Thoughts from 2023

I've been trying to learn languages for 22 and a half years (emphasis on the word "trying"). Over the years my enthusiasm and commitment to the study has been far from constant, but I think I've enough experience at this point that it's worth sharing what I have learned, so that's what I thought I'd do in this post. 

It's not a sprint, it's a marathon.

The hardest truth I have come to accept is this: learning a foreign language to fluency takes a lot of time. There are no shortcuts, despite what adverts for "quick and easy fluency in three months" courses would had you believe. It takes real dedication and a regular commitment for years of your life.

It's possible you could do it within a year, but unlikely for most people. In my claim of years I'm assuming you have a full time job and other commitments in your life. As an example, a rough estimate from the ALG approach (see the last post) is that about 2000 hours of comprehensible input is required to achieve fluency comparable to a native speaker. 

When I set out to master Spanish in 2021, I targeted a 4 year plan for fluency, hoping to achieve at least 1500 hours of input before the end of the 4th year, committing to roughly one hour a day. I think I am right on schedule for that, and while I am very happy with my progress, I accept there is still a long way to go.

(Of course, you may have a lot more spare time than me and, sure, if you can commit to 8 hours a day, then there's no reason why you cannot achieve fluency in a year. Some language learning schools, such as AUA in Thailand offer intense ALG courses based on this idea)

If you are serious about learning a language, you need to incorporate it into your life

This is easier said than done, but I can share my habits, for what they're worth. 

There are a few ways in which I learn Spanish every day. I tend to watch YouTube for an hour or so before bed (don't worry, I have a blue light filter). Nowadays most of the channels I subscribe to are native Spanish speakers. They all do things I enjoy watching which usually involves gaming (Feelink playing Hearthstone, Atlas playing Marvel Snap, Luisón playing chess).

Similarly, I changed my default language in Netflix to Spanish. Initially I watched a lot of animé, which is a bit easier to follow than live action series. Later I tried to consume shows created in Spain, such as Casa del Papel (Money Heist), Las Chicas del Cable (Cable Girls), and El Vecino (The Neighbor).

I commute to work two days a week now, during which I listen to podcasts and audiobooks in Spanish. I listened to the entire Harry Potter series (because listening to something that you already know the story of is a pretty effective way of generating comprehensible input materials), before moving on to more native media such as Memorias de Idhún (which is mad, but I love it).

Essentially, I do things I used to do in English, except they're now in Spanish. They are things I have fun doing, which is important because

When you are enjoying it, it doesn't feel like work

That should go without saying of course, but if you're not enjoying it, progress will be slow and painful. The internet is a wonderful resource, and I have found a lot of really great learning tools just by googling; sometimes it's easy to overlook the obvious.

It is a humbling feeling to realise that in 22 and a half years, what I have learned barely took 20 minutes to write. It doesn't feel like much, but hopefully someone can find it useful.

Ciao ciao Mickey Mouse

L

A note on comprehensible input

If you can read Spanish, and read my last post, and it made sense to you then:

1. I am very happy about that.

2. You will have read that I have been learning Spanish with comprehensible input for almost 2 years now.

3. It must be working!

I'll admit "almost two years" is a bit of an overstatement. I started seriously following a comprehensible input based learning method in October 2021. That's about one year and 6 months, if I can count.

Comprehensible input, for those who don't know, is a label for language learning resources that are mostly understandable (hence comprehensible) and specifically focused on listening and reading exercises (getting language input). 

Specifically, I am using the Automatic Language Growth (ALG) approach, championed my Pablo Roman Humanes over at dreamingspanish.com

I can't speak highly enough of Pablo. He is my language learning guru, though he doesn't know this himself, since we've barely interacted. I emailed him a couple of times to tell him how great I thought dreaming Spanish was and pick his brains about ways of getting input for other languages, but that's about it.

I will briefly describe ALG, but I will also say Pablo does a much better job of it than me, and you should check out the explanation on the Dreaming Spanish website.

The theory of ALG is intuitive enough, though if you've studied languages academically in the past it can be quite the culture shock. At its heart though, it's the same method we all used to learned our mother tongues as children. You listen before you speak and you listen for a long time. With ALG, listening is the core exercise. The recommendation is to listen exclusively for as long as you can stomach it before starting to even read the language.

Personally I was targeting about 1000 hours of input before practicing speaking. It is very difficult to know if I have approached that because a lot of my listening is via YouTube videos, Netflix shows and audiobooks, and I haven't been tracking it in detail. I think I must be getting pretty close now though.

Listening so extensively before reading or speaking let's you build a model of the language in your head and get used to the sounds of it. Reading and speaking too early in the process, according to the theory, is damaging to the building of this internal model, because you won't have an intuitive understanding of what things should sound like and your brain will, unconsciously, fill in the blanks. This can lead to serious bad habits (e.g. with pronunciation) that are very tough to address later on.

