9 ms·

I speak English natively, and have learned French, German, Sesotho and Japanese with a mixture of books and immersion. Obviously immersion is the best way. I u

by gramie 3y ago

I speak English natively, and have learned French, German, Sesotho and Japanese with a mixture of books and immersion. Obviously immersion is the best way. I used Duolingo to help me learn Spanish, and I was struck by how artificial it is. It may teach you to understand a language, but not to speak it. Far superior, in my experience, is https://www.languagetransfer.org https://www.languagetransfer.org, which has free audio lessons to learn French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, and Swahili (and English for Spanish speakers). This is the most natural method short of immersion I have ever experienced, and very effective. Amazingly, it is all done by one man, and runs on donations. There is an app, which is delightfully clean and usable. Mihalis also has an introduction to music theory, which gets excellent reviews!

CoastalCoder 3y ago
Thanks for the pointer! FWIW, it looks like it also teaches German. EDIT: I just noticed this comment: "Please note: Complete German remains unfinished. The course will be either continued or remade by a new teacher directed by Mihalis."
aix1 3y ago
Thanks for recommending Language Transfer. I browsed the site a bit (I'm on mobile, at an airport) but can't quite figure out in what way it's different to other methods. If you could say a few words about your experience using it, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Thanks!
- lock-the-spock 3y ago
  Maybe easiest to compare: it is purely audio and relies on you playing along with the lesson you listen to. So somewhat similar to Michel Thomas but more modern. His main effort is to make connections between material that you already know and new material, this reinforcing both and building a network in your mind. I did the first 30+ Greek lessons (each a ~10 minute audio which takes 15-20 minutes to complete as you pause to think and complete the answer). Then was forced to take a short break. l and struggle to get back in so I will restart a few lessons back. I have to say that I've never had so many "whoa, cool I figured this out" moments in a language course.
- clarkdale 3y ago
  Modernized learning a language with books on tape.
- anbende 3y ago
  So I've been using Language Transfer English to Spanish. The method uses your native language to scaffold the target language using patterns and rules. They constantly discourage you from trying to memorize or remember the word and instead encourage you to use your principles to "find it" or "think your way there". For example, they teach you that virtually any English word that end in 'ation' will correspond to a Spanish word that sounds virtually the same, so for example: - salvation = salvacíon And the Spanish verb will be the Spanish word minus the "acíon" plus "ar". Since this almost always works, you can often use this principle to find a lot of common verbs you need. So if, for example, you want to say "save", think of the english "ation" word that is related to saving, so "salvation", Spanish "salvacíon", which gives us the Spanish verb "salvar". So with that rule, and some rules for present tense conjugation and word order, you can soon you can say a surprising amount very quickly by "thinking through it" rather than memorization. So they "build up" your Spanish from these sorts of building blocks, and there are a surprisingly large number of them. "Don't remember it, find it" is the guiding mantra. And it really works well. Even as my Spanish advances, learning new principles continues to be helpful and kind of magical.
jmyeet 3y ago
> Obviously immersion is the best way. I disagree with this dogma. I, like many, have heard this for years and took it as gospel. I tried it and didn't get great results. At the time I questioned where I had failed with a method so successful. But the thing is, immersion only works if you're a relatively extroverted person (IMHO). Immersion turns language learning into a social activity. If you're more introverted, you won't get that social exposure. Worse, you may avoid that social exposure because way more because you have such difficulty communicating. Immersion is not strictly the best way.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Immersion is an important step that is often a "must do" in the process of acquisition. It is not always necessary, but: are you planning to visit the country where this language is spoken? Immersion exercises may signal to you whether you are capable of making that leap. I've been bilingual in Spanish since high school, but not until 2008 did I encounter a situation of immersion. I've worked in a bilingual office setting, and I found that it was often easy to communicate face-to-face with Spanish speakers, because I could lip-read, and make gestures, and fall back on occasional English expressions that they are capable of knowing. But when I traveled to Catalonia and we went off the widely-travelled tourist areas, I was required to know Spanish, and even Catalan, for the road signs, businesses, menus, etc. So it was as much immersion as I could get, and even then, I had a native for my guide, and she was an English teacher, and so she was very good at whispering in my ear about when waiters were simply being rude or prejudiced about my silly Mexican dialect. So yes, it depends on your use cases, and I can see why it would depend on introverted/extroverted personality whether you can handle it, but when learning foreign languages, consider whether immersion will be a foreseeable situation, and try to experience it beforehand, because it can be diagnostic, if not helpful.
  - tough 3y ago
    As a catalan waiter with a silly mexican accent, I do want to apologise for my homeland rudeness Catalan independence is a bit of a ongoing issue there, and some rural areas might frown upon spanish (mexican or not), or whatever! Hope it didn't make you don't want to comeback
anbende 3y ago
