Becoming great with foreign languages

Prepositions seem to be difficult and arbitrary wherever we go. I would say that with 'written in the stars', it's probably 'in' because the implication is that the stars themselves spell out what's written, rather than 'on' the stars, so it does actually make more sense than a lot of entirely arbitrary spelling and phrasing.

Learning is comparatively supercharged (at least for most) when we get feedback. That's partly why immersion accelerates learning - not just time spent in that environment, but when we ask for a hamburglar in a grocery and we get a little laugh, that's sharp feedback. So you need to consider how that 20 minutes is spent. Duolingo is awful for this - I zip through an exercise that's meant to take 5 minutes or more in less than a minute and a half, because it's very easy and going over stuff I've learnt over literally the last 3 weeks or more, and I still feel like it's at about 10% as efficient as I would get being able to talk to a native speaker for that long.

The other thing to consider is language families and similarities. At school I studied French for 8 years, Latin for 6, and Italian for 5 (having also learnt a little Hebrew at home). This rendered me a) far more flexible when it comes to learning languages than someone without those influences but also b) it became comparatively trivial for me to learn Spanish as an adult, where when I've tried to learn Czech, Russian and Japanese (albeit only with Duolingo) I find the process more frustration than pleasure, where I get a lot of pleasure out of learning Spanish to a conversational degree.

Note that my goal in using Duolingo to learn Spanish is not to become fluent, but just to broaden my base of grammar and vocabulary such that when I get to spend time with native speaker(s), I will be able to let immersion do its thing, and I will be practically fluent within a matter of months - immersion supercharges my learning as I have a sharp ear for accents and language in general.

Wazz, if you'd like to practice your Spanish I could help you. I'd like to get better at English and a bunch of other languages. Same goes for all posters ITT.

I can offer help to non-native speakers in the following languages:

Spanish (native)
English (C1)
Italian (C1)
French (C1)
German (C1)
Russian (I completely forgot how to speak it even at a mediocre level but my understanding of its grammar is really good)

I'd be happy to have conversations with 2+2ers who're also interested in language learning.

I'm curious what point you're trying to make with that comment

it's pretty clear

for example spanish and italian are literally mutually intelligible

If it were pretty clear, I wouldn't be asking

It's clear you're trying to undermine him, on the basis it's not impressive to speak multiple similar languages, but in what position do you think he's shooting for, and your job is to cut him down to size?

I would really love to be ethnographic about this, rather than attack you for attacking him, there's something key missing in my conceptualization of this. What is it you're reacting to, an assertion of academic authority?

I don't know what you're trying to accomplish, Rick, but you got a point: I'm fluent in easy languages (German is an easy language).
With that being said:
1: what I did is still hard and it requires a lot of time
2: I didn't learn a single dialect as none of the languages in the list is by definition a dialect
3: "mutually intelligible" is light years away from the actual ability to speak the language fluently. You have no clue if you think otherwise. If you were a native Italian speaker and went to, say, Spain, you'd realize real quickly how useless that "mutual intelligibility" is when you have to discuss something that matters.
4: if you paid more attention you'd realize that I participate in the German section of BBV and I'm fluent in it. I've never said I wasn't fluent in German (I assume you're not familiar with the common European framework of reference for languages since I listed all of them but Russian at C1, implying fluency)
5: I don't know "some Russian". My understanding of its grammar is really good and at some point I was able to communicate at B2 level which is both far from "knowing some Russian" and "being fluent in it".

I don't speak a single difficult language fluently, I'll give you that. I'm currently learning Japanese so that may change in a few months.

how much you want to wager on you being fluent in japanese in "a few months"

Uh oh it’s HU FOR LANGUAGES TIME!

I want Levy to be Daniel Tammet slowrolling Rickroll hardcore right now.

I love the fact that you doubled down, completely ignoring my post exposing your tendency to misread what's written.

It'll have to be a good amount since I'm studying 2h~ a day but I'd 5x that in order to prove a point and also materialize my equity. Be sure it'll be the biggest amount I can afford to lose.

I remember reading you'd play freerolls while at work; putting at risk a job that paid a lot even for American standards. Not a surprise you're willing to wager any amount without any certainty about my linguistic skills.

I'm willing to take the bet but let's make sure we have the same definition of "fluency", number of months and ways to evaluate my level.

A friendly reminder: at age 22 I could barely string a few sentences together in English, 3 months later I reached my current level. Just in case you want to back down.

given that i asked a basic question and you gave an essay response without even managing to answer it in the slightest, i imagine my definition of fluency is significantly more rigid than yours

Nevermind. I came to the conclusion
that there's no amount of money I can afford to lose that's worth studying 8/10h a day for a few months. EV- life-wise, even if I won the bet.
I refuse your invitation to wager. Still don't know why you tried to downplay my language skills though.

bro, you claimed you could become fluent in japanese in a 3-5 months, mind you that's a language that requires 3-5 years of dedicated study to achieve basic competency

you look like i clown, i was correct to call you out earlier as everything about your post was classic blowhard nonsense where you contributed zero to the conversation but just wanted to say "hey look at me"

you weren't contributing anything, you were just attention seeking for something which honestly isn't even very impressive but already done by millions and used to be far more common a hundred years ago where it actually made sense to learn more languages if you had any semblance of an education and weren't going to be spending your life shoveling night soil at the farm

thank you for the validation though with your japanese nonsense and backing down

if you're willing to escrow i'll book any amount you want

sorry for the language above, that was unnecessary

it also seems i missed on your earlier more informative posts above and thought your entrance here was the initial post i responded to

that one is fully on me and for that i apologize

i still stand by that you've harmed the likelihood of me viewing your opinions on this subject as meaningful if you genuinely believe you could tackle japanese in 3 months

that's the thing about this bet, there's no way you could do it so any acceptance of it on your end would make me presume you did not enter it with good intentions to earnestly attempt it but rather try to use that time to figure out how cheat or find some awkward subjective interpretation to being as simple as "can he go to the store and buy milk without any issue" and yes i would agree that's easily achievable

