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How Learning a Second Language Changed My Life

107 points by cyunker 17y ago

jrockway 17y ago
The same applies to programming. (And I don't mean learning C# if you already know Java.)
- icey 17y ago
  Yeah, we might as well cut straight to the Sapir-Whorf chase http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
  - makmanalp 17y ago
    Executive summary of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: The languages we speak and think in have certain inherent cultural understandings that affect our perception of things. Reading the whole thing is recommended though.
    - tokenadult 17y ago
      Agreeing with the author of the submitted article that learning a new language is a wonderful thing, and agreeing with you in your capsule summary of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic relativity hypothesis), I have to respectfully register disagreement with the strong version of that hypothesis. Most people are stuck in their thinking because of evolutionarily developed cognitive illusions that are not language-specific. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1 http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1 Many people can be very creative and think thoughts that have never been thought before by their fellow language-speakers even if they are resolutely monolingual. And many of the features of language that might seem to be the most influential on human thought (e.g., whether or not a language has strong concord for grammatical gender) in practice don't seem to lead to any differences in thinking. That said, even though the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is wrong, it's still a good idea to learn a new language. That does, at the very least, expose a reader or listener to authors or speakers from a different cultural tradition, and that does tend to result in new ideas and new approaches to identifying and solving problems.
dbul 17y ago
Kannada has a rep of being one of the hardest languages in India. I love the secret language bit. I always speak Japanese in public and it is great fun. Once, though, I met a couple at an event and I recognized them from a time I was at a starbucks speaking about very personal affairs in Japanese. It turns out they were from Japan. Embarrassing.
- FraaJad 17y ago
  Kannada is no harder to learn to learn than any other Dravidian or Indo-european languages. If kannada is difficult to learn, the same can be said of Telugu, whose script is close to kannada. And Hindi which also follows the same script rules (forming composites from consonants and vowels using Devanagari script). This is so much true that Sanskrit is often printed in Kannada script in my state without any loss in phonetics and "spelling" Tamil might be harder to learn as it is not phonetic. there is no unambiguous way to write 'ha' and 'ga' for instance. Mohan (a proper noun) is written mokan and called mogan. So says a native kannada speaker who can speak 3 other languages, read 4 and comprehend a couple more.
  - kragen 17y ago
    My experience from learning English, Spanish, Portuguese, some Japanese and French, and a little bit of Chinese is that mostly-phonetic writing systems are not actually difficult at all. I suspect I could learn the Kannada script well enough to read aloud fluently in a day or two, but learning Kannada well enough to speak it in conversation would take me at least three months, probably more like three years. My talent for scripts is very unusual, but I think that any person could probably learn a phonetic script in maybe a few weeks at most.
    - djuedemann 17y ago
      "My talent for scripts is very unusual" Your humility is very refreshing Mr Kragen.
      - kragen 17y ago
socratees 17y ago
That's pretty awesome. The fascinating thing is how his life changed just because of his interest in a second language. What if he had learned just french or spanish?. I think taking a different path than others sometimes pays off well. Also reminds me that luck favors the one who is well prepared.
idlewords 17y ago
To anyone considering a second language, I would recommend choosing one that is widely spoken somewhere where you can't get by with English - it will unlock a whole new part of the world for you. You might also consider studying a non-Indo-European language. It will take more time, but the experience is the linguistic equivalent to discovering functional programming after a lifetime of seeing procedural code.
- FraaJad 17y ago
  which Chad did by learning Kannada, a Dravidian (a non-Indo-european) language.
  - idlewords 17y ago
    Wow, you read the article too?
- anatoly 17y ago
  There's IE languages and IE languages. I think that, for example, a highly inflected free-word-order Slavic language may be more difficult to learn for an English speaker, and more revealing in the sense that you're referring to, than many non-IE languages. (I know you know that, but many people here might not).
mpk 17y ago
I'm always reminded of an anecdote my father told me. Once, when he was working abroad in Australia, a faxed document arrived in French, which no one else on site could read. So he translated it to English. This prompted a coworker to comment "How nice, you speak two languages!" So he reminded this person that he was, in fact, Dutch - he could speak that as well. "Oh, that doesn't count, it's your native language!" ....
- dkokelley 17y ago
  He should have asked the coworker how many languages he spoke.
  - mpk 17y ago
    The coworker only spoke English. My dad made some remark about his coworker not speaking any language at all, but I figured you'd get that from the context. I mean really - that's pretty easy from here on out, right?
    - dkokelley 17y ago
      Very straight forward. The point was to see the coworker realize on his own that by his own standards he spoke no languages at all.
- jhancock 17y ago
  but could your father speak Australian?
- radu_floricica 17y ago
  Well, in all honesty English is _not_ a foreign language. Except maybe for the Chinese and Japanese, who have a strong enough culture to survive without it.
  - snitko 17y ago
    That's exactly what I thought about. Nobody cares anymore if you speak english. Instead, it's just almost weird when you don't.
indraneel24 17y ago
"we’ve discovered...when you even try to say “Hello” or “Thank you” in their language." I'll attest to that, even though I live in the states. While this article I was proud of both the author and my own Indian heritage. Learning languages is a great thing to do, it's just a shame not all of us have the time to do it. Makes me sad that my high school was forced to cut Latin from the curriculum — it's a very interesting language to learn.
billswift 17y ago
I've read that "joke" many times before. MOST people around the world are monolingual, there are just fewer multi-lingual people in the US.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  According to the book The Tongue-Tied American: Confronting the Foreign-Language Crisis by United States Senator Paul Simon, http://www.amazon.com/Tongue-Tied-American-Confronting-Foreign-Language/dp/0826404049 http://www.amazon.com/Tongue-Tied-American-Confronting-Forei... the United States is EXTREMELY unusual in its degree of monolingualism among native-born people. The book said that the United States is the only country in the world, for example, in which it is possible to earn a Ph.D. academic degree without gaining a working knowledge of a second language.
