DIY linguistics tips/tricks/etc.

How have you lainons learned other languages outside of school? I barely passed spanish in high school (the only language offered at my school) as I had no real interest in it, but I'd love to learn Russian or German. I know a little German from duo, but it's not enough to say that in the language and it's been about a year since I practiced. Duo is also not the most helpful platform, and it costs money which I find myself not having these days. In general, what are your suggestions for an English speaker to learn a new language from scratch, on a budget of "as low as is possible within reason"? What to learn first, avoiding burnout, resources to use and anything else you can think of.

>>8843 I recommend Michel' Thomas audiotapes. He has his own specific approach to learning several European languages on his homepage. The tapes are quite expensive though, but you can probably find a torrent somewhere. >https://www.michelthomas.com/learn-russian/ >https://www.michelthomas.com/learn-german/

I'm a linguistics undergrad and am currently learning Russian. Learn linguistic typology and grammar. If you get that down, you're set.

>>8843 The most important thing about learning a language is the motivation and motivation is usually driven by necessity. As an English speaker you will probably never get into a situation when knowing another language would be required of you, so you can pretty much give up. There is a reason why you native english speakers are pretty much the only mono-lingual community in the world, you know.

>>8850 This. It doesn't matter too much what resources or books you start with, you just need the motivation to _do it_. If you can't move to another country at the drop of a hat, learning the native language of a friend/datemate/relative can be a motivator. If that's not good enough motivation for you, Duolingo is a good resource: It's free, easy, takes a few minutes a day, and can help you build momentum even with little base motivation. By the end of the tree you should have justtt enough of a base to do some actual reading and studying more easily. At that point you can probably do very well with simple books in the language and some random book on the language for intermediate learners; whatever you can find a torrent of. Duolingo gets flak for not being a complete course, but as long as you treat it like a launching-pad it's great.

>>8848 Interesting! I haven't seen that name before, I'll definitely check this out. >>8849 Holy soykaf thank you, linguistic typology is something I've been looking for but I couldn't figure out the term for it >>8850 >>8852 I've managed to figure out that having no direct/immediate need to speak these languages (school, moving, relationship, etc.) makes it more difficult to keep the motivation to learn, but I figure learning slowly whenever I can find the want to is better than not at all. I've been doing duo on and off but it's hard to pick up grammar rules that way so I'll look for some resources on grammar. Thanks for all the input so far!

>>8843 I have learned Japanese to fluency because muh anime and mangos. Here is a serious post about how to learn languages from my n=1 sample size. Basically all you need to do is try to understand the language you want to learn for multiple hours every day. Most people online doing this call it immersion. Flashcards (Anki is popular) can also help, but they're best used to help you remember basic words before your brain gets used to it. Being consistent here piles up fast, 30 new cards (=words) a day will get you 10,000 cards in 333 days, under a year. I made cards based on sentences I encountered during immersion that had one unknown word in them, after getting extremely basic vocab down. If you do use flashcards, remember that they don't define how much you know. If you do use them don't go overboard. I would say over an hour of flashcards a day is way overdoing it, and by the time you have 10,000 cards you don't need to make them anymore as you will be so accustomed to learning new words in that language that just looking them up once or twice is enough to get them to stick. For a language like German, assuming you're a native English speaker, you could probably get to this point much earlier than 10,000 cards. You don't need textbooks; aside from reading some basic grammar guide on day one I never studied grammar and came out fine. You just kind of absorb it, like new vocab. The only thing I've noticed from doing this is that I have an instinctual understanding of the grammar and sometimes have no clue what the fuarrrk people who learned from classes are talking about when they use language terms. It just "feels" like a sentence is wrong, I don't think about subordinate clauses or objects or whatnot. Learning a language takes "motivation" like the other lain said, but in my case I found the process of learning itself fun so I didn't really need motivation after getting off the ground. I would say the main problem is time, I did most of my learning Japanese in high-school/early college when I had lots of free time. I couldn't do it again with my current time constraints. Another thing about motivation: what you immerse with doesn't matter as long as you have fun. That takes care of most motivation problems, at least it did for me. In my case I just watched anime, the kind that even if you had no damn clue what they were saying it was at least slightly entertaining. I didn't bother trying to speak until I understood 90+% of what I heard. I'm sure I have an accent, but since my main goal is understanding I don't care. I have had conversations with Japanese people before, and they said I spoke well (beyond just jouzu desu ne, they started asking me for language learning tips). I hear people talk about techniques like shadowing to get a good accent, but you choose what to do. Gaijin are always gaijin, no matter how perfect their Japanese is, as it goes. >>8852 I want to disagree but you said just enough to make me unable to. Duolingo is like kicking dead whales down the beach, but if you use it only at the beginning (preferable in addition to immersion) I would give it a pass.

>>8858 off of this: i would recommend looking up "refold," they give a weirdly bad first impression by having like a fancy company website but it's just a completely free immersion learning community with some good ways of speeding things up developed. the only thing you can buy from them is a nice anki flashcard deck, but if you just search "anki" on nyaasi it'll come up. so essentially completely free. I've been doing it for a while and it seems to work fairly well

>>8885 learnjapanese (dot) moe and leaf chans /jp/djt thread also have lots of free good resources

I'm also new to learning languages, and i wonder if its best that i try and tackled their sentence structure first before understanding the words, would that help?

>>8858 I would agree with this anon as someone who learned english through minecraft youtube videos, although I'd say it's still a good idea to reach A1-A2 levels before starting to get immerse, as you need to at least know a few verbs and be able to distinguish word roles to benefit from comprehensible input

>>9609 I've heard that learning words first is best. It can be frustrating to try and learn a language with no payoff for weeks or months. When you learn words you immediately will be able to understand tidbits of what they are saying.

>>9609 I'd say you learn them in parallel. You need to have at least a few representative words to understand sentence structure, and as you study new grammar the sample sentences can come with a few new words every now and then. In the end, you need context to learn new words anyway

>>8843 I spent years trying (and failing) to become fluent in a variety of languages (Swedish, Swiss-german, Japanese, Russian) without much luck. 3 years ago I obtained an italian girlfriend and now I'm fluent in Italian. Tutto bene. Turns out the key is regularly exercising your mind in the language you want to learn. I never made a concerted effort to learn italian, it just naturally came to me over time through exposure. As >>8850 says, necessity is key to motivation. Wanting to watch your favourite anime in the original language was never motivation enough for me. Real personal connection, on the other hand, is a strong motivator. I don't think audiobooks or learning resources are a good way to learn languages. Find a friend who speaks your chosen language natively and force exposure on yourself. >inb4 I can't find friends Lainons are among the most interesting people I know - you absolutely can find friends; none of you are boring and I love you all.

>>8843 You have already received some great advice, so I'll just share something I found recently for myself. Learning poetry by heart, be it songs or poems, is really fun and increases my language exposure as well as lets me learn new vocabulary. Make it a habit and learn with flashcards - this is something much better than simply cramming vocab on its own or kanji or whatever.

>>8843 I've found the best way to learn a new language is to study the grammar and work on basic sentences or song lyrics, and jump to conversational pieces. Something like assimil, where you have conversation pieces with well made audios is a really great resource for this. Just learn the grammar piece by piece and play around with material in your target language, make sure to expose yourself to it too (watch TV shows, movies, listen to songs in it ect). See if you can join a group (in person or online) where you can practice speaking, especially with native speakers which is really helpful.