4 ms·

> 1) Don't expect the same results from self-study with a textbook and some subtitled movies. > 2) Even if you lived there and devoted your entire days to stud

> 1) Don't expect the same results from self-study with a textbook and some subtitled movies. > 2) Even if you lived there and devoted your entire days to study, it would be difficult to ramp up that quickly. These are 2 wildly different scenarios. If you stay with a family, immerse yourself and go to class every day you would have an advantage over an FSO officer. As to not being professionally fluent in that time, that is definitely true. But you should reach a level where you can be independent enough to get around, speak and understand.

x0x0 9y ago
I think results will vary depending on if you've learned another language before. Having to understand a grammar from the outside is a rough exercise the first time. I'm a native english speaker and conjugating verbs in eg Spanish wasn't hard, but really feeling the difference between the indicative and subjunctive moods takes a lot more work. I found Russian very approachable for a 3rd language. And it's really cool to be able to eg read Pushkin; I can't read Shakespeare without more footnotes than poetry.
- aquadrop 9y ago
  A bit offtopic, but can you advise an English language poet with Pushkin style poetry? I'm native Russian language speaker and even though I can easily understand regular English, I have hard time with poetry and find it quite different from Russian.
  - bzbarsky 9y ago
    There are some structural differences (e.g. the lack of using endings to indicate grammatical structure in English) that make creating the sort of "it all rhymes and flows really well" poetry you get a lot in Russian much more difficult in English. That said, I'd say some of Coleridge's work is in that general vein, in my opinion. And some of Byron's, actually. So maybe try those?
Arnt 9y ago
You can do that in a single-digit number of weeks if you're willing to never back down. Never fall back to a different language. It's a pain for yourself and the people you speak to. You'll have to apologise often. But the locals don't really mind, they approve of your goal.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  I wouldn't say they don't mind. People approve of the goal of you learning their language in the abstract, but if you're slowing down their day or worse their line of customers, you're just going to annoy everyone around you in a way that they will be too polite to make explicitly clear, but will be apparent from their tone of voice, their insistence on answering in English and so on. The real difficulty of learning a language is thus in my view nothing to do with the language itself, but rather, how good at English the speakers of that language tend to be. If you're in a part of the world where they speak an obscure language and thus all learn English from childhood, the chances of you ever getting fluent are close to zero. Nobody really cares enough to struggle through with you.
  - endless1234 9y ago
    It's not just that nobody cares enough to struggle through with you, but people actively will try to speak English with you as a way to get more proficient in English.
    - dazc 9y ago
      This is the problem I have in Spain, the few people I know who speak a bit of English use me to practice on.
    - Arnt 9y ago
      Yes, people will want that. My stock answer was "thanks, but anyone who lives in <x> should get used to speaking <y>" and that always settled it. That problem is more of an excuse for failing to learn proper <y> than a reason. (There are a lot of expats among the parents at my children's school and it's easy to tell who persisted and who didn't.)

x0x0 9y ago

I think results will vary depending on if you've learned another language before. Having to understand a grammar from the outside is a rough exercise the first time. I'm a native english speaker and conjugating verbs in eg Spanish wasn't hard, but really feeling the difference between the indicative and subjunctive moods takes a lot more work. I found Russian very approachable for a 3rd language. And it's really cool to be able to eg read Pushkin; I can't read Shakespeare without more footnotes than poetry.

aquadrop 9y ago
A bit offtopic, but can you advise an English language poet with Pushkin style poetry? I'm native Russian language speaker and even though I can easily understand regular English, I have hard time with poetry and find it quite different from Russian.
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  There are some structural differences (e.g. the lack of using endings to indicate grammatical structure in English) that make creating the sort of "it all rhymes and flows really well" poetry you get a lot in Russian much more difficult in English. That said, I'd say some of Coleridge's work is in that general vein, in my opinion. And some of Byron's, actually. So maybe try those?

Arnt 9y ago

You can do that in a single-digit number of weeks if you're willing to never back down. Never fall back to a different language. It's a pain for yourself and the people you speak to. You'll have to apologise often. But the locals don't really mind, they approve of your goal.

peoplewindow 9y ago
I wouldn't say they don't mind. People approve of the goal of you learning their language in the abstract, but if you're slowing down their day or worse their line of customers, you're just going to annoy everyone around you in a way that they will be too polite to make explicitly clear, but will be apparent from their tone of voice, their insistence on answering in English and so on. The real difficulty of learning a language is thus in my view nothing to do with the language itself, but rather, how good at English the speakers of that language tend to be. If you're in a part of the world where they speak an obscure language and thus all learn English from childhood, the chances of you ever getting fluent are close to zero. Nobody really cares enough to struggle through with you.
- endless1234 9y ago
  It's not just that nobody cares enough to struggle through with you, but people actively will try to speak English with you as a way to get more proficient in English.
  - dazc 9y ago
    This is the problem I have in Spain, the few people I know who speak a bit of English use me to practice on.
  - Arnt 9y ago
    Yes, people will want that. My stock answer was "thanks, but anyone who lives in <x> should get used to speaking <y>" and that always settled it. That problem is more of an excuse for failing to learn proper <y> than a reason. (There are a lot of expats among the parents at my children's school and it's easy to tell who persisted and who didn't.)