/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5361919]

To those of you who have learned a second language, how did you push through from intermediate being able to understand things with a moderate amount of dictionary, but nothing too difficult, to being able to fluently read actual literature?

As a side note, if you are from Europe and know English + something else, or started learning a language in any capacity before the age of 18, I really don't give a fuck about your advice. You don't even count as bilingual so don't bother responding.

[Anonymous No.5361923]

>>5361919
>As a side note, if you are from Europe and know English + something else, or started learning a language in any capacity before the age of 18, I really don't give a fuck about your advice. You don't even count as bilingual so don't bother responding.

You have some issues, darling.
Het feit dat ik coherente zinnen can construeren in zowel Nederlands als Engels means that I am, in fact, contrary to autistic beliefs, bilingual.

My advice to you is that you take some time off the internet, and go outside for a walk.

[Anonymous No.5361924]

>>5361923
>My advice to you is that you take some time off the internet, and go outside for a walk.
How would that help me get fluent in a language?

[Anonymous No.5361926]

>>5361924
Not the guy you're responding to but I'm a white dude from a monolingual family and growing up in LA I picked up workable Spanish from interacting with people on the street

[Anonymous No.5361929]

I'm an English teacher in Vietnam. I learned Vietnamese in less than a year by living here, having a Vietnamese girlfriend whose English isn't brilliant, and by being forced to read, speak, and learn it every day. All the store fronts and packaging are written in Vietnamese, all the market sellers speak Vietnamese, my girlfriends family and friends, every interaction is in Vietnamese. As well as having a formal hour a day lesson, I'm studying it all the time.

[Anonymous No.5361931]

>>5361924
It wouldn't, but it might suffice as a convalescence for your insufferable personality.

[Anonymous No.5361933]

>>5361926
>>5361929
Can you guys pick up a random novel and know 99% of the words in it? If not, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm asking how do you push through to that stage.

>>5361931
How so? I haven't left my house in a month and usually when I go outside I get depressed.

[Anonymous No.5361934]

Well, trilingual here, working on my fourth language: you're just going to have to work your ass off, bro. There is no trick or cheat. It's just hard work.

[Anonymous No.5361936]

>>5361934
Can you read novels fluently in your non-native languages? What age did you start learning?

[Anonymous No.5361948]

>>5361933
>Can you guys pick up a random novel and know 99% of the words in it?
Vietnamese novels are generally abysmal, but yes I can, quite easily. The only thing I have problems with are medical, legal and other technical terms, but the average vietnamese person doesn't know the Vietnamese for arrentation or macroangiopathy or thermocouple either.

[Anonymous No.5361951]

>>5361919
>how did you push through from intermediate being able to understand things with a moderate amount of dictionary, but nothing too difficult, to being able to fluently read actual literature
I started reading in English and French.
Reading is the key. Reading is the answer.
Praise reading.

My native language is Japanese by the way.

[Anonymous No.5361952]

>>5361936
1. English: Yes. I use it as my lingua franca with other international students in the country I study in. Started learning at age 6 or something. Earliest I can remember is with pokemon coming out.

2. Danish: Yes. I study here and read academic texts for my bachelors degree. I read books and texts which natives shy away from. Started learning at 19. Fluent at 20. Worked my ass off daily. No tips. No tricks. Flashcards and elbowgrease.

3. Arabic: No, I only just got started on learning it. I'm focusing on the spoken language before the written, this time.

[Anonymous No.5361953]

>>5361951
trilingual bro here. This is truth. Reading is love. Reading is life.

A good way to break through at first is to read your way up. Start with childrens novels. Then just read your way up the target age. Find a translated Harry Potter and read up. The books get older and more difficult as your skill rises. It's goddamn perfect.

[Anonymous No.5361955]

>>5361951
>My native language is Japanese by the way.
What a coincidence, that is the language I'm learning. How is your English pronunciation? Did you live in a foreign country as a kid?

[Anonymous No.5361958]

>>5361955
>Coincidence
>on a japcartoon image board

[Anonymous No.5361960]

>>5361952
>Fluent at 20
What is your definition of fluency?

>Find a translated Harry Potter and read up.
I've actually read the first 1 1/2 Harry Potter books in Japanese, but this stuff is pretty easy compared to real literature. I just want to get passed the intermediate stage of easy stuff, but I guess there's probably only one way, and that is to keep reading shit.

[Anonymous No.5361964]

>a depressed weeaboo trying to learn Japanese
>hasn't left his house in a month
>"if you are from Europe and know English + something else, or started learning a language in any capacity before the age of 18, I really don't give a fuck about your advice"

This is just pathetic. Please stop being such an eyesore, OP.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5361969]

>>5361955
>What a coincidence, that is the language I'm learning

Holy shit, me too. Do you like Otaku? I’m a 27 year old American Otaku (Anime fan for you gaijins). I draw Anime and Manga on my tablet, and spend my days perfecting my art and playing superior Japanese games. (Disgaea, Final Fantasy, Persona series)

I train with my Katana every day, this superior weapon can cut clean through steel because it is folded over a thousand times, and is vastly superior to any other weapon on earth. I earned my sword license two years ago, and I have been getting better every day.

