3 ms·

There is no substitute for living in the country and avoiding your native speakers like the plague. Immerse yourself completely (take a few language courses, m

There is no substitute for living in the country and avoiding your native speakers like the plague. Immerse yourself completely (take a few language courses, move in with locals, make an effort to avoid English speakers at all costs). Give yourself little challenges: Groceries, info about the train, museum, read a leaflet, book an activity, ask questions at a restaurant (even if you don't quite get the answer)... People will want to practice their English with you. Be stubborn. Reply in the foreign language and let them talk in English. For the first 2 months you will feel incredibly tired at the end of each day. Your brain will fight to stay afloat but that stress will make it learn so much faster. Around the 3rd month something clicks and you start to talk more and more. After that, the progress becomes almost automatic. Try to study something, or work or be part of some local group. One key element is to avoid perfection. Understand that you will never speak perfect grammar for years (just like kids make silly mistakes, you will too). Embrace it, have fun, make mistakes ... enjoy the trial and error discovery and the challenge of communicating ideas with rudimentary tools. Be patient. You will get frustrated because your brain has complex and nuanced ideas but your language is as basic as "me not good" or "me good". You will learn that body language and tone already communicate more than you can tell with your basic language. After a year you'll be pretty fluent (You'll be able to hold a conversation with anybody, on any topic, but still peppered with clarifications and questions). Mastering a new language would still take many years (with lots of reading, writing, talking, etc). (source: I speak French and Spanish as native languages, English as third language and German as 4th which I learnt as an adult living in Germany for a year)

happy-go-lucky 10y ago
> There is no substitute for living in the country and avoiding your native speakers like the plague. No better approach to learning a new language than that. It’s like throwing yourself into it and ignoring everything else.
spoiler 10y ago
Another, slightly unconventional way (which is how I learned English as a native Croatian speaker), is to find an online community about something you really enjoy. For me it was the combination of Harry Potter and online roleplaying[1]. I know that English isn't quite the same as other languages as it's quite widespread, but I believe it's possible to do the same for other languages. I also improved my Spanish a little through a website called lang-8.com, but I am not sure how active its community is these days; when I joined it was new and the community was relatively small. I stopped using it since I lacked the time and motivation to pursue Spanish more vigorously. [1]: As a side-note, I met my best friend this way; I was 13, she was 11 when we met. She'd would always go out of her way to help me with my English and would help me prepare for a roleplay and also analyse it afterwards, pointing out all the mistakes and potential improvements, taught me colloquialisms, etc. Although, everyone would help from time to time, too. So, meeting the right people/community also matters.
- ivanyv 10y ago
  This is how I learned english. I fell in love with computers at an early age and everything from programs to documentation and the few communities were all in english. So I had to learn. I winged it at the time, just used a dictionary, some books, and whatever other resource that I found or fell on my lap. I used to tell everyone who cared to listen that learning english would open up your world like you can't imagine (as it did for me). How many people even tried? 0. The common denominator is having to learn, and the only two ways that I've seen really work, is moving to another country OR having a strong interest about something and using a language to learn more about it (and you'll learn two things at once!).
jackfoxy 10y ago
I agree with everything you recommend, but it is possible to speak grammatically with near perfection much faster than years if you study the grammar. Finding the right grammar book/course may not be easy. I was lucking enough to go through the excellent German course at UCSB in the late '70s before I immersed myself. Getting all noun genders right in German is nearly impossible for a non-native speaker (even native speakers make mistakes). Plus when you study the grammar you can delight educated native speakers by pointing out how the colloquial diverges from the proper grammar.
- grimoald 10y ago
  > (even native speakers make mistakes) > colloquial diverges from the proper grammar. Since we are here on HN I'll allow myself to jump on your, to the topic of this thread totally unrelated, remarks. A native speaker can't really make mistakes, because what a native speaker speaks, defines the language. The grammars have to follow the speakers, not vice versa. The widespread world view that there is a proper language and beside it a inferior colloquial language needs to die.
  - whiteandnerdy 10y ago
    I think the same grammatical construct that's "slangy" when used by a native can sound ignorant or wrong when used by a foreigner, so it's more important for non-native speakers to learn correct grammar. Examples: * "I done <xyz>" or "I ain't" in English * "Je n'sais pas" in French (I'm told I sound like a moron or a child when I try this)
smoe 10y ago
This is pretty much how i learnt Spanish. I few more tips that helped me a lot improving after reaching a basic level: Besides talking/listening as much as possible in the foreign language, also try to think in it. Not mentally switching between languages made conversations much more fluent and pleasant. Start with basic things like planning a day trip. Ask people to actively correct you if you're wrong. I had and still have the problem, that my Spanish is good enough, that people understand what I want to say, but because of that, they usually don't bother correcting me. Focus a bit on pronunciation and language "melody". E.G. In my experience in Latin America, people who are not used to hearing foreigners accents, might not understand what you are saying although your grammar is perfect. A well pronounced "me not good" can often be better.
wingerlang 10y ago
> One key element is to avoid perfection. Understand that you will never speak perfect grammar for years (just like kids make silly mistakes, you will too). Embrace it, have fun, make mistakes ... enjoy the trial and error discovery and the challenge of communicating ideas with rudimentary tools. Be patient. This is a really good point. I am learning a new language right now. I am really shy, but once I started to not care too much I already feel the difference in learning.

