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My strategy for Latvian was roughly as follows: - Go mad because you don't understand a word of what's happening around you for the first time in your life. -

My strategy for Latvian was roughly as follows: - Go mad because you don't understand a word of what's happening around you for the first time in your life. - Decide to do something about it. - Take a three week university summer introductory course. Erasmus courses area great idea. - Always actively speak the language when in native company. - Pick up at least the basics from news broadcasts. - Read childrens' books and written press. - Study five common new words a day from my actual use (speaking, listening, reading) using a spaced repetition algorithm. The article mentions ankiweb. It's stellar. Picking from your own use tailors to your needs and interests. It also makes finding example phrases easier. That worked rather well for me getting to CEFR[0] C1 in Latvian. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R...

vortegne 6y ago
Cheers from Latvia!
nullsense 6y ago
I find childrens books full of all kinds of weird, bizarre phrases and plays on words, made up words and nonsensical stories.
- OJFord 6y ago
  Yeah, I thought it was a great idea, but when I actually started looking for a couple in Hindi (using Amazon's 'look inside' preview) it seemed like they give you pretty complex grammar relative to the uselessly basic vocabulary. Which does make sense for children, in English for example learning as a first language 'and on the dog's log, a cat was sitting gracefully' (mental block for a more basic adverb than 'gracefully' here) might be perfectly natural and simple, but for an adult ESL learner... it's not great. At the point where an adult's learning vocabulary like 'dog', 'log', (which er.. actually I don't know in Hindi) and 'cat', they don't want awkward grammar like past continuous 'was sitting', less common adverb position, subordinate clauses. Better would be 'a cat gracefully sat on the dog's log' grammar, but with more interesting vocabulary. Not because you won't ever say dog or cat, but because by the time you're reading to advance your second language you already know those words. It's easier to learn a different language for an idea you already know a way of communicating than it is for a child to comprehend meaning at the same time as learning the word. And also more simply, they're targeted at children, and not interesting. It would be great if there were easy-reading second language books aimed at adults (in terms of subject matter / story line, and vocabulary as above) - but I suppose it's just too niche, especially for less popular second languages.
rorykoehler 6y ago
When I lived in Latvia I found it impossible to even hear where words started and stopped for the first few months. Was a humbling experience.
- boojums 6y ago
  You may be interested in Minimal Pair Testing [0]. The idea is to train you ear to decipher between similar sounds (for example if you wanted to recognize "lock" vs "rock"). I first encountered the idea in Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_pair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_pair
- 3pt14159 6y ago
  Is Latvian anything like Russian? I found it impossible to hear the vowels when I was first learning Russian. Even today, И and Ы are difficult for me to differentiate, but I've only been in Russian speaking countries for around three months, so maybe that will come with time.
  - gnulinux 6y ago
    Latvian and Lithuanian are Baltic languages, which is a language family within Indo-European language family. Among Indo-European language family, Baltic and Slavic languages are the closest (aka Balto-Slavic language family).
- philsnow 6y ago
  It took me about that amount of time of actual study to be able to "lex" spoken Cantonese into phonemes. It's a weird experience that happened nearly overnight -- it went from "incomprehensible wall of sound" to "stream of sounds, with clear start/stops" very quickly. IIRC the early language acquisition literature supports the idea that exposing a child to the sounds of a language (even without any actual instruction or even requiring the child to pay particular attention to the person speaking) is enough to make it much easier for them to understand and produce that language later in life.
  - 6y ago
LordAtlas 6y ago
How long did that take?
- markvdb 6y ago
  It was complicated quite a bit by the fact I never lived there full time: - started summer 2013 - kept up the anki thing for about half a year - spent about 30% of my time there in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 15% of 2017 - regularly had Latvian friends visit since 2018
  - ACS_Solver 6y ago
    I'm impressed! I'm a native Latvian speaker, and am not used to the idea of foreigners learning the language, let alone someone who doesn't live in Latvia full-time. As speakers of a small, globally unimportant language that's not even mutually intelligible with its only surviving relative, we tend to be very impressed with foreigners that can put even basic sentences together.
    - yorwba 6y ago
      > not even mutually intelligible with its only surviving relative Wikipedia lists four surviving descendants of the Eastern Baltic branch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_languages#Eastern_Baltic_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_languages#Eastern_Balti... : Latvian, Latgalian, Lithuanian and Samogitian. Though apparently Latgalian and Samogitian are frequently considered dialects of Latvian and Lithuanian respectively. So in a way it's tautological that related languages don't have high mutual intelligibility since otherwise they'd likely be considered dialects of the same language.
      - ACS_Solver 6y ago
        It's not necessarily tautological because of how fluid the language/dialect distinction itself is, and often related to politics. The treatment of Latgalian as a Latvian dialect is certainly at least somewhat political, there's a case to be made for it being a different language. But for a counter-example, take the Scandinavian languages. They're always treated as different languages, even though they're highly mutually intelligible. Then there are the Czech and Slovak languages, extremely similar but not considered dialects.

vortegne 6y ago

Cheers from Latvia!

nullsense 6y ago

I find childrens books full of all kinds of weird, bizarre phrases and plays on words, made up words and nonsensical stories.