I 'm learning Japanese, both Kanji and the Osaka dialect, and I can write it okay now. I know everything about Japanese history and their bushido code, which I follow 100%

When I get my Japanese visa, I am moving to Tokyo to attend a prestigious School to learn more about their magnificent culture. I hope I can become an animator for Studio Ghibli or a game designer!

I own several kimonos, which I wear around town. I want to get used to wearing them before I move to Japan, so I can fit in easier. I bow to my elders and seniors and speak Japanese as often as I can, but rarely does anyone manage to respond.

Wish me luck in Japan!

[Anonymous No.5361971]

>>5361960
My definition of fluency is being able to speak correctly on any subject without difficulty in expressing myself. I can speak without thinking about my language, since it's just a switch I flick now, to determine which language I speak.
Also, being tested as literally between C1 and C2 in language proficiency in the European Common Framework.

[Anonymous No.5361976]

>>5361964
I'm not depressed, only when I go outside. I am generally a happy person otherwise.

[Anonymous No.5361980]

>>5361976

That's just being a hikkie then!

[Anonymous No.5361983]

>>5361969
top kek pasta

[Anonymous No.5361997]

>>5361971
Out of curiousity are you finding Arabic harder than Danish? Just wondering because of pic related.

>>5361980
What is your point exactly?

[Anonymous No.5362006]

>>5361997
>What is your point exactly?

That you're an eyesore, your thread is bad, and you should kill yourself? It seems that was too hard for you to understand, so allow me to repeat: You're an eyesore, your thread is bad, and you should kill yourself.

[Anonymous No.5362009]

>>5361997
To be honest, I can't say it's harder. It's just very different.
With Danish, I had a lot of hooks. I could link concepts, words and grammar to things I knew from my native language, from the little German I know and from English.

With Arabic, no such thing. To call it more difficult, though... Tell me, is stacking blocks more difficult if you have to stack 10 blocks instead of 2? That's how learning arabic feels to me. I just have more blocks to stack.

[Anonymous No.5362010]

>>5362006
>It seems that was too hard for you to understand
Why would it seem like that to you? How could I read the first half of your post before you posted the second half of your post?

[Anonymous No.5362011]

>>5361955
>How is your English pronunciation?
I get most consonants right. Some vowels are still tricky. Like a in apple and u in urn.
>Did you live in a foreign country as a kid?
No. But in middle school I learned for some time with a native speaker teachers from UK and USA.

[Anonymous No.5362015]

>>5362009
Time invested can be a form of difficulty.

[Anonymous No.5362017]

>>5362011
>with a native speaker teachers from UK and USA.
with native speakers from the UK and USA.

[Anonymous No.5362018]

>>5362010

Because I already said it in the first post I made?

[Anonymous No.5362022]

>>5362018
You only said one of those three things.

[Anonymous No.5362038]

>>5362015
If I were you, I'd try to lose that mindset. Learning a new language takes a long time. Some say language is a lifelong project. If you correlate time with difficulty, you're going to find it all immensely difficult.

Just make it part of your daily routine. Take a notepad with you, and try to read in jap. Find a word you don't know? Write it down. The first 30 words you write down, you flashcard the shit outta them at home every evening. Memorizing 30 words isn't hard.
Repeat old flashcardlists daily while adding new lists, until you're 100% sure you've mastered them, rinse, repeat. Enjoy mastery in less than a year.

[Anonymous No.5362041]

>>5362022

That was just me being nice. You were supposed to read between the lines.

[Anonymous No.5362045]

>>5362038
I've added an average of over 30 words per day for the last 1.5 years to Anki. I'm up to around 20,000 now, but I'm still not close to fluent in vocabulary. You either have a really shitty definition of fluency, or you're just underestimating how long it actually takes.

[Anonymous No.5362051]

>>5362045
Well, the idea is that at some point you start reading and learning words outside of flash cards. It's to get you started, not something you should rely on solely, you dunce. Do you still ride your bike with training wheels on?

[Anonymous No.5362054]

>>5362051
I do read, flashcards only take 90 minutes per day.

[Anonymous No.5362059]

>>5362054
Do you also speak with natives? Browse jap sites?

[Anonymous No.5362061]

Repetition, painstaking translation, and meticulous grammar. Shitloads of reading, endless reading.

