Language Learning

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

I spent the past few hours compiling a list of 2000 most commonly used German words and their English translations. Turns out over the past few years I have forgotten all computer skills, so it took a bit longer than expected. I can't query, program or script anymore, even forgot html. I learn fast and forget fast.

 

In 2006 I started learning Japanese using the Pimsleur method, but what stopped me was the time it consumed, you can't control the speed of learning. In 2007 I started learning Chinese because it seemed more reasonable given that 80% of my classmates speak it. After a month I could hold simple conversations, and attepted to do so. However, it took me 3 times of saying something for them to begin understanding, apparently that's how horrible my accent was, so after those attempts I lost any spirit to continue using my Pimsleur CDs. (I think English-speaking Toronto-inhabiting people are used to English-breaking immigrants and are capable of understanding them, but Chinese people expect complete native Chinese pronunciation.) In our chemistry labs we have some documentation, textbooks, and some old yellowed posters on the wall in German. The Engineering library also contains mostly English works, with the remaining 20% being German, French, japanese, Chinese, Russian, Arabic. Recently I've been listening to a lot of German rock music.

 

I've frequently thought most language-learning methods are very mismatched to how I learn. Most technical education is also mismatched. Usually any learning consists of long boring periods where my concentration is not needed, with very dense periods where I'm too relaxed to concentrate, and consequently fall behind. This led me to believe the best way of learning a language (once you're exposed to it) is to memorize a list of most commonly used words. And I am mostly exposed to Mandarin, French, German, Japanese, and formerly, Hindi, and Arabic.

 

Because of the above I've compiled the 2000-word list, which Should give me about 75-80% word coverage in average reading materials, and I got a very popular Children's book, "Der Struwwelpeter" at http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Der_Struwwelpeter. However, the Children's book seems a bit too short, and I was hoping if somebody like Sparhawk could point out where I could download other suitable reading materials with simple sentence structure and vocabulary.

 

PS, there was a time whhen I could hold a conversation in French, Dutch and German, and could read Arabic, but I learn fast and forget fast. Last year I spoke Japanese to professor Masahiro Kawaji, he told me I should speak to Douglas Reeve instead. For some reason that demoralized me and I put away the Pimsleur CDs.

Edited April 6, 2007 by Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat

[Ishtvan]

I took a class in Chinese, and it seems like there are a lot of sounds that we don't make in other languages. Expecting to pronounce those all perfectly, plus the tones, after a month is pretty optimistic. We went through the same excercises that Chinese school children do to learn the pronunciation of various syllables, "bo po mo fo, de te ne le, zi ci si, zhi chi shi", etc. Then there's the problem that there are so many regional dialects (I mean still Mandarin, but a dialect), and the only people who actually speak the "standard" way that they teach in most classes are newscasters in Beijing. I always had trouble understanding the regional accents of real people speaking. Kind've like Alabama English vs. London English, but possibly worse because China has a huge population with a huge land mass so there might be even more variation.

[sparhawk]

Sorry, but I really don't know where you might get reading material for language beginners. Looking for children books might be a good way though. When I tried to improve my english, I simply started to read books in English. However, I was already good enough to at least start reading, because I had a good basic set of english vocuabulary at that time. I once tried to do the same with a french newspaper and a dictionary, but starting from scratch like this doesn't really work and is a pain. Most words can't even be found because they are derivatives so you can not find them in a dictionary verbatim. But maybe I should have started this with childrens books. That might be a good idea actually.

[sparhawk]

I just googled a bit and I found some site that might help you a bit. The text says that it was intended for a friend of the website author, who wanted to learn german, so he translated some kidsbooks for him. So this would be the same situation as you.

 

http://home.leo.org/~gendreyz/sslp/index.html

[Crispy]

I've frequently thought most language-learning methods are very mismatched to how I learn. Most technical education is also mismatched. Usually any learning consists of long boring periods where my concentration is not needed, with very dense periods where I'm too relaxed to concentrate, and consequently fall behind.

Maybe you should try "total immersion"... go to a language class which is taught in that language. No chance of being relaxed then.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

Thanks spar.

Ishtvan, it just seems to me like Torontonians easily tolerate horrible accents, but Chinese don't.

[oDDity]

I think a better self teaching method that pimsleur is the rosetta stone software. It teaches languages the way small children learn to speak in the first place, but very alien languages like Japanese an Chinese are always going to require a lot of work for pronunciation no matter what system you use.

[Gildoran]

Actually, I would say Japanese is very easy when it comes to pronunciation; it has a very small set of sounds that are used, and each one tends to be distinct, and I think most of its sounds are common to most languages. I've heard that Japanese and Spanish are phonetically very similar.

 

To use a computer analogy, I'd be tempted to equate Chinese or English phonology to CISC processors and Japanese phonology to RISC processors; Japanese has fewer sounds that are used at a higher speed.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

I do like the sound of japanese because of that. But my Chinese friends think Chinese and Japanese are RISC while English is CISC with added indeterminacy of pronunciation. They said Chinese is easy to pronounce because it has very few sounds, and I have no excuse speaking the way I do.

[demagogue]

You guys seem to be sliding over the most important difference IMO (unless it was said and I missed it).

Chinese is a tonal language. That means differences in pitch mean completely different letters. Really tricky to even hear the difference, much less speak them (at least for me). But from what I hear Chinese grammer is pretty laid-back, and not even that far from English.

 

Japanese is the language I've personally spent the most time on, about 7 years now. The kanji characters are a pain to memorize, but that's the maybe hardest part, and once you know them then it speeds things up a lot because you can start recognizing words faster than you can learn them (sort of like knowing Latin roots helps with French or something). The grammer is also tougher than any other languages I've ever studied, lots of little by-laws that are so context dependent. Much easier pronunciation than Chinese, though, because everything is pretty clearly distinguisable. The one hard part w/ pronunciation is the difference between long and short vowels. I still can't hear the difference unless I know the word by heart ... but usually the context will tell you the word so it's not so bad.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

Yeah, Chinese grammar is like English. The tonality is easy for me to recognize and mimic. But it's hard for me to remember to use when trying to speak all of a sudden to someone Chinese. I think it's because the same part of my brain is responsible for tonality as for emotions, and maybe for native speakers it's more separated.