Wanda Kaishin

Why are you directing this question towards me? Sharp? I don't understand your sentence.

The only real solution is to learn the language to a very high level.

It definitely makes the language easier to learn, but the real question is whether or not it's worth the time and effort. After all, you could use that time and effort to learn more vocabulary instead. For me, learning the meaning of Chinese characters was well worth it, but learning greek and latin roots to learn Romantic/Germanic languages wasn't.

That's basically what edx courses do. In the one I'm taking, I watch a video the teacher made (which comes with notes and subtitles), and do homework. The homework is automatically corrected, but she will give personal feedback for anything above and beyond the auto-corrected stuff, for example, if you decide to submit a short essay. There is a midterm and a final too. I think this system works fairly well, but I'm not sure if it's as good as a "normal" class.

Not a fan. English already has more dictionary entries than any other language, and every language has shortfalls, so why be different? There's nothing wrong with using 2 or 3 words if one won't suffice, and I feel he's really stretching it on a lot of those words.

But that's the problem - assuming that it's ok to start out with a bad accent and hoping that it will get better after many years. If you never consciously work on your pronunciation, it's probably not going to get much better. That's why it's much better to work on it in the very beginning. It doesn't take long, and it's very effective. You need to work on the pronunciation of phonemes, words and sentences. You need to use audio from native speakers for each of these steps, and always listen before you pronounce until you get the hang of it. It's a pretty simple formula, and a shame that so few follow it. And to be clear I'm not saying you need to be perfect, but there's no excuse for not being understandable.

That's ok, I've learned that in this forum many people just like to read the topic and respond. This chart is for native English speakers, so it will be of limited use to you.

It's the same case with all the written language learning study material I've used. Some are certainly betters than others, but it still amazes me how many mistakes are made in language learning materials. I can understand mistakes made by non-natives, but most courses have L1 and L2 authors/proofreaders. When I read a book in my L1, errors occur, but they are very rare. Why is there a much higher percentage of errors in language learning material?

(I moved this to Apps, because I think that's what you're talking about here. If I did this in error, please let me know) I'm not very interested in typing my L2's, so I personally wouldn't use it.

Excellent post. This is a pet peeve of mine to. I've seen people with this opinion make post after defensive post that one doesn't have to use tones in Mandarin. This is terrible advice for beginners who are often not even understood because of bad tones.

Didn't translate well into English though. A ball of snot? You could say that, but it's just not terribly colloquial imo. Try this one instead: A family of mice were surprised by a big cat. Father Mouse jumped up and said, "Bow-wow!" The cat ran away. "What was that, Father?" asked Baby Mouse. "Well, son, that's why it's important to learn a second language."

SPOILER I would like to give you a hard time about this, and tell you how illogical it is to let this keep you from enjoying a book, but I have no right to say anything because I do it myself. For example, I found out one of my favorite authors is extremely religious, and now everything he writes seems to reveal this and it bothers me. And with movies for example, I don't watch or enjoy anything I've already seen by Woody Allen because he divorced his wife to marry his adopted daughter. These things really shouldn't affect me, but they do.

I remember a surprisingly large number of Japanese TV game shows in which contestants competed by "spelling", or drawing kanji for given words. It's cool how interested they are in their own writing system.

Hopefully you wouldn't let them hear you speak with a non-native accent though, right? Kids can develop a native accent if you catch them early enough, but will also fossilize a non-native accent very easily.

Any hobbits in your classroom Jodie?

Hmm...I find pronunciation to be very easy compared to tonal languages, for example. I guess that just goes to show how different people are. What I find particularly difficult about Russian is the grammar. Cases, verbs of motion, aspect, etc. Toughest grammar I've studied by far.

I just remember Rupert the Bear

Incidentally, if you are a beginner (A1/A2) in a language, it's not worth spending time to maintain. That's because it takes as much time to maintain as it would just to continue learning. In other words, if you don't have time to continue learning it, then you don't have time to maintain it. If you are advanced (C1/C2), you don't need to maintain it. You can go for years without using the language, and in a matter of hours/days/weeks regain your level. So maintaining isn't necessary. It only makes sense if you're an intermediate learner (B1/B2), and even then only if you actually have the time to maintain it.

Orthography is extremely important, and should be learned, along with pronunciation, in the very first step of language learning. Почему? Потему что if you wait to learn it later, or not at all, every time you read something you'll be reinforcing incorrect pronunciation, and incorrect pronunciation is the number one reason for native speakers to misunderstand you in my experience. Imo misunderstandings from incorrect pronunciation are more common than those from incorrect vocabulary and grammar combined. Wishing that orthography was phonetic is a complete waste of time. No languages are completely phonetic, and the only changes that are ever made are very small. I'm not going to worry about все vs всё, for example.

Normally I consider the most time consuming aspects of language learning to be the most challenging . So if I use that definition, listening and vocabulary. Each one of those takes thousands of hours to become advanced in for most languages. But if I consider the most intense aspects of language learning to be the most challenging, I'd have to say the first few hours of conversation. Over the years I've developed techniques to reduce the intensity of this stage, but it's still number one in my book.

I would hate to be an accent coach because I get frustrated that many people aren't willing to try something different. They listen to a sound, try to repeat it, and notice that they're not even close. They do it again, and sound exactly the same as the previous attempt. It doesn't occur to them that they need to try something different to get a different result, even if you explain it to them; they just keep making the same sound over and over again. People who have good accents are those who are willing to adjust their attempts. It's about being open minded, and has nothing to do with "not being flexible because of age" as one poster put it.

So are you saying that people who claim to have learned languages in different ways are liars?

Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't this already being done? I thought just about every country starts it's students off on English from the beginning, or near the beginning. It seems to work really well for western Europe, not so well for eastern Europe, and really poorly for everywhere else. The Philippines is an exception for some reason, but the global success rate is pretty low. I think it has less to do with when it's introduced than how it's taught. It takes thousands of hours to become advanced in a language; expecting a few hundred hours in the classroom to be enough is unrealistic. The kids need to really spend a lot of time with the language outside of the classroom. And if they are expected to become advanced speakers, they need to converse for hundreds of hours. Classes that focus on grammar aren't enough.

This chart is taken from a more complete one where Hungarian goes in the middle category. I explained the chart in my earlier post; too bad nobody wants to read it. The linked article is really helpful information.

Is there anything funnier than hearing a non-native botch an attempt to swear in your language? I think not.