Spanish in 3 months....

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danielapolk
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Re: Spanish in 3 months....

Postby danielapolk » Thu Jan 06, 2022 7:08 am

It’s really hard to prescribe a daily amount of time. Even with the most solid learning system, if you want to learn a language that fast, you really have to immerse yourself and devote as much focus as possible to it.
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Re: Spanish in 3 months....

Postby luke » Thu Jan 06, 2022 11:27 am

It seems I've heard the phrase "memory muscle" before. It leads me to some questions:

Do you think that improving memory with techniques like learning a deck of cards, or PI to a number of digits has benefits outside of the specific "feat of memory" trained for? I would imagine that "feats of memory" competitions attract people who are both gifted AND who train for it. In that way, like athletic competition. Some people are naturally more athletic and sports things come easier to them. But, anyone who exercises can improve their own athletic performance significantly if they are starting from an "untrained" state.

Does that apply to memory too?

In the context of language learning, does work specifically on memory (such as a deck of cards or PI) have much carryover to language learning? In athletics, and probably many domains, "specificity of training" comes into play. For example, if one doubles the amount they can bench press with a barbell, it's likely that their dumbbell press will also improve, even if it isn't trained. It may not double, but it will improve. If no leg exercises are done, and only bench presses, doubling bench press weight may have only a negligeable impact on overall squat performance.

Continuing with "specificity of training" thread, if you had a set of twins and only one of the twins did overall strength training, and then had a were to create a "move stuff" competition, the strength trained twin would likely be able to move heavier things.

Lifting and moving things involves skills and tools as well, so it's easy to imagine a twin trained for 10 hours in moving would beat the other twin who only had 10 hours of strength training.

Clicking through the links from the Original Post a bit, if I had no experience with Spanish, I can imagine a free course wouldn't hurt. One could be wasting their time, if, let's say it's only 20% as effective as "normal study", whatever that is. I recall a book about learning Spanish Vocabulary by mnemonics many years ago and I thought it was overkill, something like "I will teach you to use 3 lb dumbells". (Not that 3 lb dumbells couldn't be useful for some people at some times, but if one were a normal, young, healthy individual, 3 pound (1.4 Kg) dumbells don't need special training.

For a more exotic language, I can see memory "tricks" being helpful for learning words or characters, especially if there is a real relation between a pictograph and what it means.
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Re: Spanish in 3 months....

Postby rdearman » Thu Jan 06, 2022 2:04 pm

Your brain isn't a muscle, and doesn't really work the same. Lot's of scientists have shot the muscle analogy down. However, your brain does build neural links the more often it has to do something in order to make it easier next time. "Neurons that fire together, wire together" as they say. There have been some studies which show memorisation of numbers and things for short term usage can increase your short-term memory capacity from an average of 7 up to 9 or ten. But you're limited by basic biology, really.

The problem with the muscle analogy is that weight training will increase the muscle mass of the entire muscle, but for your brain it only wires a certain specific section of the neural network. Your muscle is a generalist, but your brain is a specialist.

The human memory is F'ING amazing, but it is mostly skewed toward the visual and auditory senses. Which makes sense if you look at memory as a survival trait for evolution. You want to be able to remember what the poison mushroom looked like when compared to the non-poisonous variety. But you don't want to remember everything, because then it would make it harder for your brain to find the important stuff, so evolution has given us the ability to ignore things which the brain doesn't flag as important. Can you remember the colour of the car which drove past you last? Remember the make and model? If you do remember, there is probably some reason it stood out for you, otherwise your brain probably registered it, evaluated it and dropped it.

There is famously some fellow who memorised the entire Oxford Mandarin/English dictionary, and he can tell you what page each word is on and the definition. But would this help him speak a language?

Personally I found the method of loci (or memory palace) useful for the Korean alphabet, I built up a journey and visited all 40 characters, looked at the sound and the shape of the character. I repeatedly wander around this path in my head so that I remember them. But because I'm studying Korean actively, this alphabet his being slowly but surely pushed into my long term memory and I don't really need to visit that path any more in order for the sound and shape of the letter to pop into my head.

Even for English children tend to learn the alphabet song which is a mnemonic trick.

I got one of those books for Italian when I started out, it had stuff like remember flies by thinking of flies flying around Red Square in Moscow, because fly in Italian is mosca. Personally, I found it easier to just remember Mosca = Fly.
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Re: Spanish in 3 months....

Postby reineke » Thu Jan 06, 2022 2:19 pm

Muscle memory is something former athletes can bank on and that's the main reason for some speedy body transformations you see on TV. Most people's bodies don't have a memory of an athletic physique. People's brains do retain stuff and I do see a parallel between muscle memory in athletes and people who have trained their language skills for years.
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Re: Spanish in 3 months....

Postby rdearman » Thu Jan 06, 2022 3:16 pm

reineke wrote:Muscle memory is something former athletes can bank on and that's the main reason for some speedy body transformations you see on TV. Most people's bodies don't have a memory of an athletic physique. People's brains do retain stuff and I do see a parallel between muscle memory in athletes and people who have trained their language skills for years.

Yes, but studying languages for years wires up the language learning, but doesn't help you remember appointment, telephone numbers or where you left your keys. That is what I mean when I say it doesn't work like a muscle. Maybe we could think of the brain as a collection of muscles. Where doing bicep curls will not help your calf muscles?
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Re: Spanish in 3 months....

Postby reineke » Thu Jan 06, 2022 3:32 pm

"New research shows that the brain is more like a muscle – it changes and gets stronger when you use it. "

That's just me being annoying. I do remember people having these discussions before and I was the first to argue that brain is not a flipping muscle. However there are some interesting parallels. The neural drive is interesting and luke already mentioned training specificity. You can train for growth (size), strength and endurance. The three are interrelated but if you train all three you will not reach your maximum potential. Most people should probably stick with being generalists and just exercise but it's interesting to see the difference and similarities between marathoners, powerlifters and body builders.
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Re: Spanish in 3 months....

Postby seito » Fri Jan 07, 2022 6:00 am

Cerebral_Arbitrage wrote:Very true. Which is why I've fantasized about downloading languages into my brain since I saw this movie in 1999.

"I know Sumerian."
"Show me."

In real life, Neo would have created a YouTube video, titled "White guy amazes black man with flawless jujitsu."
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Re: Spanish in 3 months....

Postby kelvin921019 » Fri Jan 07, 2022 9:29 am

The trick is easy,
Step 1: learn Spanish for 1 month
Step 2: calling wherever you get "fluent".
Just made up a name with "fluent" in it. like "fundamental fluency", "touristic fluency" or "youtube fluency" or "grammarless fluency"
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