Ask Lemmy

I honestly don’t know. I’ve always been extremely good with languages. When I was 12 I learned enough German to chat with people, by hanging out in German chat rooms on AOL.

So I’m lucky, and I can only advise the other lucky ones.

If you’re like me, I recommend starting with a book titled “Learn X” or “X in 30 days”, that sort of thing.

And, do that while you’re traveling in that country. Every single thing you learn, go out and use it. Have google translate or something on hand to fill in where you can’t do it.

Also, get good at connecting with people nonverbally. That gets you the goodwill that you need to access practice when you suck at the language. Get good at eye contact, at observing how people are behaving and fitting in. Be respectful. There are universal human signs of respect and they fill in decently well when you don’t know what to do. For example, the down-nod is a human universal (in fact I think it’s an animal universal — I’ve noticed even birds and dogs seem to chill about my presence when I give them a little bow or down-nod).

Then, as my father who has done intense language training for the army recommends, find a way to be both speaking and listening.

After you start getting the grammar, memorize shit tons of vocab. Get an app with like 10000 words in your target language and just work on it every day. Brainscape is cool; they’ve got a nice system for tracking confidence and presenting what most needs practice.

Watching TV is great for training the ear. Here is the key thing though. So many people find this so hard to do. It’s easy, but people resist it so hard:

Let go of understanding what they’re saying. Listen to them speaking, like you would listen to music or nature sounds. Don’t rewind it. Definitely don’t turn on the subtitles, even if they’re in the foreign language.

Also listen to podcasts. It’s useful to train different modes:

• Watching and listening
• Watching their mouth and listening
• Watching the show’s overall action and listening
• Listening only
• Listening only with your left ear
• Listening only with your right ear
• Listening at low volume
• Listening while in a noisy environment

etc. All those networks overlap in your brain, but not completely. As the old man in Blues Guitar Inside and Out says to the kid

Getting sharper at anything makes you sharper at everything

To that end, it’s okay to train extremely deep. Like, if you spent 30 minutes just repeating one phrase and trying to perfectly match the intonation, pronunciation, rhythm, and tone of a native saying a phrase or sentence, that is not wasted time.

One from Bruce Lee:

I do not fear the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once. I fear the man who has practices on kick 10,000 times.

If you can learn to say “rouge” (French for red) in exactly the way you hear a native speaker saying it, it will make all your French better. It will help with listening. It will help you understand things I can’t even put into words here, but are worth understanding.

I don’t know if this is useful for your average joe but if you’re like me and pick up languages easier than most, these techniques will probably help.

The most important and, for some reason, the most ignored advice I can give is that letting go of understanding. Whether it’s TV or real life, watch the person’s face. Absorb their emotional state and everything you can, and even imagine the feeling of communication. Actually listen, intently. But don’t worry about the things you don’t understand. Don’t worry if you understand nothing. Listening to people speak language we know nothing about is how humans learn language, and if you approach it just right you can activate that baby brain that just knows how to absorb it.

Listen the way your dog listens to you when you talk to him. Perk your ears up, make eye contact, tilt your head, and empathize. Once your brain realizes that you value what the person is saying, it will switch modes and you’ll fly through the acquisition.