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Comment by yaman12 | Hacker News Reader

Learn a another human language. You don’t have to be good at it or even able to converse. Languages are systems of thinking as much as they are systems of communication. Some thoughts only make sense in a given language! The process of learning a language builds cognitive skills and perhaps fights cognitive decline. If you have absolutely no “ear” for human language start with Esperanto and work your way to additional languages from there.

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I was going to leave this comment. I am about ~2 months into study Japanese and I love it. I get up early before work, and make some coffee and study for about an hour and it is one of my favorite parts of the day.

I am still very much in the beginning stages but the satisfaction of being able to read or understand something that was previously so foreign, is incredible.

As a fellow language lover I second the suggestion, but not the reasoning. What's your evidence for "some thoughts only make sense in a given language"? From what I've read, this isn't agreed upon in the linguistic community. As for Esperanto, it's heavily biased towards Western speakers, so it wouldn't necessarily be easy to start with for someone whose native language is non-Western.

On the most superficial level: It's easier to talk about snow or numbers in languages that have more words for these concepts than in languages that have less.

Languages with lots of words for snow tend to be used places where there is lots of snow to talk about. Languages with few words for snow tend to be used in places that don't get much snow and thus don't need to talk about it.

In short, if you need to talk about any subject learn the local language (whatever that is) so you can talk to the locals about the topic.

Having recently listened to John McWhorter's lectures on the history of human language, I was surprised to find out that there is no reliable evidence for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that language affects thought). The Wikipedia article on linguistic relativism states:

> The strongest form of the theory is linguistic determinism, which holds that language entirely determines the range of cognitive processes. The hypothesis of linguistic determinism is now generally agreed to be false.

Surely the reality is somewhere between "not at all" and "entirely" ?

English includes a lot more words than most people use regularly. I imagine that's the same in any language. Just expanding one's working vocabulary in one's native language would probably be quite helpful for thinking and expressing oneself more fluently—not that learning another language isn't valuable.

I'm told that English will create words for where other language create grammar. (which can be anything, from a new tense to prefixes to other things I cannot imagine because I don't know the language)

Let’s be real though; so many words in English are completely superfluous.

For example: jentacular.

> Languages are systems of thinking as much as they are systems of communication. Some thoughts only make sense in a given language!

This sounds like the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis [1], and it's been refuted, by and large. There's a good pop-sci book examining it [2], and it concludes that there is really only instance where language clearly influences world view, and that is that in the Guugu Yimithirr languages: people don't use left, right, front, back, but the cardinal directions north, south, east, west (as in, "there's an ant on your western leg"), and that does appear to give them a superior sense of direction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8444621-through-the-lang...

Can anybody recommend a good app to learn another language?

I wrote a couple iOS apps to help learn 100 words in several languages.

Hundred Words: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hundred-words/id1469449237

Language Pairs: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/language-pairs/id1438817614?...

DuoLingo is probably the most widely used app.

https://www.duolingo.com/

Get somewhat proficient in basic vocabulary then travel. Immersion is the best way to learn but it helps to know some basic vocabulary.

Read the book Fluent Forever, and download Anki, I learned Italian and French using this method. Duolingo is pretty useless.

Assimil is the best program I've found so far for learning a foreign language. The way you learn the language feels very natural to me. I used their book but they've recently released an app which may be good.

I also recommend Pimsleur as a supplement to work on your accent and listening skills. Don't let the limited vocabulary misguide you...Pimsleur teaches and emphasizes a lot of very useful language patterns/structures. Great tool in the language learning toolbox

In my view, apps are ok to train vocabulary, but not really to learn the grammar and usage patterns. As such, some languages might lend themselves somewhat better to learn via apps (Malay), while others are less suitable (Russian, Japanese).

Find native speakers and talk to them. Write down words you don't rememberand put them in Anki (or Pleco flash cards if you're learning Mandarin) and drill yourself on them daily.

youtube. Find out how to translate a term you are interested in to the target language and search that term. You will find a ton of videos of someone in your target language doing something of interest to you. For example "Weld" in Spanish is "Soldar" - throw that into the search box and I get plenty of interesting videos of people teaching how to weld, which is a topic I'm interested in so I enjoy watching them and I have some idea of what they must be talking about. (Of course some of them are giving bad advice, but I'm there to learn the language...) Don't forget to look at the related videos from the videos you watch to branch out topics.

You need to find your own topic of interest, but it is a great way to learn from native speakers as they would speak.

I only ever try reading latin. It does massage my brain.. the order of words, the way ideas combine slightly differently at many layers.. it does tickle the brain deeply.

Even knowing alphabet (cyrillic is "fun" one) does stimulate.

I'd second the idea of learning a non-Latin alphabet. Cyrillic is fun and many English speakers would only be a few hours' study away from recognising and sounding out every character. Korean is surprisingly easy to grasp and has the bonus of appearing to be quite complex. Even just plain old Greek is familiar-yet-not enough to be a challenge.

In terms of ones I personally don't know but would enjoy - Georgian script is beautiful, and Armenian looks cool too. I know enough to suggest steering clear of Arabic and Hebrew unless you're willing to commit to learning the languages themselves though. I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this though!

Knowing the alphabets themselves aren't really practical unless you're going to the country (and even then only if you can then match the sounds to some words) so it's only really a little party trick or for personal satisfaction.