Every grad student and professor I ever had, when I asked them where to go after introductory courses, told me that as soon as I finish the very basic outline of the language I should dive into a real text right away. Easy-ish ones, but still real prose. First year is the slog through basic grammar, and second year is really rarely (AFAIK) more of the same. Usually it's painstakingly working through real prose. Get the base grammar down, then start learning all the trillions of exceptions and wonky things that actually make up a language. Even then, you'll still have turns of phrase you'll need explained to you by annotations or friends, but will only encounter once in a blue moon.

Also immersion, but immersion isn't always available and may lead to permanent gringoism. We all know someone "fluent" in English who still makes bizarre grammatical flubs because his understanding of the language is just a massive accretion of stock formulae, whereas I know East African immigrants who have better grammar and diction than I do, because they're still learning on the 19th century model.

[Anonymous No.5362062]

>>5362059
Why would I care about production?

[Anonymous No.5362070]

>acquiring fluency in foreign language
>not by being viciously ridiculed by the native speakers

It's like you basement-dwellers never visited a random country whose language you didn't know a single bit.

[Anonymous No.5362071]

>>5362062
Because that's where the magic happens, man. Ask any learner of any language anywhere. If you want to master any language, engulve yourself in it as much as possible in as many different ways as possible. As soon as you start trying to produce, you'll find the real, relevant holes in your knowledge and those will simultaneously be filled by others.

Are you telling me you haven't been trying to speak or actually communicate for more than 1,5 years in your target language?

[Anonymous No.5362076]

>>5362070
This. Oh god, the tongue twisters.

The motherfucking tongue twisters.

[Anonymous No.5362082]

>>5362076
>Sup Anon, you should totally learn this expression! *random tongue-twister*
>What the fuck does that even mean?
>Oh, you know, it's a common thing we use every day. Practically all the time. Seriously.
>*butchering the tongue-twister*
>HAHAHAHAHAH WHAT A PLEB LOOK AT HIM PEOPLE

[Anonymous No.5362086]

>>5362071
Production and recognition are different skills. The only really "hole" in my language ability is lack of vocabulary. No I have never tried to produce a single sentence in Japanese before because I don't care about communication. I'm not some normalfag who needs to be in constant conversation with someone else in order to make myself happy.

[Anonymous No.5362102]

>>5362086
Alright, I'm a motherfucking english teacher here. I spent the last 2 years studying language acquisition.

Every. Research. Ever. has suggested that language acquisition and fluency comes from communication. The "classical" method of Latin and Greek teaching, which is just reading, reading, reading, left the children unable to actually fluently read a language without at least 10 years of constant study. This is why this method has been completely and utterly abandoned for any living language.
For the love of God, we understand your goals with the language, and we still urge you to use it for communication. None of us here are normalfags, you idiot, but it's simply the best method of learning.

If you don't want to, have fun drudging along for the next 6 years learning a language that any other cunt could master within a year or two.

[Anonymous No.5362104]

>>5362086

[Anonymous No.5362110]

>>5362102
>english teacher
>spent the last 2 years learning L2A

have you even graduated yet?

[Anonymous No.5362114]

>>5362110
First two years were about classroom management, didactics and how to introduce cultural awareness into the classroo, as well as making sure we actually mastered the language ourselves. It'd surprise you how many people were damn near illiterate and decided they wanted to teach English.

Not even shitting you.

[Anonymous No.5362117]

>>5362082
The stuff of nightmares. The fuel of learning.

[Anonymous No.5362122]

>>5362114
well im a linguistics pleb

acquisition was our 101, right from the start, even before they shown us where are the bathrooms on the campus

[Anonymous No.5362126]

>>5362102
Sorry but most linguists say that the best way to acquire language ability is through comprehensible input.

[Anonymous No.5362128]

>>5362126
Do you even languages?
It's all about making the students apply their knowledge.

[Anonymous No.5362131]

>>5362128
That's literally the opposite of what people who actually learn languages say. People who take classes generally don't become fluent. Go look up Stephen Krashen.

[Anonymous No.5362133]

>>5362131
I'm not saying that they need to apply it in a classroom context. The classroom is never a full replacement for life. It's an introduction to the language and should be understood that way.

[Anonymous No.5362139]

>>5362131
>People who take classes generally don't become fluent.

Because the majority classes still follow the 1000-year-old methods of spending hours upon hours writing down complex grammar rules and dedicate 1% of the time to actually speaking the language.

[Anonymous No.5362140]

>>5362131
"Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding." Stephen Krashen
First hit on google.

[Anonymous No.5362142]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

[Anonymous No.5362150]

>>5362142
Not relevant to the OP, seeing as Krashen speaks of acquisition. This is different from conscious learning, which OP is doing. To acquire a language, you need to communicate in it. To learn it, you drill. OP has learned for 1,5 years and gotten nowhere.