happy-go-lucky 10y ago

> There is no substitute for living in the country and avoiding your native speakers like the plague. No better approach to learning a new language than that. It’s like throwing yourself into it and ignoring everything else.

spoiler 10y ago

Another, slightly unconventional way (which is how I learned English as a native Croatian speaker), is to find an online community about something you really enjoy. For me it was the combination of Harry Potter and online roleplaying[1]. I know that English isn't quite the same as other languages as it's quite widespread, but I believe it's possible to do the same for other languages. I also improved my Spanish a little through a website called lang-8.com, but I am not sure how active its community is these days; when I joined it was new and the community was relatively small. I stopped using it since I lacked the time and motivation to pursue Spanish more vigorously. [1]: As a side-note, I met my best friend this way; I was 13, she was 11 when we met. She'd would always go out of her way to help me with my English and would help me prepare for a roleplay and also analyse it afterwards, pointing out all the mistakes and potential improvements, taught me colloquialisms, etc. Although, everyone would help from time to time, too. So, meeting the right people/community also matters.

ivanyv 10y ago
This is how I learned english. I fell in love with computers at an early age and everything from programs to documentation and the few communities were all in english. So I had to learn. I winged it at the time, just used a dictionary, some books, and whatever other resource that I found or fell on my lap. I used to tell everyone who cared to listen that learning english would open up your world like you can't imagine (as it did for me). How many people even tried? 0. The common denominator is having to learn, and the only two ways that I've seen really work, is moving to another country OR having a strong interest about something and using a language to learn more about it (and you'll learn two things at once!).

jackfoxy 10y ago

I agree with everything you recommend, but it is possible to speak grammatically with near perfection much faster than years if you study the grammar. Finding the right grammar book/course may not be easy. I was lucking enough to go through the excellent German course at UCSB in the late '70s before I immersed myself. Getting all noun genders right in German is nearly impossible for a non-native speaker (even native speakers make mistakes). Plus when you study the grammar you can delight educated native speakers by pointing out how the colloquial diverges from the proper grammar.

grimoald 10y ago
> (even native speakers make mistakes) > colloquial diverges from the proper grammar. Since we are here on HN I'll allow myself to jump on your, to the topic of this thread totally unrelated, remarks. A native speaker can't really make mistakes, because what a native speaker speaks, defines the language. The grammars have to follow the speakers, not vice versa. The widespread world view that there is a proper language and beside it a inferior colloquial language needs to die.
- whiteandnerdy 10y ago
  I think the same grammatical construct that's "slangy" when used by a native can sound ignorant or wrong when used by a foreigner, so it's more important for non-native speakers to learn correct grammar. Examples: * "I done <xyz>" or "I ain't" in English * "Je n'sais pas" in French (I'm told I sound like a moron or a child when I try this)

smoe 10y ago

This is pretty much how i learnt Spanish. I few more tips that helped me a lot improving after reaching a basic level: Besides talking/listening as much as possible in the foreign language, also try to think in it. Not mentally switching between languages made conversations much more fluent and pleasant. Start with basic things like planning a day trip. Ask people to actively correct you if you're wrong. I had and still have the problem, that my Spanish is good enough, that people understand what I want to say, but because of that, they usually don't bother correcting me. Focus a bit on pronunciation and language "melody". E.G. In my experience in Latin America, people who are not used to hearing foreigners accents, might not understand what you are saying although your grammar is perfect. A well pronounced "me not good" can often be better.

wingerlang 10y ago

> One key element is to avoid perfection. Understand that you will never speak perfect grammar for years (just like kids make silly mistakes, you will too). Embrace it, have fun, make mistakes ... enjoy the trial and error discovery and the challenge of communicating ideas with rudimentary tools. Be patient. This is a really good point. I am learning a new language right now. I am really shy, but once I started to not care too much I already feel the difference in learning.