  - RK 17y ago
    But that is relatively new. Many US universities had a foreign language requirement for graduate degrees, but since English has become the standard language in most academic fields it has been seen as unnecessary. For example, if you go to many European universities and visit any science/engineering/math department with significant foreign faculty, the language spoken is usually English. And of course that's the language in which most papers, theses, etc. are published.
  - xiaoma 17y ago
    The book is wrong. People here in Taiwan can get PHDs without working knowledge of a second language, depending on the school and department. Recently, some English-only programs have been popping up and foreigners here are getting advanced degrees from Taiwanese universities without learning any Chinese. Amazingly, quite a few of those foreigners are getting degrees in Taiwan Studies, without the ability to understand much of anything Taiwanese people speak or write. Monolingual PHD programs aren't limited to Taiwan, either. In mainland Chinese schools, 100% mandarin programs are even more common. I've also had the acquaintance of a Japanese physics post-doc with what couldn't possibly be construed as a "working" knowledge of English.
jacquesm 17y ago
Most 14 year olds in Europe study 2 sometimes 3 foreign languages. It's very hard to stay mono-lingual in this environment. And then there are all the children that have parents from more than one country. It's not rare to see them growing up fluently tri-lingual.
ivanyv 17y ago
Nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks that. I learned English when I was about 12, in part thanks to my passion for computers and in part because I had great teachers (in public school!). It's been one of the greatest gifts I've been given. I know very few people who understand it. I do tell many how life changing it is, and how it greatly opens up your world and your mind... but mostly they look at me bewildered: "why would I learn that? I'm doing fine!" or, "Nah, too difficult, and I don't have time"... It's a shame, to not be able to share so many things I've learned with the people I care about, and to know how much they're missing. Ignorance is indeed bliss I guess. I wouldn't even be here on HN if it wasn't for this.
pbhj 17y ago
I always got non-first language words confused. What interested me was when I was relearning French and learning German (to read patent docs) after having learnt sign-language (as my 4th studied language) I could think of words in sign when I was trying to find the right French word. It's kinda weird to think of a word and have an action come to mind.
- holygoat 17y ago
  I have a similar anecdote — getting muddled between French and German when learning them back-to-back at school — but bringing sign into the mix blows mine away!
  - delackner 17y ago
    Makes a lot of sense actually. Just today I was forgetting the name of someone I had just written down in the morning, and visualising the japanese characters of their name as I had written them brought the name into clarity.
tel 17y ago
I absolutely agree with all of the points Chad makes here! I just recently returned from a 3 month stay in China after studying Chinese for two years and feel the same. An interesting story was when I met another American traveler in a hostel in Shanghai. He was clearly loving his time exploring China, but every time we spoke I felt so bad for him. He was absolutely shackled to the parts of town where he could safely tread or easily find. I would spend a day wandering through streets, major and minor, dipping into shops or checking out maps to find new locations. I could fearlessly walk into a restaurant and have some idea of what I would be getting into. Best of all, I could ask anyone to help me out or just to tell me about their country -- and in a place like China, with thousands of years of rich history, people love to tell you wonderful stories about their country. When you speak someone's language, they feel comfortable around you. They're willing to help you out or listen to you try to explain things you're not quite capable of. There's an immediate reciprocation of the effort you put into that immersion in their warmth and desire to help. Better, if you go somewhere where foreigners are less common (seated train rides in China are a particular example) everyone is excited to meet and share with you. All of these things are pretty much inaccessible if you don't speak the language. So, as stereotypical as the desire to stop being monolingual is for your average American, absolutely do learn another language and then go use it. You can't imagine how tiny a chunk of the world you live in until you do.
pbhj 17y ago
Here in Wales schoolchildren are forced to learn a minority language in school. Welsh Language is given a very prominent position - it's only spoken in Wales (and bizarrely in a small area in Patagonia). I'd sooner have my kids learn a language they can use to communicate with other people that can't speak English - it's possible that there are perhaps a couple of kids now that haven't been taught English, Welsh all but died before being resurrected as a [false] part of nationalist pride. I find it very strange, I'd sooner Hindi or Urdu or Mandarin or Japanese or Spanish. Something useful. They may as well be learning Ancient Sumerian (I'd still probably prefer that). Not all second languages are equal.
- wallflower 17y ago
  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Linguistic_maps_of_the_world http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Linguistic_maps_o...
- goals 17y ago
  > I find it very strange, I'd sooner Hindi or Urdu Hindi and Urdu are practically the same languages (though, with different scripts - Hindi uses Devanagari; Urdu uses an Arabic-derived script). You can refer to both Urdu and Hindi as 'Hindustani'. Furthermore, learning Hindustani really is very advantageous. Every other grad student I see nowadays speaks Hindi (Indians, Bengalis, Pakistanis, etc.). Its speakers are usually very warm-hearted, and even more welcoming when they see someone making an effort to learn their language (and culture). Oh, and it's also the second most-spoken language by number of native-speakers. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_... ]
- idlewords 17y ago
  I've been to that tiny part of Patagonia. Sadly Welsh is no longer spoken - the older generation understands it, but for the kids it's strictly Spanish.
  - pbhj 17y ago
    Curious as to your answer: why is it sad? Surely if the kids speak fluent Spanish instead of Welsh then they can now (in their first language) communicate with far more people in the world. That's got to be better for cultural exchange, social mobility, access to services, business, etc., no? I can see an argument about losing some of the rich tradition, but the world moves on.
tokenadult 17y ago
