4 ms·

I learned 5 foreign languages different ways, and the one I'm most proficient in, Italian, I learned the hardest way, doing grammar excercises, where for every

I learned 5 foreign languages different ways, and the one I'm most proficient in, Italian, I learned the hardest way, doing grammar excercises, where for every of 31 paragraphs of the manual (each paragraph containing 2-3 grammatical phoenomena), I had to articulate ~200 sentences, each from scratch. I abandoned flashcards on the 2nd or 3rd month of learning. I also attended a discussion club, which gave that tiny bit of "coffeeshop" language the author speaks about. 1,5 years into learning, I passed CILS exam for level C (it would be C1 nowadays). My worst language in is German, where every manual is well elaborated in terms of graphical design, but every exercise askss you to insert a word or two into a sentence. Or pick an answer from a set. Basically, Duolinguo sent to printer. So after couple of years of working with teachers and taking intensive courses, my level is B1..2. I can listen to radio and understand something, I can read something. I actually can speak in a shop -- they'll understand my level and speak accordingly -- but I can't do a normal conversation. I couldn't find a teacher that doesn't just drill you through these same fancy books. "A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native", should be proverbial nowadays. So, despite the app idea being interesting and compelling, this teaching approach, picking correct options from lists, are good for testing (if the subject is given little enough time), but futile at teaching.

