I recall that my old German teacher taught us that listening to Music in a particular language, and watching TV where they speak a language, were the two best ways to learn a languages.
Her reason for why: Context and various slang words are grasped much quicker compared to the cumbersome process of repeating of words and phrases (She did not omit the need of the latter though).
She was great, 60 years old at the time and had us repeat the lyrics of Rammstein songs in class, her favorite band.
I don't know if music in a new language works so well. Lots of songs have, like, "forced" slang or even changes in pronunciation or syllable stress to meet the constraints of the lyrics. In my country I see lots of people that only listen to music in English but don't have any grasp of it.
Instead, I would go with cartoons or children/preteen's shows first. In adult shows, even when not R-rated, characters usually speak way too fast, or, what is most common, the voices are not mixed very clearly, unlike cartoons.
What worked for me best (for English) was watching Disney movies, the same ones I watched in Spanish.
> She was great, 60 years old at the time and had us repeat the lyrics of Rammstein songs in class, her favorite band
This is hilarious, like "Now, kids, repeat after me, 'te quiero puta'"
1) Use Anki with pictures and pronunciation to get necessary vocabulary. But it needs audio to learn pronunciation. Very important.
2) Speak, listen, speak, listen with native speakers in person. _Nothing_ beats this!
3) Evening school is a bonus
I like Anki because it is a calm piece of tech. It has been there for a long time with the same behavior. There is a merit to its boringness. You can also activate FSRS algorithm for supposedly better spaced repetition in profile/deck settings. This was an interesting read: https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/Spa...
When learning, motivation is first, everything else follows.
At some point I felt the drive to move on from Python as my main language. There was no question of “how”: when I needed or wanted to build anything, I would simply go with Go (later TypeScript) and plow on. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what motivated that drive, but I think it was probably curiosity after seeing examples in other languages, wanting to be more competitive, and—let’s be honest—the basic desire to feel a little cooler in the eyes of peers.
Be mindful of second-order volition here. Like when someone says “I want to quit %BAD_HABIT%”, what they really say is “I want to want to quit %BAD_HABIT”—if they really wanted to quit, they would have already done it. Similarly, if you want to learn a programming language, you are all set (unless it is so esoteric that there are no suitable resources or references, which never happens), but if you want to want to learn a programming language then what you need is some lateral move (tricking yourself, putting yourself in some situation, etc.) that makes you actually want to learn it.
These days learning a new programming language is a more sketchy question, because LLMs drain a few major sources of motivation: you can hardly feel cool for knowing how to program in a new language, because anyone would rightfully assume it was written with an LLM; you increasingly do not actually need to know a language, because a model writes everything for you; the competitive advantage is decreasing. Unlike speaking some human language, there is no society of native speakers that would accept you more or treat you better thanks to you speaking their language.
> I'm guessing the answer is making small things, but what exactly? I've made so many to do list apps I don't know what to do with them
My favorite way has always been to not just build small things, but build small useful things. There is always something that could be better, and there is always a subset of languages best for the task at hand. If it's a CLI, then a language that can compile to binary tends to be best (for me at least), so that already limits the languages somewhat. Then depending on what the task is, it might make sense to learn a new language for it.
Then naturally over the years I've picked up 10-15 languages this way, by just following what each language seems best at, and not being afraid of spending 2-3 weeks writing something basic.
Then for each language you learn, next one gets a lot easier, especially when most mainstream languages today are Algol-like languages and more similar to each other than different.
As any language, the core is "why" do you want to learn it. Is it to add it to a list and that's it? Then you might struggle by creating todo lists or play pretend on Duolingo.
On the other hand, if you do have a goal in mind try to do tiny bits of that.
My goal for natural languages is always connecting with another culture at a deeper level than just using English. If that's the case, you get someone to talk/write to and slowly do it. It won't be instantaneous or dopamine fueled but after a few years you might realise that you've been chatting with someone completely in their language without major hiccups.
For programming languages, I understand that filling a CV is tantalising and useful, so you've got to come up with projects and things you'd actually like to be doing with such a language.
You could say you want to pick up COBOL for a future job, well figure out what would make sense to use it for and go with that.
And if you really cannot think of anything, then you can fall back to make something up: make a game with such a language (even better if it is not meant for games), automate something, recreate a small tool which you find frustrating. And even if after you have read this and still cannot find a thing which gets you, maybe learning this language is not within your current interests and you might start considering to move on.
Make things that require you to use the parts of the language you don't have a strong grasp on yet, so as to get to know those better. Sorting algos, data structures, a kanren, and a library website would be a good variety pack. And aside from that, reading codebases is also important. Read the code of your CPAN equivalent, your Alexandria equivalent, your Spring equivalent, and your SDL equivalent.
Create something you actually need, or port something you already created in another language.
