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As someone whose native language is not English (and didn't receive particularly good English classes at school, but had access to the Internet): if you start a

by jdiez17 12y ago

As someone whose native language is not English (and didn't receive particularly good English classes at school, but had access to the Internet): if you start at a young enough age, you pick it up somewhat naturally. Seriously. In my case, wanting to "do X thing in VB6" drove me to read heaps of text in English, and even if I couldn't make sense of everything I could kind of guess what they were saying from the context and some few words I recognised. Do this for a few years and you'll have decent comprehension skills in that language. I guess that's a pretty natural way to learn, rather than being drilled some abstract grammar rules.

sanxiyn 12y ago
Well, before that you have to be able to read Latin alphabets. I had to. You may be fortunate enough to have a native language that happens to share the writing system with English, but a lot of people don't. Actually, I think the majority of people don't.
- merrua 12y ago
  Learning another alphabet usually only takes a week or two with flashcards though. I wouldn't imagine that will hold anyone back. Though encouragement would help.
  - jdiez17 12y ago
    Learning an alphabet might not be particularly difficult in itself, but being able to consciously identify symbols is not enough for your brain to form higher-level abstractions. It's not unattainable by any means, of course, it's just a significant obstacle. (IMO)
- jdiez17 12y ago
  That's very true, and I didn't think about it. I'm very fortunate in that regard.
Natsu 12y ago
I'm not completely sure that 'youth' is a required attribute here. From my experience, this can happen later in life as well, though you may be limited to being good at only what you can practice easily. For example, I'm much better at reading French than listening to it. The opposite is true of some other languages.
laichzeit0 12y ago
Your English is excellent. It's sad that a single non-idiomatically phrased sentence can "blow" your cover though, e.g. "some few words", that gave it away instantly.
- jdiez17 12y ago
  Hey, thanks. Yeah, being able to recognise non-native speakers (based on accents and non-idiomatic sentences) is apparently a significant evolutionary advantage. I remember reading most people can identify a person speaking in a foreign accent within 80ms. That's pretty impressive! I'm currently trying to actively get rid of my accent. I've been asked a few times whether I'm actually British, and pretty much nobody can actually guess where I'm from.
  - 1_player 12y ago
    How long have you been living in Britain, for people to think you're British from your accent? I started pretty much the same way, trying to make sense of C++ and VB manuals when I was young and I think I have pretty good reading and writing skills now, although a native speaker can notice English is not my primary language. Spoken English is still an obstacle for me, I moved to London a year ago, I got a pretty good pronunciation, but I still find it much harder to convey my thoughts, compared to writing them. And I'm trying hard to lose my Italian accent, luckily it's not as pronounced as the stereotypical one. Though I have to admit I've never been a good speaker, not even in my native language.
    - jdiez17 12y ago
      About a year now. My spoken English was pretty rough back then, but I started copying the sounds I heard when other people spoke, and it seems to have helped. Yeah, it's a lot harder to convey thoughts by speech in a foreign language, and I think it's because you have to make a conscious effort to find the right words or expressions. It's like getting data from RAM (foreign language) or from the L1 cache (native). It gets better though, with practice.
dded 12y ago
"if you start at a young enough age" My understanding is that less than 12 is a good definition of young enough. (Although, ironically in the context of this discussion, my google-fu is too weak this morning to find the reference that convinced me of this. :) In any case, a distant 2 years of high-school German coupled with 6 months of effort last year (pretty nearly an hour a day) was not enough to give me the skill to even read a children's book in German. For some of us, learning a language is hard.
- natejenkins 12y ago
  "learning a language is hard" I don't agree here. First off, your two years of high school German, like my two years of high school Spanish, were likely a waste of time. I had the highest grade in class and couldn't speak a word of Spanish, although I could write simple sentences in present tense quite successfully. I moved to a French speaking country when I was 23. Initially, like most Americans, I thought that learning languages was hard so why bother. After one year abroad I basically spoke 0 words of French. Once I decided to stay long-term I took a French class, it was once a week for two hours for about 7 months. I was teaching physics in French a few months later. Granted I wasn't fluent, but it was good enough and my students were incredibly patient. By the time my own French course started up again it was unnecessary, I was learning more than enough during the day so I quit. The key part was that the French class was only in French from day one. You could not ask a question in any language other than French because the teacher couldn't understand you (in reality she simply feigned incomprehension). Amazingly, a good teacher can make you understand a language you don't speak by speaking to you in that language. For the life of me I don't understand why high schools in the US don't adopt this system. Babies are great at learning languages and you have a massive advantage over them, you have the power of reason. You also have the massive disadvantage of people refusing to speak to you like a 2-year-old. My advice, if you really want to learn German, is to spend the next 6 months speaking to someone in German for an hour everyday (there are some websites that let you do this remotely). Same time investment as before, but I'm guessing you didn't spend so much time last year actually speaking with someone. Babies don't learn to speak through books, they listen for a year and then start saying extremely simple things. Learning to read in German will do wonders for your vocabulary, but it won't allow you to have a conversation. As someone who is quite anti-social, I find this unfortunate, but the wiring required to speak another language gets put in much faster by speaking said language. Also, don't bother learning how to speak in present tense, learn how to speak in the past and future. You want to be able to say what you did yesterday and what you are doing tomorrow. People ask you how your weekend was and what are you doing for vacation, they know what you are doing right now because you're talking to them. Surprisingly, I can't think of a language where it is harder to speak in the past or the future than in the present due to verb conjugations becoming largely trivial. I want to emphasize that I was not an especially gifted student in my French class. We were all total beginners and by the end of the course most people were functionally speaking French.