My whole life was entirely changed by the decision to try learning Chinese after elementary school lessons in German (also a heritage language in my family) and secondary school lessons in German. The East and West can meet--just learn the language of the other side. I strongly recommend to everyone to give an earnest try to learning a language you don't speak as a native language, especially if your language-learning efforts can be paired with lengthy foreign residence. There is a lot to learn from speaking to everyday people who grew up in another country and who don't share your cultural assumptions.
vijayr 17y ago
The easiest way to learn a second or third language, would be in school. Many Indian schools are English medium, but kids learn at least one more language, as their 'second' language. Sometimes Hindi, sometimes Sanskrit or even a foreign language like French. In addition to it, we learn our mother tongue (assuming Hindi is not the mother tongue), so its easy to be trilingual. There is one disadvantage though. Kids don't get to choose the language, its pretty much decided for them by their parents. When we learn as adults, we can pick and choose - depending on our goals.
- FraaJad 17y ago
  The three language system exists in all South-Indian states. I studied Kannada, English and Hindi from grade 5-8; Sanskrit, English and Kannada from 8-10; Sanskrit and English from 11-12. So that's 4 languages in 8 years :)
yread 17y ago
There is a saying in czech (and in some culturally close languages as well) that goes like "Kolik řečí umíš, tolikrát jsi člověkem". I was totally stuck with the translation but google says it could be something along the lines of "You live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once" or shorter "How many languages you speak, so many times you are a human being".
- pjonesdotca 17y ago
  The way I heard that quote was "You receive a new soul every time you learn a new language"
  - delackner 17y ago
    What a delightful, and in my limited experience, true idea. Having spent stretches of my life thinking mostly in english, then mostly in french, and now mostly in japanese and english, there is a noticeable influence on the basic kind and character of thoughts I have in each of the three. It isn't huge, but each has its own thought coloration and has concepts that are more easily expressed than the others. Most fun for me now is talking with someone else that speaks all three, and watching the conversation just naturally blend them. Sometimes the blending is black/white (several sentences in one, then a statement in another state-changes the conversation into another language) and other times it ends up a mish-mash of two.
dmix 17y ago
http://smart.fm http://smart.fm is a very useful service for learning a second language (especially Japanese), highly recommended.
Mz 17y ago
As a child, I wanted to be fluent in six languages. I speak a little German and read and write a little French. I know a few words of Russian and a smattering of Spanish. I have gotten some use of those, mostly German because I have German relatives and lived there for a time. But I never became as fluent as I wanted and it never opened up social opportunities like I had fantasized it would -- opportunities like the author of this article experienced. For me, learning a little HTML, XHTML and CSS have done far more for my ability to reach out to other people and therefore has done far more towards widening my horizons. I'm not particularly fluent in those either, but they get a good deal more use than the human languages I dabble in. It has had the unexpected side effect that I no longer bitterly regret not becoming fluent in six human languages.
darkxanthos 17y ago
I love that these types of articles make it to the front page of HN. It's not about being shackled to technology but using technology where you need to to free you and enrich your life. /swoon
321abc 17y ago
A fantastic book about learning languages: How to Learn Any Language: Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and on Your Own by Barry Farber - http://www.amazon.com/How-Learn-Any-Language-Inexpensively/dp/0806512717 http://www.amazon.com/How-Learn-Any-Language-Inexpensively/d... which is available as a PDF here: - http://fld.hit.edu.cn/english/webedit/uploadfile/2008512152454548.PDF http://fld.hit.edu.cn/english/webedit/uploadfile/20085121524... Some articles on the TPR method for language learning: - http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/rw/tprmax.htm http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/rw/tprmax.htm - http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/other/krashentpr.htm http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/other/krashentpr.htm - http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/other/ashertpr.htm http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/other/ashertpr.htm - http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/other/ashertpr.htm http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/other/ashertpr.htm - http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/rw/firstday.htm http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/rw/firstday.htm More great articles on language learning here: - http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/articles.htm http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/articles.htm
- idlewords 17y ago
  Anything with "quick" and "easy" in the title automatically discredits itself. Language learning can be a lot of fun, but it's on a par with learning to play a musical instrument, or build furniture. You're going to spend a long time on it, and you're going to spend a long time sucking at it.
  - m0nty 17y ago
    I'd second the recommendation for Farber's book. It doesn't try to hide that you will need to work, but the work can be enjoyable and productive - that's the sense of the word "easy" in this context, rather than "work-free". It also recommends some techniques for memorisation and has some great anecdotes from Farber's own language-learning experiences.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  Farber's book is actually one of the worst in that moderately large genre, but thanks for reminding me to post a link to a bibliography with some better books. http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html And thanks for the other links, several of which are new to me.
patio11 17y ago
I'd be hard pressed to name any 30 seconds in my life more consequential than these: Counselor: "Wow, that's a lot of AP credits. Well, you've passed out of 3 of the 5 classes freshman CS majors are supposed to take. We don't have enough CS classes you're qualified for to fill the rest of the schedule. What are you going to take?" Me: "I don't know, I'm thinking a language. Do you have a list of the ones the school teaches?" Counselor: "Yep, page XXX." Me: "scans list Oh, Japanese sounds fun. High tech country, lots of money, few English speakers. Sign me up." Counselor: "I studied it in college, too. Its a "#%"%." Me: "I'm up for a bit of a challenge." I loved every minute of it, added another degree on, and here I am ten years later in Nagoya looking at a stack of bug reports filed against the university entrance exam administration system.
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  "and here I am ten years later in Nagoya looking at a stack of bug reports filed against the university entrance exam administration system." So what would you recommend as a course of self study in Japanese? ( I assume such a thing is possible. I could be wrong) Anything on the Internet is fine of course and I can buy any books available on Amazon, but I can't really go back to school or attend classes (no good Japanese teachers/schools where I live).
