Language learning techniques

I'm up to starting a new one. Undecided between French and German. Probably the later.

This wiki is pretty much what I was looking for. Thanks user.

Luckily the German wiki one is pretty up-to-date. I have been working on it for a while now. I have worked a bit on the French one as well to bring it up to date, but it still needs a lot of work.

If you're beginning German I'd recommend doing the German with Ease by Assimil (easily pirated) along with the Memrise course. Duolingo is a bit of a meme and it's really useless after about 50% completion. It gets unbelievably tedious.

If you want to get a textbook get German for Reading.

Also, I'm so far pretty impressed with LingQ. A lot of people hate that you have to pay for it but if you have the extra cash it's really pretty useful.

it takes time, effort and enjoyment to learn a foreign language. I'm not an expert on it but I suppose it will depend on what language you want to learn, how many languages and what level of fluency you want to reach.

For example not too long ago I've started learning Irish semi seriously and my goal is to become as proficient as possible in it. To do this you just have to keep working at it and once you start getting some momentum it will become clear what you have to work on. I'm not an expert but this is what I'm currently trying to do, feel free to take what you like

For my reading skills I started on the most basic books for children and progressed from there (I'm now at the 8-11 reading age group, by next year will hopefully be reading Irish novels for teenagers, the year after novels for young adults and the attempting some of the big works)

For listening skills I watch tv shows or films in the language(children's shows are best), helps to get a rhythm for the language

Grammar is one of those things that you just have to keep on working at, at first it will seem so overwhelming and most of it won't sink in to you head, but if you go back to it every now it will all slowly start to sink in

for conversation the best you can do is obviously living and talking with native speakers but that hasn't been convenient for me. One of the stuff I tried for a bit and helped m was when going for walks to speak to myself in Irish such as "what is that?""that is a swan in the river". Also could help to learn songs in Irish

for writing skills I write the odd poem now and then in Irish, and kept a diary in Irish for a bit. I intend to start trying writing short stories as well in Irish

the most important thing really is to have a reason and determination to learn the language, my reason to learn is far deeper than simply it would be cool to speak another language" but because I am Irish and not speaking your own language is like not being allowed to live in your own country

Picking up a book for grammar, and grinding vocab+grammar with anki until you know most the words in a newspaper, then reading material while adding words you don't know to anki, is by far the best method

How about instead of addressing whether I've studied a foreign language or not you go to >>/int/ you retarded cunt.

Get Anki and add words that you don't know. Yes, it's tedious, but not as tedious as looking up the same words 4-5 times because you always forget them.

With Anki, don't learn exact definitions and especially not translations. Instead, focus on conjouring up the idea of the word itself. The reason is, that spaced repetition (in my experience) works very well to train pavlovian-ish reflexes, but not deeper meaning or connections. You need context for that. If you're taking a long time to answer cards, you're just wasting time that could be spent reading.

Also, find graded reader and bilingual books. In my experience those works extremely well.

What do you recommend for French?

Same thing. Assimil + memrise. French for Reading is excellent (same author) . I've heard really good things about an app called Cosmopolite as well

Borges was probably a very intelligent man who had no need for special techniques.

Pimsleur + practice with natives on skype

>I'm not an expert on it but I suppose it will depend on what language you want to learn, how many languages and what level of fluency you want to reach.

No shit Sherlock. Is this some sort of subtle trolling, posting the most banal obvious shit imaginable and shitting up entire threads?

This works. I like to use pictures on one side of the flashcard rather than the English word. Helps me to visualise the concept itself rather than translate word for word.

Here's how I do it with romance languages (native PT speaker):

1. grab an easy book, usually a history book;
2. get the dictionary;
3. circle all the words I don't know, look them up in the dictionary, and memorize them.

Works like a charm.

I am currently doing it with Latin, but it's a hell of a lot more difficult because the grammar is so different. As a result, I usually just copy the whole thing. I've copied Jonas and the Canticum Canticorum already, and plan on reading the whole of Job (without copying) in the next twenty days or so - I've read the first two pages already, and there are only 50...

I suppose by the beginning of the next year I'll be able to read the Vulgata without much trouble. Classical Latin is a lot harder, but I intend to feel comfortable with it by the time I'm 25 (currently 22).

Forgot to mention I am using an edition with interlinear translation.

It's also the same thing I will do for German. Get an interlin. trans. of Faust, and copy some 1000 verses, until I know words enough to just read with the dictionary at hand.

Precious little secret they never tell you: about 60% of the discourse in any given language is made out of the same 300 or so words. Once you get them, you can start just reading with the dictionary at hand (which is why I never use grammars for learning Romance languages).

Fastest way to learn is by tutor. Otherwise, just memorize the most common words to get started in reading.

You should be around people that speak the language you're trying to learn and actively speaking it with them, preferably native speakers not just other people that learnt it as a second language.

Anki is fast and efficient and it does all the work for you, I'm learning Japanese

Yeah basically this. Graded readers for the language you're learning will ease up the process.

How do you learn grammatical rules with this method?

Put yourself in an environment that forces you to speak the language and you'll learn it twice as fast.

>tutor
Nice one user

The old Alsace-Lorraine duality/line, hm? Good taste user.

I'm gonna spoonfeed you ass
1. start reading French for Reading or German for Reading RIGHT AWAY. Its the best resource to learn those languages. 2 Chapters into German for Reading and I could read a 1-page-long text about the geography of deutschland. Its and EXCELLENT book, and you get to read Jung, Kant and other authros on it, however focused on READING. You can find it at b-ok.org

2. Do duolingo on the side, 1~2 units a day is fine. It will help you build some vocabulary and some basics

3. Work on your pronunciation, learn how to pronounce things like "R" (reich) "CH" (lich vs loch), umlaut (ä, ö, ü)

3. Go on youtube and find videos of conversations in german. There are some that first show you the subtitles, and after a few seconds, they speak the sentence. That way you can practice your pronunciation and seconds later verify if its correct or not.

4. Listen music, watch movies, series, etc.

5. After chapter 3~4, start trying to read some children stories and newspapers in german with the help of dictionaries.

by the time you finish German for Reading, if you did 1~2 duolingo units every day, you will be able to read newspaper without much trouble, and I'd say, with the help of a dictionary, even be able to read a simpler novel

anyone have some introductory German text? I'm in an introductory uni class and I really like it.

That seems pretty solid. Thanks, user, I'm going to do that. I've already been using duolingo for a while, and have a small understanding/vocabulary.

oops didn't even realize the post above mine had a ton of good info. thanks user.

>introductory
the text I suggested requires no previous knowledge with german. Enjoy

not him but you don’t

This would be the most useless method to learn a classical language

You don't need to understand all the grammar to read, if it's imperfektum or simple past barely matters. Same with subjunctive, as long as you realise that a sentence is hypothetical or not.

youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0

this one is kinda good

OP here, thank you all very much.

Yup