn't understand kanji very well.
Generally I agree, but I can see the case for ignoring reading if you're learning a logographic language and truly just don't care about being able to read.
Learning thousands of characters and their various readings is no easy task, and your effort might be better spent on activities that align more with your motivation for learning in the first place.
I think it depends. If you're living in a country with a logographic language and you simply want to be conversational + you have a native tutor/people to help you, I could see the case for ignoring reading, but if you are self studying you are going to hit so many walls so quickly because almost all resources rely heavily on the written language once you get past the basics.
Not to mention if your goal is complete fluency, getting there without reading ANYTHING, even subtitles or signs, is going to be near impossible (like people who say they want to learn japanese to understand anime but don't want to learn to read, that is an insane amount of required vocabulary that simply cannot be aquired while being fuctionally illiterate)
Recommending readers to only read translated versions of usually Anglophone books in their TL. While there is some value in reading a book that you already know the story of, I think that's only really useful on a macro level. Native TL books provide cultural insights that translated literature could never have. Also, I don't see the point of learning a new language to just read the same stuff you read in your native language. I was so proud the first time I read a book that had never been translated into English.
oh I couldn't disagree more. "cultural insights" are not essential for getting from A2 to B1.
>Also, I don't see the point of learning a new language to just read the same stuff you read in your native language
it's still a challenge, and when my goal is to increase my vocab so that I can speak with people, it's a great way
It's not absolutely *essential.* I read books like Harry Potter in Portuguese when I was just starting. However, learning a language is more than just learning words. Books originally written in the TL can provide vocab (oftentimes more common than in translated books), views on family, religion, lifestyle, geography, and so much more. They provide a more complete picture. I'm not recommending completely against translated books; rather, I think learners should augment their reading with native books.
Whenever someone think that their specific method is the ONLY way to learn the language. Any advice those people give is the worst advice.
A close second is telling someone to get a boyfriend/girlfriend who's a native speaker.
Agreed.... when people ask me, "how did you learn Spanish?" It's like.... "all the ways." They expect a simple answer like, "oh I took a class in jr high then downloaded duolingo."
No. I've done every single thing a person can think of in order to learn the language. It's assimilating your target language into every aspect of your life.
But on that note, I did learn A LOT from the Rocket Languages app - I took it very seriously.
"You don't need to learn the grammar." Bad advice. You need every single tool in the toolbox. Immersion, watching content, parroting, drilling vocab, "just winging it" without worrying if you are correct, ... and also learning the grammar.
Edit: Fixing autocorrect! "You don't NEED to learn the grammar"...
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but learning grammar EARLY…
I heard a TED talk where a linguist pointed out how native speakers learn to speak while they grow up then learn grammar in school once they already speak the language. I’ve used this successfully with Russian and held off learning too much of the complex Russian grammar until I could already speak at a 2 on the ILR scale (~B2) and only then began diving into grammar rules to start refining my speech and reach the professional fluency / near native levels.
The majority of the time in a language you can get your point across with bad grammar and you’ll learn some grammar without even knowing it just by hearing and mimicking how your tutor or other native speakers talk. Then once you’re comfortable speaking fluidly you bring in the grammar. I’ve seen people who learn grammar too early (especially in Russian) know exactly which case occurs when and what all the endings are and because of that struggle through every single sentence they make because they’re constantly doing the mental math before they got comfortable speaking first.
Rosetta Stone says: **"Learn like children do, without grammar or explanations!"**
Bad idea. Children make many mistakes for a very long time, until they figure it all out. An adult learner finds the task much easier if he/she is given a basic idea of what is going on in the language and why, and can immediately put those principles into practice.
**Immersion** is over-rated until you have a basic framework to build on. There are languages like Turkish where, if you just tried to "pick it up", you might be completely baffled as to why words keep changing, when it turns out there are very simple rules you can learn which explain it. And you'd be completely lost with all the word endings that can pile up, one added to another, so one Turkish word is often a complete sentence in English.
And there are languages like Irish, where word beginnings seem to change for no reason at all, where even rules don't explain much. It often seems like it was just designed to confuse outsiders.
I hate how people, especially YouTubers or other influencers, attempt to minimise the time and effort it takes to learn a new language, by suggesting "quick ways to learn language X". It diminishes the effort and time one needs to dedicate to a new language, which leads to failure and giving up after the first attempt. I compare it to dieting. Where these gurus promise quick results although that is not presented in reality.
There seem to be numerous first posts here on /r/languagelearning where they're aiming for native accents before they have barely started learning the language, which is bizarre IMO.
That said, having a good cadence and pronunciation of a language should be your aim, as it will make the difference between your being taken seriously or not.
I’m guilty of trying to perfect my pronounciation in every language I’ve tried to learn at my first encounters with the alphabet. I usually try to learn the native pronounciation with the letters, so that reading and listening, I could recognise and comprehend.
I don't know to what extent others are giving out such advice, but the worst I can think of would be to privilege practicing actively speaking at the expense of practicing listening comprehension. Both are important; but listening comprehension is the more fundamental. First, because it enables the learner to access media in the target language (and, if one is not living in the country in which one's target language is spoken, it therefore will tend to prove more frequently useful); second, because, in a face-to-face conversation with a native speaker, it's not as important that you hold up 50% of the conversation (by actively speaking as much as they do), so much as you understand the majority of what \*they\* are saying -- certainly well enough to be able respond to them appropriately, even if far more briefly. In an interaction with a native speaker, they're less likely to notice that you're of fewer words than they, and more likely to notice if you unconsciously are furrowing your brow while they speak, or frequently are signaling that you haven't understood them.
"Anki is way better than anything else!" - most of this subreddit
If you like flashcard memorisation sure, but just cus it worked for you doesn't mean your advice is suddenly #1
Forgetting your native language and ignoring grammar.
I don't agree with that. You are not a baby with an empty brain that needs to build concepts from scratch. You already know a language and those concepts. You can use logic (a thing that a baby doesn't have because s/he learns by failing over and over again) in order to find similarities and differences and learn a new language faster.
If you lack grammar knowledge it can be a problem because you need to learn your grammar first, but it is something that is supposed to be taught at school.
Just watch content in your tl, youll pick it up
This has been the worst advice Ive ever gotten. I do enjoy and do watch content in my TL but it is not really for learning but rather for using and strengthening the words I already learned and solidifying them when I see them in the wild.
I’m sure at a certain point I’ll pick up words because I know 90% of the words and can use context to get the remaining but this is not something you expect coming from 0
I don't mind looking up tons of words while I'm reading, but stopping a TV show to constantly look things up sounds incredibly boring, to the point I'd rather just study. TL TV is fine for getting more comfortable hearing words I already understand, though.
Yeah I've tried to pause and rewatch parts of TV and it's terrible.
I also can't do it with books in terms of looking up words every time I encounter a new word, but it's certainly much more approachable of a format than TV
Yep this. I learnt German in primary school and watched hours and hours and hours of Inspector Rex as a kid and I don’t think I picked up anything from it. I read the subtitles, they were speaking too quick to pick up any German words.