I am just about to return to the US after 4 months in Buenos Aires. I lived in Peru for a year and a half leading up to April 2022. I'm probably approaching a B2 level of Spanish right now (based on my experience attaining a B2 and then C1 level of French once upon a time). Interestingly, when I was starting out, I was in Peru with a Spanish speaking significant other, and using Duolingo as well as taking private lessons. I found as a few others have mentioned that Duolingo actually got in the way. I liked the gamification. It helped me practice, but there were so many exercises for each set of vocabulary. Due to the way their system worked, I had to go through a lot of exercises that weren't useful for me because I had picked up the content with other learning methods. You can test out of things, but if I wasn't ready to test out of the whole block I still had to go through a lot of material that wasn't useful (i.e., even testing out skill by skill, was tedious and time-consuming and counter-productive). So as discussed in the article and here, Duolingo can't get you even to a low intermediate level, just the basics. And I found that it doesn't pair well with more intensive learning. Maybe other people have had a different experience, but I think it's good for the light hobbyist until they are ready to move on to something more serious, but that's about it. I also worry that it's promises and gamification trap and frustrate people who could have done more. Maybe it makes up for that by getting a large number of people started who then go on. Maybe.
wrycoder 3y ago
I couldn’t select a language on iPhone from the scrolling icons.
spookybones 3y ago
How did you learn Japanese? And does this overlap with living/work, or do you learn languages as a hobby? I’ve come to the sad conclusion that I don’t have the time to learn Japanese while also pursuing an unrelated career and another serious hobby.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Give Duolingo a try. Even if it doesn't work out in the end, it will at least get you started. The hiragana and katakana practice is nice.
  - ihateyouall123 3y ago
    I wouldn't recommend this advice. I learned Japanese before trying Duolingo and thought, 'how does someone learn from this?" Good for rote memory training though
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      > how does someone learn from this? Duolingo has brief explanations of the grammar for each unit. It's not even close to a textbook by any means but it's not impossible to learn. Now that I think about it, my mental algorithm works like this: 1. Observe the words 2. Observe the order they were used in 3. Have their meanings in english as reference 4. Use this information to puzzle out the meaning of the sentence This is pretty much the same process I used to learn english when I was a kid. Only I used video games and natives on forums instead of an english course.
      - logbiscuitswave 3y ago
        I’ve been using Duolingo for Japanese and at the level I’m at it’s not even providing any more explanations. It’s just “here’s some phrases, remember them”. The now locked comments sections (which is where the real learning seems to happen making it all the more frustrating that they disabled this functionality) is filled with complaints about the same. It also has a really aggravating focus on idiomatic translations for phrases that don’t really map to the real meanings. It was fun to start but now it’s become increasingly frustrating with its focus on remembering things without understanding them. I definitely don’t see myself renewing my subscription when it runs out later this year.
leke 3y ago
Reminds me of the Michael Thomas method.
watwut 3y ago
Language transfer is great, but it is 80 9 minutes long videos. That alone is NOT enough to learn and practice language, not even close. You get walkthrough grammar, sentence structure and smallest vocabulary needed for that. You don't get nearly enough practice or anything that. Nor enough of vocabulary. Like, it is great, but not replacement in any way and just like with duolingo, you need to supplement it with other resources.
dkaleta 3y ago
> used Duolingo to help me learn Spanish, and I was struck by how artificial it is. I've had the same experience with Duolingo and long story short decided to experiment with what would be the best way to learn the language if you're not advanced enough to consume content for natives. I wanted to created something that would have the same value as content for natives (interesting and real), but would be comprehensible to non-advanced learners. Just last week I opened up access to my app (with over 50 videos) to Beta testers. If anyone is learning Spanish and would like to try it out and give me feedback, I would appreciate it. Obstino U is an app that mimics a real university where you take classes about the things you are interested in like climate change, the history of china, cognitive biases, diets, investing, etc, but you do it in the language you want to learn. Simply put, you learn things you are interested in and in the process, you learn language mostly subconsciously. We use simplified language, gesticulation, and drawings to convey powerful and rich stories so that even beginner students can understand them. https://www.obstino.com https://www.obstino.com EDIT: This is an iOS app only for now. EDIT 2: I just added a sample video we make on YouTube in case you don't want to install the app but want to take a look: https://youtu.be/N2fiVLUJGvM https://youtu.be/N2fiVLUJGvM
- mnky9800n 3y ago
  Why is this an app at all as opposed to a website?
  - sprkwd 3y ago
    Why should it be a website as opposed to an app?
    - joshuaissac 3y ago
      Making it a website would allow people to use it on platforms other than iOS.
    - NikolaNovak 3y ago
      In short, Develop once, use by everybody everywhere. It's not everybody's first thought. My sister was working with local university to build content to support access and awareness of accessibility resources (mostly for parents of disabled children) . She couldn't even parse the notion of making a website as opposed to an app. Who doesn't use an iPhone these days?? Who uses a computer to do stuff??? Ironically, it kills so many screen readers too. Plus you need specifically iOS developers instead of generic web developers. And redevelop multiple times if you want multiple platforms. Plus some people are wary of installing apps so there's an overhead loss there. Just... A massive amount of unnecessary constraints if your goal is simply to get information out there. But apps are many people's default way of thinking, and certainly many companies are pushing it due to lock in benefits. Edit : the original post now has a "here's a YouTube video if you can't / won't install an app", which, y'know, exemplifies it perfectly :). Now, this looks like a labour of love so more power to author to use whatever method of getting it out there that they are comfortable with. But app has drawbacks over a website as well as benefits, is all :)
dutchbrit 3y ago
Thanks for sharing, I’m going to give this a try!
NikolaNovak 3y ago
Thanks! It feels a lot like the Michel Thomas method from the quick look

