Language learning as entry into a foreign culture + My thoughts on how to learn a foreign language

[Lucas88]

I am under the impression that most members here don't like to learn foreign languages. Many of you guys seem to perceive language learning as tedious or even useless and prefer to go to places where English is widely spoken (e.g., the Philippines) or are otherwise content to get by with the most basic of language skills. I however see language learning as an opportunity to truly get to know a foreign culture and even as a reason or "excuse" to spend an extended period abroad.

I know that a lot of you guys are tired of your lives in America and would love to get out. I know that you dream of exotic lands with hot women and a healthier and more vibrant social culture. Language study could help you live your dream.

Around the world there are immersive language schools which teach foreign learners the language in a natural setting and include homestay programs with a native host family. These schools don't just focus on grammar; they prioritize speaking and actual communication and get you proficient in the language really fast. The homestay programs place you right into the heart of the host culture and give you plenty of opportunity to practice your language skills. They also allow you to meet many new people since your host family will surely introduce you to their friends and extended family and you'll be able to rapidly expand your social network.

I myself attended immersive language school on two separate occasions in Spain and once in Japan.

During both of my stays in Spain I studied at a school named Españolé in Valencia and did homestay programs with two different Spanish families. The first time I was enrolled in the school for 3 months during the summer and the second time for a slightly shorter period during the winter. Some students were enrolled for a much shorter period while others were there for 6 months or longer. One guy had already been enrolled for a year by the time I got there. At the school we typically had four hours of class each day. Classes were given in a relaxed and informal setting and resembled play more than actual study. Teachers would often organize fun games and debates as language practice. The school also included extracurricular activities such as salsa classes and frequently organized trips throughout the region. Most Fridays after class the teachers would organize a party on the beach for students and staff.

During my stay in Japan I studied at a school in Gifu and did a homestay with a Japanese family. The period of enrollment was 3 months. The teaching was okay but in comparison to the Spanish language school the classes tended to be a little more bookish and it certainly felt more like school. I guess @Winston is right about East Asian cultures. They really are inflexible to the extreme and lack imagination. During the 3 months I advanced at Japanese and made friends with locals through my host family but my experience of the school wasn't as good as the one in Spain.

You guys could do this too. You could even view immersive language school as your excuse to escape America. Especially the younger guys.

Wanna learn a foreign language? I tell you how.

Begin learning your language of choice with books and a self-study course while you are still in America. The idea is to build a strong foundation before we enroll in immersive language school abroad. Preparation is important. Choose a good self-study course, one like Linguaphone (the starter courses from the 70s, 80s and 90s, not the more recent useless crap). You can often purchase these courses on eBay or even download them for free in PDF format with torrents. Study diligently. Reserve a few hours for language study each day. Become obsessed. Immerse yourself in your target language's media. If possible find a native language partner and do language exchange. Get your language partner to teach you correct pronunciation. Try to speak the language as much as possible.

At the same time save up money if you are employed. Cut out any bullshit and adopt a Spartan lifestyle. No booze, no pot, no expensive videogames or other luxuries. Save your US dollars. This is for your language immersion dream!

Once you have enough money saved up and are pragmatically and psychologically ready, choose an immersive language school in your desired location and book the program (school enrollment and host family) online. Some places in developing countries will be cheaper and your US dollars will go much further. Plan the logistics of your journey and you're good to go!

Once there you'll be able to vastly improve your language skills at the school, form social networks with locals, date hot women and even scout the area for future relocation and business prospects should you fall in love with it.

Just my thoughts and advice on the topic.

[Spencer]

Wiseton speak english and 2 kinda chinese

ladislav speak 6 or 7 other language flunent

public duende speak italian and enlglis flunent

stanford guy speak english and russia

retire frank speak english and russia

mr man speak enlish and indonesia

falcon speak english and 5 or 6 other language flunent

newbie poster in last year or light poster not share but long term poster and founder poster and advisor all more than one language

only angloman speaking just the english and south americas to mexicos speak spanish or portguese and other peoples in world mostly multilinguistical

[Lucas88]

only angloman speaking just the english and south americas to mexicos speak spanish or portguese and other peoples in world mostly multilinguistical

Those dudes are the exception here on the forum, not the norm.

My post is aimed at our Anglophone members who only speak English. I want to recommend them immersive language school in a foreign country as a way to escape from America even if it's just for a while and then to experience a foreign culture among natives and date hot chicks and have fun all while learning a second language!