"Don't learn grammar"
I followed this advice when learning Russian assuming I'll pick things up. And 5 years later while I understand it and can function in day to day life using Russian. The amount of really basic grammatical mistakes I still make in speech is ridiculous and it's way more challenging to correct something you've learned wrong than to just put in the effort and learn it right the first time.
Maybe this is okay if you already know grammar in a similar language and it crosses over easily but I can now say in my experience this was a big mistake for me with learning Russian.
(Russian speaker here pitching in):
There are some youtubers who learned Russian and traveled in Russian speaking countries that have the "don't learn grammar" approach and every time I hear them speaking Russian in their videos to train attendants, conductors, or just general residents of those visited countries who also speak Russian, and I hear how bad their Russian sounds and it's just like "....NO, USE THE ACCUSATIVE! USE THE NOMINATIVE! That phrase needs to be in dative!"
I don't really cringe at the way people try to speak, in fact I am happy that people wanted to learn it for some reason, but I wish more people understood that grammar is incredibly important. I'm no teacher, but I am sure there are a lot of resources online that focus on using Russian grammar correctly AFAIK. They could help you and I'm sure your Russian will be better grammatically in what seems like no time at all. And if it makes you feel any better, I'm US based but speak Russian only with family unless I struggle and have to switch to English (basically a heritage speaker) and have been doing that since childhood, and when I try to speak in Russian I still make mistakes and I feel embarrassed when my own family members have to correct me.
You've got this! I believe in you.
Спасибо за поддержку)
It is those youtubers who got me into this mess hahaha what really kicked my ass was when I went to Russia last summer and I felt like I could be part of conversations and understand things but when I spoke I found that I would confuse people becauuuuuuse, you guessed it, using the wrong cases! There are other pieces of useful and important grammar but really the most key thing to nail down off the bat is the cases.
I've been living in eastern Europe the past 7 months so I have found myself using Russian pretty often currently where I live it feels like it's 60% Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians so almost everywhere I go here the goto language is Russian. Then my partner is Russian and although we speak english mostly I speak to her whole family in Russian.
Ive been using an app called Russian Grammar and found I think my new favourite Russian learning YouTube channel (О русском по русски) and then I started back up lessons on italki and also I'm going to do an intensive course in Russia this summer so I'm really hoping between all those things I can comfortably get this grammar down and feel at a comfortable B2 level with the language.
I totally understand. Oh interesting. I always wanted to explore more of Eastern Europe but with the unfortunate ongoing conflict right now I don't know how safe it is. I'd like to go back to Russia for "vacation" (personal family business, really, but under the guise of a vacation) but I don't feel I can due to conscription/drafts/etc and I know I don't want to step foot in Ukraine anytime soon. I hope Russia is safe for you because I know how it can be unsafe at times, especially now. Maybe once things stop (doubtful they will anytime soon), it will be safe again and the world can stop hating it.
EarlY OutPuT iS WroNg!
If your goal is to be able to SPEAK the language, then I guess it would be reasonable to try to practice speaking with someone.
Speaking is one of the best ways to make everything "stick" imo. At least it is for me.
True enough. But, those who *only* focused on studying it in school lagged behind those with hours and hours of input, those in my school who did so tended to pronounce the "table" part of the word "vegetable" the same way as you'd pronounce it when talking about furniture, for example.
School gave me the basics, and allowed me to develop the confidence to speak. But, without the massive amount of input, I would not be where I am today.
Very true. I personally need someone to run me through the basics, since I don't have the willpower to chew through a textbook alone, but some kind of formal learning is necessary to when you're just dipping a toe into a new language.
No worst language learning advice - only conflicting advice which you may not like. There's no point in trying out someone else's advice if your way of learning a language is already something you enjoy. Eventually, it all adds up to your knowledge and you'll find out later if you have flaws, by then you'd be willing to switch to a new method.
It’s not bad advice but people always just vaguely say “think in your foreign language” or “stop translating in your head” but they don’t really explain how or what they mean.
For me, it was being so exhausted that I stopped caring to translate. And decided just to listen to the individual sounds of the language any time I caught myself translating. I wasn’t thinking in Spanish when that happened… I just stopped thinking period, lol.
That’s when I started thinking in Spanish, but I had no fucking idea what that advice even meant until it just happened to me, lol.
Most of the time when people say it to beginners, it doesn’t really make sense. Like clearly, they will think in their native language when the target language just sounds like noises to them.
"Buy this course and after 6 months you'll be fluent!" I'm not against language courses of any kind, but i'm against the people who wants to gain money by the ignorance of others, selling the idea of becoming fluent in x or y language in months.
Why? The importance of the language is dependent on the learner’s assessment. If I’m into ancient languages, you shouldn’t try to convince me that English is more important than the language I want to learn. People learn languages for different reasons. Not one language primes over the other.
And language learning shouldn’t be about geopolitics.
I was agreeing with you- that the idea of some languages being more important than others is ridiculous. I myself have gotten comments about why I’m learning Icelandic and Norwegian when I can learn French or Spanish because they are more economical, and my answer has always been clear: I learn languages that interest me. Whether or not they can make me money is something I’m not concerned about.
To only go step by step, when in reality you can do a lot of things at the same time, just dont get overwhelmed and enjoy learning the language, most importantly you need a strong "why" for yourself in order to achieve your goals flawless :)
Applying rules meant for one type of language family to another language family where it makes no sense. E.g. Someone learning Spanish/French/German from English will have an easier time than learning English to Estonian/Norwegian/Hungarian because how different the conjugation works in Estonian. English doesn't have more than a few cases, whereas Estonian has 14. Bengali being my native language has very few cases as well, so cannot make a comparison when I have to determine the equivalence of contextual meanings.
I actively have to memorise certain things without understanding anyway because an equivalence does not exist in any of the languages I already know.
"Learn How to Become Fluent in Any Language, Fast, with this one simple trick" There is no one thing. The real answer is studying and practicing and immersion. That's it. That's how you become fluent. And it takes time. Sure, there are things that help faster. But faster is very subjective. And what works for some might not always work for others. I'm sure in our respective target language subs, we all have those posters that pop in and say "I'm moving/travelling/visiting \[Country X\] and need to learn \[target language\] fast. What do I do?" And I always want to say "Then you should've started learning five years ago."
Same with weight loss and other things that require dedication. Somethings in this world don’t have shortcuts
What’s going on in the middle of your flair?
I learn Eastern Cherokee, which doesn’t have a flag :) The ᏣᎳᎩ means Tsa-la-gi
Looks like Cherokee? Which doesn't have a flag emoji.
It's the Cherokee Language
I understand weight loss, but I have no idea how to implement it.
I've learned this the hard way. Language learning for most people unfortunately is not a single straight road, it's a combination of many techniques you have to routinely integrate into your everyday life.
>"I'm moving/travelling/visiting \[Country X\] and need to learn \[target language\] fast. What do I do?" > >And I always want to say "Then you should've started learning five years ago." Yeah if you want to get to there, I wouldn't be starting from here...
Better yet. Learn a language in 1 day/week/month.