by gramie 3y ago

CoastalCoder 3y ago

Thanks for the pointer! FWIW, it looks like it also teaches German. EDIT: I just noticed this comment: "Please note: Complete German remains unfinished. The course will be either continued or remade by a new teacher directed by Mihalis."

aix1 3y ago

Thanks for recommending Language Transfer. I browsed the site a bit (I'm on mobile, at an airport) but can't quite figure out in what way it's different to other methods. If you could say a few words about your experience using it, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Thanks!

lock-the-spock 3y ago
Maybe easiest to compare: it is purely audio and relies on you playing along with the lesson you listen to. So somewhat similar to Michel Thomas but more modern. His main effort is to make connections between material that you already know and new material, this reinforcing both and building a network in your mind. I did the first 30+ Greek lessons (each a ~10 minute audio which takes 15-20 minutes to complete as you pause to think and complete the answer). Then was forced to take a short break. l and struggle to get back in so I will restart a few lessons back. I have to say that I've never had so many "whoa, cool I figured this out" moments in a language course.
clarkdale 3y ago
Modernized learning a language with books on tape.
anbende 3y ago
So I've been using Language Transfer English to Spanish. The method uses your native language to scaffold the target language using patterns and rules. They constantly discourage you from trying to memorize or remember the word and instead encourage you to use your principles to "find it" or "think your way there". For example, they teach you that virtually any English word that end in 'ation' will correspond to a Spanish word that sounds virtually the same, so for example: - salvation = salvacíon And the Spanish verb will be the Spanish word minus the "acíon" plus "ar". Since this almost always works, you can often use this principle to find a lot of common verbs you need. So if, for example, you want to say "save", think of the english "ation" word that is related to saving, so "salvation", Spanish "salvacíon", which gives us the Spanish verb "salvar". So with that rule, and some rules for present tense conjugation and word order, you can soon you can say a surprising amount very quickly by "thinking through it" rather than memorization. So they "build up" your Spanish from these sorts of building blocks, and there are a surprisingly large number of them. "Don't remember it, find it" is the guiding mantra. And it really works well. Even as my Spanish advances, learning new principles continues to be helpful and kind of magical.

