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Have you learned a foreign language as an adult? What did you find effective?
I would love to know of your experiences. I do speak multiple languages, but was lucky to learn them through immersion as a child.
I would be super interested to know how people learn languages (with a goal to speak them fluently) as an adult. What techniques worked? What techniques didn't? Do you have any funny stories (perhaps miscommunication anecdotes)? Was it worth it? Or your things generally in relation to language-learning!
Not me but my husband. He watches television and plays videogames in the target language. He meets native speakers who want to learn English and they trade conversation practice time using video chat. He found one online source for language partners but there might be more. He uses the anki app to create flash cards on his phone. I'm not sure what he does for grammar study but it seems effective.
This was essentially what I did to learn Japanese. Except instead of conversation practice over video chat, I played online games and read and wrote Japanese to talk to other players.
Dedicated study was mainly Anki for vocabulary 15+ minutes a day over many years, not a small commitment. Japanese grammar is relatively simple and well-behaved, I used only Tae Kim's guide. It was worth it to me, because I was still mostly doing fun things that I wanted to do with it.
My spoken Japanese is halting and I bet awkward (the few times I actually get to use it), reading is good (I've done some translation to English before), and people understand my written Japanese fine (though I'm not anywhere near as expressive in it as I am in English.)
I've been able to get away with using mostly kudaketa and not worrying about keigo and more polite forms because I've only used Japanese in casual settings. (The translation I've done was paid work, but for acquaintances.) Yeah, I imagine you have to be a lot more careful with grammar in say a business setting.
In my case I've only written Japanese in online games and emails to those acquaintances (they were friends of a friend). I was very obviously the gaijin and most folks were understanding (in fact many gamers were surprised I could write Japanese as well as I did) and I rolled with it. I never tried to speak like a native, it was very much my pace.
I was never comfortable with switching between forms. Kudaketa felt most 'natural' to me, in that it seemed to me most analogous to how I'd talk to English-speaking gamers in English. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have felt that way if it were native speakers talking to each other though (at least while everyone's still unfamiliar with each other), most of the time I might've been the only one in the team/guild/etc who could get away with so much of it lol. I played around with colloquialisms and silly puns too, basically taking advantage of my 'diplomatic immunity' to have fun and play around with the language. I felt it was fine, you can stay respectful through the content of your words (e.g. joking about the game and not about the people), not simply their form.
I used teineigo occasionally to make requests. The jump from kudaketa to teineigo felt odd, but I wanted to be careful for requestd (especially while working on the translations). Again it was trusting that the other party understood where I was coming from and that they don't mind.
I do plan on visiting Japan someday, and even if it's far in a progressive future I absolutely will be starting with teineigo with strangers lol.
I learned how to read French in 2020 during the early days of the pandemic by using LingQ and that was about it. I ended up writing my own translation of the French version of Foundation by Asimov by the end of it, now I passively read French news and various content on a semirehular basis. I can't particularly speak it (no one around me is interested), and I can understand when spoken or sung at times (but not as well), but I have never had such a remarkable and fast learning experience as when I used that service. Well worth the money ($10-12/mo). It's hard at first, but revolutionary in the way it teaches you.
I've tried it for Japanese, but had some problems (you def need to learn the basics before) and just that is a herculean task in itself.
Edit: Steve Kaufman, a polyglot, created it. Here is a decent video explaining the strategy of learning by reading source materials, and not worrying about grammar rules.
Wow, LingQ looks awesome, how have I not heard of this before? I've been wanting to learn a new language but I haven't quite known where to start so I think I'll try this out.
One thing I would recommend if you would like to improve your listening with French is basically transcribing things you listen to. Start with things that are quite slow and basic and play them as many times as you need until you're confident you've transcribed everything as accurately as you can. It looks like audio on LingQ come with transcripts so what you then want to do is listen again while reading the provided transcript and note where your transcription differs from the official one. Re-listen to those bits to get a really good idea of how they sound. Do this as often as possible, slowly increasing the speed and difficulty of the things you're listening to.
This really levelled up my listening skills to the point where they're on par with my reading skills, i.e. the only things that impedes me is not knowing a word or expression rather than not being able to parse the words.
Just a warning, it's daunting at first, because there are no instructions, no tidbits of knowledge, it's 100% in the language of your choice. Even the tutorial on how to use the site is your very first lesson! Over time you will begin to learn more and more and in time you won't have to work so hard, but the first two months are rough to say the least. The color coding and word creation are valuable, and don't be afraid to update, add, or use the community definitions. It's a puzzle, take it slow and figure out where all the pieces fit.
Saving this comment for the future, there's a decent chance I need to learn a new language as an adult and it's a daunting task.
I concur with the "wow"! I'm surprised it has Finnish courses. I'm definitely trying this, thanks!