As I said, I'm by no means an authority on ALG - I'm merely a student - but I can say that with the right resources, focusing on input without actively thinking about grammatical constructs and without worrying about whether you are getting things wrong has been quite liberating and at times, e.g. when listening to Memorias de Idhún in the original Spanish and actually understanding it, pretty awesome. 

I'm still very much on the journey though. One day, when it's not so late and I'm not feeling guilty that I told Emma I'd be in bed soon but instead I've spent half an hour writing a blog post, I'll update with a bit more detail about how I've managed to build Spanish input into my daily routine and how ALG had been working for me in practice.

Fingers crossed in a few more years I'll be feeling fluent, but we will see, of course.

Long days and pleasant nights,

L

Siete años después...

Muy buenas chicos,

No he escribido nada aquí en un tiempo muy largo. Muchas cosas han cambiado, pero algunas cosas no. Estoy todavía aprendiendo español, con más ganas que nunca. Hoy en día, mi actitud y método son más casual y más serio a la vez. 

He sido usando recursos de comprehensible input - no sé cómo se dice en español, ¿tal vez "input comprensible"? El método en general enfocame en escuchando en primero. Ahora, he sido escuchando para casi dos años, y por eso puedo entender nativos hispanohablantes mucho mejor que antes.

Pero todavía necesito más input. De hecho, me cuesta mucho escribir esto. Formulando cosas a decir en español es todavía difícil para mí. En septiembre Emma y yo vamos a España otra vez (¡no puedo esperar!), pues espero practicar hablando y escuchando allí. 

Bueno, ahora es tarde y debería ir a cama. Cuando puedo escribir con un poco más fluidez, me volveré. En unos meses o unos años - hasta luego...

L

Review Time: Episode 1

Catch up/obligatory statement of intent

Yesterday marked my first post in the years which, until now, was the usual update rate of this blog. Since last posting here I've done relatively little on the language front, but one of the major game changers for me has been the discovery of Duolingo.

If you don't know what Duolingo is and enjoy language learning, I cannot express how incredible a tool it is for quick comprehension of various languages and urge you to give it a try immediately. My first foray into Duolingo was the Spanish for English speakers course. I have long wanted to learn more Spanish, but I found self-teaching via dictionaries, grammar and phrase books to be quite draining and rarely rewarding. Maybe I'm just lazy.

Duolingo completely revitalised my approach to learning a language. While it's important to note that nobody should expect fluency just from using Duolingo, after little more than a few months, I was pretty comfortable reading articles on Spanish websites and had a strong grasp of grammar.

Of course, like most things worth learning, languages require regular practice and it's been quite some time since I've been looking at the Spanish course regularly. That is to say, my Spanish is quite rusty at the moment! So I thought I'd try to use this blog for regular practice. Hence the pretty poor post seen yesterday.

I will practice other languages too when I'm actively studying them. Without wanting to make too many wild promises, I'm starting to get to grips with Welsh at the moment, and have Hungarian in the pipeline for my trip to Budapest this summer. We'll see how that goes...

Reviews

So, these posts will be reviews of what I did right and wrong in the last non-English update. In this case, I fear it will be much more wrong than right...

Falling at the first hurdle
I entitled the post 'Ha sido uno tiempo largo'. This was so close to being correct it makes me hurt a little in my heart of hearts. But alas, I made a catastrophic error - forgetting the Spanish article.

'Uno' is the Spanish number one, and never the indefinite article for masculine nouns. Lol. The sentence should of course have been:

'Ha sido un tiempo largo'
'It has been a long time'.

Falling at consequent hurdles
The next section was also almost correct I began with my trademark melodrama:

'Hay muchas cosas de que deseo a hablar...'

I'm not entirely sure about this line. The sentiment is 'There are many things about which I want to speak', and I think this might be acceptable. When I later put it through the always-100-percent-accurate Google translate ™, it was implied that it only makes sense when the 'de' follows 'hablar'. I can believe that, since 'to speak of/about' is basically the verb. I suppose it depends on the workings of 'que' and how that translates. I will endeavour to research it.

I keep on falling in and out of love with you
'pero ahora las trato de escribir, encontro que no sé tanta español que pensé.'

Again, not sure about this part. 'But now I try to write them (down), I find that I don't know as much Spanish as I thought.'

Key points here are that I'm unsure of the use of 'las' here. I also think the encontrar conjugation is wrong...

I'm free... Free falling
'Es bastante a decir que he sido aprender! Quizas no tal bien!'

'It's enough to say that I have been learning! Perhaps not so well!'

I'm pretty confident that the first half of this is correct. Google translate did not like the use of bien for 'well' at all here though. That's made me doubt myself.

Blah blah blah Hammer to Fall
'Voy a tratar de practicar más! Lo siento por esto obra pobre.

'Hasta la vista'

'I'm going to try to practice more! Sorry for this poor work.