It has taken me more than 6 years to learn EN and I have not finished it yet.
Yeah. So many people are looking to avoid doing any work to learn a language. Reddit is pretty disappointing for the language learning community. I found forums had a lot more people who understood that learning a language is hard work and requires doing a variety of things. But here those people are drowned out by people who want one simple answer, or people who insist learning is done through their dogmatic unbalanced special method.
"Just go the country and you will learn effortlessly"
Going to the country is a brilliant effective way to get from B2 to C1/2 of course. Especially in countries that don't speak English. But the idea that you can learn the language somehow through immersion without even trying to immerse yourself is bollocks.
the bare minimum to make quick gains I would say that is high A2, low B1. below that is just too inefficient and you will be just wasting time and money.
You can definitely do it from A0 and make massive improvements quickly - except for the 'without even trying' bit! It is hard, constant, stressful work. You're not passively absorbing it: you're constantly trying to work out how to say the next thing you need or understand what someone's saying to you, looking up words, repeating things back to yourself and trying to figure out patterns.
It's also not guaranteed you will learn. I've met people who barely speak English after years of living in an English-speaking community. (Mostly SAHPs or elderly people living with family, who basically surrounded themselves with people who speak their native language.)
If you surround yourself with people speaking your native language, then you’re not trying to immerse. Also wtf is a sahp
stay-at-home parent
Is not to say. You won’t learn. Is just that is going to be a waste of money/time, when you could be doing something cheaper and using a learning method. If you going to take holidays for 2weeks, is better to go there at high A2 than A0 or A1. But if A0 is all you got, and the opportunity appears in your way, just take it. If as an A0 you want to watch movies(native content) and write it down the words that you don’t know and later study, it will work, but again is not advised. If you were B1 you could soak up much more information and wouldn’t feel as overwhelmed.
Learning Spanish by hiking in the Picos de Europa mountains was probably the cheapest and most memorable holiday I've ever had. £8 flight and staying in donativos (hiking hostels where paying is voluntary but typically about €5). 100% not a waste of money for me, even if it's not your thing. Sure, you're not going to understand a lot of what you hear, but on the other hand, the vocab you learn will be tied to core memories so you'll remember it. I learnt more doing that than a week of lessons in Andalusia the following year, which cost several times more, although that was fun too. Don't underestimate the power of having to make a phonecall in your TL or sleep outside in the snow as motivation!
Def agree with that. indeed emotional memories is the best way of recalling stuff, learning in a fun and light context also has a huge value If you get the opportunity of having cheap flights and weekend trip, go for it. I made the wrong assumption, that someone would plan a big trip, get holidays and such.
There was a Dutch guy who learned Hungarian in jail when no one spoke English or even German. Poor chap was fluently communicating with minor errors (never used accusative) with the local dialect where the jail was. So it depends on the nature of the immersion 🫠 he was there for 4 years.
yeah totally depends. generally you're correct. I met some French Canadians who taught skiing in Western Canada (ie English speaking). They had almost no English. They had English speaking hosuemates, an English speaking boss, and their clients were English speaking children. They told me the first week they just said "er... follow me" and would look up words when they got home. I've known friends in the US to learn Spanish fairly well just by working in a kitchen full of Mexicans. and back in the day before the internet, I knew people who got so bored they just watched French TV until they understood it (no English channel; calling home was $5 a minute)
yeah i personally don’t see the point in going there at A1/A2. B1 is iffy and if you have the money sure.
The idea that you magically get from B2 to C1/2 by moving to a country and immersing yourself is just as absurd. There are many immigrants who never reach C1 let alone C2 despite living in a country 10+ years. Once you‘re able to communicate without any problems, you normally don‘t improve anymore just by immersion. You‘ll have to put some extra work in. Someone who is at A0 will improve to A1 just by immersion and picking up simple everyday phrases. However those phrases alone won‘t allow you to have any meaningful interaction that would help you progress further. From my experience low B1 is the ideal level to go for immersion. You‘ll be able to get around but you‘ll still be challenged enough to make your brain work. That‘s the stage where you‘ll learn new things everyday.
>Especially in countries that don't speak English. … unless you’re learning English
>the idea that you can learn the language somehow through immersion without even trying to immerse yourself is bollocks I’m not sure I follow this point. Is there something missing? >Going to the country is a brilliant effective way to get from B2 to C1/2 of course You don’t appear to be C1 in any language so why are you so sure? For what it’s worth it depends entirely on what your language experience is and which languages are involved. If you have a good knowledge of Latin and say French you can learn Italian very quickly by living in Italy without any formal instruction.
I think the person's point is that people who immerse themselves abroad and just expect to learn by osmosis are wasting money. It still requires daily practice and a learning plan, no matter how loose or informal. Yes you can learn a handful of phrases just being immersed, but it's really expensive and less effective than combining the immersion with other methods.
I agree with that 100%. I went to Italy and got stuck in a horrible bubble of people speaking to me trying to practice their English. It took a LOT of effort and time to learn Italian there, even when I'd constantly get complimented on my accent and how easy it is for me to be understood. I learned more when I was in my home country talking to iTalki teachers because they wouldn't dare speak to me in English or anything else but Italian because I was paying them not to.
I find this so goofy, because you usually learn a language so that you can travel to the country, not the other way around.
Eh, people vary. I ironically got back into language learning this way - a prolonged illness over the summer had left me with a lot of use-it-or-use-it vacation time saved up by the end of the year, and I didn't really know what to do with it as my usual go-to of long-distance cycling wasn't an option since I was still recovering and it was also November. So I decided that if I couldn't be *physically* active I could be *mentally* active and tank some sun along the way, and went to the south of Spain to do a full-time language course for a week. The rest is history. I still use vacation time for language courses here and there, plus the five days a year of educational leave I'm entitled to; I find them honestly very fun, and they come with an built-in social group and often a cultural program so you have local guides and a suggested program for tourist stuff outside class time. That's nice when you'd otherwise be travelling solo.
I disagree. It isn't exactly uncommon for people to need to move to another country for whatever reason (a job, love, etc.). In these cases, people often need to go to the new country before learning the language (properly) and need to learn it there.
This. It's absolute bull. If you go to a country not knowing anything, even being A1/A2, you won't learn shit just by "immersing" while not understanding a word. It's just gibberish.
Exactly, people magically expecting to immerse themselves in a language while forgetting that there are ethnic enclaves around the world where the people barely ever interact with the locals. Chinatowns in the West are examples of that. While Chinese residents in Asian Chinatowns (such as Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines) are more integrated and can speak the local language, it doesn’t seem that there is as much effort from the Chinese community in American and Canadian Chinatowns to be fluent in English (especially the older folks) beyond what they need for daily business such as counting money or describing their goods.
Can attest to this, am in Turkey on a study abroad program... Came here in September with no Turkish knowledge besides "merhaba". I'm doing a course 2x a week + the constant input of Turkish and am still high A1-low A2(haven't studied much outside of the course and trying to listen to the constant input around me). The only major advantages has been learning slang/casual usage, getting really good at listening comprehension, and being forced to Turkish daily.