  - patio11 17y ago
    Candidly, I wouldn't. If you put a gun to my head I'd say find yourself a copy of Japanese the Spoken Language with the CDs and drill them until your ears bleed. In particular, make sure you practice production (i.e. talk, talk, talk, if you don't sound like the CD keep talking until you do, then drill some more). The lack of somebody to tell you "You're saying everything... wrong" is one of the largest problems with self-study. The largest is that almost everyone gives it up.
    - plinkplonk 17y ago
      "Candidly, I wouldn't. Thanks! What if I wanted (primarily) to read, write and understand (spoken) Japanese? (vs speak without mangling pronounciation) Would that be equally hard? Iow can self study get me to the point where I can watch a video clip or movie in Japanese and not have to look at the subtitles?
Pistos2 17y ago
This article showcases that a critical component of attaining fluency in a language is immersion. Many linguists insist that language cannot be separated from culture. Another important ingredient in language learning is practicing output; i.e. not restricting yourself solely to input (reading, listening).
poshj 17y ago
I speak Indonesian and Javanese as my native language, "forced to learn" Japanese, English, Malay, and a bit of Chinese here in Japan. Contrary to common opinion, I regret that I learn and speak a lot of languages because I don't feel adequate enough in any of them, even my native language. Being able to use a lot of language really broaden your view, but at the same time, you will incline to develop multiple personalities/conscious in your effort to speak like the native. I find it difficult to express myself in a "constant" way regardless languages, hence the feeling of inadequate.
- euccastro 17y ago
  I was raised in Galician but taught to read and write in Castillian (Spanish), and grew up in an environment where almost all media, signs, labelling, ..., were in Castillian. Programming related learning and work has taken most of my studying since my teen years, and I did that exclusively in English. Because of this, I estimate English is already the language in which I've done most of my reading and a fair share of my writing. I can relate to what you say, because for quite a time when trying to express myself formally I used to end up resorting to a lot of transliterated Castillian constructs and phraseology. Other times, ideas would come in English and I'd try and find a Galician equivalent. I only got past that after a conscious decision to immerse myself in Galician and Portuguese literature. Sometimes I still feel like learning my native language as a second language. And I'd be at a loss if I had to talk about programming related concepts in anything but English. I'd have to reinvent the vocabulary as I go. My own scribbled notes for personal use are written in a patois that is mostly Galician generously sprinkled with English.
- delackner 17y ago
  I run into quite a few people that were raised either first half in japanese and second half in english, or vice versa, and many of them seem to have this difficulty, not being quite up to the highest level of fluency in any language. They can get by perfectly well in both, but neither language is perfect.
sown 17y ago
My university forced me to take a second language for a CS degree. The department was located in Arts/Sciences, not engineering where it belonged. It was a perilously stupid waste of time. It required 14 credit hours. 14 credit hours of learning a language I will never speak to anyone ever again and never had any interest in learning. The only thing the language requirement does now is make the CS degree at my alma-matar less competitive since I would have taken more CS/Math/EE electives. 21 or 18 hours of humanities is enough. I'll get down-modded for being this way but I don't care. This was the reality of the situation. It genuinely hurt me. The only way it changed my life was make me miss out on interesting elective classes, like AI or computer music and I also didn't have enough time (in semesters) to do undergraduate research.
- jasonkester 17y ago
  Give it time, man. Your priorities will change. Ten years ago you were complaining that you'd never use any of that silly Math they were forcing you to learn. It took me 5 years before I appreciated the German I learned in high school. I was in Bangkok airport and met a German woman that didn't speak a word of English. She asked me something, and I understood it. I opened my mouth and a complete sentence came out in a language that I'd never truly believed that people actually spoke in real life. That was the moment I got it. So yeah, wait and see. Ten years from no I won't be surprised to find you backpacking across Guatemala, burned out on writing code, and thanking that stupid university for forcing you to learn a foreign language.
  - sown 17y ago
    > Ten years ago you were complaining that you'd never use any of that silly Math they were forcing you to learn. No, I wasn't. I minored in math. > Ten years from no I won't be surprised to find you backpacking across Guatemala And no, I won't. One of the ways to make the pain go by faster was to go to a language school in Mexico. Worse two weeks of my life in recent memory.
- yardie 17y ago
  Wow, talk about missing the point. The point of university (or used to be before they turned into high priced vocational schools) is to teach you how to learn. If you didn't learn AI or computer music in school then what's stopping you from learning on your own. In fact, you could enroll at any university right now and take those electives as audits. And the 14 credits you took to learn another language barely cover what is required to speak that language. So congratulations you have the same vocabulary as a 7 year old native speaker. The school did their part. They got you in the game. How you go about the rest is entirely up to you.
torpor 17y ago
I am Australian, living in Austria. My two year old son speaks German and English now. It is an awesome thing to see him understand English speakers, and reply in German, and vice verse. I also speak German, but he is really teaching me things about the language already that I never knew I'd comprehend, after 10 years of speaking German myself already. Once he gets older, I want to move us to somewhere in Asia, perhaps India, and give him another language to speak, which we will learn together. I can't think of a greater gift to give your child than another language, personally. It really truly opens the world to him. Of course, I'm a programmer. Language is my bread and butter. To be truthful, I'm a bit ashamed that I haven't learned as many human languages as computer languages, but there is still time for that.. ;)
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Downmodded?
tallanvor 17y ago
Learning a second language as an adult, while difficult, is definitely worthwhile. As an American in Norway, I'm struggling to learn Norwegian for many reasons, not the least of which being that pretty much everyone here speaks English very well and doesn't mind switching to English. Still, I'm continuing to work on it and hopefully will be fairly fluent within a couple of years.