jmyeet 3y ago

> Obviously immersion is the best way. I disagree with this dogma. I, like many, have heard this for years and took it as gospel. I tried it and didn't get great results. At the time I questioned where I had failed with a method so successful. But the thing is, immersion only works if you're a relatively extroverted person (IMHO). Immersion turns language learning into a social activity. If you're more introverted, you won't get that social exposure. Worse, you may avoid that social exposure because way more because you have such difficulty communicating. Immersion is not strictly the best way.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Immersion is an important step that is often a "must do" in the process of acquisition. It is not always necessary, but: are you planning to visit the country where this language is spoken? Immersion exercises may signal to you whether you are capable of making that leap. I've been bilingual in Spanish since high school, but not until 2008 did I encounter a situation of immersion. I've worked in a bilingual office setting, and I found that it was often easy to communicate face-to-face with Spanish speakers, because I could lip-read, and make gestures, and fall back on occasional English expressions that they are capable of knowing. But when I traveled to Catalonia and we went off the widely-travelled tourist areas, I was required to know Spanish, and even Catalan, for the road signs, businesses, menus, etc. So it was as much immersion as I could get, and even then, I had a native for my guide, and she was an English teacher, and so she was very good at whispering in my ear about when waiters were simply being rude or prejudiced about my silly Mexican dialect. So yes, it depends on your use cases, and I can see why it would depend on introverted/extroverted personality whether you can handle it, but when learning foreign languages, consider whether immersion will be a foreseeable situation, and try to experience it beforehand, because it can be diagnostic, if not helpful.
- tough 3y ago
  As a catalan waiter with a silly mexican accent, I do want to apologise for my homeland rudeness Catalan independence is a bit of a ongoing issue there, and some rural areas might frown upon spanish (mexican or not), or whatever! Hope it didn't make you don't want to comeback

anbende 3y ago

I am just about to return to the US after 4 months in Buenos Aires. I lived in Peru for a year and a half leading up to April 2022. I'm probably approaching a B2 level of Spanish right now (based on my experience attaining a B2 and then C1 level of French once upon a time). Interestingly, when I was starting out, I was in Peru with a Spanish speaking significant other, and using Duolingo as well as taking private lessons. I found as a few others have mentioned that Duolingo actually got in the way. I liked the gamification. It helped me practice, but there were so many exercises for each set of vocabulary. Due to the way their system worked, I had to go through a lot of exercises that weren't useful for me because I had picked up the content with other learning methods. You can test out of things, but if I wasn't ready to test out of the whole block I still had to go through a lot of material that wasn't useful (i.e., even testing out skill by skill, was tedious and time-consuming and counter-productive). So as discussed in the article and here, Duolingo can't get you even to a low intermediate level, just the basics. And I found that it doesn't pair well with more intensive learning. Maybe other people have had a different experience, but I think it's good for the light hobbyist until they are ready to move on to something more serious, but that's about it. I also worry that it's promises and gamification trap and frustrate people who could have done more. Maybe it makes up for that by getting a large number of people started who then go on. Maybe.

wrycoder 3y ago

I couldn’t select a language on iPhone from the scrolling icons.

spookybones 3y ago

How did you learn Japanese? And does this overlap with living/work, or do you learn languages as a hobby? I’ve come to the sad conclusion that I don’t have the time to learn Japanese while also pursuing an unrelated career and another serious hobby.