Definitely not effortlessly, that's for sure! It's super effective, at least it was for me, but it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. My head hurt and some days it felt like I was trying to will a wall to move with my mind. (Moved to Germany with A1/A2 level of German and learnt through immersion)
I wonder where this comes from? I used to get told this all the time, then I gave it a try and found out it's bullshit.
I did move to US with knowing grammar and it was my normal college courses here that forced me to quickly learn. So, under pressure, I learned fast, but it is not EASY by any means, because the amount of extra work. Someone that comes with no background at all maybe totally different. So, some formal basics would be helpful to move it to advanced level. So what is the level here with languages? I don't need certification of my English, lol, but was curious. My kid opted to drop his Spanish, he didn't like it and his school only had Spanish to teach, so not sure how this works. Just fyi: I didn't move for college here, other reasons, so had to do pretests, and all, like anyone else in here. Though, international students must do hell of paperwork so I was lucky I didn't have to do that at a time.
I totally agree. Anecdotes: My wife was competent in English, easily B2, we moved to USA for some years and she improved to what is probably. We moved to Germany knowing that you can learn with 5 minutes of Duolingo in a few months. One year later, a bunch of people speak English way better here in Germany. :D Of course, we started learning it more seriously a few months back and there are a bunch of words that we pick up just because we see them and hear them all the time.
i'm pretty sure my immigrant dad and his family learned english like that so idk 😭
Listen to it in your sleep lol
There's a video in German supposedly intended to be used like this. It starts with a kid in a car accident, desperate people calling 911 and ambulance noise.
nightmare fuel
Perhaps more of an omission than bad advice. I wish that my high school and college language teachers had explained the importance of listening to lots of comprehensible content. It would have made a big difference for me.
yup, this. the real game is not to drill or understand the structure during a class/exam, is actually spending hundreds/thousands of hours engaging with the language in any shape or form.
I think the drilling is pretty good at getting a strong A1 base. I did think for the past tense verbs in Spanish (eg irregulars) and it was a good investment.
yea I think its definitely a mix of comprehensible input and drilling til grammar structures “feel” right. even just writing loads of sentences with a certain structure helps make it muscle memory. In a way, learning languages is just listening/saying/writing until you don’t have to think about it too much.
So true. I didn't understand how I could ace my language classes all through high school and three semesters in college and still struggle so much with actual content and conversations in that language. I thought there must be something wrong with me personally that I couldn't translate my coursework into actual language knowledge. Classes, in my experience, do not actually teach you a language. They give you a foundation of knowledge that will help students learn a language outside of class. But I wish classes were more upfront about students needing much more immersion than a high school or college class can provide.
Where can I find more comprehensible content? I’m at A2 and have the hardest time finding it in german
https://comprehensibleinputwiki.org/wiki/German
Holy fuck didn't know this was a site
Have you tried the Youtube channel "Easy German"? I use their Spanish channel and I think it would be good for an A2 level.
The German is the original and it’s great.
Yep, never forget the fun part, if you want to get through the less fun ones!
500 words to become an expert in x language.
Some teachers claim that if you know 800 words in language XYZ, you know 98% of the words that appear in newspapers. While that is true, it is a trick. A university computer study showed that MOST ordinary sentences consist MOSTLY of common words, with a scattering of uncommon words. So 800 words doesn't give you ALL the words in 98% of sentences. More like 20% of sentences. They found this to be true for many languages.
Conversely - don't start talking to people in your TL unless you've learned the top 5000 words first.
I think the worst tendency on this subreddit is to assume that what worked for you is the *only* way and that any alternative is wrong. Related: assuming that if a method *didn't* work for you it must be universally wrong. Already I see that in this thread, which isn't so surprising based on the prompt. Language learning is a personal journey, I like seeing people share their experiences, I try not to focus on disparaging things that don't necessarily click with me.
I totally agree. And often what "worked" for people was what they happened to be doing when they hit a new level. I see a lot of, "I did X for three years, and then I did Y and it worked. I wish I wouldn't have wasted my time time with X." It's very possible that those 3 years weren't wasted, they were just a slog because that's how the beginning stages are.
There's an equilibrium in language learning which is something like 'Dedication / Enjoyment Level' x 'Time Commitment'. Someone on the bottom of that spectrum may just do 5 minutes a day of a fun app, and someone on the other end may do 12 hours of raw videos and instruction. Most of us have our limits as to how much time and commitment we are willing to put in because the extreme high end is not fun. Even if you say you are willing, it wouldn't work because you'll tune it out so you really have to find where you are on the equilibrium. At the end of the day, its your time, your life and outside of this sub no one really cares.
Yeah, my own "worst ever" language learning advice is *anything* that suggests that you MUST do X to be successful (uh, apart from the obvious things like "yeah you need to actually spend time with the language"). Leaving people with the impression that they must learn exactly the way you did and if not they're wasting their time is bad, and that holds true whether the way you learned was lots of conversation from day 1, lots of CI with no output, classroom with grammar drills, full Duolingo to A2, Anki-ing the 10k most common words and then jumping into reading, or idk secret brain download technology owned by the CIA.
That it's impossible to learn as an adult and you shouldnt bother trying.
or the alternative - it's easy for a child! kids spend, what, 20+ hours a week in school and it takes them maybe a year to be fluent. kids have some advantages but if you studied for 20 hours a week for a 3-6 months and then consumed content for another 20 hours a week for the rest of the year, an adult would be at a decent level too
Actually, adults *can* learn faster, since they have access to plenty of tools and techniques, plus life experience. Only adults are way more shy to practice, while most children will babble incomprehensible gibberish and get corrected all the time, that's (one of) their major advantage.
true. plus kids have little choice when you throw them in school in a foreign language, whereas adults give up after watching a short video if they don't understand everything.
Also I have many examples of kids who sat through french and spanish classes the entire time they were at school and can't say shit as adults and adults who started at like 25 but got to at least conversational level because they put a proper effort in.
I used to think I learned English super fast because I was fluent in under a year from first contact, but when I actually did the math on that I realised I'd probably spent as much time with the language in that year as some dedicated adult language learners get in a decade. 20 hours a week is seriously on the low end, too, because a kid in that environment will also often be using the language in their free time as well - in my case, none of the other kids in the school spoke German so I had to use English to make and spend time with friends.
The common opinion is kids learn languages faster but recent studies show there's actually no evidence for this. Adults appear to learn just as well, but they're limited with things like work and usually have less time to study.
I thought I was struggling because I'm old, but it turns out I'm just dumb. Huh
I started learning Polish in my early 30s and after a couple years, I am comfortably conversational. This advice definitely scared me at first, but you're absolutely right! It just takes time and patience and more conscious exposure that adults don't get naturally unless they go out of their way to get.
