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Comment by notyourloops | Hacker News Reader

I learned how to turn a stream of nonsense (from my perspective) into words by listening to hundreds of hours of Spanish TV that I didn't understand. Spanish audio + Spanish subtitles (to figure out how to parse sound, and to map sound to writing), and then Spanish audio only (prevent reliance on reading). Surprisingly effective. Incomprehensible input appears to be quite valuable.

At some point I'll try applying my methods to learning a different language to see if I can generalize (for me and my ability to pick up a language, at least).

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Just bear in mind that there's a huge difference between being able to get the gist of something spoken in a foreign language and being able to convey your thoughts effectively in that language. Even after man-years of study I still sound like an idiot when trying to speak English in conference calls, even though I can understand nearly 100% of written and spoken English.

I obviously can't judge your spoken English, but your written English is fine. If you hadn't stated otherwise, I would have assumed from your writing that English was your native language.

Idiomatic usage ("bear in mind") and register ("gist") even came off as native, without running into common give-aways like incorrect or technically-OK-but-not-quite-right prepositions. Nice.

You can't rely on it as the only means of learning, but it makes for the foundation. Conversation is hard to begin with, but conversation when you don't understand what is spoken quickly enough to begin to form a response is impossible.

I sound like an idiot when trying to speak English and I'm a native speaker.

I don't know what my conclusion is; maybe speaking is difficult.

Ability to communicate effectively, especially in public, is an extremely valuable skill. Much more valuable than, say, knowing how to program.

Unless English is an easier language to understanding all broken up, nearly 100% of the time I can figure out what someone who claims to be "bad" at it is saying. English speakers, particularly in the US seem to be pretty tolerant of it. While other countries seem to be dismissive of anyone attempting their language, as if they can't POSSIBLY understand a single word you're saying.

tldr: I'm sure you sound fine, and we can all understand you.

English speakers have contact or familiarity with a huge variety of foreign speakers, enough that we can categorise French accents, Swedish accents, Hindi accents etc etc. And we simply get heaps of practice with non-native English speakers. I don't think the same thing occurs so strongly in other languages.

English has a massive variety of vowel sounds within its different accents, as well as other variations in length, emphasis, consonants etc. Native English speakers have a subtle ear for a massive range of vowel sounds (and plenty of people can reproduce them when speaking in an accent). A Spanish person can be confused if you substitute or mispronounce a single vowel in my experience.

nah, the man is right. I learned english that way, it works surprisingly well, but only if paired to "use in context". Every time you learn something, you gotta use it, otherwise it won't stick. You gotta use that new word to get something done you actually need, because your brain is very reward oriented and it will fix the memory if it leads to a positive outcome.

Yeah, language is all about input. I'm learning Spanish now and it's going super fast. it's the second foreign language I've tried to learn (which I think helps, especially as they both have conjugated verbs, which is not really a thing in English), and it is much easier than the first (definitely helps).

Anyway, my method is:

0. Learn the grammar rules but don't fixate, just enough to get oriented. Occasionally review them.

1. I listened to this person who said something in Spanish then the same thing in (this case) the first foreign language I leanred, and does this over and over, occasionally adding new elements with an explanation, but mostly just brute-force repetition.

2. After a few hours of this (which is pretty boring), started watching 'Easy Spanish' videos on youtube, where they ask people questions on the street and have subs in Spanish and English. Watch these on repeat.

3. Start watching other Spanish youtubers who speak in that youtube manner (where everything is EXCITING!) - I have been watching Luisito Communica (or something like that, my Spanish is still bad).

4. (This is mostly how I learned my first language - Russian) - Listen to podcasts, but read the transcription first. For Spanish i am using radio Ambulente

5. Listen to full albums on youtube and follow along with the lyrics on genius.

I hope that soon I can just watch movies and stuff in Spanish without subs. Once you can get to the point where you can do that it's not even work to get better.

This is my experience in learning Japanese. At first, it was kind of an accident haha but you sort of link the general meaning of things after months worth of content. For me though, there was definitely an upper limit (not to mention this does very little for learning how to speak--at least in my experience) and because of that I've started on more concrete methods of learning.

I also feel the process has given me a kind of a boost in my studies as certain words and phrases have already been ingrained into memory.

I still do consume audio/video content primarily in Japanese (mainly because that's what I'm interested in--which definitely helps the learning process) and it's gotten easier and easier to listen/watch without subtitles lately.

Well that's pretty much how you learned your first language already! You didn't even need subtitles.

Keep in mind the brain's disposition to learn changes depending on age. And as an adult your brain will struggle for many different reasons: stressful day, lots of other information streams, far less time for learning, decreased flexibility, etc.

As a kid I learned 3 languages (including the native one) with relative ease. As an adult I really struggled to learn the fourth using what I think are the same techniques. Given the factors above the reality may be that it's almost impossible to learn in the same conditions.

Yes, but they had to teach me how to read later in life. This is a two-for-one strategy, because the reading skill transfers much more easily.

My technique was to pick a TV show that I basically knew all the lines to (Friends, in this case), and then watch it in Spanish with Spanish language subtitles.

This way I already know what the English meaning is, and I can also map the sounds to the written script.

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