Multilingual people of Lemmy who learned a language (or multiple) as adults, how did you do it?
I wish we as society could simply have one language to overcome language barriers, but that's more of a content for my daydreaming.
I often encounter issues due to language barriers.
Mainly with 2 languages.
Since the start of war, I've been encountering lots of Ukrainians I can't really speak with. Especially when I was on a dorm, where they were a great majority.
Not that I tend to talk with people, but I felt weird after a while.
Probably like someone who doesn't speak Spanish in the US (at least I assume that's fairly common over there).
And now searching for a job, I found many companies want you to know German.
Which I also encountered as "would've been useful now" a few times.
Seems like I should know an answer to this, as English isn't my first language, but I have no fucking idea how I picked it up. I never made any serious attempt (i.e.: studying for more than a week) to learn it.
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I grew up bilingual (Spanish & English) but now am well into learning French. It helps that I live in a country with a lot of French speakers. I got to B1 (conversational) in about 2 years but it took a loooot of work on top of knowing a similar language. You really need to be around native or advanced speakers in order to learn it, otherwise you'll just learn to read and understand it but won't have the confidence to communicate with it
Another thing to understand is that learning a language is a marathon, not a sprint. It's a lifelong commitment. As long as you're learning at least one thing a day and retaining it, you're doing well
Alors, j'ai trouvé que cette langue est vraiment jolie. Je trouve l'expérience d'apprentissage très agréable (mais pas sans difficulté), et j'adore que j'ai une nouvelle chaîne pour parler avec mes amis. C'est quelque chose de spécial!
It takes time to learn a language. Some are easier for speakers of certain languages/language families, but they all take time and effort. Get study material, find what strategy works for you, and chip away at it daily. An SRS (such as Anki) can be good for vocab.
for me it's reading lots. then, it's hours of watching TV copying how toastmasters do it. then you start to feel you ain't street and talking all boujee.
My second language was German - then I was forced to pick up a third in high school. It was English...
I sucked in both those mainly because I didn't want to learn. I chalk it up for my undiagnosed dyslexia - that didn't help to make it fun at all.
What made me to stick to English is: everything was English on the Internet, all the games and so on.
Then I wanted to read some not yet translated book series so went to read in English. I wasn't speaking it.
Then moved to the big old USA and now I'm 99% English only. I do understand some German but ohh boy did it move into passive knowledge...
So when you have no choice you will learn. (Tho there are so many people who don't speak English and proud of it... That's the one thing I can't wrap my head around. How can be proud of your refusal to learn.)
Edit: forgot to recommend something - I believe it is phenomenal in some cases: language transfer I tried the English to Spanish and it is amazing for a native English speaker - hut there is value for non native speaker also!
My job is to teach English to Japanese people, both kids and adults, but anyone over 12 seems really set in their ways when it comes to grammar and sentence structure. I have a really hard time getting them to write coherent sentences like you do.
Have you tried to give them american comic books? Or some very popular teenager adventure stories?
It is hard to grab someone's interest if it's just schoolwork....
Both you and OP would never be thought of as a non-english speaker. You guys really picked it up.
Appreciate the compliment!
My accent is really strong and that won't change. I don't have the ability to do that.
Interesting to note: I noticed that native US speakers actually struggle more to understand really strong accented second language English.
They don't have a problem with the southern deep deep "crocodile hunter" English, but watch something with a very strong accented English - even some Ted talks - and they start to struggle.
I struggle with Scottish, but I think that's because they have a lot of slang mixed into the typical English words. If they took those out, I would hope I would get the rhythm. Japanese accents can sometimes be hard, but most of the time I have no issue. That might be a speed issue as well. I think exposure has a ton to do with it.
I've had coworkers look me in the face and claim that they simply can't understand what someone is saying if they have an accent. I happily take all the calls they don't want to bother putting even a little effort towards.
Of course they never struggle with southern accents and the like.