[Anonymous No.5362152]

>>5362139
>Because the majority classes still follow the 1000-year-old methods of spending hours upon hours writing down complex grammar rules and dedicate 1% of the time to actually speaking the language.
Are you joking? Most language classes are mostly speaking practice, and no one ever makes any progress unless they take their own initiative and read at home or something.

[Anonymous No.5362155]

>>5362152
No shit, who would've known you can't teach a language to people who don't want to learn it.

[Anonymous No.5362156]

>>5362150
I am OP.

>To acquire a language, you need to communicate in it.
Did you even read the link?

[Anonymous No.5362163]

>>5362156
But what happens you give output? You get input!
Krashen is all about natural language acquisition, which comes from communicating(which means you're not just talking, but also listening) in the target language.

[Anonymous No.5362164]

>>5362152

In my country at least, that kind of thing is still fairly new. I took a Chinese class a few years ago, where the teacher had us always apply what we had learned in simple conversations at the end each segment, and she said it was her own way of teaching and not commonly practiced.

[Anonymous No.5362168]

>>5361964 This
+
>>5361976 This

= OP confirmed depressed weeaboo faggot

[Anonymous No.5362169]

>>5362163
Input is all that matters though. You can get input from watching a video or reading, personally communicating in it is really quite irrelevant to the acquisition of a language. It seems like you're backpedaling now though.

[Anonymous No.5362172]

>>5362156

>The ability to speak is not the CAUSE of language learning or acquisition
>Although speaking can indirectly assist in language acquisition

If you actually take what he says as "you don't need to speak a language to learn it", I think you need to polish your English reading comprehension first.

[Anonymous No.5362173]

I'm good at French. But I can never pronounce "ecrire" correctly.
I'm thinking of giving up just because of this.

[Anonymous No.5362175]

>>5362169
Alright, I'd like you to find me a single source that says, explicitly, fluency can arise without communication. If you can, I will agree with you.

On the other hand, who here can say they've achieved fluency in any language without communicating?

[Anonymous No.5362179]

>>5361919
>Speak 4 languages fluently.
>You don't even count as bilingual so don't bother responding.

Ahhh, America.

[Anonymous No.5362180]

>>5362172
He's saying you need input to acquire language ability, and output is just an side-effect of acquisition, which comes from input. He's basically saying that people often confuse cause and effect and although output can result in input which can result in acquisition, the output itself is irrelevant to the acquisition.

[Anonymous No.5362183]

>>5362102
>Every. Research. Ever. has suggested that language acquisition and fluency comes from communication.
Reading is a kind of communication, you tard.

>left the children unable to actually fluently read a language without at least 10 years of constant study.
The problem was due to the choices of reading material, not due to the approach itself. If they read Facebook posts and anime subtitles in Latin I can assure you they'd have learned it very quick indeed.

[Anonymous No.5362184]

>>5362179
I'm very confused by that sentence. Does OP not know what bilingual means? And surely everybody started learning a language before the age of 18...

[Anonymous No.5362186]

>>5362173
e.kʁiʁ

IPA is your friend, anon

[Anonymous No.5362189]

>>5362180
You're nitpicking his ideas, though.

>"Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding." Stephen Krashen

>"In the real world, conversations with sympathetic native speakers who are willing to help the acquirer understand are very helpful." Stephen Krashen

>The Input hypothesis is Krashen's attempt to explain how the learner acquires a second language – how second language acquisition takes place. The Input hypothesis is only concerned with 'acquisition', not 'learning'.

Amongst others, this tells us that, since OP is learning the language explicitly, his approach is not endorsed by Krashen.

[Anonymous No.5362190]

>>5362184
I said it because I don't want advice from people who learned a second language as a child or early teen. It's not the same process.

[Anonymous No.5362194]

>>5362190
Because that's language acquisition. It happened in a natural way. Acquisition=/=Learning

[Anonymous No.5362196]

>>5362102
>None of us here are normalfags
I'm pretty normal.

>>5362164
It probably varies a lot depending on the language. Chinese language learning will likely have a hefty amount of rote learning, simply because that's how most of the teachers learnt it.

[Anonymous No.5362197]

>>5362190
But why does that mean they don't count as bilingual? It's practically the definition of bilingual. AFAIK it's extraordinarily difficult to become genuinely bilingual in adulthood.

[Anonymous No.5362201]

>>5362196
>I'm pretty normal.
He's deluding himself. He goes to college, he's clearly a normalfag too.

[Anonymous No.5362250]

>>5362180
>the output itself is irrelevant to the acquisition.

There's no way anyone could agree with that. To use a language, you must call upon the acquired knowledge, which strengthens the neural connections in your brain and creates new ones. By analyzing acquired stimulation (what another person says) and formulating appropriate responses, your brain works double time to improve its performance. And so your language skills drastically improve. These aren't elements that can be strictly divided and parts left out without losing in effectiveness.

