Learning a new language with Audacity

My method for learning English was a little bit different. First, the groundwork was definitely laid at school, because in my country's school system learning English is mandatory. But after I finished school, I could hardly speak English without errors. I could write and read it, but I couldn't speak it fluently.

I was aware of this, but I didn't know what to do about it without going abroad. Then, after a while I happened to find out about The Daily Show [1] by coincidence and I started to watch it every day. This was the best thing that could've happened to my English skills.

They have different guests on the show everyday, so you get to hear a variety of different dialects, and you get to hear actual spoken English (not the scripted dialogs from Hollywood), and you also learn a lot about American culture. There are surprisingly big parts of American culture that don't get imported into Europe. :-)

After a year or so, my English got good enough that you can't hear an accent anymore, I think. I actually don't know how good or bad I am, because I don't know any English-speaking people to whom I could talk to. Which is a little bit sad.

But if one day my chance arises to move to the USA, I'm at least ready language-wise.

[1] http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/

Maybe it's obvious, but using more or less the same technique with a piece of music and an instrument in your hands works great, too. You learn small nuances in how better musicians play while also getting in some good ear training. Works much better for me than getting sheet music and interpreting it in my own (amateur) way. It certainly works better at correcting little problems than most teachers can.

Sound editors like audacity can slow down sections and then do pitch shifting to make it sound like a slow version of the original. It's very difficult to use those features to make a good recording (it usually sounds at least a little weird), but for doing quick and dirty analysis of a song that will be thrown out within a few minutes, it's fantastic and easy.

I've used this method a few times over the years and wish I had time to do it more. Now that this article made the connection to learning a new language, I can actually see myself learning a new language, which has always seemed like it would take too much time. Obsessing over sound clips in Audacity seems totally normal to me, though.

This method sounds effective. For improving your accent, I suggest reading while listening to audio-books. I used this method to improve my French and it proved very effective. Plus you can choose pretty much any book/topic you like.

This is how I learned Scala.

Wow. This is exactly how I practice Japanese. Edit: Actually, I go a bit further and practice my pronunciation with Audacity. I go over a segment, over and over, trying to copy the speaker's accent exactly.

Thank you. That is pretty cool. If only I had a better way to overcome the mental block keeping me away from using the required mental bandwidth.

A minor note: "konnen" is not a German word. I assume the author meant "konnten" (past form) vs "könnten" (2nd Konjunktiv/imperfect subjunctive).

VLC doesn't have looping (that I know of) like Audacity, but it has a slow-down/speed-up feature. Slowing down a movie by 50% just about triples my comprehension (Japanese). I wish we'd had such technology when I was studying Spanish in high school..