The Most Thorough Methods and Materials for Learning a Variety of Languages

[h.porter23]

As a complete newcomer both to this forum and the field of languages as a whole, I appreciate that my subject is probably vague and a little asinine: I apologise, but I couldn't think up a better one. Thank you to those who'll bear with me.

I've maintained an interest in languages for some years, now, primarily as gateways to interaction with the vastly different cultures they grow from and almost represent (to my mind, anyway). This interest spans almost every language I've ever come across, fuelled by a love of world literature and film: the Russian of Tarkovsky, the French of authors like Jean Genet and Julien Gracq, the Spanish of Juan Rulfo and Julio Cortázar, even the seemingly less familiar Serbo-Croatian of Aleksandar Tišma and 'dead' languages like Latin, Ancient Greek and Old Norse. Having recently graduated high school in Australia and enrolled at university in B Arts / B Finance, I've been looking to marry both sides of the double degree with this particularly long-standing and passionate interest by selecting a second Arts major in Japanese (which I understand to be a trial by fire for somebody with no prior experience, but -- probably naïvely -- I don't doubt my ability). Whilst I've read about the supposed shortcomings of learning languages at university, I imagine it provides a necessarily structured and deep theoretical understanding to complement the practical, which I'd hoped to augment using film, literature, multilingual forums, etc. Essentially, what I'm looking to gain is fluency based on a deep conceptual understanding, rather than the Duolingo-style memorisation of words and phrases. I hope that makes sense.

So (and thank you again to any who forded all that exposition -- I thought a little context necessary) I wondered if anybody might offer some recommendations on the most thorough, ground-up methods and materials for fluently learning any given language that they know of. What I want most to avoid is the phrasebook / tourist style of learning, and so I wonder if finding teachers might be the best approach. But again, I have no idea. The best example I've found of a book that uses this style of learning is the Viking Society for Northern Research's three part volume 'A New Introduction to Old Norse' (recommended me by a friend of a friend who studied the language); I don't think I've found an analogue for this series in any other language I've looked into, but that could be my poor research.

In summary, can anybody recommend what they've found or heard to be the best materials and approaches for developing a technical understanding of a language upon which fluent pronunciation, vocabulary, etc. can be built? This is just the style of learning that sits best with me. Otherwise, any advice in general is appreciated. Am I just fumbling around, asking stupid questions in a field I know nothing about? I have no way of knowing.

I'm interested in any and all languages (and cultures) from antiquity through present day, though at the moment I am most interested in French and Spanish (primarily due to the literature of those languages). Advice on all languages is appreciated, though; if any experts on Hungarian, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic, etc. decide to offer advice, I will receive it enthusiastically.

Thanks again.

[Adrianslont]

Hi. Welcome to the forum.

I’m far from the most accomplished language learner here but I’m always happy to give advice - haha.

There’s a very knowledgeable, accomplished guy on his forum called iguanamon - if you are lucky he will come along and lend you his wisdom. If not, use the search function to seek out the advice he gives to enthusiastic newcomers! Of course there are many other people worth listening to here!

Anyway, the thrust of the iguana’s advice is that it’s not a great idea to take on the study of multiple languages simultaneously if you are a monolingual beginner.

I can only agree with that advice. Based on my experience. I myself have ignored it and am learning two languages simultaneously - I often wish I wasn’t, I’d love to see faster progress - but there you go. I have my reasons.

Anyway, it’s hard to tell from your post if you are planning to take on languages simultaneously or just planning ahead over the next twenty years. I would advocate serial language monogamy myself or maybe a marriage and one mistress at most.

I would focus most energy on the language(s) you are studying at uni. Do the coursework and do as much extra study as you want. Ace that course! Boost your WAM. Gather those HDs. Many others will just get through their course and not be so great in the language - you, with your enthusiasm will do much better - but not if you are spending all your energy on learning outside the uni context.

Starting uni is a transition that requires some negotiation - it really is different to high school. I know the Australian context because I am Australian, too. Some people thrive, some people get by and about thirty per cent of first years drop out because .... I don’t know why but I think mainly because it’s different. Let yourself settle in and find your level in first semester. (Dear northern hemisphere people, uni starts in feb/march in aus.

This forum is great for specific advice but you seem to be asking about a million different languages. And seeking the one true way. I’m not sure there is a one true way - especially when wanting to learn such a disparate set of languages (though imho certain principles apply to learning all languages/anything). I would advise focussing both your efforts and questions on one or two languages.

All the best.

[PeterMollenburg]

For Spanish: Destinos - An Introduction to Spanish

For French: Gaston Mauger’s Cours de Langue et de Civilisation Françaises in four volumes. Obtaining the audio is difficult. You could begin with French in Action, which has plenty of audio and video, then move onto the Cours de Langue et... (mentioned above).