[Anonymous No.5362256]

>>5362190

Not even being able to speak one language must make learning another very hard for you.

[Anonymous No.5362273]

>>5362250
To learn a language you only need two ingredients:

a) Motivation.
b) Practice.

And by far the key, the most important ingredient, is motivation. Why? Because language learning is an insidious process, and for the longest time you're going to feel like you're not making any progress at all. It's important to keep practicing despite this.

Now, what exactly you do for practice -- reading, writing, speaking, listening -- is irrelevant, as long as you keep practicing.

Of course, the best way to motivate yourself is to place yourself in a context where you need language skills for your own survival; this is 'total immersion'.

However, failing that, if reading motivates you and speaking demotivates, then by all means start reading and don't force yourself to speak.

It is better to practice lots of reading than it is to make some feeble attempts at speaking.

[Anonymous No.5362280]

>>5362169
I'm a TEFL teacher, and none of my students learn unless they speak and listen regularly. I have a ton of students who have pretty decent vocabularies but struggle with reading comprehension, let alone vocal interaction, because they never try to speak. The language isn't "real" to them, it's only a complicated sound game.

You're asking how to improve your language, people are telling you how, and you are mulishly insisting on continuing doing the same things you've always done. Why do you even bother to ask for advice?

[Anonymous No.5362287]

>>5362273
>Now, what exactly you do for practice -- reading, writing, speaking, listening -- is irrelevant, as long as you keep practicing.

But this is simply wrong. You have to understand that the human brain works in certain ways and that some ways of learning are inherently more efficient for humans than others. You won't become fluent in a language by grinding flash cards, not even in a hundred years. The end.

"B-b-b-but, it's written language, you can't learn to read by speaking!"
The spoken language always affects the written language and causes it to evolve. There are expressions, references, implications, etc, that you will never pick up if you're unfamiliar with the spoken language.

[Anonymous No.5362300]

>>5362280
He wants an echo chamber. But I have always been a big believer in immersion for learning a language.

[Anonymous No.5362327]

>>5362287
>But this is simply wrong.
It isn't. How many foreign languages have you learned?
>You have to understand that the human brain works in certain ways and that some ways of learning are inherently more efficient for humans than others.
That's a truism that is irrelevant to the concrete issue of language learning.
>You won't become fluent in a language by grinding flash cards, not even in a hundred years. The end.
Grinding flash cards isn't practicing a language. Written language is still language, while flashcards aren't.

Yes, you _can_ learn to read a language simply by reading texts until you gain fluency. It's not hard and it won't take too long, but it will be a boring, especially at first.

[Anonymous No.5362359]

>>5361969
You've ruined my life

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5362615]

>>5361948
>The only thing I have problems with are medical, legal and other technical terms, but the average vietnamese person doesn't know the Vietnamese for arrentation or macroangiopathy or thermocouple either.

I don't know what those are in English.

[Anonymous No.5362623]

>>5361919
>You don't even count as bilingual so don't bother responding.
Are you really mad at euros for knowing two languages while you only know one?

[Anonymous No.5362688]

>>5361919
I know english as a second language. They taught it at school in my country and I had good grades, but I never realized how poor the standards were until I actually started watching movies and stuff in original language.
That's a great help though. You just download a movie in original and subs in the same language, and try and follow the dialogues.
You learn a lot more than you could learn by a regular course, including slang terms, figures of speech and the like.
If you wanna step it up move to a country where they speak that language, you'll speak fluently in no time.

[Anonymous No.5362720]

>>5362688
>be in school
>learning English
>use word "simpleton" in a short story written from a bourgeois perspective
>teacher marks me down
>"you can't make up words, anon"
>teacher confirmed for plebeian

[Anonymous No.5362722]

>>5362061
>painstaking translation

This. I got this advice from an English teacher, who is European and certainly started learning English before 18, so she doesn't count as bilingual by OP's standards. By still, her advice is very sound: translate short passages from literary works so closely that after finishing your translation you could almost quote the original (and the translation) by heart. The trick is not to memorize, but to pay close enough attention to each word that the text eventually bury itself in your memory. Try to hold yourself to academic standards and/or compare with professional translators. Doing that once or twice a week on a 500-words extract should be enough to propel your understanding skywards.

More precisely, there are two types of translations:
>version
From foreign to native. It's basically very close and careful reading of a foreign language+practice on expression in your native language, so it actually increases your mastery in two languages. It requires a good ear for what is idiomatic and what is not, what sounds good/contrived/unusual and what doesn't (so a good linguistic intuition).

>theme
From native to foreign. Essentially it's a good exercise of practical grammar. You won't be flexing your literary muscle, but it will compel you to get your grammar damn straight. Bonus point: good themes on a given text are pretty much all the same (while versions can vary a lot from a translator to another), so it's easy to see if you're doing it right. Requires grammatical rigor.