107 points by cyunker 17y ago

jrockway 17y ago

The same applies to programming. (And I don't mean learning C# if you already know Java.)

icey 17y ago
Yeah, we might as well cut straight to the Sapir-Whorf chase http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
- makmanalp 17y ago
  Executive summary of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: The languages we speak and think in have certain inherent cultural understandings that affect our perception of things. Reading the whole thing is recommended though.
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    Agreeing with the author of the submitted article that learning a new language is a wonderful thing, and agreeing with you in your capsule summary of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic relativity hypothesis), I have to respectfully register disagreement with the strong version of that hypothesis. Most people are stuck in their thinking because of evolutionarily developed cognitive illusions that are not language-specific. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1 http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1 Many people can be very creative and think thoughts that have never been thought before by their fellow language-speakers even if they are resolutely monolingual. And many of the features of language that might seem to be the most influential on human thought (e.g., whether or not a language has strong concord for grammatical gender) in practice don't seem to lead to any differences in thinking. That said, even though the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is wrong, it's still a good idea to learn a new language. That does, at the very least, expose a reader or listener to authors or speakers from a different cultural tradition, and that does tend to result in new ideas and new approaches to identifying and solving problems.

dbul 17y ago

Kannada has a rep of being one of the hardest languages in India. I love the secret language bit. I always speak Japanese in public and it is great fun. Once, though, I met a couple at an event and I recognized them from a time I was at a starbucks speaking about very personal affairs in Japanese. It turns out they were from Japan. Embarrassing.

FraaJad 17y ago
Kannada is no harder to learn to learn than any other Dravidian or Indo-european languages. If kannada is difficult to learn, the same can be said of Telugu, whose script is close to kannada. And Hindi which also follows the same script rules (forming composites from consonants and vowels using Devanagari script). This is so much true that Sanskrit is often printed in Kannada script in my state without any loss in phonetics and "spelling" Tamil might be harder to learn as it is not phonetic. there is no unambiguous way to write 'ha' and 'ga' for instance. Mohan (a proper noun) is written mokan and called mogan. So says a native kannada speaker who can speak 3 other languages, read 4 and comprehend a couple more.
- kragen 17y ago
  My experience from learning English, Spanish, Portuguese, some Japanese and French, and a little bit of Chinese is that mostly-phonetic writing systems are not actually difficult at all. I suspect I could learn the Kannada script well enough to read aloud fluently in a day or two, but learning Kannada well enough to speak it in conversation would take me at least three months, probably more like three years. My talent for scripts is very unusual, but I think that any person could probably learn a phonetic script in maybe a few weeks at most.
  - djuedemann 17y ago
    "My talent for scripts is very unusual" Your humility is very refreshing Mr Kragen.
    - kragen 17y ago

socratees 17y ago

That's pretty awesome. The fascinating thing is how his life changed just because of his interest in a second language. What if he had learned just french or spanish?. I think taking a different path than others sometimes pays off well. Also reminds me that luck favors the one who is well prepared.

idlewords 17y ago

To anyone considering a second language, I would recommend choosing one that is widely spoken somewhere where you can't get by with English - it will unlock a whole new part of the world for you. You might also consider studying a non-Indo-European language. It will take more time, but the experience is the linguistic equivalent to discovering functional programming after a lifetime of seeing procedural code.

FraaJad 17y ago
which Chad did by learning Kannada, a Dravidian (a non-Indo-european) language.
- idlewords 17y ago
  Wow, you read the article too?
anatoly 17y ago
There's IE languages and IE languages. I think that, for example, a highly inflected free-word-order Slavic language may be more difficult to learn for an English speaker, and more revealing in the sense that you're referring to, than many non-IE languages. (I know you know that, but many people here might not).

mpk 17y ago

I'm always reminded of an anecdote my father told me. Once, when he was working abroad in Australia, a faxed document arrived in French, which no one else on site could read. So he translated it to English. This prompted a coworker to comment "How nice, you speak two languages!" So he reminded this person that he was, in fact, Dutch - he could speak that as well. "Oh, that doesn't count, it's your native language!" ....

dkokelley 17y ago
He should have asked the coworker how many languages he spoke.
- mpk 17y ago
  The coworker only spoke English. My dad made some remark about his coworker not speaking any language at all, but I figured you'd get that from the context. I mean really - that's pretty easy from here on out, right?
  - dkokelley 17y ago
    Very straight forward. The point was to see the coworker realize on his own that by his own standards he spoke no languages at all.
jhancock 17y ago
but could your father speak Australian?
radu_floricica 17y ago
Well, in all honesty English is _not_ a foreign language. Except maybe for the Chinese and Japanese, who have a strong enough culture to survive without it.
- snitko 17y ago
  That's exactly what I thought about. Nobody cares anymore if you speak english. Instead, it's just almost weird when you don't.

indraneel24 17y ago

"we’ve discovered...when you even try to say “Hello” or “Thank you” in their language." I'll attest to that, even though I live in the states. While this article I was proud of both the author and my own Indian heritage. Learning languages is a great thing to do, it's just a shame not all of us have the time to do it. Makes me sad that my high school was forced to cut Latin from the curriculum — it's a very interesting language to learn.

billswift 17y ago

I've read that "joke" many times before. MOST people around the world are monolingual, there are just fewer multi-lingual people in the US.