In my experience these courses will get you a long way with these two languages, perhaps further than any other course, but then again I’ve not completed every course in existence! You still will most definitely need native content after completing them.

[iguanamon]

... the thrust of the iguana’s advice is that it’s not a great idea to take on the study of multiple languages simultaneously if you are a monolingual beginner. ...

Well, yes, that's true. I've seen a lot of over-enthusiastic learners come and go over the years. While it is indeed possible to learn multiple languages as a monolingual adult beginner, it is not very probable to have a positive outcome- if the desired outcome is a high level in a language.

It's just that there is a lot to take on board and, as a monolingual, you don't yet know how second languages work or how best to learn. It's hard enough to learn one language (to B2 or above) as a monolingual, let alone several at the same time.

That being said, I have seen over the years that telling people what they don't want to hear is not very effective. Yes, you can learn some of a lot of languages, this is sufficient and enjoyable for many people. Zen Buddhism talks about how it's our expectations that make us unhappy in life. What often happens is that some learners want to get to a high level in the languages they study and get stuck at low levels for whatever reason: overload; not enough consistent study; not knowing how best to learn on their own; too much divided attention; etc. So, the frustration tends to form a negative feedback loop and instead of dropping simultaneous multiple language study they end up dropping language study altogether and silently exit the forum. School situations are different from self-study. Study and consistency tend to be enforced because of the reward of a grade and cost of fee/time in class.

We have many learners here who learn multiple languages simultaneously. Many will come here to offer advice and tell you how to do it. Still, the variable they're not accounting for in their advice, is an adult monolingual's lack of knowledge about how languages work and lack of experience in self-learning.

Lately, I've come up with new advice for irrationally exuberant adult monolingual beginners as to simultaneous multiple language-learning. Even though it is unlikely that you will be successful in reaching a high level in any of the languages you study doing it this way, there are always exceptions to every rule. Maybe you will be one of them. Ultimately, my advice for learners in this situation is to do whatever they want to do, whatever makes them happy... because... they're going to anyway.

[David1917]

Two of the more accomplished polyglots, neither of which post on this forum (though both had tenures on the older forum), strongly advocate learning French and German first, if your long-term desire is to study 10+ languages. The main reason being that a) some truly great materials exist in those languages for learning others, and b) they represent the largest cornerstones of two language families that you yourself have expressed interest in exploring further, therefore being the "easiest" to learn because of the variety of resources/literature/film etc. you can find in them.

That brings me to the product line Assimil. A French company, most of its coursebooks are only in French - which includes its Czech, Serbo-Croat, and Advanced Arabic courses, to name a few that you have listed. Many people (the 2 mentioned above, and myself) swear by Assimil as the greatest introduction to a new language. The courses work by means of roughly 100 short dialogues in bilingual text format that are to be learned one at a time over the course of 100 days. Now obviously, you may take more than exactly 100 days, but that is the gist of it. There is built-in review in the "official" Assimil system, as well as some other methods people use to make sure they are sufficiently mastering the material.

Luckily for you, Assimil's English line includes the first volume of their Japanese course, Hungarian (I am using it, it is quite good, very dense, steep learning curve), and of course French and Spanish. Now, most here contend that the newest editions of Assimil are significantly less thorough than their older counterparts. Therefore, I would track down the older versions of French and Spanish (they are rendered "French Without Toil" and "Spanish Without Toil" - both are authored by A. Cherel, and both more or less follow a continuous story of a man visiting France/Spain.) The 2nd edition of French "New French With Ease" is also highly regarded, though I don't know about the follow-up Spanish versions. These can easily be found secondhand on Amazon/ebay.

For your in depth study of Japanese, there is a pretty hefty 3-volume set called Japanisch Intensiv put out by the Buske publishing house, authors Foljanty and Fukuzawa. Langenscheidt as well has issued a "Praktisches Lehrbuch" for Japanese, a generally well-regarded publisher though I found their Chinese course to be incredibly substandard.

Finally, for the exploration of multiple language families, it often helps to move backward through time, and explore the many subsets of the family. If you only wanted to learn Old Norse, then by all means, learn Old Norse. But since you are interested in many languages, I'm guessing exploring the modern Germanic family will be of interest to you as well. Check these sample paths out, with reference to longer discussions on the old forum:

Romance: Spanish, French, Latin, Italian, Portuguese/Catalan, Romanian (More details in this thread)
Germanic: German, Old Norse, Dutch (Frisian), Swedish (Norwegian/Danish/Faroese) (More details in this thread)
Slavic: Russian, Czech, Serbo-Croat, Polish, Bulgarian (More details in This thread)

What should you do right now?
I'd say if you want to have a major in Japanese, then by all means go for it. Supplement your coursework with the Assimil course to see how you like the method. Begin working on French as well. I would not being French and Spanish simultaneously, as mentioned above it is probably more likely to have interference.

