12 ms·

At least for Christians a good way to learn a foreign language is to read the Bible in that language, because (1) they are probably used to read a chapter or t

• klmr 7y ago
  This is good advice, but > they are probably used to read a chapter or two on a daily basis This sounds mental. Reading the Bible on a daily basis? I’m pretty sure that this is not the norm for the vast majority of (devout) Christians (at least in Western/Central Europe).
  • viraptor 7y ago
    It is not a norm. Even in very devout households attending multiple masses every week. (I'm not saying there aren't people doing actual mindful reading every day, but the generalisation to "Christians" in this case is bad)
    • pwinnski 7y ago
      I believe (without linkable evidence) that Roman Catholics are far less likely to engage in daily reading that protestants, but 27% of Americans[0] read their Bibles several times a week or daily. [0] https://www.barna.com/research/state-of-the-bible-2018-seven-top-findings/ https://www.barna.com/research/state-of-the-bible-2018-seven...
      • pault 7y ago
        Is that based on self reporting?
      • viraptor 7y ago
        I tried to get to some research on this topic, but it's pretty hard to find anything really independent. There are a few surveys, but there are issues: they're sponsored by Christian/evangelical groups, and I think their respondents are going to be a bit skewed: > Persons in selected households are then invited by telephone or by mail to participate in the web-enabled KnowledgePanel I have opinions on how biased this can be...
  • woodrowbarlow 7y ago
    just because it doesn't align with what you've observed doesn't mean it's "mental". that's rude. please be constructive.
    • commandlinefan 7y ago
      I think he means that it's "in your mind", not that it's crazy.
    • asdkhadsj 7y ago
      I think he means it's mental to imagine Christians actually doing that. I agree. No judgement in if you do that, good for you. However the point is not that it's too much reading or w/e, but rather that it's far more than the typical christian cares to do. To assume christians actually do that is the mental part, but you choosing to do; if that makes sense. edit: To the downvote, do you honestly think the majority of christians in America, some self proclaimed 70% of Americans iirc, read several passages a day? Really?
      • iamnotacrook 7y ago
        Not a downvoter, but you're probably being downvoted because it's clear that "mental" IS being used to mean "crazy", and quite obviously so.
        • asdkhadsj 7y ago
          I mean, imo he very clearly meant the frequency was mental; I guess I just interpret his reply to someone saying that Christians read that frequently as mental, rather than it being mental itself to read that frequently.
        • klmr 7y ago
          For what it’s worth the comment you’re replying to is completely right about what I meant. I see that my phrasing invites misunderstanding, and the distinction is subtle.
      • pwinnski 7y ago
  • jlg23 7y ago
    "mental"? In rural areas of central Europe you'll quite often find the Bible in hotel rooms for your nightly bible lecture.
    • viraptor 7y ago
      Because they're supplied by specific organisations (mostly Gideons International) in large quantities to hotels. You'll also find them in hotel rooms in central Sydney. It's neither a rural nor European thing. (Literally their main goal listed on the site: https://www.gideons.org/about https://www.gideons.org/about)
    • astura 7y ago
      That's because an organization called the Gideons put them there, not necessarily because anyone asked for them, wants them, or reads them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gideons_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gideons_International
    • asdkhadsj 7y ago
      In the US too. Doesn't mean "christians" actually do that. Christians in my experience largely just like the label, very few follow through with a life of learning and loving. edit: I should be clear, I'm just referring to christians by label; not anyone specifically. If you are christian and you read daily, put in effort to learn and love, more power to you. I appreciate you. That however seems abnormal in my experience. People tend to be lazy, and christians are after all people.
  • a-saleh 7y ago
    When I was in high-school and college I did this a few times for several months. Pattern I usually fell into is reading a chapter of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes in the morning (to get my boost for this weird spiritual nihilistic stoicism) and a Psalm in the evening (that felt like more of a human connection) I had friends who had that as a stable morning and evening ritual for years, complete with bible-studybook-journals e.t.c
  • pessimizer 7y ago
    I'd argue that it definitely is a norm for devout Christians in the US. Bible chapters are a lot shorter than you think (if you're not familiar with the Bible), though. It's a bit of a No True Scotsman, but a lot of people who claim they're devout don't really read the Bible at all, just make public judgments about people. The actually devout people I know usually have a copy of the Bible near the bed, often with an issue of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Daily_Bread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Daily_Bread on top of it (A daily devotional.) Very long-time atheist here. Is it really that much of an ordeal to spend 10-20 minutes with the words of the creator and lord of your universe every day? IMO if that sounds tough, then the belief can't be serious. If you have a favorite 1 hour weekly TV show, that's almost the same amount of time committed.