Mikhail_Edoshin 10mo ago
When I was an adolescent boy, my teacher gave me a beautifully looking "scientific" encyclopedia, translated into Russian from a British original. Graphically it was a masterpiece; I think it was used as one of samples in in Alan Hurlburt's "The Grid". Yet as I tried to read it I was somewhat puzzled and disappointed. Normally as I read a scientific book for my age I could form a coherent big picture. If I could not, then the material was hard, so I had to re-read, write things down, explain to myself and I would finally get it. Yet with this encyclopedia I could not get even a glimpse of the big picture. A factoid here, a factoid there, all very well illustrated, the whole book in full color, which was rare those days, but without any links between those factoids. As a Russian saying goes, it all flew into one ear and flew out from another. Nothing stayed. I've got much more from a modest physics schoolbook where I re-read every topic and derived every formula.
awesome_dude 10mo ago
> A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native, should be proverbial nowadays. I tried to learn Mandarin via Duolingo, and whilst I agree that the "multi choice" style isn't great for learning a language I did notice that I was picking up fragments of what native speakers were saying around me.
dgfl 10mo ago
For once, the Italian fascination with grammar and sentence analysis comes useful. For some context, when moving abroad I felt that most other countries don’t really teach grammar and language analysis to the point that we do in Italy. I did attend a language-focused school, which obviously leaned even more towards this tendency; but I get the impression that most competent teens graduating italian schools have a more extensive grammar-related vocabulary than other cultures. It makes sense then that Italian learning books would be more focused on grammar compared to other languages. I felt it extended to how we were taught English as well (i.e. the opposite direction). I don’t think it is the absolute best tactic for language learning, but perhaps it is the best one when restricted to purely written exercises. I’d be curious to know whether you had a similar impression. My evidence is all anecdotal, mostly from talking to various people around Europe.
- culebron21 10mo ago
  The Italian textbook was actually written by a Russian, Yulia Dobrovoskaya, in 1960s (with refrences to Rodari, Togliatti, and partigiani). But I guess she learnt from the native speakers and the literate culture. (After learning Spanish and Portuguese, the sophistication of Italian speech and writing outshines every other language to me.)
- darkwater 10mo ago
  > For some context, when moving abroad I felt that most other countries don’t really teach grammar and language analysis to the point that we do in Italy. Yep, I have to agree, as an Italian living abroad. In my case, I now have kids on the verge of finishing primary school and - maybe they will start next year who knows - I haven't seen grammar taught that much. Ironically they have more grammar exercises when studying English than the native tongues. But maybe it's just a "modern school" thing...
- voidmain0001 10mo ago
  I'm a native English speaker and taught myself Spanish. I focused heavily on grammar and verb conjugation such that I can explain verb tenses and their uses to someone else learning Spanish, yet I struggle to explain the same to an English learner. Either I didn't care enough to pay attention during my English courses or it's not taught.
actionfromafar 10mo ago
You could try the opposite angle with German - watch movies and shows in German, no subtitles. Maybe start with something aimed at children. Sprinkle in some Dutch to mix it up. It can be useful in real-world situations, depending on region.
- Gravityloss 10mo ago
  or have subtitles in German at first. Also helps if you repeat some catch phrases aloud. Especially fun if you're watching together with someone. One cool effect is that your vocabulary can be heavily concentrated on what you're watching. Like police procedures. (in Alte they speak very clear German, can recommend.)
  - culebron21 10mo ago
    The only case for me, when subtitles helped, was watching British TV series, first without subtitles, then with them, and improving listening. But only after all the grammatical heavy lifting.
- culebron21 10mo ago
  These passive approaches don't work at all. I tried this with Portuguese, French (which I don't consider learnt at all), and German as well. Before I took a good teacher's classes, I had been listening German radio for 2 years, learned nothing of substance. Portuguese, which I do speak, probably even at B2, is the language that I learned through radio, thanks to similarities to Italian and Spanish, and in which I feel the least confident. All my progress with it was when I was actually using it -- spoken or written, looking up dictionaries.
  - actionfromafar 10mo ago
    I think YMMV here. If you watch a movie without subtitles, you are sort of forced to pick up understanding, or you won't get anything out of it. This is maybe not the best way to get started, but it helped me getting to a fluent level when talking to people, specifically the "listening and understanding" part. Before, I could read and write (horribly, but legibly, mostly), but would very often draw a blank when it came to understanding what people said.
mzhaase 10mo ago
Italian is also very easy to learn while German makes absolutely no sense. A turnip is female, the fishmongers wife is neutral, a boy is male, a girl is neutral, the wife is female. Plural of Tür is Türen plural of Öffnung is Öffnungen, plural of Vogel is Vögel plural of Fenster is.. Fenster. Hundreds of unspoken rules regarding word order, some verbs that can be separated and others cannot.. Completely random. And good luck even being able to hear the difference between spucken and spuken if your language doesn't have long vs. short vowels.
- miroljub 10mo ago
  > Italian is also very easy to learn If your native language is similar, for example, Romanian or Spanish, sure it is. For the others, not really. > while German makes absolutely no sense. Mark Twain also complained about it. > A turnip is female, the fishmongers wife is neutral, a boy is male, a girl is neutral, the wife is female. Plural of Tür is Türen plural of Öffnung is Öffnungen, plural of Vogel is Vögel plural of Fenster is.. Fenster. So as in basically every language that has a grammatical gender. If it's not the same as in your native language, it won't make sense, and you'll need to learn it. After some time, you'll notice the pattern and will be able to guess accurately. > Hundreds of unspoken rules regarding word order, some verbs that can be separated and others cannot.. Completely random. The rules are well understood and clearly written. You just need to learn them. > And good luck even being able to hear the difference between spucken and spuken if your language doesn't have long vs. short vowels. Isn't that the case about every foreign language? I was never able to distinguish or pronounce correctly French diphthongs. I'm pretty sure half of the people here wouldn't be able to pronounce a couple of sounds from my native language even if their lives depended on it.
- Joker_vD 10mo ago
  To this very day I can't hear the difference between e.g. "sit" and "seat", or "eat" and "it". I can pronounce them no problem, but hearing it? Nope, those two are the same sounds. Well, whatever, the context is always disambiguating enough. But I can hear the difference between short/long (as in, differing in actual temporal duration) vowels just fine, e.g. in Finnish/Latvian ― although those languages kinda overextend it IMHO.
andrepd 10mo ago
I've had excellent results for French with a series of books called Grammaire Progressive du Français. Self-contained lessons of grammar. Vocabulary is easier because I already spoke a language with significant cross-pollination with French vocabulary. It's not an "app" and doesn't have a "streak" or an "HP bar", so...
- fransje26 10mo ago
  And if you really like to suffer, you can do it like the locals and try working through a copy of le "Bescherelle"..
integralid 10mo ago
That's a nice story, but I think restricting yourself to exactly one teaching methods is needlessly limited. Yes, you probably need a proper textbook and (ideally) a teacher to learn grammar and the language rules. This is hard work, but IMO gamified apps make users a huge disservice by handwaving this and hoping the user magically figures it all out. But, like the author found out, grammar alone won't make you fluent. I'm personally very fond of flashcards (Anki). Yes, memorizing words is just a part of language learning, but it's important and FSRS is extremely good at it. Way better than repeatedly reading a textbook. I personally hate duolingo for many reasons (it doesn't work for me), but some of my friends use it. This touches another important thing: regularity. Gamified apps and flashcards make it easy to form a habit. You can complete your daily lesson in a bus. And they are (more) fun. Even ineffective learning method is better than nothing. Finally, ymmv and there's no one size fits all. I got pretty good (fluent and communicative) by in Russian by initially just studying flashcards (followed by reading and listening - another very important component) - because grammar is similar to my native (Slavic) language and I could, actually, figure out most of it. Textbooks came much later. It was not as easy with German... PS. worth noting that the author explicitly says that this app is meant to teach you just the very basics and numerals, not for language learning
thedanbob 10mo ago
> "A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native", should be proverbial nowadays. I tried picking up some German via Duolingo once. I thought it was going great, pretty soon I was up to full sentences. Then one day I realized (because my voice teacher sometimes makes me translate the foreign language songs) that I wasn't learning German sentences, I was learning English sentences substituted with German words. German grammar is completely different. I haven't touched Duolingo since.
- stronglikedan 10mo ago
  At least with Duolingo's Spanish course, the differences in grammar are among the first things they teach. Weird that it would be different with German.
  - thedanbob 10mo ago
    It's been almost 10 years so maybe they do it differently now. I just remember they made a big deal about the gendered nouns but nothing about the fact that sentences weren't even close to correctly structured. And too be fair, maybe that was coming later and they didn't want to overwhelm people, but a quick explanation would have been nice.
- ponector 10mo ago
  What is your approach to learn German?
  - thedanbob 10mo ago
    I haven't tried since that one attempt. I've picked up a few words from learning German songs as part of my voice training, but otherwise it's not useful enough to me to take the time and effort.
- kot_manul 10mo ago
  I experienced the same thing with both German and Dutch while trying to learn them via Duolingo over a period of 6 months or so. After all the drilling and gamified lessons I never even started to feel like I was actually _learning_ these languages. With German I figured was just me being stupid or not grokking it properly; it's different enough from English to "feel" very foreign. But Dutch isn't that different. I remember only two sentences from the Dutch Duolingo, maybe because they were constantly repeated: "Ik ben een appel." (I am an apple.) and: "Nee, je bent geen appel!" (No, you are not an apple!) For comparison, I did self-study with Japanese in my teens and learned enough to ace the first 1.5 years of college Japanese instruction without much effort. And I remember taking Spanish classes in high school and to this day can at least fumble my way through a basic conversation. In contrast the only use I would have for what I learned of Dutch via Duolingo would be if I came across someone having a psychotic break. You're _not_ an apple, dude. Granted, I spent more time with both Spanish and Japanese than with any language I tried with Duolingo, but my point is simply that Duolingo just doesn't make languages "click", at least not for me and apparently not for a bunch of others either.
burkaman 10mo ago
What was "the manual" that you used for Italian?
neutronicus 10mo ago
Hmm. I learned Hebrew in Duolingo and I've in fact spoken many sentences to natives. All the Israeli women we know are always negatively comparing their American Jewish husbands to me, the goy who learned Hebrew from Duolingo. Granted, those natives are either married to me or related to someone who is. So maybe that component is essential.
- culebron21 10mo ago
  Ok, it may work if you're in the language ambient, IDK. The situation of most learners is different: we live in our countries, there are very few if any speakers of target language, or they're too busy.

