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Originally Posted by N.B. Forrest
You know, I've heard about that sort of thing for years - "total immersion", like Mario Lemieux learning English by watching soap operas for hours on end - but I can't quite see how it works: I mean, if you don't know the language at all at the start, how the hell do you even begin to pick it up by osmosis?
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Nah...he may have done that, but he LEARNED english by living it with people and being forced to speak it in daily life. That's the BEST way by far. You can study out of a book all you like, but that won't teach you all that much, except to read the language. I knew a girl in Germany, an American, who simply went over there and got a job as a waitress. She was fluent in a year. Whereas I had studied out of books, and I could barely get by if the other person was patient and spoke to me at retard level. You simply have to LIVE it. Watching it is not enough. Because you're not interacting. You don't have to produce anything.
But once you know the guts of a language fairly well, then I think listening does help some. Certain words and patterns are used over and over, and recognizing functional, practical stuff like that is the larger part of knowing a language - in a functional rather than academic sense.
We had a great post on here, I think it's on here, but I don't know where, showing that comparative few words make up the guts of most languages. Like 200 words is 40% of some language, and 2000 words is 90%. I've probably got that wrong. I know English has a far greater vocab than most languages. The difficulty is getting the verbs and declensions right, but for functional work, that stuff is irrelevant, it will come with use. Then you can read grammar books and get it right.
I would honestly say, looking back at my life, in which studying languages was such a large part of my formal studies, it was mostly a waste of time - if my intent were to FUNCTION in or functionally communicate in that language. If you're serious about that? You either go to France or speak french to french speakes 24 hours a day. There is no other serious way to do QUICKLY. Learning out of a book won't cut it.
Now, where word study DID pay off for me hugely is in my own PRIVATE study of English. I'd make lists of obscure words, I'd read every satirist out there, study their techniques, any word they used I hadn't come across I looked up. This worked BECAUSE i already had an excellent grasp of English. I could add baubles to basics.
Unless you are a genius, you simply cannot learn to speak functionally and English-level in foreign languages without being in that environment 24 hours a day and FORCED to use it, at least for several months. That's if you're a regular or smart person. Books alone or tapes or tv won't do the job. My mom who was ABD in Spanish said she eventually began to dream in Spanish. But she was also over in Spain, so she had the background to get to the level where you actually truly know the language.
I've made private studies of all the major European languages, but I'm far from fluent. I can just read a lot of words in a lot of languages. But that's not functional fluency, it just helps me read stuff I use editorially. Like, if something's in French or Dutch, I can make out a lot of it.
Another tip - watch movies with subtitles in, say, Dutch or Swedish. I've learned a lot this way. These are kind of off-German languages, so you already have a good base with Dutch if you know German OR English, and Swedish, if you know German. Russian and Greek - you have to know the Cyrilic alaphabet to get in the game on that one. But it's not too hard to learn, at least to where you can sometimes make out slogans on posters.
I'd say, I'm all about functionality. That's because when I went to school, I took some language classes past simple grammar, literature, and you're competing for grades with people almost all of whom grew up in a house where Spanish or German were spoken at least by one parent. These people are fluent. When you're like me, I learned it all out of a book. I couldnt be on that level if I studied nothing else. There's no point to it unless you really are into studying the literature. For me, English is it. The only language I mastered or have any deep interest in. Other languages are for reading. I don't feel I need to master German to get what Hitler or Schopenhauer or Nietzsche is saying, I grasp it just fine.
Day to day, I listen to Spanish mostly, if anything. It is simply easier to pick up than almost any language. But then again, I studied it more than any other language, about seven years in school. It's just not very hard to learn though.
So what I can summarize from my experience: if you're serious about learning a language, total immersion - by living over there and using it DAILY is the only way to go. Nothing out of a book ever can or will get anywhere ner that - those are just for looking up stuff to get it right, functionally you have to DO it to become truly fluent in it. Otherwise, don't kid yourself. You're just learning to read a different tongue.
"Had we world enough and time..." -- it's one of those things. I concluded, rather sadly, that my study of non-English languages would have been better spent elsewhere - studying religion, for example. Or taking more formal English classes to read more great stuff and get the System take on the author. But my study of English, in private, has been more than worthwhile, and will never end. You see what I mean...
http://www.tvonlinelive.net/Watch/TV...line-1048.html
I keep this on in background sometimes, just to try to get better at Spanish patterns... This is a semi-porn channel Miami TV, the broad does it half in English and half in Spanish and half-covered in a shirt. Also, they do run some kind of odd German porno in the other stream, so you can listen to German sometimes too... I don't really get where this stuff comes from, but the German porno channel is out of Austria, and the Miami TV is just kind of some local deal I guess, the broad runs around to car shows, clubs, zoos, art exhibits, just talks to people, and also does advice responses.
German is more difficult than Spanish, but it's not as hard as people like Twain claim it is. I really wish he hadn't exaggerated its difficulty.