by jdiez17 12y ago

sanxiyn 12y ago

Well, before that you have to be able to read Latin alphabets. I had to. You may be fortunate enough to have a native language that happens to share the writing system with English, but a lot of people don't. Actually, I think the majority of people don't.

merrua 12y ago
Learning another alphabet usually only takes a week or two with flashcards though. I wouldn't imagine that will hold anyone back. Though encouragement would help.
- jdiez17 12y ago
  Learning an alphabet might not be particularly difficult in itself, but being able to consciously identify symbols is not enough for your brain to form higher-level abstractions. It's not unattainable by any means, of course, it's just a significant obstacle. (IMO)
jdiez17 12y ago
That's very true, and I didn't think about it. I'm very fortunate in that regard.

Natsu 12y ago

I'm not completely sure that 'youth' is a required attribute here. From my experience, this can happen later in life as well, though you may be limited to being good at only what you can practice easily. For example, I'm much better at reading French than listening to it. The opposite is true of some other languages.

laichzeit0 12y ago

Your English is excellent. It's sad that a single non-idiomatically phrased sentence can "blow" your cover though, e.g. "some few words", that gave it away instantly.

jdiez17 12y ago
Hey, thanks. Yeah, being able to recognise non-native speakers (based on accents and non-idiomatic sentences) is apparently a significant evolutionary advantage. I remember reading most people can identify a person speaking in a foreign accent within 80ms. That's pretty impressive! I'm currently trying to actively get rid of my accent. I've been asked a few times whether I'm actually British, and pretty much nobody can actually guess where I'm from.
- 1_player 12y ago
  How long have you been living in Britain, for people to think you're British from your accent? I started pretty much the same way, trying to make sense of C++ and VB manuals when I was young and I think I have pretty good reading and writing skills now, although a native speaker can notice English is not my primary language. Spoken English is still an obstacle for me, I moved to London a year ago, I got a pretty good pronunciation, but I still find it much harder to convey my thoughts, compared to writing them. And I'm trying hard to lose my Italian accent, luckily it's not as pronounced as the stereotypical one. Though I have to admit I've never been a good speaker, not even in my native language.
  - jdiez17 12y ago
    About a year now. My spoken English was pretty rough back then, but I started copying the sounds I heard when other people spoke, and it seems to have helped. Yeah, it's a lot harder to convey thoughts by speech in a foreign language, and I think it's because you have to make a conscious effort to find the right words or expressions. It's like getting data from RAM (foreign language) or from the L1 cache (native). It gets better though, with practice.

dded 12y ago

"if you start at a young enough age" My understanding is that less than 12 is a good definition of young enough. (Although, ironically in the context of this discussion, my google-fu is too weak this morning to find the reference that convinced me of this. :) In any case, a distant 2 years of high-school German coupled with 6 months of effort last year (pretty nearly an hour a day) was not enough to give me the skill to even read a children's book in German. For some of us, learning a language is hard.

natejenkins 12y ago
"learning a language is hard" I don't agree here. First off, your two years of high school German, like my two years of high school Spanish, were likely a waste of time. I had the highest grade in class and couldn't speak a word of Spanish, although I could write simple sentences in present tense quite successfully. I moved to a French speaking country when I was 23. Initially, like most Americans, I thought that learning languages was hard so why bother. After one year abroad I basically spoke 0 words of French. Once I decided to stay long-term I took a French class, it was once a week for two hours for about 7 months. I was teaching physics in French a few months later. Granted I wasn't fluent, but it was good enough and my students were incredibly patient. By the time my own French course started up again it was unnecessary, I was learning more than enough during the day so I quit. The key part was that the French class was only in French from day one. You could not ask a question in any language other than French because the teacher couldn't understand you (in reality she simply feigned incomprehension). Amazingly, a good teacher can make you understand a language you don't speak by speaking to you in that language. For the life of me I don't understand why high schools in the US don't adopt this system. Babies are great at learning languages and you have a massive advantage over them, you have the power of reason. You also have the massive disadvantage of people refusing to speak to you like a 2-year-old. My advice, if you really want to learn German, is to spend the next 6 months speaking to someone in German for an hour everyday (there are some websites that let you do this remotely). Same time investment as before, but I'm guessing you didn't spend so much time last year actually speaking with someone. Babies don't learn to speak through books, they listen for a year and then start saying extremely simple things. Learning to read in German will do wonders for your vocabulary, but it won't allow you to have a conversation. As someone who is quite anti-social, I find this unfortunate, but the wiring required to speak another language gets put in much faster by speaking said language. Also, don't bother learning how to speak in present tense, learn how to speak in the past and future. You want to be able to say what you did yesterday and what you are doing tomorrow. People ask you how your weekend was and what are you doing for vacation, they know what you are doing right now because you're talking to them. Surprisingly, I can't think of a language where it is harder to speak in the past or the future than in the present due to verb conjugations becoming largely trivial. I want to emphasize that I was not an especially gifted student in my French class. We were all total beginners and by the end of the course most people were functionally speaking French.