I did this in my late teens and early 20s and it really paid off. I was able to immerse myself in some awesome cultures for extended periods of time and date hot exotic ladies because of it. Maybe such an option hasn't occurred to many of our members, so I thought I'd give them some ideas.

Happy escape, guys!

[WilliamSmith]

I drafted out a thread to ask about technique for mastering Japanese specifically (but also any languages), so looks like this is a great start and you've beat me to it.

Begin learning your language of choice with books and a self-study course while you are still in America. The idea is to build a strong foundation before we enroll in immersive language school abroad. Preparation is important. Choose a good self-study course, one like Linguaphone (the starter courses from the 70s, 80s and 90s, not the more recent useless crap). You can often purchase these courses on eBay or even download them for free in PDF format with torrents. Study diligently. Reserve a few hours for language study each day. Become obsessed. Immerse yourself in your target language's media. If possible find a native language partner and do language exchange. Get your language partner to teach you correct pronunciation. Try to speak the language as much as possible.

I also think self-study is valuable for many reasons. Especially so that when you're ready to engage with people who are ready and willing to put the time into interacting with you in their language (whether it's a langauge school, or my preference for women in company, or else movies/shows/etc when alone), max energy goes into listening and verbal communication, vs struggling to comprehend/learn/apply a grammar point of some sort and slowing down the pace.

People learn in different ways, but my personal inclination for a general system is this:

The script or alphabet the language uses might be a prerequisite (more on that in a minute).

But first priority:
Study and outline the language's grammar points with maybe 1-3 example sentences (nothing too fancy) for each.

To me, it'd drive me crazy to not get at least a birds-eye-view overview of grammar points before I just jumped in.
Especially in Japanese, because they do so many different conjugations that it'd drive me crazy wondering what they were, unless I'd studied the grammar points in advance, after which it becomes easy to spot things like (for example) past-tense forms of verbs.
Japanese and Chinese also use grammatical "particle" words that are continuously sprinkled throughout sentences but are not part of the other words, so studying what those are up front is sort of a must, IMO.

Second priority after outlining the grammar points with at least one example sentence for each: Translate small fun pieces of material into English and understand the underlying structure (and also learn vocabs this way).

To me, learning lists of vocab words in isolation is OK as a compromise if it's presented in a lesson of some sort, but on your own it's not how I want to do it:
A better way IMO is to translate small pieces of material, and pull your vocab out of those.
Ideally these might be prepared by a native speaker so you can get a "pro's" take on both the original and translated versions, but I think it's good enough to DIY it with material of your choice, as long as you stay flexible about being corrected by native speakers later on.

One concept language teachers talk about for learning is a "memory palace" or at least "mnemonics," where you try to form a strong memorable mental imagery association of some kind with what you're trying to learn, one that engages multiple senses (i.e. visuals to go with the 'abstract' language point) rather than trying to remember things that are too abstract.

So to me it seems like finding some source of entertainment or media you really like is a great way to do this mostly automatically:
Knowing exactly which Cantonese grammar points came from unforgettable scenes in a favorite Hong Kong movie, for example, makes it hard to forget the applied examples (and hence the grammar points and vocab that went with them).
And you get visuals, context, and sound all at once.
Same for Japanese if you like some kind of movies or shows they have, or possibly written word like their mangas or retro RPGs where you get more reading practice even if less audio.

For Spanish I'd use my Conan the Barbarian comics for visual aid to understand context, then maybe my Spanish Robert E Howard library, then try to find some Spanish dubbed macho action films maybe, LOL.

More about the pre-requisite if you're learning a language that has its own script, e.g. kana alphabets in Japanese, Vietnamese diacritics, or one of the languages with its own script:
It probably makes sense to learn that first. Japanese kana alphabets will take a little while, but are really easy and a nice tidy system.
Vietnamese is even easier because they use Latin alphabets + just a few diacritics that are easy to add via keyboard shortcuts once you learn them.
Languages that have their own alphabetic script (but not thousands of unique ideograms) are a step up, but a lot of times it probably makes sense to learn that first.

The hon ji / kanji in Chinese/Japanese that require memorization of literally thousands of ideograms for fluency are in their own category:
They probably are better off learned on a continual basis in addition to studying applied/translated material, unless you're an unusual learner who wants to learn thousands of them by themselves before beginning the rest of the studies.

So far this has worked for me, even though I have a long way to go. Maybe we can even have some fun putting it to the test in the HA language forum here, LOL?
I don't mind being made fun of if I attempt a translation and botch it, and get made fun of by HA members and trolls alike.