Don't worry. Regarding the wager there's no way to learn Japanese in 3 months: had I taken the bet I wouldn't have settled for anything less than 10 months, something you might have accepted as you seemed really confident. My logic is this: according to the FSI it takes 2200h to reach fluency in Japanese (https://www.fsi-language-courses.org/blo...)
That's doable as I can study 8h a day which is how much time you'd need to reach 2200h in 10 months. I consider I have some edge over the average language learner so I really liked my odds. But as I said even if I took the bet I'd have to study 8h a day for 10 months which is exhausting and I don't have the money to make the bet EV+ all things considered.

I have other things to do so I'll keep learning 2h~ a day and have fun with it. This is the first language I'm trying to enjoy (the learning part), and will keep it that way.

As for any potential cheating on my side I would've demanded taking a test or something that is completely objective. I don't like the idea of having a person evaluating my level as that would increase variance since we all have different definitions of fluency.
If you take an official test it makes everything easier for both parties.

I said "so that may change in a few months" out of spite because you were quite aggressive. It's not doable and any fair bet would involve a time frame of at least 8 months.

10 months > 8 months >>>>>>> few months

fwiw 10 months not possible either even if you weren't drawing dead to begin with by not being physically present in japan

Back into the real world: I'm really curious about your Mandarin. I read not so long ago you were in China for quite some time; you were saying a youtuber was wrong about his criticism of China and someone mentioned your time there. Do you speak some Mandarin?
I tried it when I was 26 but it was so challenging from a phonetic perspective that I gave up on it after 3 days. Japanese is totally the opposite: really complex grammar yet it's the language with the fewest amount of phonemes I've ever studied.

i would define myself as conversationally fluent to normies and as proficient to those who know the language well - i can survive without any issues in chinese only reading/writign/speaking environments

in all my time around non native speakers, i only ever met a small handful who were genuinely fluent in the language and the overwhelming majority of people who claim fluency are lying because they can get away it - generally whenever you hear "x speaks chinese" and then later hear them speak you cringe really hard because it's usually unintelligeble, nearly every scene in films where brad pitt character suddenly bursts out in chinese for the big reveal that he speaks the language it's practically unintelligeble and impossible for me to understand without the english subtitles

john cena is very good at chinese but this is nowhere near fluent, while i can understand everything he says perfectly, he uses the sentence structure and complexity of thought of a toddler and speaks with a speed so unnaturally slow that it would be incredibly tilting to ever have to carry on a coversation with him especially since he's literally forming english sentences in his mind and then speaking out the chinese version of it so he's producing sentences no chinese person in a million years would ever do

chinese is a very efficient and densely packed language where you can convey complex thoughts in seconds, meanwhile he takes minutes to painstakingly say that he enjoys eating spicy food

but he's still very good, i'm sure there are aspects of the language that he knows which i do not

same with former presidential candidate john huntsman - he's capable, but again you think you're talking to a 4 year year old child with both a speech impediment and mental ******ation

in fact becoming fluent in the language, like genuinely fluent, is such a rare achievement that you'll literally become a major celebrity starring in your own tv shows and movies

listen to this guy, he speaks the real deal, see how dramatically different in is in structure and cadence than the "fluent" speakers above

he's literally one of the most famous people in china because he's able to speak so well

japanese is considered slightly harder than chinese

i'm way closer to huntsman and cena than to the latter, but i kind of cringe each time i hear them speak and hope i don't sound like that, but i probably do

Chinese characters make me feel ill just looking at them.
Is that weird? They are so complex and maze like relative to English.
When I was psychotic I was convinced they were developed to enslave people's minds.

there's over a billion people who feel this way 😀

You have my respect then, truly. Not many learn a really difficult language to a respectable level, let alone native English speakers. Most go for the easy ones, as I did. Russian was the most challenging by far and never got even close to the level I wanted. Maybe I could've done it if I continued but I felt it wasn't worth the effort. It was truly a failure.

Taking into account most people see languages as a tool to get a bigger salary rather than a beautiful piece of culture that you make your own I also want to thank all native English speakers who learn a second language out of passion and curiosity.

i just realized they didn't do subtitles for when he spoke here he literally didn't say what the guy was asking, which would be an incredibly simple thing for someone who was fluent

he instead just awkwardly fumbled about giving generic praise to the show and wishing them success, using some sentence structure i've never heard of - i'm genuinely unsure which variant of "jianglai" he was intending to use because only one fits the context whereas another which doesn't fit the context does fit the accompanying grammar - again because i don't consider myself fluent, i'm also a little unsure if that is not his error but rather my own (but i'd gladly wager that it was an error on his end)

he also speaks incredibly slowly, with awkward cadence and very bizarre word choice

it's literally hearing forrest gump speak - if you didn't know he wasn't a native speaker, you'd be wondering where this invalid's caretaker must have gone - but this was a presidential candidate who not only told the voting public he was fluent in the language, but was also so proud of it that he literally spoke in chinese at the presidential debate as if that gave him credibility

and of course he also butchers this