Mikhail_Edoshin 10mo ago

When I was an adolescent boy, my teacher gave me a beautifully looking "scientific" encyclopedia, translated into Russian from a British original. Graphically it was a masterpiece; I think it was used as one of samples in in Alan Hurlburt's "The Grid". Yet as I tried to read it I was somewhat puzzled and disappointed. Normally as I read a scientific book for my age I could form a coherent big picture. If I could not, then the material was hard, so I had to re-read, write things down, explain to myself and I would finally get it. Yet with this encyclopedia I could not get even a glimpse of the big picture. A factoid here, a factoid there, all very well illustrated, the whole book in full color, which was rare those days, but without any links between those factoids. As a Russian saying goes, it all flew into one ear and flew out from another. Nothing stayed. I've got much more from a modest physics schoolbook where I re-read every topic and derived every formula.

awesome_dude 10mo ago

> A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native, should be proverbial nowadays. I tried to learn Mandarin via Duolingo, and whilst I agree that the "multi choice" style isn't great for learning a language I did notice that I was picking up fragments of what native speakers were saying around me.

dgfl 10mo ago

For once, the Italian fascination with grammar and sentence analysis comes useful. For some context, when moving abroad I felt that most other countries don’t really teach grammar and language analysis to the point that we do in Italy. I did attend a language-focused school, which obviously leaned even more towards this tendency; but I get the impression that most competent teens graduating italian schools have a more extensive grammar-related vocabulary than other cultures. It makes sense then that Italian learning books would be more focused on grammar compared to other languages. I felt it extended to how we were taught English as well (i.e. the opposite direction). I don’t think it is the absolute best tactic for language learning, but perhaps it is the best one when restricted to purely written exercises. I’d be curious to know whether you had a similar impression. My evidence is all anecdotal, mostly from talking to various people around Europe.