'Until next time'

I think this is OK, if a little clunky. It stinks of somebody not knowing enough foreign vocab to make a coherent sentence. I'm unsure of the use of tratar here, and whether por is correct vs para. Hasta la vista literally means 'until the sight', I think? Unless the la is a pronoun.

An embarrassing summary
All in all, I wasn't lying; I definitely don't know as much Spanish as I thought. I will update again with the following confirmations:

'To talk about' definition and usage
Usage of 'que' and 'that' vs. 'which'.
'To write down' translation
Las as an object pronoun usage.
Encontrar conjugation present
Use of bien as 'well' (adverb)
Tratar de usage
Por vs para
Hasta la vista literal meaning.

Adios!

[ESP] Ha sido uno tiempo largo

¡Hola!

Hay muchas cosas de que deseo a hablar, pero ahora las trato de escribir, encontro que no sé tanta español que pensé. Es bastante a decir que he sido aprender! Quizas no tal bien!

Voy a tratar de practicar más! Lo siento por esto obra pobre.

Hasta la vista,
L

English note: I've written this off the top of my head on the train home from work. I think it will be more beneficial for me to worry less about perfection in these posts and just do more of them. I dread to think how incorrect some of this might be...

La coqueluche du moment!

It's been a long, long time since I've posted on here. In the years since my last 'update', I've holidayed (not a real verb) in a few different places and had a couple of opportunities to speak some non-English! In this respect, the best experience I've had (by far) was in Vienna last August, where I managed to get lots of the locals to understand me. Unfortunately, I struggled with understanding the ensuing conversations and (since we were only there for five days) by the time I started to get the hang of it, it was time to go home.

This year I'm going back to Spain and, for once, making the effort to learn some Spanish! I'm quite excited about this, since fluent Spanish is one of my favourite languages to listen to. I'll be starting some (very basic) Spanish posts later in the year. Before all that, however, je vais a Paris en avril!

I don't think (my memory is terrible) I've ever been to France since I stopped 'officially' studying the language in 2006, so it will be interesting to see how I fare in real-life, fast-paced conversational settings. In preparation for the trip, I've purchased Collins' Easy Learning French Grammar, and shall be doing a couple of blog-related activities:

1) Starting at some point soon, I'll be brushing up on my verbs and tenses. For a while now, it has been my (unproven) belief that getting to grips with grammar is the most important (and most difficult) part of learning a new language. In these activities, the focus will be on practising each tense. I will practice each tense until I feel I've covered them sufficiently enough to remember! This will give me the opportunity to use a variety of different verbs; there will be a secondary focus on expanding vocabulary.

2) I have begun (by which I mean I've done this once) watching French cinema films with English subtitles. Last night I watched The Intouchables (aka Untouchable). I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and after it finished I immediately rushed to Wikipedia to find out more about it (a newly emerging habit of mine). There, under the 'Critical Reception' subheading, I was surprised to find the English(/American) media gave it some pretty bad reviews, many implying the plot is fundamentally racist. This whole debacle has inspired me to write my own thoughts on the film... en français! So the idea for my next blog post is something of a film review. This should help me learn different ways of expressing my feelings in French*, as well as give me opportunity to use lots of different tenses, etc.

*Something I really should practice doing in English...

So there you have it; with renewed vigour I hereby declare this blog resurrected!

...

I'll give it two weeks...

Au revoir!


P.S. The title of this post 'La coqueluche du moment' was somewhat lost in translation. I wanted to call it 'Flavour of the Month' (referring to French being my current language of interest), but also wanted the title to be French. According to my Concise Oxford Hachette French Dictionary, the French have two idioms similar to this. 'être en vogue' meaning (no prizes for guessing) 'to be en vogue' (or if you want to be obstinately English about it 'to be in fashion'). The second idiom 'être la coqueluche du moment' translates as 'the idol of the moment' (in the Pop Idol sense of the word 'idol'), and can only really be applied to people. Since 'En vogue' would have been a bit too much of an ambiguous title, I opted for the latter. In hindsight, I could have called it something like 'la langue en vogue' or 'la langue du moment', but now that I've written all this out, I don't really want to change the title and render this paragraph obselete, so I'm going to leave it as is.

P.P.S. Incidentally, the French word 'coqueluche' can also mean 'whooping cough'. I thought this both funny and interesting. One day I'm going to study etymology. Probably.

Long awaited update

Foolishly on returning to uni in September I neglected to bring my French and German dictionaries with me. To be fair the French one is huge, bigger than my English one in fact. I've resolved to post to this blog when I go home. That way I'll have more to talk about, although I'm by no means planning to allow this blog to dissolve into a tedious description of my life. Even if it is in a foreign language I imagine it'd still be boring.

So yeah, sorry I guess, but it's not like I write this for your benefit. You just get strung along for the ride, disappointed at every turn. Poor little you.