Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?

Read read read read. And then do some more reading.

I love this blog:

http://www.fluentin3months.com/

He has a number of reviews of software packages and websites, along with his own "language hacking" guide.

This is how I've learned English and French:

* Step 1: Learn the grammar and the few thousand most important words. This is the hardest and least fun part.

* Step 2: Read a lot in order to obtain a large vocabulary. A lot.

* Step 3: Listen to the language. TV, Radio, Movies, etc.

* Step 4: Talk to native speakers. A lot.

Personally moved in the country whose language I wanted to speak.

Otherwise there is Tim Ferriss method http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/01/20/learning-lan...

The best way is immersion (roommates, television, taking regular college classes in another languages, etc) but if that's not something you can do, the next best thing is to get gigs translating documents. Underbid professional interpreters and be upfront about the time it will take. If possible, start with technical documents such as electronics manuals - they require minimum grammar and vocabulary. It worked for me to get started on English... when you have a paid gig with a deadline, you are much more motivated.

I have to learn a language for my graduate program. I have been learning German using the Michel Thomas audio program. It isn't perfect, but I do feel like I have learned a lot with relative ease -- much more easily than I learned Spanish in middle and high school classes.

Advantages:

* Michel Thomas CDs are significantly cheaper than software-based programs

* audio format means you can study on your commute, rather than only in front of your computer, and you can easily use the CDs with a Free OS

* I like that the program is interactive, and there are two other students on the recording -- it feels like you're getting useful feedback that you wouldn't get practicing alone

Possible Disadvantages:

* the program's focus is on grammar, which is useful for me, but it does mean that you don't learn a lot of vocabulary; I am on the twelfth disc of 15, and the lessons have barely touched on the use of nouns. This might be a downside if you are trying to become conversant with native speakers.

* the audio format means you don't always get the spelling of new words (sometimes they are spelled aloud on the recording, but not always); I deal with this by looking new words up in a German dictionary as I hear them

I also bought a book (German Quickly, by April Wilson) designed as a crash course for students needing to pass a language exam. It looks like it will be helpful in filling in the gaps in the Michel Thomas program, but I honestly can't recommend it yet, since I have barely cracked it -- reading a grammar book is so much dryer and more boring than listening to audio lessons!

I moved to France, and painfully became more apt in the language out of necessity.

If there are any English speaking Canadian students out there who would like to learn or boost your French, I highly recommend the Explore [1] program. It's 5-weeks of French immersion that you will never forget. Being forced to speak, listen, and live the language is the best way to learn.

[1] http://www.myexplore.ca/en/

Personally for me, the best way to learn a new speaking language is by conversing in that language. When I was in college, I'm 'forced' to speak in Mandarin as most of my friends speak Mandarin. Within 3 months I can converse pretty well in Mandarin. I listen when my friends speak, catch the pronunciation and repeat that. The loop goes on until I can speak with confidence.

FWIW Arabic is apparently ridiculously hard to become fluent in. This is according to one of my friends that speaks English, Hebrew, and Spanish and whose dad speaks Arabic (and English, and Hebrew, and French).

When I was in Spain, I talked with a number of adult immigrants about how long it took to become fluent in Spanish. They all said three years and that the first year (of complete immersion) was the hardest. Because they struggled with daily tasks. Watching movies with subtitles helped.

Rosetta Stone sucks, don't go anywhere near it. Pimsleur & Michel Thomas are nice, particularly if the length of one lesson is equal to one half of your daily commute.

AJATT's a great website for learning Japanese - you might be able to adapt it to Arabic: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/

At the core of AJATT are the following principles:

1. Total immersion

2. Use of an SRS (Anki is free, cross-platform, & open source) to learn vocabulary IN CONTEXT

3. Language exchange with a Skype buddy to work on pronunciation

I don't know if #3 would be adequate for mastering Arabic pronunciation though. Japanese pronunciation is relatively easy for native English speakers so it's not an issue, but you might have to find somebody IRL to help you out.

I speak 4 languages. Russian is my native; I then learned English, Spanish and Portuguese.

There's only so much you can learn from books and taking lessons. My skills really took off to fluency level when I moved to the particular country (US, Mexico, Brazil, respectively) for at least few months (I would say at least 6 months) and practiced with native speakers.

By moving to central america.

I didn't personally like Rosetta Stone for Japanese, but everyone else I've talked to really likes it. How about that in combination with a little bit of full immersion on the web? Instead of CNN, try reading Al Jazeera or something. You can see the language as it's used in practice today while catching up on things that interest you.

I've been using software from Fluenz, which works really well for me for Spanish. I'm also lucky to live with a native speaker, and we watch movies with the sound or subtitles swapped.

Are you using an SRS (Spaced Repetition) flashcard program? It helps if you're starting and stopping because it will force you to review all the words, grammar, sentences etc. that you used to know.

You can fit it into any other learning you do. It really helps put things into your "long-term memory".

