How long did it take before you "got it"?

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jonathanrace
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How long did it take before you "got it"?

Postby jonathanrace » Fri Nov 02, 2018 12:54 pm

I know this is a bit of a tricky one to answer as there isn't really a way to measure it but... When was the point (if you've got to it yet) during your studies where you felt "Yeah I think I've got this". I'm not saying you are necessarily fluent or that you've mastered the language, just that you feel confident in a lot of situations using the language and feel almost I guess comfortable.
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Re: How long did it take before you "got it"?

Postby dicentra8 » Fri Nov 02, 2018 1:59 pm

I can only talk for English, since it's the one I feel more confortable. In general, I would say it took around 3 years to "feel ok" and maybe 5 years until I was watching anything without feeling the need to have subtitles to help. But then again, I wouldn't say that English was that different from my native language...at least in terms of sentence order (and alphabet as well). I could guess and connect words in the subtitles with what I was hearing. Then I started to pay attention to idiomatic expressions that were different.

To contrast with that, Japanese has taken a lot of more time. The differences are more outstanding and it feels like it's all upside down (kind of). :lol:
It's got a lot more stuff to know and it ends up taking more time to get there (at least for me). It also took me a while until I notice that I should be paying more attention to the end of sentence. I actually just realized that when I read this book that mentioned that. It sounds like the obvious thing but it never crossed my mind until I read it. :oops:
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Re: How long did it take before you "got it"?

Postby nooj » Fri Nov 02, 2018 2:04 pm

For Spanish, about 8 months. But I was immersed. I'm at that point for French now. Took me years because I didn't care too much about improving.
For both these languages I feel comfortable in a lot of situations.

Other languages I'm working on. I think I can get Italian and Catalan there if I really work at them for a year or two. I feel on the cusp for both of them.
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Re: How long did it take before you "got it"?

Postby patrickwilken » Fri Nov 02, 2018 2:31 pm

I haven't owned a car for years, but when I did own a car I used to drive it a lot. Every time I go back to Australia there is this fear in me for the first five minutes or so when I get behind a wheel again that I have forgotten how to drive. There is a strong cognitive disconnect between my abilities and my knowledge of my abilities.

The same thing happens in German for me. I know rationally I can produce German and understand German, but there has never been a point where I feel I have got it (whatever "it" is). I am starting to wonder if there ever will be. My wife, who is C2 in English, still talks about her weaknesses in English, even though you wouldn't be able to tell she's not a native speaker.

I suspect this has to do with the way the brain is wired, and the fact that our conscious mind just doesn't have direct access to certain parts of the brain.
Last edited by patrickwilken on Fri Nov 02, 2018 7:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: How long did it take before you "got it"?

Postby Axon » Fri Nov 02, 2018 2:47 pm

In immersion situations, it's never been a single moment. At some point I've just looked back and said "wow, I can and regularly do handle all these things in the target language." That happened after about a year of total study time with Indonesian (5 months immersed).

With Mandarin, at almost four years, there are still daily life things that are difficult for me (using new apps in Chinese etc), but there's a lot that's second nature. I actually don't remember the transition from being unsure about Mandarin to being comfortable with it - I know at one year of study I was struggling to catch up in a college class, and after another year I was still pretty illiterate but starting to be okay at traveling in Mandarin. After the third year I was pretty comfortable having spontaneous conversations with people I knew well, and from that point my speaking and listening has just steadily gotten better.

I suppose living in China started feeling comfortable pretty quick because I had already traveled and stayed in several different places before I moved here and I was already very comfortable with the language.

Edit based on what patrickwilken said about self-perception: at two and a half years of Mandarin I was still worried that if I started seriously studying related languages or even stopped Mandarin completely, I would rapidly lose everything. I'm not worried about that anymore.
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Re: How long did it take before you "got it"?

Postby PeterMollenburg » Fri Nov 02, 2018 3:02 pm

My feelings are pretty similar to the last two replies by patrickwilken and axon. I still don't feel like I'm completely there even after 5 + years of pretty intensive study (not full time, not immersion, but a hell of a lot of time on task). Yes I converse every day fluidly with my daughter in French, who chats non-stop to me only in French, but I still constantly have to look things up to check I'm saying them correctly, that I'm using the right verbs for the right expressions. It's simply not instinctive yet. I doubt it will happen without me living in a francophone country. But I am soooo much faster at speaking than I was even a year ago, excellent at reading, pretty decent most of the time with listening... there's always room for improvement, and like axon i'm worried now, cutting back my hours of French that it will slide. We'll see :)
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Re: How long did it take before you "got it"?