[Anonymous No.5362774]

>>5362190
You don't acquire English just by being exposed to tv series, unless you decide on yourself to watch them in the original with subtitles (and it has become a fad only in recent years, at least in my country). A lot of people 20-25 years old people in Europe had their first real contact with English through classes, which include grammar lessions, and count as learning. Some of those people might even have become able to write essays in English mostly thanks to working for class (although that's rare and mostly happens in higher education). So their advice could actually interest you.

[Anonymous No.5362789]

>>5362774
European here.

English pre-MMO's: sloppy, weak, difficult.
English post-MMO's: fluent.

[Anonymous No.5363662]

>>5361997
>tfw native in english and korean and trying to learn icelandic
looool fuck me

[Mitani-Kun No.5363740]

Fuck you op, I thought /lit would be different, but you boy are just ignorant, even though I am an european fag I could give you an advise, but this way, fuck it.

[Anonymous No.5365638]

Bump.

[KAWAII MAX 10 No.5365670]

>>5361919
Read literature in target language. When you find a particularly beautiful piece of prose commit it to memory. Otherwise keep reading and refer word lists/apps/dictionaries when needed. Try to establish reading speed of target lang to be as close as native lang reading speed as possible.

Its not only exposure towards language, but its directed intentionality. It may be of some use to think of using targeted language as a part of a game.

[Anonymous No.5365690]

Just read. And don't search for translations, search for the meaning of the world in that language. First because there is no real translation and all that crap, second because you start thinking in that language instead of doing a translation from your first one.

[Anonymous No.5365741]

I've been learning Japanese for a month now. It's difficult but also exciting. Gave up on Spanish before this. People are going to assume that I'm a weeb but fuck 'em. From what I hear, communicating with other people is very important to help master the language. You can do this online, via forums and shit.

[KAWAII MAX 10 No.5365764]

>>5365741
I'd say when you're starting off, just to have your unconscious mind be able to process differences in intonation etc. it is more important to get the exposure in communicating, then say when you have already have had significant amount of exposure and have everything sort of uploaded from memory in your brain.

Theres more to Japanese than weebs mang, the literature is good stuff mang.

[Anonymous No.5365778]

I begun to learn Norwegian but lost motivation. I learned a fair bit of German in school. Norwegian is far easier; after a month of learning it I was nearly as proficient as I was after several years of German (although the curriculum was shit and my class was disruptive which didn't help).

I've found translating useful. There was a time where I was translating Also Sprach Zarathustra into English based on another translation and a dictionary. I learned quite a lot of German.

[Anonymous No.5365789]

>>5365764
So I should be trying to communicate while I learn? Ok. I was gonna put it off until I could hold a conversation or something. I don't know.

[Anonymous No.5365802]

Japanese is fucking hard OP, even JET English teachers and gaijin who live there for years can't speak it semi-fluently. I've put 500 hours into anki and probably half of that into grammar and reading in the last 1.5 years (yeah I know it's my fault that I didn't read more but fuck man it's so mentally draining) and I consider it all a colossal waste of time.

[Anonymous No.5365811]

>>5365802
Learning is never a waste of time.

[Anonymous No.5365814]

>>5365811
only if you stick through with it

[KAWAII MAX 10 No.5365826]

>>5365789
Exposure, get as much exposure as you can. You can try to communicate, if your partner can give you instant feedback during the initial period, it would be ideal. But for the most part, just hearing other people speaking the language in a natural setting (TV Broadcast and thing like anime, movies, tend to talk at marginally slower rate than real life convo), And generally never learn words and grammar points in isolation, always try to have some kind of context you can pin it to.
>>5365802
Rikai kun brah. Reading literature can be pleasurable. Don't look at reading Kanjis a chore. Project Gutenberg + Aozora bunko, sometimes it helps to listen to native speaker narrating the piece you are reading to get the cadence down. We live in the 21st century mang; this be a century where speaking 5 languages fluently is quite an attainable feat. Alot of difficulty with language acquisition seems to be out of our self-deception as to how hard language acquisition is, we overestimate the difficulty. Focused learning, best learning.

[Anonymous No.5365834]

>>5365826
Thanks for the advice, homie. I'm surprised at how much time I've been devoting to this. When I was learning Spanish I spent the bare minimum each day going over it, but I want this now. I want to stick with this.

[Anonymous No.5365923]

>>5365802
OP here, I've been at it for 1.5 years too, Anki says I've done 700 hours, and I've done way more than that reading and listening. I'm at a decent level, just can't get past the last hump to actual fluency where I can just learn without any tools. Although maybe I just need to read more, so far my readings accomplishments are: 1.5 Harry Potter books, first volume of a light novel, about 100 volumes of manga and 300+ chapters of One Piece. Whenever I try to read some actual literature that isn't intended for otaku retards I'm completely fucked.