[Lucas88]

I drafted out a thread to ask about technique for mastering Japanese specifically (but also any languages), so looks like this is a great start and you've beat me to it.

Begin learning your language of choice with books and a self-study course while you are still in America. The idea is to build a strong foundation before we enroll in immersive language school abroad. Preparation is important. Choose a good self-study course, one like Linguaphone (the starter courses from the 70s, 80s and 90s, not the more recent useless crap). You can often purchase these courses on eBay or even download them for free in PDF format with torrents. Study diligently. Reserve a few hours for language study each day. Become obsessed. Immerse yourself in your target language's media. If possible find a native language partner and do language exchange. Get your language partner to teach you correct pronunciation. Try to speak the language as much as possible.

I also think self-study is valuable for many reasons. Especially so that when you're ready to engage with people who are ready and willing to put the time into interacting with you in their language (whether it's a langauge school, or my preference for women in company, or else movies/shows/etc when alone), max energy goes into listening and verbal communication, vs struggling to comprehend/learn/apply a grammar point of some sort and slowing down the pace.

People learn in different ways, but my personal inclination for a general system is this:

The script or alphabet the language uses might be a prerequisite (more on that in a minute).

But first priority:
Study and outline the language's grammar points with maybe 1-3 example sentences (nothing too fancy) for each.

To me, it'd drive me crazy to not get at least a birds-eye-view overview of grammar points before I just jumped in.
Especially in Japanese, because they do so many different conjugations that it'd drive me crazy wondering what they were, unless I'd studied the grammar points in advance, after which it becomes easy to spot things like (for example) past-tense forms of verbs.
Japanese and Chinese also use grammatical "particle" words that are continuously sprinkled throughout sentences but are not part of the other words, so studying what those are up front is sort of a must, IMO.

Second priority after outlining the grammar points with at least one example sentence for each: Translate small fun pieces of material into English and understand the underlying structure (and also learn vocabs this way).

To me, learning lists of vocab words in isolation is OK as a compromise if it's presented in a lesson of some sort, but on your own it's not how I want to do it:
A better way IMO is to translate small pieces of material, and pull your vocab out of those.
Ideally these might be prepared by a native speaker so you can get a "pro's" take on both the original and translated versions, but I think it's good enough to DIY it with material of your choice, as long as you stay flexible about being corrected by native speakers later on.

One concept language teachers talk about for learning is a "memory palace" or at least "mnemonics," where you try to form a strong memorable mental imagery association of some kind with what you're trying to learn, one that engages multiple senses (i.e. visuals to go with the 'abstract' language point) rather than trying to remember things that are too abstract.

So to me it seems like finding some source of entertainment or media you really like is a great way to do this mostly automatically:
Knowing exactly which Cantonese grammar points came from unforgettable scenes in a favorite Hong Kong movie, for example, makes it hard to forget the applied examples (and hence the grammar points and vocab that went with them).
And you get visuals, context, and sound all at once.
Same for Japanese if you like some kind of movies or shows they have, or possibly written word like their mangas or retro RPGs where you get more reading practice even if less audio.

For Spanish I'd use my Conan the Barbarian comics for visual aid to understand context, then maybe my Spanish Robert E Howard library, then try to find some Spanish dubbed macho action films maybe, LOL.

More about the pre-requisite if you're learning a language that has its own script, e.g. kana alphabets in Japanese, Vietnamese diacritics, or one of the languages with its own script:
It probably makes sense to learn that first. Japanese kana alphabets will take a little while, but are really easy and a nice tidy system.
Vietnamese is even easier because they use Latin alphabets + just a few diacritics that are easy to add via keyboard shortcuts once you learn them.
Languages that have their own alphabetic script (but not thousands of unique ideograms) are a step up, but a lot of times it probably makes sense to learn that first.

The hon ji / kanji in Chinese/Japanese that require memorization of literally thousands of ideograms for fluency are in their own category:
They probably are better off learned on a continual basis in addition to studying applied/translated material, unless you're an unusual learner who wants to learn thousands of them by themselves before beginning the rest of the studies.

So far this has worked for me, even though I have a long way to go. Maybe we can even have some fun putting it to the test in the HA language forum here, LOL?
I don't mind being made fun of if I attempt a translation and botch it, and get made fun of by HA members and trolls alike.

I'll try to share some of my thoughts and advice on how to learn a language since knowledge of methods is an essential and much neglected area.