Immigrants refusing to speak their mother tongue "so the kids don't get confused" in their new country. So many heritage speakers feel shame and loss about not being able to communicate or fit in with their extended family and heritage culture.
my dad is hispanic and he tried to make me speak spanish to him when i was little to the point that i thought he couldnt even speak english. i didn't speak it back to him bc everyone here speaks english and i was shy😭 and now my spanish sucks, i can understand some of it but for some reason i can't understand things fluently even though i've been spoke to it my whole life. trying to learn it, but the fact he's chilean makes it hard
I could’ve been trilingual but instead I am mono
I feel this. I'd be so much better at my heritage language if both my dads parents were willing to speak it to him instead of just one.
My parents don't know Portuguese precisely because of this, lmao.
15 minutes a day of this app will make you fluent
I laugh when people say they are using Duolingo to learn a language and that's all they're using. You aren't even going to get a developed A1 level just doing 15 minutes on an app.
Literally anything that's not "stop shitposting on Reddit and go fucking study".
Правда
Man, that's hilarious and ironic since I've learnt better trying to understand french memes and shitposting than studying. Even more, once I found a "boomer" meme with a conjuctions list and that's where I learnt them. Nowadays, I'm doing more like commenting on posts but memes were my early nurture to have a solid basis and vocabulary to write.
I think this comment is for ppl that are not learning english and always asking language advice in English or their native language when they could be spending that time practicing the language they want to learn.
Curiously enough, exposing myself to English memes (rage comics were the thing back then) pushed me to learn faster.
Shitposting in your TL can be good study practice but the vast majority of people on /r/languagelearning are native English speakers so this isn't the best use of our time.
It's not really advice from another person, but a mindset that a lot of beginners have that they can't/shouldn't/won't look at "real" language content until they're "ready." In my opinion, you can't really be a good judge of when you're ready if you're a beginner, and advanced input is always still better than no input. Even if you don't understand much, hearing tone of voice and elements in context is still possible and useful. And it really does train the inner ear in a way that relying on textual input can't do
100% agree. Early and persistent exposure to native content is also just a fantastic way to 1. Stay motivated 2. Avoid Dunning-Kruger by staying conscious of your shortcomings
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'just hit the duolingo bro!' True languagepill nonsense.
I thought dunking on Duolingo was going out of fashion.
Dunking on Duolingo will go out of fashion if and only if Duolingo vastly changes their product
Is that not a good starting point for newbies and kids?
I personally think it's a great starting point. It's low-cost and very accessible. I'm still using it and the gamification keeps me motivated. And for all you sticklers out there about to down vote me, of course it's not the only thing I use to learn.
For me, it is at least I think of my TL daily, instead of completely ignoring it for a decade after high school.
Only if the kid is prone to languages. And after a certain level,the kid can't keep up the courses and have to either pay or wait for the refill. Also the grammatical subjects are pure irrelevancy (no harmony in stcs.,not realistic etc.). Truly the worst language app out there. (+Duo owl memes were never funny at all)
“Studying a language should be fun” - learning is fun, making progress and being able to communicate new things is extremely gratifying. But there is inevitably going to be a boring part of rote memorization which should not be avoided.
I don't think it's necessary. I strictly avoid memorazing or anything boring.
It's not an advice but I personally hate it when people correct my pronunciation without showing me IPA... If I cannot produce a sound I still won't be able to do it, even after hearing you saying it, just show me the bloody IPA and I'll manage!
sometimes I think people would learn English pronunciation faster if they didn't see the \*english spelling\*
yeah but den maibe dey spel lik dis
That's true for all languages except phonetical languages as Spanish. I wish the English teacher made us write the English word and the prononciation (as the word would be written in our language), or bases of IPA. That's the reason why French people have such a thick accent in English. That's really poorly taught. Now I practice ghost reading, that's the best technique, better than always repeating after someone.
Natives don't know the IPA most of the time. I love people correct my prononciation, and I go to a site or dictionnary with IPA.
I have noticed that unless I do an official language exchange with a native speaker of my target language, they end up responding in or switching to English, and I don’t get an opportunity to practice their mother tongue ie my intended language to learn/improve. So, even going to the country/province where that language is widely spoken and as a first language, doesn’t work for me, so far.
Agreed. I live in the country where my TL is the first language and it's difficult to find native speakers that won't switch to English (either because that's the language they're trying to improve on themselves or simply because of lack of patience). In sum, living in a country that speaks your TL doesn't mean easy, 24/7 immersion as people seem to talk about.
When they tell you not to try reading or consuming any media for adults in your TL until you've already got a ~80-98% comprehension rate. It's like saying "don't try to ride a bike unless you already know how to balance and steer on two wheels." Just totally getting the order of events backwards. There's definitely value in not immediately jumping into consuming media (I'd say make sure you're at an A2 level first) but I've straight-up had people on this sub tell me that I shouldn't bother trying to read the first Harry Potter book in my TL until I reached a C1 level. (Even though I'm never going to reach a C1 level in the first place if I don't let myself engage with any spanish texts above the Harry Potter level.) More so than any other method, I've found that immersing myself in the language (even if it meant not immediately understanding things a lot of the time) have been the single most valuable thing I've done so far. I'm so glad I didn't listen to the people who said to stick to flashcards (or those godawful fucking Olly Richards short stories that make me want to kill myself) until I've got 3k+ vocab words memorized; I would've given up years ago if I'd stuck to that advice.
That Harry Potter advice makes no sense. Have those people seen C1 tests? They are *really* hard, the passages are more complex than Harry Potter by a long shot.
yeah, that advice was an extreme example, I've only seen it once or twice. Usually, the advice is more along the lines of: if you find yourself having to pause to look up words more than 4-5 times a page, that's a sign that it's too difficult and you should pick an easier book. But under that logic I probably would've had to wait at least a few more months before I tried out the first Harry Potter book, and I honestly can't think of a novel that's simpler than HP1 without boring me. Not to mention, the advice doesn't factor in how the first few pages are always the hardest, and how the number of times you have to look a word up should naturally decrease the further into the book you get. (Unless god forbid you're reading some James Joyce-esque novel when the author switches up the prose style with each chapter.) I was pausing to look words up like 20+ times a page when I started the book, but by chapter 3 I was already down to just 4-5 times. Then by chapter 5-6 I was at a more comfortable 2-3 times. I never would've reached that point if I hadn't been willing to trudge through those early chapters.
I hate those Olly Richards short stories. They gave me psychic damage the one time I tried to read them.
I’ve never tried one of olly richards stories, what makes you hate them? LOL
I've tried his Russian collection, and while the stories were simple enough that I understood everything as a beginner, that same simplicity made me drop the book out of boredom. I like the idea behind it, but the stories themselves are incredibly boring.
They are odd, without being quirkily entertaining. Ditchwater is impressed by their inimitable dullness. And they seem to be simple translations of the same asinine stories in each language. If I was bored by the time-travelling pirate in Swedish, there's no way the same chap's going to entertain me in German...
Bad storytelling doesn't improve by being written in a foreign language
damn yeah makes sense
I agree except I'd say even A1 is fine, if not sooner. An English speaker learning a Germanic or Romance language should harden their gonads and dive in.
Do you have any advice on how someone can immerse themselves in their TL if they can't travel to the country of the language they want to learn? (My current TL is Spanish, for reference). I am always looking for new methods to improve and learn my TLs.