[Kawaii as Fuark No.5365989]

>>5365923
Less Manga more Novels. Start with some Miyazawa Kenji, Ogawa Mimei, Kikuchi Kan, Hayashi Fumiko, etc etc. Children Stories ->
Then after tackle immediate Postwar when you feel comfortable: Dazai, Mishima, Shohei Ooka,
Then Contemporary stuff to build up :
Then if you want to a better foundation for writing and stuff like that Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, Mori Ogai, Fukuzawa Yukichi, all those Meiji fellows.
And generally work backwards from there, until you reach whatever point you are satisfied in your knowledge of target language, or who knows you may even become a kuzushiji aficionado.

Point being, the path to acquiring language is indeed one filled with blood and rank stank of perspiration;

I mean to a certain extent anki and stuff like that is good and all, but its a kind of a crutch. Try to exercise your mind as you are reading these texts, not only keeping tabs on whats going on in these stories, plot wise, characters, themes, motifs, and being on the look out for any passages of literary flourish. Write these passages down if you want to and memorize them. Learn how the sentence is construed and the grammar used to see how it is conveying an information etc. If getting over the mental block of oh this is so difficult, whats the point of it anyway, don't think of it as a learning exercise. If possible, try to look up the definition of words later, like underline the words, or use a app in your browser to highlight the passage, and go back to it to define it. Try to comprehend as much and as fast as you can. Even if you are drawing blanks, push through. Trust me, your brain will come away with a general sense of story and theme even when there are like 2 or 3 words that you don't know on a line. Once you have that image in your mind, when you do go back, you will have some sort of reference to create a mental peg between the word and the story, allowing you to remember the word better. Its all about making your brain make new connections, and to form these connections as quickly as possible.

Try to find a good environment to read. Maybe buy a 4000$ arm chair? I jest, but seriously, literature does mighty good for language learning

[Anonymous No.5366036]

>>5362720

>be in school
>learning English
>use the word "ominous" in a short story
>teacher returns the essay
>there's a huge red question mark above the word

[Anonymous No.5366049]

>>5362327
>How many foreign languages have you learned?

Four.

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

[Anonymous No.5366052]

>>5366049
I would love to learn Russian. At the moment I only speak and read English and Hebrew. I don't read anything in Hebrew though and barely use it because I really haven't found that much good stuff. Save for some music and poetry. I only know it because I was raised on it.

I would love to about about learning Russian. You seem to know what you are talking about. How would I go about doing this? What is the best method in your eyes?

[Anonymous No.5366053]

>>5361929
How do i get a job there

[Anonymous No.5366054]

>>5361919
>As a side note, if you are from Europe and know English + something else, or started learning a language in any capacity before the age of 18, I really don't give a fuck about your advice. You don't even count as bilingual so don't bother responding.

er.... what? are you implying that someone learning English 'doesn't count' (to make you feel better about not speaking a second language)?

[Anonymous No.5366057]

>>5366053
Me too! I have a BA in psychology if that helps.

[Anonymous No.5366136]

>>5366049
>You clearly have no idea what you're talking about
Not that anon, but you're being hugely prescriptive about how people learn. If speaking practice were genuinely essential for learning to read a language, how would anyone learn to read Latin, Ancient Greek, Classical Chinese etc?

[Anonymous No.5366141]

>>5366053
There are a million websites about teaching English there. Google TEFL Vietnam. I've done it in China rather than Vietnam, but AFAIK the requirements will typically be
>be white
>be a native English speaker, or plausibly sound like one
The hard part would be avoiding dodgy schools, for which online research would be needed.

[Anonymous No.5366732]

Anyone have any good tools for learning Arabic?
Currently at the beginning stages and it feels like being dropped in the middle of the ocean.

[Anonymous No.5366740]

>>5366141
iirc you usually need a BA for any legitimate program

[Anonymous No.5366775]

>>5366052

Russian is actually one of the foreign languages I've studied, and also possibly the hardest. I think Russian is a good example of a language where verbal exercises are a must. For example, there are several "s" letters with slightly different pronunciations, and it takes a long time and lots of listening practice to learn to identify them. If you only ever read and study the written language, you wouldn't be able to understand the spoken Russian at all!

You could start by learning the Cyrillic alphabet and some basic vocabulary from internet materials and then enroll on a language course, where you can focus more on the listening practice, as you have the basics already covered. It would be ideal to have a native Russian speaker for a teacher, because getting the pronunciation and tempo right really is tough for foreign speakers.