I needed a tool to get the contents of a remote zip file without downloading the whole file. I wanted to learn Go, so I created the tool with Go, then I ported it to Rust when I wanted to learn Rust.
Writing one from scratch gives a lot of understanding to how it works under the hood and in the process you learn right phraseology and treat all languages as computational fronteds.
I love brazilian Portugese becuase I love Brazil and it's people and culture. So I listen to a lot of brazilian music and I am always curious about lyrics. I try to sing along, but it's hard sometimes to read it in english and pronouncate, sometimes 't' is 'chi' ... I might be wrong , I am new to the language and I am learning. I have picked up a lot of words in my subconscious and I know what they mean and this is probably a good way learn in my opinion.
It’s true that 70% of a language is about ~100-300 words. In linguistics this is called the “core sight set”. If you’re in a pinch traveling I recommend asking an AI for the 300 most frequent word core sight set and cramming these with Anki. You can get gist with about 10 hours of study and be much more useful than 100 hours of Duolingo. With the core sight set and a generous amount of loan words and gesticulation you can communicate practically any necessity to anyone. It will by no means be elegant or poetic but it gets the job done reliably. It’s the 10,000 word long tail of vocabulary where a language shines but it’s the first 300 where it lives and breathes.
The focus on a small set of core vocabulary is one of the main principles of the Pimsleur method, along with a strict spaced repetition format. When I travel to a new country I always spend about 15-20 hours beforehand doing the 30-minute Pimsleur lessons, just to pick up basic survival vocabulary. I've always been satisfied with the results.
Frequency lists are very useful but learners need context in order to use them, because little word atoms like prepositions, pronouns etc are heavily over represented in the core set. So make sure to study how to use those, and master the core to be/to have verbs too. Some languages have two verbs that roughly translate as to be so you need to crack that too.
Beware free lists on Ankiweb. They are very variable in quality. Frankly better to build your own.
Live with it, think in it.
I recall that my old German teacher taught us that listening to Music in a particular language, and watching TV where they speak a language, were the two best ways to learn a languages.
Her reason for why: Context and various slang words are grasped much quicker compared to the cumbersome process of repeating of words and phrases (She did not omit the need of the latter though).
She was great, 60 years old at the time and had us repeat the lyrics of Rammstein songs in class, her favorite band.
I don't know if music in a new language works so well. Lots of songs have, like, "forced" slang or even changes in pronunciation or syllable stress to meet the constraints of the lyrics. In my country I see lots of people that only listen to music in English but don't have any grasp of it.
Instead, I would go with cartoons or children/preteen's shows first. In adult shows, even when not R-rated, characters usually speak way too fast, or, what is most common, the voices are not mixed very clearly, unlike cartoons.
What worked for me best (for English) was watching Disney movies, the same ones I watched in Spanish.
> She was great, 60 years old at the time and had us repeat the lyrics of Rammstein songs in class, her favorite band
This is hilarious, like "Now, kids, repeat after me, 'te quiero puta'"
1) Use Anki with pictures and pronunciation to get necessary vocabulary. But it needs audio to learn pronunciation. Very important. 2) Speak, listen, speak, listen with native speakers in person. _Nothing_ beats this! 3) Evening school is a bonus
I like Anki because it is a calm piece of tech. It has been there for a long time with the same behavior. There is a merit to its boringness. You can also activate FSRS algorithm for supposedly better spaced repetition in profile/deck settings. This was an interesting read: https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/Spa...
See also https://louisrli.github.io/blog/2023/06/13/effectively-using...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis
This has worked for me. Just try to enjoy a self bombardment of the foreign language and hope you will catch on eventually.
I'm in progress learning Vietnamese this way. To me, whether it works or not is no longer a question :)
Were you trying to learn a language or did it just happen to you?
I thought this was about programming languages before I saw it was from BBC, making me ask - what is the best way to learn a new programming language?
I'm guessing the answer is making small things, but what exactly? I've made so many to do list apps I don't know what to do with them
When learning, motivation is first, everything else follows.
At some point I felt the drive to move on from Python as my main language. There was no question of “how”: when I needed or wanted to build anything, I would simply go with Go (later TypeScript) and plow on. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what motivated that drive, but I think it was probably curiosity after seeing examples in other languages, wanting to be more competitive, and—let’s be honest—the basic desire to feel a little cooler in the eyes of peers.
Be mindful of second-order volition here. Like when someone says “I want to quit %BAD_HABIT%”, what they really say is “I want to want to quit %BAD_HABIT”—if they really wanted to quit, they would have already done it. Similarly, if you want to learn a programming language, you are all set (unless it is so esoteric that there are no suitable resources or references, which never happens), but if you want to want to learn a programming language then what you need is some lateral move (tricking yourself, putting yourself in some situation, etc.) that makes you actually want to learn it.