tokenadult 17y ago
According to the book The Tongue-Tied American: Confronting the Foreign-Language Crisis by United States Senator Paul Simon, http://www.amazon.com/Tongue-Tied-American-Confronting-Foreign-Language/dp/0826404049 http://www.amazon.com/Tongue-Tied-American-Confronting-Forei... the United States is EXTREMELY unusual in its degree of monolingualism among native-born people. The book said that the United States is the only country in the world, for example, in which it is possible to earn a Ph.D. academic degree without gaining a working knowledge of a second language.
- RK 17y ago
  But that is relatively new. Many US universities had a foreign language requirement for graduate degrees, but since English has become the standard language in most academic fields it has been seen as unnecessary. For example, if you go to many European universities and visit any science/engineering/math department with significant foreign faculty, the language spoken is usually English. And of course that's the language in which most papers, theses, etc. are published.
- xiaoma 17y ago
  The book is wrong. People here in Taiwan can get PHDs without working knowledge of a second language, depending on the school and department. Recently, some English-only programs have been popping up and foreigners here are getting advanced degrees from Taiwanese universities without learning any Chinese. Amazingly, quite a few of those foreigners are getting degrees in Taiwan Studies, without the ability to understand much of anything Taiwanese people speak or write. Monolingual PHD programs aren't limited to Taiwan, either. In mainland Chinese schools, 100% mandarin programs are even more common. I've also had the acquaintance of a Japanese physics post-doc with what couldn't possibly be construed as a "working" knowledge of English.

jacquesm 17y ago

Most 14 year olds in Europe study 2 sometimes 3 foreign languages. It's very hard to stay mono-lingual in this environment. And then there are all the children that have parents from more than one country. It's not rare to see them growing up fluently tri-lingual.

ivanyv 17y ago

Nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks that. I learned English when I was about 12, in part thanks to my passion for computers and in part because I had great teachers (in public school!). It's been one of the greatest gifts I've been given. I know very few people who understand it. I do tell many how life changing it is, and how it greatly opens up your world and your mind... but mostly they look at me bewildered: "why would I learn that? I'm doing fine!" or, "Nah, too difficult, and I don't have time"... It's a shame, to not be able to share so many things I've learned with the people I care about, and to know how much they're missing. Ignorance is indeed bliss I guess. I wouldn't even be here on HN if it wasn't for this.

pbhj 17y ago

I always got non-first language words confused. What interested me was when I was relearning French and learning German (to read patent docs) after having learnt sign-language (as my 4th studied language) I could think of words in sign when I was trying to find the right French word. It's kinda weird to think of a word and have an action come to mind.

holygoat 17y ago
I have a similar anecdote — getting muddled between French and German when learning them back-to-back at school — but bringing sign into the mix blows mine away!
- delackner 17y ago
  Makes a lot of sense actually. Just today I was forgetting the name of someone I had just written down in the morning, and visualising the japanese characters of their name as I had written them brought the name into clarity.

tel 17y ago

I absolutely agree with all of the points Chad makes here! I just recently returned from a 3 month stay in China after studying Chinese for two years and feel the same. An interesting story was when I met another American traveler in a hostel in Shanghai. He was clearly loving his time exploring China, but every time we spoke I felt so bad for him. He was absolutely shackled to the parts of town where he could safely tread or easily find. I would spend a day wandering through streets, major and minor, dipping into shops or checking out maps to find new locations. I could fearlessly walk into a restaurant and have some idea of what I would be getting into. Best of all, I could ask anyone to help me out or just to tell me about their country -- and in a place like China, with thousands of years of rich history, people love to tell you wonderful stories about their country. When you speak someone's language, they feel comfortable around you. They're willing to help you out or listen to you try to explain things you're not quite capable of. There's an immediate reciprocation of the effort you put into that immersion in their warmth and desire to help. Better, if you go somewhere where foreigners are less common (seated train rides in China are a particular example) everyone is excited to meet and share with you. All of these things are pretty much inaccessible if you don't speak the language. So, as stereotypical as the desire to stop being monolingual is for your average American, absolutely do learn another language and then go use it. You can't imagine how tiny a chunk of the world you live in until you do.

pbhj 17y ago

Here in Wales schoolchildren are forced to learn a minority language in school. Welsh Language is given a very prominent position - it's only spoken in Wales (and bizarrely in a small area in Patagonia). I'd sooner have my kids learn a language they can use to communicate with other people that can't speak English - it's possible that there are perhaps a couple of kids now that haven't been taught English, Welsh all but died before being resurrected as a [false] part of nationalist pride. I find it very strange, I'd sooner Hindi or Urdu or Mandarin or Japanese or Spanish. Something useful. They may as well be learning Ancient Sumerian (I'd still probably prefer that). Not all second languages are equal.

wallflower 17y ago
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Linguistic_maps_of_the_world http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Linguistic_maps_o...
goals 17y ago
> I find it very strange, I'd sooner Hindi or Urdu Hindi and Urdu are practically the same languages (though, with different scripts - Hindi uses Devanagari; Urdu uses an Arabic-derived script). You can refer to both Urdu and Hindi as 'Hindustani'. Furthermore, learning Hindustani really is very advantageous. Every other grad student I see nowadays speaks Hindi (Indians, Bengalis, Pakistanis, etc.). Its speakers are usually very warm-hearted, and even more welcoming when they see someone making an effort to learn their language (and culture). Oh, and it's also the second most-spoken language by number of native-speakers. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_... ]
idlewords 17y ago
I've been to that tiny part of Patagonia. Sadly Welsh is no longer spoken - the older generation understands it, but for the kids it's strictly Spanish.
- pbhj 17y ago
  Curious as to your answer: why is it sad? Surely if the kids speak fluent Spanish instead of Welsh then they can now (in their first language) communicate with far more people in the world. That's got to be better for cultural exchange, social mobility, access to services, business, etc., no? I can see an argument about losing some of the rich tradition, but the world moves on.

tokenadult 17y ago

My whole life was entirely changed by the decision to try learning Chinese after elementary school lessons in German (also a heritage language in my family) and secondary school lessons in German. The East and West can meet--just learn the language of the other side. I strongly recommend to everyone to give an earnest try to learning a language you don't speak as a native language, especially if your language-learning efforts can be paired with lengthy foreign residence. There is a lot to learn from speaking to everyday people who grew up in another country and who don't share your cultural assumptions.

vijayr 17y ago

The easiest way to learn a second or third language, would be in school. Many Indian schools are English medium, but kids learn at least one more language, as their 'second' language. Sometimes Hindi, sometimes Sanskrit or even a foreign language like French. In addition to it, we learn our mother tongue (assuming Hindi is not the mother tongue), so its easy to be trilingual. There is one disadvantage though. Kids don't get to choose the language, its pretty much decided for them by their parents. When we learn as adults, we can pick and choose - depending on our goals.