matheusmoreira 3y ago
Give Duolingo a try. Even if it doesn't work out in the end, it will at least get you started. The hiragana and katakana practice is nice.
- ihateyouall123 3y ago
  I wouldn't recommend this advice. I learned Japanese before trying Duolingo and thought, 'how does someone learn from this?" Good for rote memory training though
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    > how does someone learn from this? Duolingo has brief explanations of the grammar for each unit. It's not even close to a textbook by any means but it's not impossible to learn. Now that I think about it, my mental algorithm works like this: 1. Observe the words 2. Observe the order they were used in 3. Have their meanings in english as reference 4. Use this information to puzzle out the meaning of the sentence This is pretty much the same process I used to learn english when I was a kid. Only I used video games and natives on forums instead of an english course.
    - logbiscuitswave 3y ago
      I’ve been using Duolingo for Japanese and at the level I’m at it’s not even providing any more explanations. It’s just “here’s some phrases, remember them”. The now locked comments sections (which is where the real learning seems to happen making it all the more frustrating that they disabled this functionality) is filled with complaints about the same. It also has a really aggravating focus on idiomatic translations for phrases that don’t really map to the real meanings. It was fun to start but now it’s become increasingly frustrating with its focus on remembering things without understanding them. I definitely don’t see myself renewing my subscription when it runs out later this year.

leke 3y ago

Reminds me of the Michael Thomas method.

watwut 3y ago

Language transfer is great, but it is 80 9 minutes long videos. That alone is NOT enough to learn and practice language, not even close. You get walkthrough grammar, sentence structure and smallest vocabulary needed for that. You don't get nearly enough practice or anything that. Nor enough of vocabulary. Like, it is great, but not replacement in any way and just like with duolingo, you need to supplement it with other resources.

dkaleta 3y ago

> used Duolingo to help me learn Spanish, and I was struck by how artificial it is. I've had the same experience with Duolingo and long story short decided to experiment with what would be the best way to learn the language if you're not advanced enough to consume content for natives. I wanted to created something that would have the same value as content for natives (interesting and real), but would be comprehensible to non-advanced learners. Just last week I opened up access to my app (with over 50 videos) to Beta testers. If anyone is learning Spanish and would like to try it out and give me feedback, I would appreciate it. Obstino U is an app that mimics a real university where you take classes about the things you are interested in like climate change, the history of china, cognitive biases, diets, investing, etc, but you do it in the language you want to learn. Simply put, you learn things you are interested in and in the process, you learn language mostly subconsciously. We use simplified language, gesticulation, and drawings to convey powerful and rich stories so that even beginner students can understand them. https://www.obstino.com https://www.obstino.com EDIT: This is an iOS app only for now. EDIT 2: I just added a sample video we make on YouTube in case you don't want to install the app but want to take a look: https://youtu.be/N2fiVLUJGvM https://youtu.be/N2fiVLUJGvM

mnky9800n 3y ago
Why is this an app at all as opposed to a website?
- sprkwd 3y ago
  Why should it be a website as opposed to an app?
  - joshuaissac 3y ago
    Making it a website would allow people to use it on platforms other than iOS.
  - NikolaNovak 3y ago
    In short, Develop once, use by everybody everywhere. It's not everybody's first thought. My sister was working with local university to build content to support access and awareness of accessibility resources (mostly for parents of disabled children) . She couldn't even parse the notion of making a website as opposed to an app. Who doesn't use an iPhone these days?? Who uses a computer to do stuff??? Ironically, it kills so many screen readers too. Plus you need specifically iOS developers instead of generic web developers. And redevelop multiple times if you want multiple platforms. Plus some people are wary of installing apps so there's an overhead loss there. Just... A massive amount of unnecessary constraints if your goal is simply to get information out there. But apps are many people's default way of thinking, and certainly many companies are pushing it due to lock in benefits. Edit : the original post now has a "here's a YouTube video if you can't / won't install an app", which, y'know, exemplifies it perfectly :). Now, this looks like a labour of love so more power to author to use whatever method of getting it out there that they are comfortable with. But app has drawbacks over a website as well as benefits, is all :)

dutchbrit 3y ago

Thanks for sharing, I’m going to give this a try!

NikolaNovak 3y ago

Thanks! It feels a lot like the Michel Thomas method from the quick look