These days learning a new programming language is a more sketchy question, because LLMs drain a few major sources of motivation: you can hardly feel cool for knowing how to program in a new language, because anyone would rightfully assume it was written with an LLM; you increasingly do not actually need to know a language, because a model writes everything for you; the competitive advantage is decreasing. Unlike speaking some human language, there is no society of native speakers that would accept you more or treat you better thanks to you speaking their language.
> I'm guessing the answer is making small things, but what exactly? I've made so many to do list apps I don't know what to do with them
My favorite way has always been to not just build small things, but build small useful things. There is always something that could be better, and there is always a subset of languages best for the task at hand. If it's a CLI, then a language that can compile to binary tends to be best (for me at least), so that already limits the languages somewhat. Then depending on what the task is, it might make sense to learn a new language for it.
Then naturally over the years I've picked up 10-15 languages this way, by just following what each language seems best at, and not being afraid of spending 2-3 weeks writing something basic.
Then for each language you learn, next one gets a lot easier, especially when most mainstream languages today are Algol-like languages and more similar to each other than different.
As any language, the core is "why" do you want to learn it. Is it to add it to a list and that's it? Then you might struggle by creating todo lists or play pretend on Duolingo.
On the other hand, if you do have a goal in mind try to do tiny bits of that.
My goal for natural languages is always connecting with another culture at a deeper level than just using English. If that's the case, you get someone to talk/write to and slowly do it. It won't be instantaneous or dopamine fueled but after a few years you might realise that you've been chatting with someone completely in their language without major hiccups.
For programming languages, I understand that filling a CV is tantalising and useful, so you've got to come up with projects and things you'd actually like to be doing with such a language.
You could say you want to pick up COBOL for a future job, well figure out what would make sense to use it for and go with that.
And if you really cannot think of anything, then you can fall back to make something up: make a game with such a language (even better if it is not meant for games), automate something, recreate a small tool which you find frustrating. And even if after you have read this and still cannot find a thing which gets you, maybe learning this language is not within your current interests and you might start considering to move on.
Make things that require you to use the parts of the language you don't have a strong grasp on yet, so as to get to know those better. Sorting algos, data structures, a kanren, and a library website would be a good variety pack. And aside from that, reading codebases is also important. Read the code of your CPAN equivalent, your Alexandria equivalent, your Spring equivalent, and your SDL equivalent.
Create something you actually need, or port something you already created in another language.
I needed a tool to get the contents of a remote zip file without downloading the whole file. I wanted to learn Go, so I created the tool with Go, then I ported it to Rust when I wanted to learn Rust.
Writing one from scratch gives a lot of understanding to how it works under the hood and in the process you learn right phraseology and treat all languages as computational fronteds.
I love brazilian Portugese becuase I love Brazil and it's people and culture. So I listen to a lot of brazilian music and I am always curious about lyrics. I try to sing along, but it's hard sometimes to read it in english and pronouncate, sometimes 't' is 'chi' ... I might be wrong , I am new to the language and I am learning. I have picked up a lot of words in my subconscious and I know what they mean and this is probably a good way learn in my opinion.
Learn your own languages' grammar.
Then learn (in all tenses) the below verbs that are (usually) followed by infinitives
Can / am able Must/ to have to To want to
Then, 'to be' and 'to have' (to go with the above).
Vocabulary...including a boatload of infinitives.
Does the article actually answer the question of the headline?
No.
It’s true that 70% of a language is about ~100-300 words. In linguistics this is called the “core sight set”. If you’re in a pinch traveling I recommend asking an AI for the 300 most frequent word core sight set and cramming these with Anki. You can get gist with about 10 hours of study and be much more useful than 100 hours of Duolingo. With the core sight set and a generous amount of loan words and gesticulation you can communicate practically any necessity to anyone. It will by no means be elegant or poetic but it gets the job done reliably. It’s the 10,000 word long tail of vocabulary where a language shines but it’s the first 300 where it lives and breathes.
I tried this is it didn't work. The most common words are the most versatile too and need context
You can learn word "investigation" without context, but not get or set
The focus on a small set of core vocabulary is one of the main principles of the Pimsleur method, along with a strict spaced repetition format. When I travel to a new country I always spend about 15-20 hours beforehand doing the 30-minute Pimsleur lessons, just to pick up basic survival vocabulary. I've always been satisfied with the results.
I cannot find anything on google nor on google scholar under "core sight set" that has anything to do with language.
In fact the term does not appear to exist at all.
Frequency lists are very useful but learners need context in order to use them, because little word atoms like prepositions, pronouns etc are heavily over represented in the core set. So make sure to study how to use those, and master the core to be/to have verbs too. Some languages have two verbs that roughly translate as to be so you need to crack that too.
Beware free lists on Ankiweb. They are very variable in quality. Frankly better to build your own.