Self-Study vs. Language Classes

Self-study is absolutely essential. Ultimately only you can teach yourself a language. Classes might be okay for motivation and a bit of spoken practice with the native teacher but expect to spend the majority of your study time with self-study courses (textbooks with audio), grammar books, graded readers and online media. Self-study should form the basis. It is best to have reached at least an intermediate level before enrolling in an intensive study program or immersive language school.

Learning the Fundamentals

The first thing you should do is get your hands on a comprehensive beginners' course that can teach you core vocabulary and all of the basic grammar in a systematic way. The Linguaphone Starter Courses are great for this. Each lesson (there are usually 30 in total) includes various natural dialogues displayed in writing and spoken by native voice actors on the accompanying CD, vocabulary lists, explanations of grammar points, and written exercises. You learn the most common and useful words first and progress through all of the main grammatical features of the language all while being immersed in realistic scenarios. By the end of the course you should have a vocabulary of over 2000 words and be able to manage everyday conversations. This kind of course is a must.

Linguaphone offers a Japanese Starter Course with the dialogues written entirely in Romaji so that the learner may focus on the spoken language and the grammar. I myself used this course to begin my study of the language. After a few months of study I began to learn Hiragana and Katakana with another textbook and then learned the Kanji gradually (more on that later).

I cannot recommend Linguaphone enough. This company really does offer some of the best comprehensive language courses that I've ever used. It is better than Assimil which in my opinion is just a poor man's Linguaphone with much less dialogue and half-assed grammatical explanations. It's also way better than the crappy Pimsleur courses or any of those glossy textbooks you find. Linguaphone courses are the real deal and you can find the old-school courses (these are the best ones, btw) for a reasonable price on eBay or even download them in PDF format if you know where to find them. This kind of course will really get you started.

Panoramic Overview of the Grammar

I share your view with regard to learning grammar. I too like to see the whole picture before I begin to focus on the details. For this style of learning I recommend that you buy also a grammar book like the ones from the Essential Grammar series and read through all the sections at your on pace. You can do this in conjunction with the comprehensive beginners' course. These grammar books present all of the language's grammatical features systematically. There will usually be one chapter for each grammatical area, e.g., orthography, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, etc. Also find websites that give an overview of the language's grammar and spend some of your free time casually reading through them.

Real Media

Once you've completed the comprehensive beginners' course and have the language's core vocabulary down, then you should start reading real materials like your Conan the Barbarian comics and watching movies and browsing through websites. You do this to add new vocabulary to your base and continue to learn the patterns of the language in a natural setting. I myself started to watch soap operas and documentaries on TVE (Televisión Española) once I had a decent understanding of Spanish. I would also watch my favorite American movies like Kill Bill dubbed into Spanish so that I could learn how to say all of the famous lines in the language. It is at this point that your learning really takes off.

Speaking Practice

Find a native language partner with whom you can practice basic conversations early on. When you are alone have conversations with yourself out loud. Make up dialogues. Become a character and roleplay. You have to be constantly verbalizing what you have learned. Remember that you're primarily learning how to speak, not just how to read.

Non-Latin Scripts

If your chosen language has a simple non-Latin script like Russian or Greek learn it from the start. Your comprehensive beginners' course in that language will almost certainly use the native script from the beginning.

Obviously that is not possible for a language like Japanese which uses many ideograms. Start to introduce the Kanji once you have basic grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and Hiragana and Katakana down. The best book series I know for this is Basic Kanji Book/Intermediate Kanji Book. It consists of four books which introduce a total of 1000 Kanji in a series of logical lesson plans together with some basic vocabulary for each individual character.

To learn Chinese the method would be similar. At first you would start with Pinyin to learn basic vocabulary, sentence structure and dialogues and then you would gradually introduce the Hanzi through a specialized textbook equivalent to the Japanese BKB/IKB.

Immersive Language School - The Final Frontier

Once you have an intermediate knowledge through the various methods presented herein it's now time to travel to the country of your target language and immerse yourself in the environment in which it is spoken. After a few months of immersion you'll really begin to be fluent. This is the point when you move from learner to speaker.

If you like, @WilliamSmith, I could make a list of good resources for learning Japanese in particular.

[WilliamSmith]

If you like, @WilliamSmith, I could make a list of good resources for learning Japanese in particular.

@Lucas88 yes, please! Thanks for all that advice and recommendations on specific programs.

I just made a thread about Mastering Japanese specifically, and will add a post soon with resources I thought were useful so far, but would love to know what you think:
viewtopic.php?f=43&t=45355

Based on what you said in your last post there it sounds like you're further along than me in fluency, so that'd be great to get your advice.