4 ms·

Ask HN: What languages do you speak fluently, and what next?

2 points by Jugurtha 13y ago

In fluent, I mean way more fluent than a CIA operative getting described as "fluent in X" in a movie, to finally open his mouth and completely butcher the language while magically not getting detected by the natives. Which may either mean that the CIA operates only in stupid countries (which they don't) or that they only hire handsome men(which in addition to get all startup funding according to the recent "buzz", also manage to get away with their life). Also, if you can make be precise (a lot of people say they speak Arabic, but they in fact speak the dialect spoken in Egypt (which is what Hollywood calls "Arabic") and not the classical Arabic (Fus'ha). Which dialects, etc. Why you speak them, and why will you learn the ones you are aout to learn ?

mindcrime 13y ago
I speak English fluently, and can speak 2 or 3 words (literally) in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Tamil. I was getting pretty good at Spanish once when dating a girl who was a native Spanish speaker, but since then I haven't made it a point to keep practicing. I've also made aborted efforts to learn Russian, German and Mandarin over the years. In the case of most of the foreign languages I've tried to learn (specifically excepting French, which I studied for two years in high-school), I've mostly tried to learn languages of people I worked with or around. What usually happens is that I learn a few phrases ("hello", "good morning", "how are you") and then the co-worker quits, I quit, the company closes down, or something else weird happens (my jiu-jitsu instructor was my "learning buddy" on Portuguese and he got deported for over-staying his time in the US on a guest visa). So what's next? Probably putting some time into making a serious effort to get good at Spanish. Where I live (NC) there are plenty of Spanish speakers around to talk to, and I have a co-worker from Argentina I could practice with. And there is a lady from Mexico at the restaurant downstairs that I talk to sometimes that has offered to help me with Spanish, in exchange for helping her with English. Bigger picture... because I've dabbled in Spanish, French, and Portuguese already, and because I have always wanted to learn Latin anyway, and because I speculate that it would be interesting to learn Latin and the major descendants, I'm tempted to put some serious effort into learning Latin, and then try to learn all of French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese. The big constraints are time and people to talk with, especially for something like Romanian (I don't know a soul who speaks that one).
- Jugurtha 13y ago
  Thanks for your elaborate answer, Mindcrime ! I'm a native French and Kabyle speaker (meaning I started talking those since I could babble words), then learned Algerian dialect (which is the language we speak in the streets and is a mish-mash of Arabic, French, Kabyle, Turkish, Spanish and a whole bunch of languages of countries who invaded us). Then learned classical Arabic (the one used in poetry and literature). I started communicating in English around 2009. I had been "reading" books and doc in English before that, but to articulate ideas, get subtleties and all was another matter. The point is: What I learned in school was nothing. What I learned alone reading definitely helped. What I learned online communicating on forums, having to explain myself to people, elaborate, etc was the major game changer. It's not until then that my skills took off. Also a clear decision to switch to all English: Meaning my OS, my search queries on Google, the pages I visit became all in English. It was hard in the beginning, since I was tempted to seek comfort, searching in a language I know and making the least effort. My brain ached and thought: I could be reading this in French and grasping it in 5 minutes, but I kept at it. TV shows, movies, I watched all of those in English and stopped watching them in French. I had subtitles, but in English, since I already had the vocabulary, but missed idioms and having subtitles in French would defeat the purpose of "practicing". Stopped translating in my brain: Used to translate English to French, and now comprehension was done on a pure meta English level. Now I want to learn other languages. Mandarin and German, I suppose. I would love to learn Italian. I don't really like Spanish, but it's a useful language. Though it's not unusual to find people who speak it, and better. I can understand text in Italian and Spanish (being a native French speaker). But I wouldn't be able to communicate in it. My strategy for learning the other languages will be "RC time constant": Getting to 63.2%. I won't write prose in English, but my current skills are more than enough to get by. That's what I shoot for, since it will probably take more time to go from 63.2% to full mastery (which will never happen, so why bother) than it would to go from 0 to 63.2%. Just like a capacitor charging will never really, mathematically speaking, reach the voltage of its charging source.. What's nice being Kabyle is that we can pronounce all sounds (the weird German sounds are part of our sounds, too) and we don't have "accents" (meaning that most of us speak languages like a native would). So I'll start hanging out in Chinese and German fora. The difficulty, I suppose, is they have their own characters. But these are the quirks of the language I will embrace, and I won't be a "stupid tourist".

mindcrime 13y ago
That's pretty awesome. Sounds like you grew up in a pretty cool environment for becoming very multilingual. Sadly for me, not a lot of Americans grow up multilingual and I never studied any other languages until French in high-school. And to be honest, I wasn't very motivated back then and I didn't put a lot of effort into it. Pretty much all I can say in French now is: je ne parle pas Francais or je parle un peux Francais and je m'appelle mindcrime I like your idea about learning by hanging out on forums dedicated to other languages though. I hadn't thought of that. One thing I used to do when I was studying Spanish, was watching an hour or two of some Spanish language TV show a couple of times a week. Of course, one great thing about the Internet is that there are podcasts, streaming audio radio stations, youtube videos, and tons of resources for learning almost any language you can think of. But, again, time and energy are the big constraints (at least in my world). Anyway, glad you posted this thread. It's reminded me of my desire to dive back into language learning.
- Jugurtha 13y ago
  Yeah, they weren't forums dedicated to learning the language. I think that's the major mistake people do: trying to learn the language by .. trying to learn the language. They were forums dedicated to their specific topics, just in English (like electronics forums, social sciences, etc). One of the most frustrating things in our English courses is that whether it's 8th grade or college level, they all go back and start from scratch, with grammar and really basic sentences. That's like spending years going over the instruction set, or syntax of a language, instead of trying to do a meaningful project that interests you (I'm guilty of that, hence my lack of programming proficiency). Plus the fact it's daunting in the beginning, and you only regret that looking backwards: If only I started doing that seriously when I started 7 years ago, I would be great today. So finding an area that interests you (like really interests you to the point where you don't mind the hassle) but in another language. PS: It's "un peu". Peux is the verb "pouvoir" for Je and Tu, and "peu" is "little". But then again, you got the apostrophe spot on the money (which isn't that obvious, so kudos to you).