culebron21 10mo ago
The Italian textbook was actually written by a Russian, Yulia Dobrovoskaya, in 1960s (with refrences to Rodari, Togliatti, and partigiani). But I guess she learnt from the native speakers and the literate culture. (After learning Spanish and Portuguese, the sophistication of Italian speech and writing outshines every other language to me.)
darkwater 10mo ago
> For some context, when moving abroad I felt that most other countries don’t really teach grammar and language analysis to the point that we do in Italy. Yep, I have to agree, as an Italian living abroad. In my case, I now have kids on the verge of finishing primary school and - maybe they will start next year who knows - I haven't seen grammar taught that much. Ironically they have more grammar exercises when studying English than the native tongues. But maybe it's just a "modern school" thing...
voidmain0001 10mo ago
I'm a native English speaker and taught myself Spanish. I focused heavily on grammar and verb conjugation such that I can explain verb tenses and their uses to someone else learning Spanish, yet I struggle to explain the same to an English learner. Either I didn't care enough to pay attention during my English courses or it's not taught.

actionfromafar 10mo ago

You could try the opposite angle with German - watch movies and shows in German, no subtitles. Maybe start with something aimed at children. Sprinkle in some Dutch to mix it up. It can be useful in real-world situations, depending on region.

Gravityloss 10mo ago
or have subtitles in German at first. Also helps if you repeat some catch phrases aloud. Especially fun if you're watching together with someone. One cool effect is that your vocabulary can be heavily concentrated on what you're watching. Like police procedures. (in Alte they speak very clear German, can recommend.)
- culebron21 10mo ago
  The only case for me, when subtitles helped, was watching British TV series, first without subtitles, then with them, and improving listening. But only after all the grammatical heavy lifting.
culebron21 10mo ago
These passive approaches don't work at all. I tried this with Portuguese, French (which I don't consider learnt at all), and German as well. Before I took a good teacher's classes, I had been listening German radio for 2 years, learned nothing of substance. Portuguese, which I do speak, probably even at B2, is the language that I learned through radio, thanks to similarities to Italian and Spanish, and in which I feel the least confident. All my progress with it was when I was actually using it -- spoken or written, looking up dictionaries.
- actionfromafar 10mo ago
  I think YMMV here. If you watch a movie without subtitles, you are sort of forced to pick up understanding, or you won't get anything out of it. This is maybe not the best way to get started, but it helped me getting to a fluent level when talking to people, specifically the "listening and understanding" part. Before, I could read and write (horribly, but legibly, mostly), but would very often draw a blank when it came to understanding what people said.

mzhaase 10mo ago

Italian is also very easy to learn while German makes absolutely no sense. A turnip is female, the fishmongers wife is neutral, a boy is male, a girl is neutral, the wife is female. Plural of Tür is Türen plural of Öffnung is Öffnungen, plural of Vogel is Vögel plural of Fenster is.. Fenster. Hundreds of unspoken rules regarding word order, some verbs that can be separated and others cannot.. Completely random. And good luck even being able to hear the difference between spucken and spuken if your language doesn't have long vs. short vowels.

miroljub 10mo ago
> Italian is also very easy to learn If your native language is similar, for example, Romanian or Spanish, sure it is. For the others, not really. > while German makes absolutely no sense. Mark Twain also complained about it. > A turnip is female, the fishmongers wife is neutral, a boy is male, a girl is neutral, the wife is female. Plural of Tür is Türen plural of Öffnung is Öffnungen, plural of Vogel is Vögel plural of Fenster is.. Fenster. So as in basically every language that has a grammatical gender. If it's not the same as in your native language, it won't make sense, and you'll need to learn it. After some time, you'll notice the pattern and will be able to guess accurately. > Hundreds of unspoken rules regarding word order, some verbs that can be separated and others cannot.. Completely random. The rules are well understood and clearly written. You just need to learn them. > And good luck even being able to hear the difference between spucken and spuken if your language doesn't have long vs. short vowels. Isn't that the case about every foreign language? I was never able to distinguish or pronounce correctly French diphthongs. I'm pretty sure half of the people here wouldn't be able to pronounce a couple of sounds from my native language even if their lives depended on it.
Joker_vD 10mo ago
To this very day I can't hear the difference between e.g. "sit" and "seat", or "eat" and "it". I can pronounce them no problem, but hearing it? Nope, those two are the same sounds. Well, whatever, the context is always disambiguating enough. But I can hear the difference between short/long (as in, differing in actual temporal duration) vowels just fine, e.g. in Finnish/Latvian ― although those languages kinda overextend it IMHO.