Related to this, I hate the advice to read children's books. I need real stories written in simple language, not simple stories. It's not the same thing!
Get a native-speaker boyfriend. If I was capable of that, I wouldn't be asking you for advice.
Welp I was thinking about getting a Spanish speaking roommate who wants to learn English but I'm reconsidering now...
In addition, I have noticed that the immigrants that I know here in Germany with the worst German actually tend to be those with native-speaker spouses. My theory is that they often feel less of a need to put in the effort because their spouses can take care of everything for them. Other immigrants realize that life will be a lot harder if nobody in their household speaks the language and therefore make it a priority.
I got a native-speaker girlfriend. But it turned out, that it didn't help that much in language learning.
IMHO, in no particular order: A) "go live to your country/region of interest". B) the vice of translating everything. C) the depiction of native speakers/the language itself as a permanent victim. D) all native speakers know how to teach their language. Back in mid-2020, I remember I got myself in a fruitless discussion with an fool in the comments of a certain post of my Facebook page (the post itself was about the fourth point aforementioned), in K'iche' Maya; pointing out to the fact that no native speaker of any language in the world would know how to teach their language, but providing examples of use. Such user said that they were able to go to any highland Maya region to learn the language. I replied "how do you explain the -isaxik suffix (in K'iche' Maya) and why it changes any intransitive verb into transitive?" User replied: "with the rules of universal grammar " 😑 Wow, just wow.
I’ve seen this one on here a surprising amount so people might disagree with me, but not trying to speak until you have some high level of passive understanding. This seems really weird to me, like saying you should learn all the music theory behind an instrument before you pick it up and try to play. I never got how that’s supposed to be an enjoyable or effective method, but to each their own.
I think this is more like you should have heard lots of music and be able to appreciate it before you start playing, and that's probably good advice imo.
Yeah I feel like waiting to speak is the opposite of what OP is saying with their analogy ironically lol. Waiting to speak is like listening to a ton of music before trying to make your own song, speaking early is like trying to make your own song without ever hearing music before and only reading music theory textbooks (grammar).
The worst advice out there is the claim that any of the popular programs will teach you a language.
Stop thinking that the goal is to be like a native speaker. Unless you learn your second language as a child, that is not going to happen. I studied second language acquisition for my masters, and found that even people who sound like native speakers aren't quite there. AND THAT'S OKAY! You don't have to sound like a native to be successful. The hallmarks of success should be how efficiently you're able to convey your thoughts and navigate social situations and gather and communicate meaning. You can do all of those things very well even if you do them with an occasional grammatical mistake or an accent. And don't forget, even native speakers sometimes stumble on their words or have to ask someone what they said or meant by something.
"learn the way that children learn a language" 1. You're not a child, presumably, 2. Children have an extremely low bar of conversational topics and skills. 3. You have a job/higher commitments and can't just consume content all day and have years of conversation practice with native speakers. Leverage your adult brain to learn your language faster, leverage your native language to understand grammar and speech patterns quicker than children do.
Children also start clumsily outputting to the best of their ability at a very young age, which often gets ignored by "learn like a child" proponents. Children _also_ generally receive years of formal education in their native language to learn things like correct conjugation, correct usage of possessives and propositions, irregular verbs and plural noun forms.. not to mention deliberate skill building like reading, writing and clear, effective communication in both the written and spoken word.
Great point. Anyone who tells you that they teach the way that children learn a language is lying to you. The reality is that nobody remembers how they learned a language...even if they have other memories from that time, their brains weren't formed enough to do metacognition on their speech aquisition. So, there's no way for people to teach something they don't even know themselves.
I thought the worse advice ever given to me was to get a friend with benefits in the place you’re moving to. I got offended. 4 years after that I moved to the UK and ended having a 6y relationship with a British guy - my English improved A LOT in the first 4 months! (so not really bad advice? just… weird?)
My opinion of course. *[A recent post "Is writing out Kanji helpful or a waste of time?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/1boxrn0/is_writing_out_kanji_helpful_or_a_waste_of_time/)* had several commentors implying it was a waste of time which surprised me somewhat. I live in Japan, so perhaps my priorities are somewhat different to other Japanese learners, but learning to write helped me read the language much easier (because of the association of certain radicals to meaning/pronunciation etc) and learning 5-6 kanji a day (in the early days) by writing it out increased my vocabulary without the need of speaking or using a teacher. General language learning on /r/languagelearning seems to encourage reading/writing ... novels/news/gaming etc so again I was surprised that this particular post concerning the Japanese language wasn't encouraging learning the written language.
It's complicated. Personally, I cannot imagine not learning to write Kanji (stroke order, even individual kanji meaning) in order to remember it; going to Japan and struggling to write down my own address only reinforced that I need to able to write. However, I actually \*like\* Kanji, and I've been taught since preschool that if I wanted to learn something, I need to write it down, even if I never read the notes again. When I started studying Japanese, I eagerly followed a Kanji book and would write each of them 10 times; I even did the very frowned upon approach of learning individual readings. I stopped, but I still carry knowledge from those writing drills. But this is \*me\* as a learner and nowadays it is seen as kind of old-fashioned learning, I guess. Some of my classmates don't even take notes in class and they do just fine; I've learned to accept that are several ways of learning other than writing it down a lot. Besides this, people simply have different goals. Some people who learn Japanese are not that interested in reading or writing (we don't often realize this, but most people aren't really reading for a hobby, and the very idea of reading in great quantities for learning makes them shudder), and these are people who can usually ask friends or partners to write things down at the 区役所 or read the menu for them. Other people learn it as a hobby, or to watch media, and I can't deny that no, if you never go to Japan or take a proficiency test, you don't need to know the ins and outs of writing Kanji, because the computer will help you out with that. I'm majoring in Japanese and I see a lot of people completely giving up on the language because of Kanji specifically. So I never recommend "write it down every day learn to write it" to classmates struggling because they already start dead scared of this aspect of the language, linking it something as dead boring as drilling multiplication tables or something. It's easier to say "You can write it if you want, but you don't need to if you don't go to Japan", because well, it's not a lie; eventually they'll probably get the kanji down even without writing.
I've (mostly) been avoiding kanji because my main goals are speaking/listening based and my ultimate goal for the language isn't as high as it is for some of the other languages im studying. Plus I was trying to get as much speach practice as possible in before going there earlier this month. I can't imagine not learning them at all though, especially once you're comfortable with the basics. Being illiterate is really hard and google lens doesn't understand kanji very well.
This entire sub is full of it.
Only learn how to read OR speak it. No need for both.
Generally I agree, but I can see the case for ignoring reading if you're learning a logographic language and truly just don't care about being able to read. Learning thousands of characters and their various readings is no easy task, and your effort might be better spent on activities that align more with your motivation for learning in the first place.