Your first summer can be spent reflecting on how Japanese and French are going, as well as experimenting with different approaches to either. Did you find that your course had too little emphasis on xyz component? What do you think was the key to your success in the course? What about your self-study of French? Answering these questions and spending a summer engaged in a more focused study of these two languages will help you begin to add more languages in a more efficient manner.

[zenmonkey]

Learning a language is like learning a martial art. A deep understanding of physiology and biomechanics and physics will not make you a black belt. It certainly will help, but you need to do the time on the mat. There are no universal methods or materials, you choose a good one (and people can point those out) but based on your level, your background, your learning style then you go from there. You need to define what works for you, it’s a discovery process.

And as it has been pointed out, it’s usually better to start with one, begin figuring out how that works and add on material and languages.

Best of luck.

In general, here is the advice I can give : stickiness matters, language learning takes time. Take any method, spend 30 minutes or more a day, use something to build vocabulary, keep at it. Review your learning and strategy and keep at it. Have fun. Come back and think about learning. Rinse and repeat.

[reineke]

[Arnaud]

That being said, I have seen over the years that telling people what they don't want to hear is not very effective. Yes, you can learn some of a lot of languages, this is sufficient and enjoyable for many people. Zen Buddhism talks about how it's our expectations that make us unhappy in life. What often happens is that some learners want to get to a high level in the languages they study and get stuck at low levels for whatever reason: overload; not enough consistent study; not knowing how best to learn on their own; too much divided attention; etc. So, the frustration tends to form a negative feedback loop and instead of dropping simultaneous multiple language study they end up dropping language study altogether and silently exit the forum.

So true that it should be engraved on the pediment of our temple

- I'll add that for me there are no "Most Thorough Methods and Materials for Learning", there is simply what suits your learning style (you'll have to discover it) and what pleases you. Moreover, to reach a high level you'll need at one moment to accept to give up all your beloved courses and textbooks and use only native materials: in hindsight, that reality makes the quest for the "Most Thorough Methods and Materials for Learning" a loss of time and money.

[aronald]

I can only speak from my experience (and everyone is different), but I wouldn’t sacrifice reading for anything. A multi-faceted approach would be very helpful, and leaning heavily on the reading from day 1 is a good idea that you really can’t go wrong with. You can always look up grammar along the way to supplement the reading. Personally I use LingQ because of the ease of importing websites and books, and it also counts your known words and words read statistics. I’d also put flashcards low on the totem pole (if that saying hasn’t been fully debunked yet). This approach works well for Romance languages and I guess for Slavic languages too, but I can’t confirm (yet) for Asian languages. Maybe if you’re studying Mandarin it would be a good idea to use flashcards for the first 1000 characters or so.

I also wouldn’t take on 2 languages at the same time (if you’ve never studied a language seriously before) until you reach at least a B2 reading level. After that point reading takes a lot less energy to make good progress.

Regarding listening, I would do it without expecting much at the beginning. You’d be surprised how much easier listening becomes as your reading speed improves. Maybe it has something to do with the brain’s information processing speed.

I used to think language acquisition needed a special method that was fine-tuned and now I realize how much bull that was. If you attack your studies 6 days a week for a couple hrs (at least) per day then you can make huge improvements very quickly. I spend about 4 hrs per day reading and just looking a month back seems like a huge difference. So keep your head down and grind away, but don’t burn yourself out. Once you start taking too many days off it’s all downhill from there.

[Ogrim]

I'll echo Arnaud and say that there is no perfect method or language course, you need to find out what works for you. Assimil has been mentioned, and a lot of people on the forum like Assimil very much. I have nothing against Assimil, except that I find they do not explain grammar very much, and I am the kind of learner who gets annoyd if I don't get grammar clearly explained from the outset. There are other language courses, llike the Colloquial series by Routledge or the German-based "{Sprache x} mit System which are better in that respect. Then there are of course tons of courses and manuals for the "big 4", the FIGS (French, Italian, German, Spanish). Once you get into language learning you will soon find out what works for you.

The languages you list, from Hungarian to Arabic, are all quite different from English (I assume that is your native language since you are in Australia) and you will encounter a lot of grammatical features which do not exist in English: two or three genders, case inflection, imperfective and perfective aspect, agglutination, dual etc. just to mention a few. (NB: Not all the languages you list have all these features, they are just examples of things you may encounter in one or the other.) If you are not familiar with what these and other grammatical features mean and how they work I think the risk of getting lost is much higher. That does not mean you should get fixated at drilling grammar, just that you should work on both grammar and vocabulary acquisition in parallel. One without the other is not enough.

Iguanamon does give very good advice, and I encourage you to read his guest post in the forum blog about the "multi-track" approach.