I would perhaps recommend Latin, because it has a huge and rich literature, and uses essentially the same script as English.

I don't know the numbers but I would assume there is more literature in French and Spanish by now, and more diverse.

To learn a language effectively it's important to be able to immerse yourself in it. Youtube with auto transcripts, Netflix w/ subtitles, news in written form, chatting with native speakers in a language exchange by texting or skype, tutoring, etc. Once your reach A1-A2 level by any traditional mean, you will have a lot of options to get to fluency.

I was thinking of learning French, can anyone recommend which tool to use?

I learned with a really inexpensive (30 bucks) boxed set called Living Language

Then once I knew the basics I went to conversation hours

About 3-4 months to low conversational if you practice 30min-hr every day

this https://www.livinglanguage.com/faq/downloads/french/complete

Yep that's it

The boxed set has 3 booklets (Essential/Intermediate/Advanced) that cover all the grammar. Libraries usually have it.

I recommend them for the main romance languages and possibly German but for Slavic or Asian languages I would recommend other sources (I am barely intermediate in Russian and Czech and was trying Mandarin for a while).

Spanish language learner here (five years invested). Some generally applicable tools/programs I'd recommend are: Anki (or any other SRS flashcard app), Glossika (expensive but worth it), and Clozemaster (free). Glossika and Clozemaster work better after you have a basic foundation with the language. To establish a basic foundation, I recommend this strategy (https://bit.ly/397DPzM).

I would suggest using a French or Canadian person.

Agreed. My language learning skyrocketed once I forced myself to only converse in the language. Regrettably for that you need to have native language speakers available which was something I was able to avail myself of.

Online tutoring platforms like iTalki have tutors from all over the place. Including in countries with vastly different cost of life. For spanish for example you can get an hour of one-to-one tutoring with a pro teacher for less than $10. Lots of teachers from Venezuela for example where this is more than the average monthly salary.

After trying a few different options I have ended up on the (seemingly very uncool) Pimsleur program (available for cash lump sum or monthly. I am paying monthly). For me, one of the biggest challenges in French is how a lot of words get blended together and are spoken very fast. It's easy to hear what seem like new words, but they're actually things I know, but spoken as native speakers do. This listening concept is extremely important for me with French in particular. To contrast, I speak Swahili too and learned it differently, where I wouldn't say there's as much of a demand for emphasis on listening to native speakers.

Some other alternatives I tried first include: Chatterbug: Nice combination of tools/methods, but expensive and I'd need to pay a much higher price to get the kind of listening I need. A side note on these guys that's relevant for this site: they do a lot of ruby/rails stuff and have a nice graphql gem called cacheql.

French Uncovered: Interesting idea and fun method of learning, but the "book" material wasn't as long as I'd have liked and I would have liked to do a lot more listening. The self-study written materials are decent, but felt slow and like a forced way of trying to cram information into my head, where I personally do better getting that stuff naturally.

Language Transfer: Great free option, but doesn't have native French speakers and the French course doesn't good too far.

I've also done the apps like Duolingo, but the listening and speaking isn't what they do best. I basically get great at Duolingo, but not at being able to use the language.

I tried a single lesson of the trial version of Frantastique, and enjoyed it, however their monthly subscription is too expensive ($20-50 range). Can't say much else since I didn't finish the trial.

https://www.gymglish.com/en/frantastique

Lexilize flashcards on smartphone and tablets

I can give you a couple suggestions from my own experience, of course take them with a lot of salt... Unless you're very studious, start with an environment where French is spoken at you and you occasionally have to speak back, with comprehension routinely above 80%. Typically this means a classroom unless you have or are confident with other social engagements...

I did 5 years of French throughout junior and high school. I didn't quite reach fluency, but over a decade later without any further instruction I can still read a good amount, absorb new vocabulary quickly (and retain it pretty well -- I just wish I knew about Anki back then), and understand well-enunciated/slower speaking people. (Favorite recent example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLsxYlTA9Ds He's basically talking about why people find it easy to understand him vs. some random Parisian.) I've forgotten some of the grammar but if I ever get motivated to refresh that I'd go through the book we used in the final year again and make an Anki deck. (https://www.amazon.com/Fois-Pour-Toutes-Hale-Sturges/dp/0801... -- Une Fois Pour Totes. If you can reach the level by whatever means where you can start a feedback loop of teaching yourself more within the target language, I think it helps a lot. Even using a French-to-French dictionary, rather than English-to-French.)

In contrast to French I've been lazily teaching myself Japanese over the past few years, but I haven't been diligent about it and thus my conversational ability is still basically 0, my vocab is limited (though recently expanding quicker as I'm able to pick out more and more words/phrases from media), and my kanji count is only ~500 out of 2000. With more diligence I think I have enough books and methods to synthesize them that I could achieve similar proficiency as my current level of French even without a classroom environment to test it in, but I'm also fighting prioritization. If it were higher priority I think I'd try and enroll in a community college class or something just to get a boost on speaking with immediate teacher feedback.

TLDR: As far as free tools go, Anki is great for any language, especially when you build the decks yourself. (I like the existing "french core 3k" deck as it includes audio for its sentences, but unless you already have a basic understanding of French grammar, I think it might be too much to start with.)

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