Started learning Spanish as my 4th language at 30, I'm now fluent at 33. What worked for me was classes - I'm rubbish at learning by myself and Duolingo is a joke. I also watched movies with Spanish subtitles and listened to music in Spanish, and once I got to about B1 level, I started reading books in Spanish too (YA novels mostly, nothing too complicated).
The biggest 'upgrade' I got was when I befriended a girl who only spoke Spanish (Ecuadorian, too, so a different accent than I was used to), so I either had to speak Spanish as well or there was no way for us to communicate. I wasn't as self conscious as I would normally be, because I knew she knew that I was making the effort for her, and for some reason, she talked like she normally would and didn't adjust her language at all. After a few coffee hangouts where I had no idea what she was talking about 80% of the time, I slowly got better at the whole thing. She recently moved away and now my spoken Spanish is deteriorating again; in fact, I need to start working on it or I'll lose it.
The service my husband uses is www.mylanguageexchange.com and he has met friends and acquaintances. I am sure there are also other options
I’m currently learning Norwegian. I’ve been using Memrise, Duolingo, and Anki flashcards for vocab, using youtube videos and reading childrens books and now newspapers to try to get grammar down, and have been fortunate enough to travel to Oslo a couple times this year to practice! I enjoy watching tv shows and listening to music in norsk mainly to track where my comprehension is at.
This video sums up my experience learning languages pretty well. Tldr: Input is everything. That said, I am in my early twenties so take that as you may.
I'm currently in the middle of ASL 101 at a local community college, and I feel like it helps a lot, especially because you're forced to communicate with people. I'm also learning Japanese and have Korean on deck, so I can hopefully speak the "big 3" Asian languages by the time I'm 30! I think immersion is the biggest thing you'd probably want to focus on, but I'm also using Duolingo and Lingodeer for Japanese.
I learned Spanish by following language courses and watching movies/TV in Spanish.
I tried Duolingo before that but that doesn't work at all. You learn to play the game, not learn the language. It's really easy to play Duolingo and get all the answers right but you still won't know the language after doing that for months.
Thinking about it, i have to agree with you about Duolingo, It felt more like a game trying to get into the higher leagues. You do learn some words and some phrases stick but it doesnt feel right?. Know what i mean?.
That's the thing, Duolingo IS a game. The things you learn just don't stick. I always got perfect scores with it and I had a very long streak but I still couldn't hold any kind of conversation in Spanish. It took less time to follow one basic Spanish course and it was much more effective as well.
I use Duolingo to learn enough to start learning myself, when I get the basic structure and most common verbs and adverbs down, I can "just" start reading the language and after that it's a matter of picking up vocabulary.
Speaking is a whole different thing though =)
It can help to build up your vocabulary but if you're serious about learning another language I wouldn't waste too much time on Duolingo. Follow a real language course instead. It takes more effort and the good ones aren't free but it's worth it in my opinion.
Do you find any of the other available apps actually more effective? (even though many are only meant to be supplements)
I've only tried a couple (several years ago) but they're all too gamey in my opinion. Out of all the apps I've tried I do think Duolingo is the best option but I don't think it can properly teach you a language on its own. I would follow a proper language course and use Duolingo as an extra for when you have some spare time to kill. I would sometimes use Duolingo at work during my break or when there was nothing to do. At home, I would follow the language course. The only issue I had with that was the different rates at which the language course and Duolingo would progress through the material. Sometimes the language course would move on to more difficult stuff and Duolingo would linger in the basics with no real way to skip to the more advanced stuff so eventually I stopped using Duolingo entirely.
I've personally had pretty good success with Duolingo, but I think a lot of people end up in a failure mode where you can trick yourself into thinking you're making progress when you aren't. For example, you can game the rankings by reviewing a beginner lesson over and over, and you'll get lots of points for that but won't learn much. Doing one lesson per day to keep up a streak is the same way. But if you sit down and do multiple new lessons each day, you slowly pick up the language. It's never going to be as effective as a class or immersion, but it's much easier to fit into a busy lifestyle.
I was in French immersion as a child and (egotistically) thought I could learn Chinese (traditional - not mainland) being surrounded by it.
So.... Wrong....
Anyways, I eventually got a job that gave me time to take classes. I did pretty immersive classes for a year and a half. The things that helped me most were just speaking the little I knew and getting used to getting into uncomfortable conversations. Chinese is a very hard language to go to from English. There are no verb tenses, and 90% of the characters have no real meaning on their own. You have to learn to recognize the often-complex characters and develop your own meaning as pnemonics. My school used quizlet and I'd recommend it. You make flip cards (or they're made for you) and from that it makes matching games, etc... My reading skill is quite good, but my grammar is meh. Also my vocab is not super but with certain topics I can discuss things with decent depth.
You have to take classes for it because even if you got the vocab down, grammar is very important.
As for funny stories - when I first moved here, my gf playfully told me I was a pig (here it just means lazy) so, I turned her sentence around. First I told her she was a cow - but she said that just means strong and hard-working. So then I told her she was a chicken (you're yelluh - that's what I was thinking). She immediately hit me. It turns out calling a girl 'a chicken' means they're a prostitute.
