Thinking of learning a new language - Any tips?

[GearheadNY.com]

@OsoiNA6

Nice to hear you want to learn another language.

I’ve studied several languages and can tell you it’s not easy but immersion definitely helps. I minored in German in college and picked up a decent amount of vocabulary but couldn’t speak for jack even after a couple of years (granted class was at 10 AM so I missed a few of those too). But after 2 months (and about 500 pints of Paulaner) in Germany I can say I at least got to a conversational level. Bad part is, I can no longer converse in German, since that was a while ago. I spent a few years in Taiwan growing up and could converse a bit in Mandarin too before thanks to taking classes and having an opportunity to practice. At this point, I remember a few pieces here and there but cannot speak anymore. Lesson learned is that with languages, you use it or lose it eventually.

So consider what you want to learn the language for, and will you be doing it for something long term? This is preferable since there is a higher chance you will retain it if you will use it for a while after learning it. If you have the chance to immerse yourself, even for a short while, by enrolling in studies abroad or just meeting up with those that speak the language, then by all means do that. As others have mentioned, learning by watching TV in that language or listening to radio broadcasts / podcasts will help as well, but of course you need some level of comprehension to benefit from that.

Language study is all about pattern recognition, and of course rote memorization (for vocabulary). Then reinforcement by actually using what you learned (writing it out and practicing speaking to others). If you are studying a language that doesn’t use the Roman alphabet, be sure to get the flash cards out. Buy lots of flash cards. There are a bunch of apps out there to help drill on new vocab and stuff, but I’m from the old school so I used flash cards before (oh yeah and that was back when Apple stock was in the double digits).

Anyways, learning a new language can definitely lead to new opportunities, not least of which is the future possibility of marketing Gearhead “joints” worldwide (sorry I couldn’t help rehashing this old joke).

I cannot reinforce this point more and actually, as I type this I am sitting in a boardroom in Seoul (of all the places to lurk Shift- go ahead and check your IP addys Vlad). Unfortunately, I don’t speak any Korean.

Best of luck.

PS shout out to Vlad, Wayne64SS, Cossey, crappachio, Bennyfizzle, Singh and all the other Shift heads hope all is well. Things are good on my side of the world.

Holy crap, good to hear from you! Hope all is well!

I definitely want to get started with a new language, my wife is very good with French because she has been doing it for a really long time since elementary school and spent a few month over there as well. I also hope that we will be able to teach our daughter how to speak as well.

I’m hoping that the more advice I get from bi/multi-lingual friends, the easier it will be for me to at least comprehend how to get over some hurdles in learning. I would like to move on to an additional language as well at some point, but we all have to start somewhere! Only having known pretty much one language my entire life, it’s a mind boggling issue to call something by a different name that isn’t English! It’s really something that took me some time to comprehend. Then on top of that to be able to actually use both (or many) languages on command is a crazy concept as well!

I spoke with one of my friends last night regarding his experience and it seems the translation never really stops, but fades out to only apply when things become more difficult to explain/translate. There’s always a translational gap as you guys have mentioned.

I’ll have to start getting my ass in gear with getting the proper material to learn. It looks like it will be a longer road now because I am most definitely tied down here with everything that is going on in our life now.