FraaJad 17y ago
The three language system exists in all South-Indian states. I studied Kannada, English and Hindi from grade 5-8; Sanskrit, English and Kannada from 8-10; Sanskrit and English from 11-12. So that's 4 languages in 8 years :)

yread 17y ago

There is a saying in czech (and in some culturally close languages as well) that goes like "Kolik řečí umíš, tolikrát jsi člověkem". I was totally stuck with the translation but google says it could be something along the lines of "You live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once" or shorter "How many languages you speak, so many times you are a human being".

pjonesdotca 17y ago
The way I heard that quote was "You receive a new soul every time you learn a new language"
- delackner 17y ago
  What a delightful, and in my limited experience, true idea. Having spent stretches of my life thinking mostly in english, then mostly in french, and now mostly in japanese and english, there is a noticeable influence on the basic kind and character of thoughts I have in each of the three. It isn't huge, but each has its own thought coloration and has concepts that are more easily expressed than the others. Most fun for me now is talking with someone else that speaks all three, and watching the conversation just naturally blend them. Sometimes the blending is black/white (several sentences in one, then a statement in another state-changes the conversation into another language) and other times it ends up a mish-mash of two.

dmix 17y ago

http://smart.fm http://smart.fm is a very useful service for learning a second language (especially Japanese), highly recommended.

Mz 17y ago

As a child, I wanted to be fluent in six languages. I speak a little German and read and write a little French. I know a few words of Russian and a smattering of Spanish. I have gotten some use of those, mostly German because I have German relatives and lived there for a time. But I never became as fluent as I wanted and it never opened up social opportunities like I had fantasized it would -- opportunities like the author of this article experienced. For me, learning a little HTML, XHTML and CSS have done far more for my ability to reach out to other people and therefore has done far more towards widening my horizons. I'm not particularly fluent in those either, but they get a good deal more use than the human languages I dabble in. It has had the unexpected side effect that I no longer bitterly regret not becoming fluent in six human languages.

darkxanthos 17y ago

I love that these types of articles make it to the front page of HN. It's not about being shackled to technology but using technology where you need to to free you and enrich your life. /swoon

321abc 17y ago

A fantastic book about learning languages: How to Learn Any Language: Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and on Your Own by Barry Farber - http://www.amazon.com/How-Learn-Any-Language-Inexpensively/dp/0806512717 http://www.amazon.com/How-Learn-Any-Language-Inexpensively/d... which is available as a PDF here: - http://fld.hit.edu.cn/english/webedit/uploadfile/2008512152454548.PDF http://fld.hit.edu.cn/english/webedit/uploadfile/20085121524... Some articles on the TPR method for language learning: - http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/rw/tprmax.htm http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/rw/tprmax.htm - http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/other/krashentpr.htm http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/other/krashentpr.htm - http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/other/ashertpr.htm http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/other/ashertpr.htm - http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/other/ashertpr.htm http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/other/ashertpr.htm - http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/rw/firstday.htm http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/rw/firstday.htm More great articles on language learning here: - http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/articles.htm http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/articles.htm

idlewords 17y ago
Anything with "quick" and "easy" in the title automatically discredits itself. Language learning can be a lot of fun, but it's on a par with learning to play a musical instrument, or build furniture. You're going to spend a long time on it, and you're going to spend a long time sucking at it.
- m0nty 17y ago
  I'd second the recommendation for Farber's book. It doesn't try to hide that you will need to work, but the work can be enjoyable and productive - that's the sense of the word "easy" in this context, rather than "work-free". It also recommends some techniques for memorisation and has some great anecdotes from Farber's own language-learning experiences.
tokenadult 17y ago
Farber's book is actually one of the worst in that moderately large genre, but thanks for reminding me to post a link to a bibliography with some better books. http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html And thanks for the other links, several of which are new to me.

patio11 17y ago

I'd be hard pressed to name any 30 seconds in my life more consequential than these: Counselor: "Wow, that's a lot of AP credits. Well, you've passed out of 3 of the 5 classes freshman CS majors are supposed to take. We don't have enough CS classes you're qualified for to fill the rest of the schedule. What are you going to take?" Me: "I don't know, I'm thinking a language. Do you have a list of the ones the school teaches?" Counselor: "Yep, page XXX." Me: "scans list Oh, Japanese sounds fun. High tech country, lots of money, few English speakers. Sign me up." Counselor: "I studied it in college, too. Its a "#%"%." Me: "I'm up for a bit of a challenge." I loved every minute of it, added another degree on, and here I am ten years later in Nagoya looking at a stack of bug reports filed against the university entrance exam administration system.

plinkplonk 17y ago
"and here I am ten years later in Nagoya looking at a stack of bug reports filed against the university entrance exam administration system." So what would you recommend as a course of self study in Japanese? ( I assume such a thing is possible. I could be wrong) Anything on the Internet is fine of course and I can buy any books available on Amazon, but I can't really go back to school or attend classes (no good Japanese teachers/schools where I live).
- patio11 17y ago
  Candidly, I wouldn't. If you put a gun to my head I'd say find yourself a copy of Japanese the Spoken Language with the CDs and drill them until your ears bleed. In particular, make sure you practice production (i.e. talk, talk, talk, if you don't sound like the CD keep talking until you do, then drill some more). The lack of somebody to tell you "You're saying everything... wrong" is one of the largest problems with self-study. The largest is that almost everyone gives it up.
  - plinkplonk 17y ago
    "Candidly, I wouldn't. Thanks! What if I wanted (primarily) to read, write and understand (spoken) Japanese? (vs speak without mangling pronounciation) Would that be equally hard? Iow can self study get me to the point where I can watch a video clip or movie in Japanese and not have to look at the subtitles?