    • astura 7y ago
      I don't know about Protestant denominations but my mother grew up extremely Catholic (in the US) where every single part of life revolved around church. The family was about as devout as you could possibly get, including not practicing birth control. However, individual Bible reading wasn't practiced. In fact, individual Bible reading was actually discouraged by the nuns.
      • pessimizer 7y ago
        I'd bet the tradition isn't the same in Catholicism (which I have no experience with.) Protestantism is largely an outgrowth of insisting that the Bible be distributed, and in a language that the locals could understand. The Roman churches expected you to be dependent on the priest's communications of what the Bible said.
        • pteraspidomorph 7y ago
          The catholic church in general is, incredible as this may sound, more open to evolution. It just takes a very, very long time, but there have been dogma updates and clarifications throughout the centuries, and even admissions of being in the wrong. I fully expect the church's stance on some highly divisive issues of today to further evolve in the coming decades. Rather than insisting stories from millennia ago written by humans (even if you believe them to be divinely inspired) are forever perfect and right for an evolving secular civilization, it makes more sense to me if those stories are put into context by what are, in the end, educated professionals who have spent years studying them and other associated texts. I've heard a lot of sermons from catholic priests who were good at their job (caveat: I've also heard priests who were terrible at their job...) that I would consider interesting and thought-provoking even for atheists. I'm particularly fond of jesuit priests (such as the current pope), who are more scientifically minded and more likely to speak "my language", in my experience.
  • bogrollben 7y ago
    It's called a "quiet time". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Time
    • koenigdavidmj 7y ago
      Or family worship among us stodgier Protestants. It also includes a family praying together and singing psalms and/or hymns.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • hannasanarion 7y ago
    Even if you don't normally read daily, you probably know the meaning of most verses. Most Christians know the creation myth by heart, and are pretty familiar with the sermon on the mount and the passion stories, so they can probably pick up a lot of vocabulary from context.
    • klmr 7y ago
      Yes: As mentioned, I think this is excellent advice.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • workthrowaway 7y ago
    first time i am using a throwaway account lol. but, hey, i do read the bible on a daily basis or at least try to. i don't consider myself the most "devout" tbh. but reading the bible daily is very easy! i mean everyday readings comes in my email along with a bunch of other newsletters. i read all that stuff every morning, so it is definitely not hard.
• jlg23 7y ago
  Bible, Thora and Koran are all good for that purpose because even if you don't know them in your own language, you can compare the foreign language version with your native version verse by numbered verse. So are publications by international bodies like the UN (though those tend to deal less with sex, drugs and rock-and-roll than the religious books).
  • Finnucane 7y ago
    I'd think that would not be very reliable considering how much variation there is among bible translations even in one language. For instance, if you compare some passages of the Jewish Publication Society translation of the Tanakh with some Christian translations of the OT, you might wonder if they were actually referring to the same original text.
    • en-us 7y ago
      This is true of all translation I think. Apart from the simplest of sentences, there is usually more than one way to phrase something. Different styles of translation account for this differently, e.g. some seek to make literal word for word translations while others try to preserve higher level semantics. So those styles may produce different sentences and they can both be right.
• raverbashing 7y ago
  Replace the Bible with any simple book you know by heart I would actually advise against religious texts as their language is usually more archaic and less common on the day to day
  • timerol 7y ago
    I did this with the first Harry Potter to help me learn German, back when I was re-reading all of the Harry Potter books as each new one came out.
    • irishsultan 7y ago
      One problem is that with books like Harry Potter the names tend to be "translated" as well, which will often throw you off.
      • mattkrause 7y ago
        There are also a fair number of invented words. I tried to read the first book in Spanish, and ended up owning a number of dictionaries because none of the ones I already had contained an entry for "los muggles." (I had not, obviously, read the English version first).
      • raverbashing 7y ago
        Yes, but it's a minor problem. You usually know who's it referring to.
    • hsitz 7y ago
      Yes, Harry Potter is especially good because although it's written for younger readers (i.e, not difficult reading) it's well written and enjoyable for all ages. Also, you can find audio for the book as well as text in both languages. Listening to foreign language audio while following along in foreign language text is excellent method.
• Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Using the bible is... contentious I'd say because there's a lot of differences between even English translations. I mean I guess the gist of it and the stories are roughly the same but it's definitely not a 1:1 translation between languages.