OJFord 6y ago
Yeah, I thought it was a great idea, but when I actually started looking for a couple in Hindi (using Amazon's 'look inside' preview) it seemed like they give you pretty complex grammar relative to the uselessly basic vocabulary. Which does make sense for children, in English for example learning as a first language 'and on the dog's log, a cat was sitting gracefully' (mental block for a more basic adverb than 'gracefully' here) might be perfectly natural and simple, but for an adult ESL learner... it's not great. At the point where an adult's learning vocabulary like 'dog', 'log', (which er.. actually I don't know in Hindi) and 'cat', they don't want awkward grammar like past continuous 'was sitting', less common adverb position, subordinate clauses. Better would be 'a cat gracefully sat on the dog's log' grammar, but with more interesting vocabulary. Not because you won't ever say dog or cat, but because by the time you're reading to advance your second language you already know those words. It's easier to learn a different language for an idea you already know a way of communicating than it is for a child to comprehend meaning at the same time as learning the word. And also more simply, they're targeted at children, and not interesting. It would be great if there were easy-reading second language books aimed at adults (in terms of subject matter / story line, and vocabulary as above) - but I suppose it's just too niche, especially for less popular second languages.

rorykoehler 6y ago

When I lived in Latvia I found it impossible to even hear where words started and stopped for the first few months. Was a humbling experience.

boojums 6y ago
You may be interested in Minimal Pair Testing [0]. The idea is to train you ear to decipher between similar sounds (for example if you wanted to recognize "lock" vs "rock"). I first encountered the idea in Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_pair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_pair
3pt14159 6y ago
Is Latvian anything like Russian? I found it impossible to hear the vowels when I was first learning Russian. Even today, И and Ы are difficult for me to differentiate, but I've only been in Russian speaking countries for around three months, so maybe that will come with time.
- gnulinux 6y ago
  Latvian and Lithuanian are Baltic languages, which is a language family within Indo-European language family. Among Indo-European language family, Baltic and Slavic languages are the closest (aka Balto-Slavic language family).
philsnow 6y ago
It took me about that amount of time of actual study to be able to "lex" spoken Cantonese into phonemes. It's a weird experience that happened nearly overnight -- it went from "incomprehensible wall of sound" to "stream of sounds, with clear start/stops" very quickly. IIRC the early language acquisition literature supports the idea that exposing a child to the sounds of a language (even without any actual instruction or even requiring the child to pay particular attention to the person speaking) is enough to make it much easier for them to understand and produce that language later in life.
- 6y ago

LordAtlas 6y ago

How long did that take?

markvdb 6y ago
It was complicated quite a bit by the fact I never lived there full time: - started summer 2013 - kept up the anki thing for about half a year - spent about 30% of my time there in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 15% of 2017 - regularly had Latvian friends visit since 2018
- ACS_Solver 6y ago
  I'm impressed! I'm a native Latvian speaker, and am not used to the idea of foreigners learning the language, let alone someone who doesn't live in Latvia full-time. As speakers of a small, globally unimportant language that's not even mutually intelligible with its only surviving relative, we tend to be very impressed with foreigners that can put even basic sentences together.
  - yorwba 6y ago
    > not even mutually intelligible with its only surviving relative Wikipedia lists four surviving descendants of the Eastern Baltic branch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_languages#Eastern_Baltic_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_languages#Eastern_Balti... : Latvian, Latgalian, Lithuanian and Samogitian. Though apparently Latgalian and Samogitian are frequently considered dialects of Latvian and Lithuanian respectively. So in a way it's tautological that related languages don't have high mutual intelligibility since otherwise they'd likely be considered dialects of the same language.
    - ACS_Solver 6y ago
      It's not necessarily tautological because of how fluid the language/dialect distinction itself is, and often related to politics. The treatment of Latgalian as a Latvian dialect is certainly at least somewhat political, there's a case to be made for it being a different language. But for a counter-example, take the Scandinavian languages. They're always treated as different languages, even though they're highly mutually intelligible. Then there are the Czech and Slovak languages, extremely similar but not considered dialects.