At 21 I learned spanish by taking 20 hours of classes a week for 3 months and a buch of self study afterwards.
Now at 38 I've been trying to learn Hindi for a couple of years already, but progress is much slower than when I was younger. It also doesn't help that there are a lot less learning materials for Hindi.
We sort of do. English. I say sort of, because obviously its not 100% but its the closest thing we have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_a_lingua_franca
In my country, we have two official languages, Finnish and Swedish. Finnish is the main language but everyone has to learn Swedish as well. But we also have mandatory English lessons and in fact, we teach more English than Swedish, even though Swedish is a official language and English is not. I learned English from grade 3 to grade 9, Swedish from grade 7 to grade 9. I also took voluntary German and French, but I've forgotten most of those.
As to to your main question, the best way to learn a language is to use it. Duolingo and such apps are pretty much useless, they get you started, but if you don't use the language you might as well be memorizing random words.
I started learning French when I was 12 which I've continued into adulthood.
What I've learned after leaving highschool and learning it on my own is that the book version of the language is very much not useful if you actually want to understand native speakers.
In real life people blend sounds together and use a bunch of slang and the books really don't teach that, so when I started learning listening skills post-highschool, it kind of felt like I starting over from square one to a degree.
I really recommend that you start with listening and speaking skills first before moving on to reading and writing. That's the order we all learned our first language in and it still works really well for learning your second or third. The way languages are taught in schools really feels backwards to me.
I've been learning little bits of Japanese here and there and starting with listening first feels so much easier. I also feel like it really helps with pronunciation as well since I'm copying native speakers.
My husband learned English through a mix of watching a lot of television, English classes as a child, and then immersion by living someplace where English is the primary language. He says a lot of it was kinda programmed in from absorbing it throughout his life, but his English got perfected when he moved.
I've posted about being the world's shittiest polyglot multiple times. Here's my secret :
My Spanish is OK. My Turkish struggles. English is my primary language. While my spanish isn't as good as my english, I think "learning a language as an adult is impossible" is bullshit, but accents are difficult to get rid of (I still say Üstedes)
There are plenty of things you can do, mostly comes down to time and determination and what you enjoy. Overall, use the language a whole lot for decoding/encoding real communication. At first that can be too hard, so you might bridge the gap with deliberate study, grammar/translation formulas, and vocab memorization.
We have a community at [email protected] where you can look for support. This would be a good question to crosspost there. (Full disclosure, I'm a mod there.)
sheer curiousity from what the world had to offer in information to me in english
teaching english in china got me nandarin.
for the other languages it was duolingo mostly, and talking to real people helps a lot. i live abroad, so immersion is right there.
I find learning all the food first really helps me,. I learn a lot about the phonemes nad rhythms of the language and after I'm comfortable with those, it's just a repetition game for the words and grammar.
My 100% speed trick if you can stand it is watching the same episode of TV or movie once per day for a couple of weeks in that language and paying absolute attention to the show for that span of time each day.
It boosts, speech, listening, and comprehension so crazy much over 2-3 weeks, but of course is boring after a few days.
I'm taking this class right now: https://oleloonline.com/
Its more structured and yes costs money. But my kumu Kaliko is very good and I'm actually making progress in my ʻŌlelo.
Because we have weekly sessions and homework, it holds me more accountable. With the structure I felt like I made more progress in 8 weeks of classes than I did in 5 years of trying to read newspapers. Its 1000% been working the spend to just sign up for a night class and take it seriously. Also, it being non based through a university; there are no grades, you can down load all the material, its a very "mixed audience" (highschoolers to aunties): the people taking the class truly want to learn and are not just going through the motions.
I to wish we all spoke one but I stink at language. Im worse at foreign but my second worst grades were in english. My thing is I wish the world would agree on one sign language and then all the countries teach it from early on through the end of required schooling. figure win win with the bonus it would be for people who have to use sign.