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Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

Another great resource is Pimsleur. I've used their courses to learn Italian and German.

It's a half hour of audio each day. The key is that you speak out loud. You can do it while cooking or driving, or any other activity that is routine and non-verbal.

They teach you to pronounce phrases very well, and you learn the basic structure of the language. Once you can say "I would like a glass of wine", you can easily learn to say "I would like X".

When I got to Italy, people thought I had been living there for a year.

There are only two things you MUST do:

1. Do a lesson every day. 2. Speak out loud, in a normal conversational tone. The program is teaching you to have conversations.

I love these courses so much that I'm compelled to gush about them whenever language learning is mentioned. They won't make you a native speaker, but you'll quickly reach a level where you can advance rapidly.

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I used Pimsleur for Cantonese in 2010 during a trip to HK and have kind of mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it was good for pronunciation. Many people were shocked by how good my Cantonese sounded and had troubles believing me when I said I'd just gotten to Hong Kong. On the other hand, this caused some problems-- people consistently over-estimated my language abilities, and as a result said a ton of stuff I couldn't understand. Had my speech sounded worse they'd probably have modified theirs a bit and I'd have learned faster. The other wildcard is that I already spoke Mandarin fluently, and definitely had a bit of help from all the cognates.

Another downside to Pimsleur I discovered more recently while working on Swedish. They're all about the same! The dialogues and stories got kind of boring since I'd heard them already in Cantonese.

Ideally, I'd like a resource like Pimsleur plus some kind of podcast (e.g. popupcantonese.com) so that I could build more vocabulary at least at a passive level and understand more of the speech I elicit from native speakers.

people consistently over-estimated my language abilities, and as a result said a ton of stuff I couldn't understand

The same thing happened to me in South America. I studied Spanish in high school, but when I asked someone a question there, they started talking at 100mph and I had no idea what they were saying.

I find it's a lot easier to understand Spanish speakers who grew up stateside. They use a more limited vocabulary, and they're Spanglish accent is a lot easier to understand.

> On the other hand, this caused some problems-- people consistently over-estimated my language abilities, and as a result said a ton of stuff I couldn't understand.

I don't see how that's a downside of Pimsleur...

Fundamentally, it's just a result of picking up certain attributes of the language more quickly than others. That could be a result of the particular teaching method that Pimsleur uses, or just the natural abilities of the student.

I've had a similar experience to the grandparent while learning Mandarin (not through Pimsleur), where my pronunciation has far outstripped my progress in listening, grammar, and vocabulary. Hoping to remedy this through different exercises, talking with (sympathetic) native speakers, and catching up on my Chinese soaps. ;)

Still, I don't see it as downside of the method at all. If Joe learns how to say "Excuse me, where is the Hilton Hotel?" in Chinese with really good pronunciation, and some Chinese people go on to assume he speaks really well, then that means to me: (i) Joe used a method that teaches good pronunciation from the start, (ii) those Chinese people are overestimating Joe's ability, they're simply wrong.

On (i): any method has to make some choices on what to teach first. I think good pronunciation and listening skills are much important than knowing spelling or explicit grammar rules at the beginning. While Pimsleur is not perfect, I believe it's a good method in that respect.

On (ii): it's possible that Joe got unlucky, or maybe people in that region are monolinguals and don't quite understand that language proficiency is far being binary. It's not a big deal anyway: just learn how to say "I don't understand", "sorry, I don't speak Chinese well" and "please speak slowly". At least the first 2 of those are stock Pimsleur phrases.

For what is worth, some of us foreigners in Japan experience a different phenomenon: Japanese people who can't quite believe that non-Japanese can speak their language.

I agree that it's not a downside. It's just an interesting effect and experience! As far as Pimsleur, from people's comments here I'd certainly consider using their materials.

Regarding your experience in Japan, I think that's a demonstration of why learning foreign languages (and traveling)is so significant: It creates new cultural ties and has the power to jolt people out of their preconceptions and prejudices (both for learners and native speakers). It opens minds on all sides.

On a similar note, I started learning Swedish mostly through months of self-study (reading/writing) in the US, and a private tutor every other week. She was the only Swedish tutor I could find in a 1 hour driving radius, and British. She is a professional translator and also teaches Spanish and German; I was her first Swedish pupil.

Which meant I, like you, had the strange ability when visiting Swedish, of speaking much better Swedish than I could understand.

agreed. This is a good thing. It puts you on the spot and you are forced to try to comprehend what is being said. Even if you only understand a word, you have consumed all and found the one word or phrase you do know.

I'll add my endorsement. Pimsleur was the most enjoyable audio learning experience I've had while commuting, because I actually learned something that has kept with me.

They use spaced repetition and native accents. I hear what I should say in my mind when I want to say it instead of trying to think of words on paper I've learned. Of course, it has its limits (you don't learn to read or write), and only gets you the basics of a language, but it really helps you nail them in a way that makes you feel like you're naturally learning a language like a child does.

I'm only a few lessons into Pimsleur but it is quite interesting. I understand the concept of speaking out loud, but I hope normal conversational tone is not required! I do these on the bus, which means I can mouth the words and speak in a quiet voice, but talking makes me look like a crazy person!

Just get a pair of iPhone earbuds (with a microphone). That way you can pretend to be on the phone.

Then, instead of a crazy person, you look like an asshole.

Why do you care what other people think?

Seriously, just whisper and accept the stares. That's what I do. People lose interest in you after a while anyway.

I don't know about pavel_lishin, but I care what other people think because I don't want to be an asshole. I don't want to be the guy talking loudly on his phone on a crowded bus, because that's guy's obnoxious.

The guy who's whispering to himself is fine. Weird, but at least not an asshole.

Talking into a communications device at normal volume makes you look like an asshole? O_o

First, no one talks on the phone at a normal volume when they're on the phone. They always speak louder in order to speak "over" the noise of the bus.

Second, yes, it totally does. The guy loudly talking into his phone is audible to everyone on the bus, thanks to the fact that he's speaking loudly. It's really obnoxious. e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0uTi2qkgf0

With that said, you could probably practice this stuff on the bus without being obnoxious by simply speaking more quietly. You'll still be more annoying than the quiet guy reading a book, but probably not unreasonably so.

Just get a pocket dictionary of the language you're studying with the subject printed large on the cover. Headphones on, same mouth movements, but now you've gone from crazy to studious!

It's a great conversation starter, too, which might land you a conversation partner if you're in a multicultural city.

That is actually an excellent idea, thanks!

I thought Pimsleur was pretty good, but I hit a pretty big brick wall at one point. I was saying things properly accented, and I was doing really well in the prompted exercises. But I wasn't really getting any real understanding... I was just getting very good at memorizing whole-sentence responses. And at some point, they try to mix things up and I just had no idea how to go from what I "knew" to what they wanted me to say.

So I was very, very good at my canned sentences, but had no real language ability.

Another vote for Pimsleur here. I've used levels 1-3 Chinese Mandarin and its excellent. I wish they made more.

Another thing on that list is 3. Repeat lessons.

I tried using Pimsleur to learn Dutch, but I must say that I didn't like it too much. The language they used was way too formal, and people here in the Netherlands don't really speak like that too much.

Michael Thomas courses, on the other hand, have been very helpful. Instead of just drilling how to ask for directions, you get taught how to form sentences.

Then again, it probably comes down to personal preferences.

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