  • indigochill 7y ago
    There's no such thing as a real 1:1 translation between languages anyway. Some words may map that way, but languages as a whole reflect their cultures. A common example from the New Testament is that English has just one word for "love" whereas Greek has several. We compromise by adding some adjective, like "brotherly love". When learning a language, I've heard its best to not learn a direct mapping to a word in your original language but instead to, for example, place the word for "lamp" on a sticky note and stick it to a lamp in your house. This way you more directly associate the word with the object rather than the name in your original language, because you'll otherwise grow to rely on using your original language as a go-between from ideas to the foreign language, which will make fluency more difficult.
    • gjm11 7y ago
      English has plenty of words for "love" too, even if the distinctions it makes aren't quite the same ones that ancient Greek does. For instance: Liking, caring, lust, enjoyment, admiration, friendship, attraction, affection, worship, loyalty, infatuation. All of them are aspects of things we could refer to as "love", just as much as ἀγάπη, φιλία, στοργή, and ἔρως are in Greek. (I'm not denying that it's enlightening to look at another culture's words and see how they divide the world up differently from ours, and direct attention to things ours might miss. But I get the impression that ever since C S Lewis's "Four Loves" many people think that the ancient Greeks had a richer variety of understanding of human affections than we do because they had four words for "love" and we have only one, and I think that's all wrong.)
  • hwj 7y ago
    I agree with you not every word being a 1:1 translation, but e.g. the KJV 1611 and Luther 1998 are very alike. That's probably true for most/all Textus Receptus based Bibles.
• friedegg 7y ago
  When I was a kid in Catholic school, we could get extra credit by going to Spanish language Mass, and I did it a few times as an altar server. Even though I didn't really directly understand much of it, I knew all of my cues, etc, because I'd done it so many times in English.
• adrianN 7y ago
  Wouldn't your learn a pretty archaic version of the language? I know that the bible passages I've read were very strange compared to everyday speech.
  • en-us 7y ago
    Depends on the translation you're reading. The original texts are in Hebrew and Greek so everything we read is a translation. You probably read the English KJV version, which was translated in 1611 and is thus the English of that time. More modern translations such as NIV or ESV will read more like modern everyday speech.
    • pgcj_poster 7y ago
      Actually, the language in the KJV was already out of date at the time in was written. The lofty archaisms were intentional.
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• 0x38B 7y ago
  I do this, with English, Russian, and Ukrainian. Two suggestions: - In MyBible[1] you can read multiple translations at once, e.g. English and Ukrainian. Double-tapping a word opens it in your installed dictionaries (which are found under 'Modules' in the app). - Listen to an audiobook of what you're reading, as well: what you hear more directly influences your speaking skills. Also, too much reading and too little listening isn't good for pronunciation. - Listening to the same things multiple times (repetition) is like Neo downloading Kung-fu into his brain in the Matrix. 1: https://mybible.zone/index-eng.php https://mybible.zone/index-eng.php
• peterburkimsher 7y ago
  This also helped me learn Chinese, along with translated worship music. For English speakers learning Chinese: https://pingtype.github.io/bible.html#_home https://pingtype.github.io/bible.html#_home For Chinese speakers learning English: https://pingtype.github.io/bibleEnglish.html#_home https://pingtype.github.io/bibleEnglish.html#_home Songs: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwKrKHi_rqtAjt0eIvhEBGFs2vTwDvfU7 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwKrKHi_rqtAjt0eIvhEB... https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwKrKHi_rqtBNfDESXQukyLV9FfRHN0wL https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwKrKHi_rqtBNfDESXQuk...
  • pwinnski 7y ago
    I attend church in Cantonese every week with my girlfriend. She is fluent, and I am not at all. Even after a month of services, I can occasionally sing along with bits of songs, especially songs I know in English. Pretty crazy.
• ashton314 7y ago
  I’m a Christian: a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be precise. I served a two-year volunteer mission [1] in Germany, and I read the Bible and the Book of Mormon a lot in both English and German during that time. This helped me tremendously. I now speak fluent German. It also makes a nice yardstick: you start out having to look at the original text after every verse. Soon you are able to start reading verses, chapters, then entire books without referencing your native language. [1]: https://www.comeuntochrist.org/belong/meet-missionaries/who-are-the-missionaries https://www.comeuntochrist.org/belong/meet-missionaries/who-...
• robocat 7y ago
  As a native speaker, it drives me mad when people try to learn English by reading. They end up training themselves with whacky mispronunciations because they sound out words to themselves, and they can't fix thier pronunciation later because it has becomed so ingrained - especially basic words like "the", "she" etc. I personally have the same issue saying "me" in Spanish, which I still say incorrectly, even though I've been told most of my Spanish sounds good (especially compared against most native English speakers). Edit: although given how useful it is to read/write English, and how we often find it easier to motivate ourselves by reading, I understand it.