Pistos2 17y ago

This article showcases that a critical component of attaining fluency in a language is immersion. Many linguists insist that language cannot be separated from culture. Another important ingredient in language learning is practicing output; i.e. not restricting yourself solely to input (reading, listening).

poshj 17y ago

I speak Indonesian and Javanese as my native language, "forced to learn" Japanese, English, Malay, and a bit of Chinese here in Japan. Contrary to common opinion, I regret that I learn and speak a lot of languages because I don't feel adequate enough in any of them, even my native language. Being able to use a lot of language really broaden your view, but at the same time, you will incline to develop multiple personalities/conscious in your effort to speak like the native. I find it difficult to express myself in a "constant" way regardless languages, hence the feeling of inadequate.

euccastro 17y ago
I was raised in Galician but taught to read and write in Castillian (Spanish), and grew up in an environment where almost all media, signs, labelling, ..., were in Castillian. Programming related learning and work has taken most of my studying since my teen years, and I did that exclusively in English. Because of this, I estimate English is already the language in which I've done most of my reading and a fair share of my writing. I can relate to what you say, because for quite a time when trying to express myself formally I used to end up resorting to a lot of transliterated Castillian constructs and phraseology. Other times, ideas would come in English and I'd try and find a Galician equivalent. I only got past that after a conscious decision to immerse myself in Galician and Portuguese literature. Sometimes I still feel like learning my native language as a second language. And I'd be at a loss if I had to talk about programming related concepts in anything but English. I'd have to reinvent the vocabulary as I go. My own scribbled notes for personal use are written in a patois that is mostly Galician generously sprinkled with English.
delackner 17y ago
I run into quite a few people that were raised either first half in japanese and second half in english, or vice versa, and many of them seem to have this difficulty, not being quite up to the highest level of fluency in any language. They can get by perfectly well in both, but neither language is perfect.

sown 17y ago

My university forced me to take a second language for a CS degree. The department was located in Arts/Sciences, not engineering where it belonged. It was a perilously stupid waste of time. It required 14 credit hours. 14 credit hours of learning a language I will never speak to anyone ever again and never had any interest in learning. The only thing the language requirement does now is make the CS degree at my alma-matar less competitive since I would have taken more CS/Math/EE electives. 21 or 18 hours of humanities is enough. I'll get down-modded for being this way but I don't care. This was the reality of the situation. It genuinely hurt me. The only way it changed my life was make me miss out on interesting elective classes, like AI or computer music and I also didn't have enough time (in semesters) to do undergraduate research.

jasonkester 17y ago
Give it time, man. Your priorities will change. Ten years ago you were complaining that you'd never use any of that silly Math they were forcing you to learn. It took me 5 years before I appreciated the German I learned in high school. I was in Bangkok airport and met a German woman that didn't speak a word of English. She asked me something, and I understood it. I opened my mouth and a complete sentence came out in a language that I'd never truly believed that people actually spoke in real life. That was the moment I got it. So yeah, wait and see. Ten years from no I won't be surprised to find you backpacking across Guatemala, burned out on writing code, and thanking that stupid university for forcing you to learn a foreign language.
- sown 17y ago
  > Ten years ago you were complaining that you'd never use any of that silly Math they were forcing you to learn. No, I wasn't. I minored in math. > Ten years from no I won't be surprised to find you backpacking across Guatemala And no, I won't. One of the ways to make the pain go by faster was to go to a language school in Mexico. Worse two weeks of my life in recent memory.
yardie 17y ago
Wow, talk about missing the point. The point of university (or used to be before they turned into high priced vocational schools) is to teach you how to learn. If you didn't learn AI or computer music in school then what's stopping you from learning on your own. In fact, you could enroll at any university right now and take those electives as audits. And the 14 credits you took to learn another language barely cover what is required to speak that language. So congratulations you have the same vocabulary as a 7 year old native speaker. The school did their part. They got you in the game. How you go about the rest is entirely up to you.

torpor 17y ago

I am Australian, living in Austria. My two year old son speaks German and English now. It is an awesome thing to see him understand English speakers, and reply in German, and vice verse. I also speak German, but he is really teaching me things about the language already that I never knew I'd comprehend, after 10 years of speaking German myself already. Once he gets older, I want to move us to somewhere in Asia, perhaps India, and give him another language to speak, which we will learn together. I can't think of a greater gift to give your child than another language, personally. It really truly opens the world to him. Of course, I'm a programmer. Language is my bread and butter. To be truthful, I'm a bit ashamed that I haven't learned as many human languages as computer languages, but there is still time for that.. ;)

jacquesm 17y ago
Downmodded?

tallanvor 17y ago

Learning a second language as an adult, while difficult, is definitely worthwhile. As an American in Norway, I'm struggling to learn Norwegian for many reasons, not the least of which being that pretty much everyone here speaks English very well and doesn't mind switching to English. Still, I'm continuing to work on it and hopefully will be fairly fluent within a couple of years.