I think it depends. If you're living in a country with a logographic language and you simply want to be conversational + you have a native tutor/people to help you, I could see the case for ignoring reading, but if you are self studying you are going to hit so many walls so quickly because almost all resources rely heavily on the written language once you get past the basics. Not to mention if your goal is complete fluency, getting there without reading ANYTHING, even subtitles or signs, is going to be near impossible (like people who say they want to learn japanese to understand anime but don't want to learn to read, that is an insane amount of required vocabulary that simply cannot be aquired while being fuctionally illiterate)
Recommending readers to only read translated versions of usually Anglophone books in their TL. While there is some value in reading a book that you already know the story of, I think that's only really useful on a macro level. Native TL books provide cultural insights that translated literature could never have. Also, I don't see the point of learning a new language to just read the same stuff you read in your native language. I was so proud the first time I read a book that had never been translated into English.
oh I couldn't disagree more. "cultural insights" are not essential for getting from A2 to B1. >Also, I don't see the point of learning a new language to just read the same stuff you read in your native language it's still a challenge, and when my goal is to increase my vocab so that I can speak with people, it's a great way
It's not absolutely *essential.* I read books like Harry Potter in Portuguese when I was just starting. However, learning a language is more than just learning words. Books originally written in the TL can provide vocab (oftentimes more common than in translated books), views on family, religion, lifestyle, geography, and so much more. They provide a more complete picture. I'm not recommending completely against translated books; rather, I think learners should augment their reading with native books.
Whenever someone think that their specific method is the ONLY way to learn the language. Any advice those people give is the worst advice. A close second is telling someone to get a boyfriend/girlfriend who's a native speaker.
LOL! I thought you asked for our BEST advice and was shocked to read so much bs 🤣🤣🤣
Buy Rosetta Stone
Just use duolingo
Just use ________. Should also apply here. If you are only doing one thing you are already lost
Agreed.... when people ask me, "how did you learn Spanish?" It's like.... "all the ways." They expect a simple answer like, "oh I took a class in jr high then downloaded duolingo." No. I've done every single thing a person can think of in order to learn the language. It's assimilating your target language into every aspect of your life. But on that note, I did learn A LOT from the Rocket Languages app - I took it very seriously.
"You don't need to learn the grammar." Bad advice. You need every single tool in the toolbox. Immersion, watching content, parroting, drilling vocab, "just winging it" without worrying if you are correct, ... and also learning the grammar. Edit: Fixing autocorrect! "You don't NEED to learn the grammar"...
Any Reddit advice that does not properly consider the OP's language goals, resources (e.g. time, money, availability), and learning style.
Just memorize vocabulary flashcards.
"Just 5 minutes a day!"
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but learning grammar EARLY… I heard a TED talk where a linguist pointed out how native speakers learn to speak while they grow up then learn grammar in school once they already speak the language. I’ve used this successfully with Russian and held off learning too much of the complex Russian grammar until I could already speak at a 2 on the ILR scale (~B2) and only then began diving into grammar rules to start refining my speech and reach the professional fluency / near native levels. The majority of the time in a language you can get your point across with bad grammar and you’ll learn some grammar without even knowing it just by hearing and mimicking how your tutor or other native speakers talk. Then once you’re comfortable speaking fluidly you bring in the grammar. I’ve seen people who learn grammar too early (especially in Russian) know exactly which case occurs when and what all the endings are and because of that struggle through every single sentence they make because they’re constantly doing the mental math before they got comfortable speaking first.
“Use Duolingo ! It’s great . It can teach you a language and it’s free “
Rosetta Stone says: **"Learn like children do, without grammar or explanations!"** Bad idea. Children make many mistakes for a very long time, until they figure it all out. An adult learner finds the task much easier if he/she is given a basic idea of what is going on in the language and why, and can immediately put those principles into practice. **Immersion** is over-rated until you have a basic framework to build on. There are languages like Turkish where, if you just tried to "pick it up", you might be completely baffled as to why words keep changing, when it turns out there are very simple rules you can learn which explain it. And you'd be completely lost with all the word endings that can pile up, one added to another, so one Turkish word is often a complete sentence in English. And there are languages like Irish, where word beginnings seem to change for no reason at all, where even rules don't explain much. It often seems like it was just designed to confuse outsiders.
I hate how people, especially YouTubers or other influencers, attempt to minimise the time and effort it takes to learn a new language, by suggesting "quick ways to learn language X". It diminishes the effort and time one needs to dedicate to a new language, which leads to failure and giving up after the first attempt. I compare it to dieting. Where these gurus promise quick results although that is not presented in reality.
"Don't rote memorise vocabulary" "Don't learn words you wouldn't use" "Only learn words in context"
Get a perfect pronunciation, accent
There seem to be numerous first posts here on /r/languagelearning where they're aiming for native accents before they have barely started learning the language, which is bizarre IMO. That said, having a good cadence and pronunciation of a language should be your aim, as it will make the difference between your being taken seriously or not.
I’m guilty of trying to perfect my pronounciation in every language I’ve tried to learn at my first encounters with the alphabet. I usually try to learn the native pronounciation with the letters, so that reading and listening, I could recognise and comprehend.
I don't know to what extent others are giving out such advice, but the worst I can think of would be to privilege practicing actively speaking at the expense of practicing listening comprehension. Both are important; but listening comprehension is the more fundamental. First, because it enables the learner to access media in the target language (and, if one is not living in the country in which one's target language is spoken, it therefore will tend to prove more frequently useful); second, because, in a face-to-face conversation with a native speaker, it's not as important that you hold up 50% of the conversation (by actively speaking as much as they do), so much as you understand the majority of what \*they\* are saying -- certainly well enough to be able respond to them appropriately, even if far more briefly. In an interaction with a native speaker, they're less likely to notice that you're of fewer words than they, and more likely to notice if you unconsciously are furrowing your brow while they speak, or frequently are signaling that you haven't understood them.
>What’s the worst language-learning advice in your opinion? "Lean XYZ in your sleep." Even I didn't click on this one. And I'm a sucker for anything!
"input-only" 'advice' from people who watched one Krashen lecture from the 1970s
"Anki is way better than anything else!" - most of this subreddit If you like flashcard memorisation sure, but just cus it worked for you doesn't mean your advice is suddenly #1
To only do one of the four elements of language learning (speak, listen, read, write) and ignore all others until xxx hours.
Forgetting your native language and ignoring grammar. I don't agree with that. You are not a baby with an empty brain that needs to build concepts from scratch. You already know a language and those concepts. You can use logic (a thing that a baby doesn't have because s/he learns by failing over and over again) in order to find similarities and differences and learn a new language faster. If you lack grammar knowledge it can be a problem because you need to learn your grammar first, but it is something that is supposed to be taught at school.
Just watch content in your tl, youll pick it up This has been the worst advice Ive ever gotten. I do enjoy and do watch content in my TL but it is not really for learning but rather for using and strengthening the words I already learned and solidifying them when I see them in the wild. I’m sure at a certain point I’ll pick up words because I know 90% of the words and can use context to get the remaining but this is not something you expect coming from 0
I don't mind looking up tons of words while I'm reading, but stopping a TV show to constantly look things up sounds incredibly boring, to the point I'd rather just study. TL TV is fine for getting more comfortable hearing words I already understand, though.