Postby zKing » Fri Nov 02, 2018 9:34 pm

I agree with Axon that it doesn't feel like a single moment. Take my opinion with a grain of salt as my highest achievement in both my languages is mid-B levels. But I believe it goes something like this:

At the beginner / A levels you can have what I'd call interactions or encounters, but not really conversations. You can prepare yourself to go buy a pack of gum, introduce yourself or similar situations where there is fairly defined set of language you might need/encounter, but any significant deviation from the standard encounter will quickly push you into water well over your head. Side note: these beginner situations can rarely successfully include something like asking for (non-trivial) directions because of the really open ended response you might get. You can do 'conversations' but they are really banal and fairly short and require constant teaching language guide rails. I think as you go up the A-levels you build more and bigger islands of these possible interactions until they start to connect enough where they can become something like a conversation at which point you start hitting the B-levels...

Somewhere around the beginning of B1 or so, you can start having semi-real conversations (still requiring lots of training wheels and scaffolding at the start, i.e. a dictionary at the ready). But what often happens now is you go 1-4 phrases before you stop short and need help... for example you try to say something and realize you don't have the word and either need a translation (dictionary/human) or you re-word / circumlocute around it. As you get better and learn more, several things happen: your 'ear' improves, your brain hands you more words more easily, and you get better and faster at circumlocution/direct-simplification of your TL. These "stops" in the conversion slowly get further and further apart.

At some point you will complete a whole exchange/conversation and right after realize: "Hey, I got all the way through that without stammering and annoying the other guy while I wracked my brain for a word." Which is the coolest feeling in the world, I remember clearly when this happened for me with Italian. But you also know... you got LUCKY. You got through THAT conversation because it happened to thread the needle of your TL skill without running off the track into your unknowns. The cool part is that this will happen more and more as you get better. But the bad part, as others have said here... even at higher levels, you always know in the back of your mind that at any time the native on the other side of a conversation can throw out one of tens of thousands of (rare-ish) words or phrases that will stump you. But this possibility gets smaller and smaller as you keep going and learn more.

I should also point out that at some point in the B-levels (at least for me), when you've practiced a lot conversations with tutors etc, you become pretty numb to the frustration and fear of getting stuck. It happens to you SO many times over and over, that it just becomes part of the process and you expect it. And as you become semi-fluid in larger chunks of of your output, even cranky non-tutors will be more tolerant of your occasional hiccups because they won't happen too much.

To actually answer your specific question: for me with Italian, I had studied off and on for two years, but actual study time was likely less than a year, maybe 9 months? Cantonese is tougher, I've studied more off than on for over ten years. I ran way ahead with my reading/listening skills and never really tried speaking much until I re-started my studies in May of this year. I'd say I'm _almost_ to that level now, maybe I need another 2-3 months? Tonal languages are a beast. :)
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Re: How long did it take before you "got it"?

Postby BOLIO » Mon Nov 05, 2018 1:42 am

I’ll let you know when I get there. :D

I was two years in when I figured out I would be successful. Now I just want to do what I know I am capable of but just more effortlessly and more freely.

Russian is probably five years away.
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Re: How long did it take before you "got it"?

Postby Djedida » Mon Nov 12, 2018 3:56 pm

I'm nowhere near fluent, but what I do know in Spanish, I have down pretty well.

I tried self-studying from a few books from 4-6th grade, in 7th grade I took my first intro to Spanish course and quickly followed up with Spanish II in high school. Duolingo came out right around the time I started college, so I tried the French course and soon decided to try out its Spanish course, too, as a refresher. I ended up finishing the tree, then took a university intro to Spanish course as an easy A in my senior year.

I'm not sure when I got it; I did extremely well in a class that I was overqualified for, yet I think it helped cementing the fundamentals for me. I guess re-learning the very basics every few years was my way of spaced repetition.
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