I think even for languages that don't have the massively difficult aspect of hanzi, people overestimate how much just being surrounded by a language is to learning.
Yeah, it will often push you from absolutely zero knowledge to A1 or maybe even A2, but your brain doesn't absorb language unless it needs to use it for something. This has been my current struggle, living in Germany with German that's more than sufficient for getting groceries and ordering food, but woefully insufficient for holding conversations. If I don't need to hold conversations in German, my brain is perfectly content not learning how. I'm currently trying to break over the hump of motivating myself to put in the effort to learn German beyond the bare minimum I'm at, but it unfortunately takes a lot more than just being surrounded by it.
I did study Mandarin Chinese in college though and it definitely put my German learning into perspective. They both have things that are really difficult to learn as an English speaker, but there's very little overlap in which things!
I agree. I was fully immersed in the language when I moved and could do basic stuff, like buy things, but after 2 years my language skills had not progressed at all. Taking classes moved me from essentially illiterate to - well, not great but still OK on certain topics and I can read a large number of characters. I only did immersion for a year and a half but it progressed my language skills immensely.
I wish I could find decent classes here. Back when I was actively studying Mandarin I managed to barely scrape into B1 level almost because the program was pretty intense (and time-consuming), but I dropped it to study German when I decided to move here and I've definitely regressed a lot since. Of course, I should probably be focusing on learning German anyway, seeing as that's the more directly relevant language atm, but it's irritating to know that my options here aren't that good if I did want to get back into it... unless I coerce my Taiwanese friend here to be my language partner lol
I can't recommend much because there really are only 2 series of books for learning traditional Chinese and they're both outdated. The main books are OK, but once you get to book 4 it pretty much turns into learning University-style Chinese while having missed many basics. Most of the books go via the typical Taiwanese 'if you can't memorize it then it's your fault' style of teaching. You'll get random vocab that is brought up once and never again until 2 books later. Still, it's good for learning grammar rules which is one thing you HAVE to learn.
Check out Teng Shin-Hsou 'A course in contemporary Chinese'. There's tons of additional study material made by people trying to study it available online. We'd spend about a week full-time doing each unit so plan accordingly.
I'm much more interested in the grammar rules side of things anyway tbqh. I've spent my share of time on Chinese grammar wiki lol! I studied simplified characters in college which I think made finding writing textbooks easier (though our speaking/listening textbooks were horribly outdated 👀).
Does 23-25yo is considered adult? If so, then yes.
Previous comments already mentioned it but: immersion and motivation.
I tried different courses, few technics, but, unfortunately it doesn't help very much. Even speaking with native speakers does not help. Now I understand that lack of motivation (at that times) is a reason why it doesn't help.
I started writing all the small notes in different language, started learning lyrics of songs, changed default language in phone, PC, to language that I want to learn, started writing comments, reading articles, books (quite slow and hard way, but I was lucky that some of the best books was written in different language), also started watching movies in different language with subtitles in different language. I`m quite happy with the results. Not sure how long it take, probably few years. I definitely did not learn language consciously, it happens like organically I suppose?
After about 6 or 7 months living in Korea and studying it fairly seriously, I found I was able to understand much of what my friends would talk about. Immersion is great, but it is not necessarily sufficient in itself (and not always feasible). Reading a variety of materials and writing and talking about them will help build your vocabulary and sense in the language (I'm sure there are more technical terms used for this). I think this is especially helpful for native speakers of Indo-European languages learning Korean since it is kind of in its own linguistic universe. Learning the language and internalizing its logic requires some degree of acculturation, I think.
I documented my first three months of «speed learning» Russian here on tildes: https://tildes.net/~humanities.languages/12ed/from_beginner_to_conversational_in_three_months_of_learning_russian_my_takeaways
In it I talk a lot about motivation and technique.
I'm a really lazy language learner, and probably not that good at it. I speak pretty decent Japanese, but that's largely a mix of growing up with it and being forced to use it at work.
I "tried" learning Swedish (one of the easier languages for a native English speaker), in Sweden, dating a girl who taught Swedish to immigrants, and basically got nowhere (though my pronunciation was quite decent supposedly) because I'm terribly inconsistent with effort.
So, I'm very excited that for the first time in my life, I'm making real progress learning Russian via self study using some pirated pimsleur CDs. It's pretty slow, but the focus on pronunciation and the consistent spaced repetition (each lesson rehashes parts of all the previous lessons) means that for a lazy and inconsistent person like me, so long as I do a lesson a day, I'm actually progressing and the things I learn are actually sticking.
Sure, it's limited, and it doesn't teach you to read or write (learning to read Cyrillic took all of an afternoon), but I love that for very little time out of my day, and absolutely no stress, I am making very slow, but steady progress.