andrepd 10mo ago

I've had excellent results for French with a series of books called Grammaire Progressive du Français. Self-contained lessons of grammar. Vocabulary is easier because I already spoke a language with significant cross-pollination with French vocabulary. It's not an "app" and doesn't have a "streak" or an "HP bar", so...

fransje26 10mo ago
And if you really like to suffer, you can do it like the locals and try working through a copy of le "Bescherelle"..

integralid 10mo ago

That's a nice story, but I think restricting yourself to exactly one teaching methods is needlessly limited. Yes, you probably need a proper textbook and (ideally) a teacher to learn grammar and the language rules. This is hard work, but IMO gamified apps make users a huge disservice by handwaving this and hoping the user magically figures it all out. But, like the author found out, grammar alone won't make you fluent. I'm personally very fond of flashcards (Anki). Yes, memorizing words is just a part of language learning, but it's important and FSRS is extremely good at it. Way better than repeatedly reading a textbook. I personally hate duolingo for many reasons (it doesn't work for me), but some of my friends use it. This touches another important thing: regularity. Gamified apps and flashcards make it easy to form a habit. You can complete your daily lesson in a bus. And they are (more) fun. Even ineffective learning method is better than nothing. Finally, ymmv and there's no one size fits all. I got pretty good (fluent and communicative) by in Russian by initially just studying flashcards (followed by reading and listening - another very important component) - because grammar is similar to my native (Slavic) language and I could, actually, figure out most of it. Textbooks came much later. It was not as easy with German... PS. worth noting that the author explicitly says that this app is meant to teach you just the very basics and numerals, not for language learning

thedanbob 10mo ago

> "A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native", should be proverbial nowadays. I tried picking up some German via Duolingo once. I thought it was going great, pretty soon I was up to full sentences. Then one day I realized (because my voice teacher sometimes makes me translate the foreign language songs) that I wasn't learning German sentences, I was learning English sentences substituted with German words. German grammar is completely different. I haven't touched Duolingo since.

stronglikedan 10mo ago
At least with Duolingo's Spanish course, the differences in grammar are among the first things they teach. Weird that it would be different with German.
- thedanbob 10mo ago
  It's been almost 10 years so maybe they do it differently now. I just remember they made a big deal about the gendered nouns but nothing about the fact that sentences weren't even close to correctly structured. And too be fair, maybe that was coming later and they didn't want to overwhelm people, but a quick explanation would have been nice.
ponector 10mo ago
What is your approach to learn German?
- thedanbob 10mo ago
  I haven't tried since that one attempt. I've picked up a few words from learning German songs as part of my voice training, but otherwise it's not useful enough to me to take the time and effort.
kot_manul 10mo ago
I experienced the same thing with both German and Dutch while trying to learn them via Duolingo over a period of 6 months or so. After all the drilling and gamified lessons I never even started to feel like I was actually _learning_ these languages. With German I figured was just me being stupid or not grokking it properly; it's different enough from English to "feel" very foreign. But Dutch isn't that different. I remember only two sentences from the Dutch Duolingo, maybe because they were constantly repeated: "Ik ben een appel." (I am an apple.) and: "Nee, je bent geen appel!" (No, you are not an apple!) For comparison, I did self-study with Japanese in my teens and learned enough to ace the first 1.5 years of college Japanese instruction without much effort. And I remember taking Spanish classes in high school and to this day can at least fumble my way through a basic conversation. In contrast the only use I would have for what I learned of Dutch via Duolingo would be if I came across someone having a psychotic break. You're _not_ an apple, dude. Granted, I spent more time with both Spanish and Japanese than with any language I tried with Duolingo, but my point is simply that Duolingo just doesn't make languages "click", at least not for me and apparently not for a bunch of others either.

burkaman 10mo ago

What was "the manual" that you used for Italian?

neutronicus 10mo ago

Hmm. I learned Hebrew in Duolingo and I've in fact spoken many sentences to natives. All the Israeli women we know are always negatively comparing their American Jewish husbands to me, the goy who learned Hebrew from Duolingo. Granted, those natives are either married to me or related to someone who is. So maybe that component is essential.

culebron21 10mo ago
Ok, it may work if you're in the language ambient, IDK. The situation of most learners is different: we live in our countries, there are very few if any speakers of target language, or they're too busy.