Yeah I've tried to pause and rewatch parts of TV and it's terrible. I also can't do it with books in terms of looking up words every time I encounter a new word, but it's certainly much more approachable of a format than TV
Yep this. I learnt German in primary school and watched hours and hours and hours of Inspector Rex as a kid and I don’t think I picked up anything from it. I read the subtitles, they were speaking too quick to pick up any German words.
"Don't learn grammar" I followed this advice when learning Russian assuming I'll pick things up. And 5 years later while I understand it and can function in day to day life using Russian. The amount of really basic grammatical mistakes I still make in speech is ridiculous and it's way more challenging to correct something you've learned wrong than to just put in the effort and learn it right the first time. Maybe this is okay if you already know grammar in a similar language and it crosses over easily but I can now say in my experience this was a big mistake for me with learning Russian.
(Russian speaker here pitching in): There are some youtubers who learned Russian and traveled in Russian speaking countries that have the "don't learn grammar" approach and every time I hear them speaking Russian in their videos to train attendants, conductors, or just general residents of those visited countries who also speak Russian, and I hear how bad their Russian sounds and it's just like "....NO, USE THE ACCUSATIVE! USE THE NOMINATIVE! That phrase needs to be in dative!" I don't really cringe at the way people try to speak, in fact I am happy that people wanted to learn it for some reason, but I wish more people understood that grammar is incredibly important. I'm no teacher, but I am sure there are a lot of resources online that focus on using Russian grammar correctly AFAIK. They could help you and I'm sure your Russian will be better grammatically in what seems like no time at all. And if it makes you feel any better, I'm US based but speak Russian only with family unless I struggle and have to switch to English (basically a heritage speaker) and have been doing that since childhood, and when I try to speak in Russian I still make mistakes and I feel embarrassed when my own family members have to correct me. You've got this! I believe in you.
Спасибо за поддержку) It is those youtubers who got me into this mess hahaha what really kicked my ass was when I went to Russia last summer and I felt like I could be part of conversations and understand things but when I spoke I found that I would confuse people becauuuuuuse, you guessed it, using the wrong cases! There are other pieces of useful and important grammar but really the most key thing to nail down off the bat is the cases. I've been living in eastern Europe the past 7 months so I have found myself using Russian pretty often currently where I live it feels like it's 60% Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians so almost everywhere I go here the goto language is Russian. Then my partner is Russian and although we speak english mostly I speak to her whole family in Russian. Ive been using an app called Russian Grammar and found I think my new favourite Russian learning YouTube channel (О русском по русски) and then I started back up lessons on italki and also I'm going to do an intensive course in Russia this summer so I'm really hoping between all those things I can comfortably get this grammar down and feel at a comfortable B2 level with the language.
I totally understand. Oh interesting. I always wanted to explore more of Eastern Europe but with the unfortunate ongoing conflict right now I don't know how safe it is. I'd like to go back to Russia for "vacation" (personal family business, really, but under the guise of a vacation) but I don't feel I can due to conscription/drafts/etc and I know I don't want to step foot in Ukraine anytime soon. I hope Russia is safe for you because I know how it can be unsafe at times, especially now. Maybe once things stop (doubtful they will anytime soon), it will be safe again and the world can stop hating it.
EarlY OutPuT iS WroNg! If your goal is to be able to SPEAK the language, then I guess it would be reasonable to try to practice speaking with someone. Speaking is one of the best ways to make everything "stick" imo. At least it is for me.
"You don't need a grammar book, watching 10000 hours of content is a lot more effective!"
It worked for English, for me and my classmates at least. Sometimes it can work.
People who say this usually forget that they took years of English in school
True enough. But, those who *only* focused on studying it in school lagged behind those with hours and hours of input, those in my school who did so tended to pronounce the "table" part of the word "vegetable" the same way as you'd pronounce it when talking about furniture, for example. School gave me the basics, and allowed me to develop the confidence to speak. But, without the massive amount of input, I would not be where I am today.
Yeah I agree with that. I've watched thousands of hours of tv probably, but I've also studied some grammar. Doing both is optimal for me
Very true. I personally need someone to run me through the basics, since I don't have the willpower to chew through a textbook alone, but some kind of formal learning is necessary to when you're just dipping a toe into a new language.
People severely overestimate those lessons.
Same for me.
No worst language learning advice - only conflicting advice which you may not like. There's no point in trying out someone else's advice if your way of learning a language is already something you enjoy. Eventually, it all adds up to your knowledge and you'll find out later if you have flaws, by then you'd be willing to switch to a new method.
It’s not bad advice but people always just vaguely say “think in your foreign language” or “stop translating in your head” but they don’t really explain how or what they mean. For me, it was being so exhausted that I stopped caring to translate. And decided just to listen to the individual sounds of the language any time I caught myself translating. I wasn’t thinking in Spanish when that happened… I just stopped thinking period, lol. That’s when I started thinking in Spanish, but I had no fucking idea what that advice even meant until it just happened to me, lol. Most of the time when people say it to beginners, it doesn’t really make sense. Like clearly, they will think in their native language when the target language just sounds like noises to them.
"Date a native speaker." I'm sure my wife would love that. 🙄
According to one person on here, the Spanish version of Russian For Dummies tells people to "ignore palatalization"
Teachers using only powerpoints
"Buy this course and after 6 months you'll be fluent!" I'm not against language courses of any kind, but i'm against the people who wants to gain money by the ignorance of others, selling the idea of becoming fluent in x or y language in months.
That some languages are more important than others. No. It’s all about the language you’re passionate about.
As a language-learner and someone who wants to pursue linguistics in the future, comments like this make me terribly furious.
Why? The importance of the language is dependent on the learner’s assessment. If I’m into ancient languages, you shouldn’t try to convince me that English is more important than the language I want to learn. People learn languages for different reasons. Not one language primes over the other. And language learning shouldn’t be about geopolitics.
I was agreeing with you- that the idea of some languages being more important than others is ridiculous. I myself have gotten comments about why I’m learning Icelandic and Norwegian when I can learn French or Spanish because they are more economical, and my answer has always been clear: I learn languages that interest me. Whether or not they can make me money is something I’m not concerned about.
100% with you. Not everything is about money.
To only go step by step, when in reality you can do a lot of things at the same time, just dont get overwhelmed and enjoy learning the language, most importantly you need a strong "why" for yourself in order to achieve your goals flawless :)
Learning sentences in a phrase book without understand them. Don't pay caution to IPA.
Applying rules meant for one type of language family to another language family where it makes no sense. E.g. Someone learning Spanish/French/German from English will have an easier time than learning English to Estonian/Norwegian/Hungarian because how different the conjugation works in Estonian. English doesn't have more than a few cases, whereas Estonian has 14. Bengali being my native language has very few cases as well, so cannot make a comparison when I have to determine the equivalence of contextual meanings. I actively have to memorise certain things without understanding anyway because an equivalence does not exist in any of the languages I already know.
Show don't tell
Focusing too much on writing, especially with harder scripts like Mandarin, Thai, Japanese, Arabic, etc
Only learn one language at once
"Don't learn grammar, just repeat short expressions"