[Anonymous No.5366795]

>>5361929

That's the best way to learn another language - complete immersion. Unfortunately not everyone can have the opportunity to expose themselves to such an environment or the privilege of being able to do so. The main point still stands though for OP - expose yourself to as much of the language as you can. Watch movies, cartoons, read books, articles in the language you are interested. Practice translations, try to converse with natives (offline if possible but online is also good - go to >>>/int/ and find people there).

The most important thing though is dedication and not losing interest. If you lose your passion you can end up doing a two steps forward, one step back thing which would greatly hinder your learning in the long term.

[Anonymous No.5368735]

>>5361952
>Arabic
Good luck bro, shit's hard but having two already under your belt will be helpful.

Learnt Persian here.

[Anonymous No.5368790]

>>5362201
no one is truly normal if they browse 4chan

[Anonymous No.5368804]

>>5363740
>file name Mitani-Kun
>mfw this means "you know ass" in Persian

[Anonymous No.5368806]

polish is my native language

after studying your piece of shit english for 15 years I still don't understand the articles

russian a easy doe

[Anonymous No.5368828]

>>5366732
Horrible to say so but it's just very difficult. I'd say that unless you have very goo resources (which in my book would be living with an Arab or having an Arab gf etc) you'd probably have to learn another (easier) language first before you attempt Arabic. It's notorious on all front: grammar, script, pronunciation. Along with languages like Chinese it's just so different in the way it works that it might be best to tackle these issues in an easier language first.

There's also a few major dialects you'd have to choose from. Very roughly speak you could split it east/west (north African vs Syrian)

[Anonymous No.5368835]

>>5368828
apologies for sloppy writing - it's late

[Anonymous No.5368878]

>>5361969
>this superior weapon can cut clean through steel because it is folded over a thousand times
>mfw some weebs actually believe that katanas were superior to european weaponry
top kek

[Anonymous No.5368880]

>>5361997
>dutch easier than bengali
lol

[Anonymous No.5368897]

i learned french up to GCSE level at school but that was several years ago and i've lost much of it now; however i want to get back and expand my skills. what resources do i use now that i'm not in school? how do i even get started?

[Anonymous No.5368908]

>>5365638
>lists 329 million spanish speakers (therefore includes ex-colonies)
>lists 67.8 million french speakers (therefore excludes ex-colonies)
>lists native hindi speakers, when in reality up to 500 million people speak it

[Anonymous No.5368950]

>>5368897
duolingo.com
read texts

[Anonymous No.5369877]

Question kinda relating to this topic

How do I find books in Korean?

I used to speak Korean everyday back in 2007, which was ...wow 7 years ago...
I'm losing my Korean, and my girlfriend is upset at me for it. How do I get back into it, and where can I find a lot to read in it?

[Anonymous No.5369881]

>>5368790
Yes they are. This is site is full of them. Every other post in this thread is talking about going to university and getting jobs and stuff.

[Anonymous No.5370010]

>>5361923
>Nederlands
>respectabele taal

[Anonymous No.5371210]

>>5369881
that's not the definition of normal you ignoramus

the amount of casual racism, throwing around of the word faggot, and barely contained paedophilia on this site is staggering

the humour on here is beyond nonmainstream

[Anonymous No.5371215]

>>5371210

This post is the definition of normal.

[Anonymous No.5371218]

>>5370010
Wees eens trots op je afkomst, man. Als je eens een jaar buiten Nederland in een niet-engels land woont, zal je zien dat het Nederlands je toch wel mooi in de oren gaat klinken.

Ik mis je, Hollands;_;

[Anonymous No.5371221]

>>5371215
well I forgot to mention that's why I love this place

though /lit/ is about as normal as you can get on this site, it's still pretty odd.

[Anonymous No.5371223]

>>5368828
Well, Arabic would be my fourth language. So it's not like I'm new to the game.

[Anonymous No.5371227]

>>5371210
>who cares that I have a job and a gf and go to uni and have friends and a social life I'm not a normalfag because I'm a little introverted and have a dark sense of humour lol
normalshit detected

[Anonymous No.5371245]

>>5371227
not sure what point you're making but I'm guessing you don't greentext your gf or let her see what .gifs you have lurking on your pc

[Anonymous No.5371246]

>>5371223
Any of 'em non-Germanic/Romance?

[Anonymous No.5371248]

>>5371246
Nope, 'fraid not.

[Anonymous No.5371249]

>>5371245
yep, it's normie

[Anonymous No.5371261]

>>5371210
you gotta remember that not everyone who uses 4chan posts that stuff

[Anonymous No.5371275]

>>5371210
If using the word 'faggot' makes someone not normal, does that mean dudebros are a freaky sub-culture?

[Anonymous No.5371292]

>>5371275
no, the odd part is that no one here is actually racist or homophobic

[Anonymous No.5371296]

>>5371292
except the /polites/ who think that everyone is like them here

[Anonymous No.5371300]

>>5371210
Forgot the gynandromorphophlia.