Software: Mnemosyne - http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/ Anki - http://ichi2.net/anki/

"I give the advice for what it's worth: if you wish to learn a foreign tongue properly, study it in bed with a native girl. I'd have got more out of the classics from an hour's wrestling with a Greek wench than I did in four years of Study at school."

For Arabic, check out Al-Kitaab (and its predecessor book) at Amazon.com (worth reading the reviews, imho). Part of a three year course. Still I think forms the basis for most university programs. May be available on the internets.

Some day it'd be great to have rich, interactive ways to do learning. Rosetta Stone is cool. My experience is that this is good for a colloquial/conversational emphasis. It's all about details at some point though -- so Alif Baa / Al-Kitaab might not be so bad.

Personally, I don't know Arabic -- but I had a friend who was staying with us who was studying it at a university -- so I was curious to look it up. There are a lot of different theories about the best way to learn language: immersion, multimedia, native speakers, etc. I think when you're learning a language for the first time though, there's so much ground to cover, that it doesn't matter which direction you take. The best direction is the one you can go furthest in (is the most sustainable because of interest, convenience, availability, etc.) which is most positive and least negative. I.e., we don't learn a language perfectly the first 100 times traversing through it. But gradually we get there.

But it's probably like with programming -- the most undervalued link is actually just putting yourself in front of it (as much as possible, in a sustainable manner). This can be something as simple as eating at a restaurant where they speak Arabic. Or it can be flashcards, etc. At any rate, I guess they still use it at Midd too (I'm from California -- UC Berkeley and Stanford, I think use Al-Kitaab too, or used to):

http://www.middlebury.edu/ls/arabic/curriculum/courses

But yeah, depending on interests / how engaged you'll be with the language in the future (reading a newspaper can be both a goal and a tool -- but only if you really need it / want it), it probably all depends.

I recently had a conversation with my best friend's grandmother, who floated from Cuba to Puerto Rico at the age of 27 (and 30 years later moved to Miami). At the time, to obtain work in Puerto Rico, you were required to be proficient in English. Since she didn't know any English and had less than $5 to her name, her solution was to watch television only in English, read stuff that was only published in English, and eventually she said she refused to talk to anyone if they weren't using English. After a year of this, she knew enough to get a job. Similarly, I have another friend who is part Cuban whose dad learned English by watching tons of Sesame Street and English news programs.

"The best way to learn a new language is in the horizontal position [i.e. with a lover]." — Recently retired NPR correspondent in Moscow

Need to have a grasp of basic grammar - after that it's all conversation, if you can't talk to real people watch tons of TV/Movies with subtitles (both movie and subs in original language of course).

The first thing to bear in mind is that language learning for an adult is a completely different proposition from language learning as a child. Kids are wired for it, they have the time, and usually have external pressure to make progress. Learning methods for kids therefore tend to be slow, tedious and - because kids haven't fully developed their capacity for abstract thought - dependent on rote memorization.

My recommendation would be to start with a Pimsleur course. Don't worry about writing and vocabulary at first, just get a feel for the language. With Arabic, you have a different alphabet to learn - do that before you try learning written vocabulary, or you will be forever hamstrung by romanized transliteration messing with your pronunciation. For vocabulary, spaced repetition is the way to go. There are lots of sites and systems for this. Go with the ones that give you a high level of control over what you are studying, and train only production (i.e. going from English to Arabic), recognition will take care of itself. For grammar, here's a cute idea I had some success with in Japanese which has highly regular grammar (I don't know about Arabic): as you learn the grammar rules, write code to produce them. E.g. write a function to conjugate the past tense. When it's working, you have the basis of a game to test yourself. Use your powers of abstraction to bypass rote memorization.

Don't be down about the fact you don't manage to keep studying religiously. As long as you get some studying done, no matter how little, you are making progress. There is a lot of snake oil out there - if you find something isn't fun or isn't working for you, don't try and force yourself. Most of us learnt languages the wrong way in school, and learned a lot of bad study habits and worst of all, got the idea that it's supposed to be hard and take a long time. Not true - use your experience of learning programming as a template for what your experience of learning a real language should be like. (assuming you are a programmer, apologies if not)

Immersion is the best way. If you can go to a country and take language lessons there, you will learn much more quickly. Learning a language requires lots of correct repetition.

If Spanish is what you want to learn, then it's pretty easy. Go to Antigua, Guatemala and spend 12 weeks in one of the 150 language schools. It will cost between $150-$200/week for classes with your own private instructor.

I spent 10 weeks at this school:

http://www.travelpod.com/ad/Proyecto_Linguistico_Francisco_M...

Be careful, this is a backbacker and gringo town. You might find yourself partying late into the night and not studying too much. Here's my favorite bar:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4123596654

I'm of the written/read type. The advantage you have with these skills is that you have all the time you need to acquire them. This was okay to me while I didn't have to interact with native speakers. When the time came, I found myself unable to interact (due to lack of conversational skills...)

The thing that helped me the most was chatting by msn with my coworkers (not cellphone). You have the structure of a conversation with read/write times. You also get the latest jargon and regionalisms in written. Don't overlook this useful resource!!!