[SinomaSo]

As someone who speaks 4 languages fluently including German. I can advise the following:

The first advice is not to use a dictionary and translate from one language to another. This might sound weird, but I never used any dictionary. You have to understand words in their sentences and try to memorize a sentence instead of just a word.

Movies, TV, Youtube were the one I used primarily to learn a new language. Why?, because you shouldn't be too much focused on "learning" a new language, but more living it and having fun with it. Getting pen/paper and a dictionary every time you want to learn a language sounds like a big hassle. Make learning the language you want a fun part of your life.

Writing in forums/websites very helpful.

If you want to understand a language, you need to understand how people laugh in that language. Watch comedy shows, buy trash magazines and understand the pop culture.

Go to meetups/get together where you can find native speakers.

[twoquestions]

How do you make sense of that media without already knowing the language?

I can see reading such media to improve fluency to be sure, but I can't see how a sufficient amount of listening to foreign gibberish somehow makes it not-gibberish.

I tried this for learning Japanese while I was an anime fan in high school, and after taking classes in college I could understand every 10th word or so. I was a C student in those classes, so it's possible I just suck at Japanese. Is German easier to do this with?

[SinomaSo]

Have you seen the movie "13th Warrior" with Antonio Banderas?. In the movie he keeps trying to understand what the other warriors are saying and concentrating until one Day he started talking just like them.

To be fair this method doesn't work for everyone. Just like learning a programming language, some people find it easier to follow a course while others just start coding for a small project.

You do need to have at least the basics of the language and grammar. But no more than that. I remember when I learned English 7 years ago, I started by watching the TV show "24". In the first season I couldn't understand anything Jack Bauer was saying. I remember saying to myself: "what the hell does he mean by saying "copy that". I only understood what the show was about. Then in the second season I started subconsciously memorizing sentences and understanding their meaning. Just like a baby would learn a language without using a dictionary. Similarly I started not only understanding English but also talking and writing in it.

I used this technique for French, German and English. Not sure how complicated Japanese is though.

Edit: Just to add, that with this method you need to watch a lot and I mean a lot of TV shows/Movies/Radio/Youtube to get the full benefit.

[i336_]

I've always had a dubious view of DuoLingo, the language learning community, etc; the people that have the loudest voices in those communities have a specific mental bent that lends them to approaching many languages, but the style of academic approach they use doesn't work for me, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's intimidating to the majority as well.

The method you've outlined here sounds a lot more intuitive and natural, and I definitely want to give a go. I'm having similar bootstrapping questions to 'twoquestions' though; you've outlined how to reach critical mass, but how do you actually begin spinning the reactor up?

In particular, "I started by watching ... 24" sounds like a workable start, but if I did something similar with a foreign language right now, as someone interested in studying other languages but who currently knows approximately less than zero, I would only get frustrated because I wouldn't understand any of what I was hearing.

So, how did you get from 0 to 24?

[SinomaSo]

Good question. I've had the same question from my two brothers. One of them couldn't learn the language using the above approach, the other forced himself to do it with great results. And by that, I mean no subtitles, no dictionary (or at least very rarely).

So how to get from 0 to 24?. I'm really no scientist, but I think of it as the same way a baby would learn a language. you get yourself in an environment where you try to submerge yourself into the language. The "mum" here should be something you really love, for example a TV show or a movie or a radio show. The other ingredient would be to get the basics of the new language first in term of grammar and words. I would say a few hundred words that are important would suffice at the beginning. The trick is not to learn word by word, but rather sentences (I think of them as the algorithm of each language). Subtitles for me at least seem to hinder the brain of connecting speech, facial expressions, feelings, images etc and blending everything in a perfect place for the brain to remember. An example: In German "Gift" means poison in English. However, As a native English speaker your brain is wired to think of it as something positive, because all of the memories you had when you received a gift. So instead of translating it, remember it in the original language with original memories/images/sentences.

Try also to read a lot of pop culture magazines. This is really important because it helps you understand slang, inside jokes..etc. An example: Would you be able to understand a joke about Bill Cosby/ Justin Bieber if you didn't read those pop culture magazine?

Finally, your speaking need practicing by talking to native speaker and going to meetups/get tog ether's to practice.

Once you get the above, just have a little faith that it will click. Keep watching/listening and you will at the end understand what the "mum" is saying :).

Edit: This method is based on Images and Emotions which scientifically have a bigger impact on us than just words. Can't find a link to an actual study though.

Hope this helps.

[i336_]

I think the idea of just immersing oneself in a language is incredibly natural and intuitive, and sounds like the least stress-inducing of all the possible methods one could use.

And I've heard that it works: plunge yourself into a language, and eventually it starts to "click". You start to think the way the language works, and it just takes off. But reading this description, I have a bit of decent insight into the process, and I sorta get how it's possible.

I agree that subtitles are basically chaos and noise; if you're trying to learn another language, it'll throw you right off. See my other answer to 'mkaziz' one level up.

The context thing is very interesting. On the one hand, it can seem incredibly intuitive to want a perfectly flat, scopeless index into memory and facts, but it's functionally impossible (with computers right now too - web and other large index searches go through MapReduce and similar. When we can directly search all of RAM in realtime life will be very different!). But, context is vital to mental organization, and I've observed this to amusing effect when I have, on many, many occasions realized I've used the same terms or acronyms in different contexts in technology and not realized the connection :P

I don't read magazines, so scene websites like Reddit-in-whatever-language will have to fill in there. But the Web moves quite a bit faster than print (hours as opposed to many days, in some cases) which might help a slow beginner keep up with trends, but I can imagine it becoming an overload quickly, especially with places that talk entirely using slang and/or memes.

The bit where you mention how your brother "forced himself to do it" and succeeded is strongly reminiscent of neuroplasticity literature, which describes a sort of anti-plateau point where for a short period no progress appears to be made in spite of continued concerted effort, and then suddenly (eventually) results begin to snowball. A most curious phenomenon that makes me think of

[mkaziz]

Did you try it with subtitles? I also assume it's easier if you're familiar with a language you already know. For example, it's probably easier to learn Spanish if you know English, as opposed to Arabic.

[i336_]

Realtime translation, the art of listening or reading in one language, and typing or speaking in another, takes many years [citation needed, uneducated guess] and can only begin once someone is incredibly skilled and experienced at the languages they're translating.

Reading subtitles in a language you know well, and trying to associate that with foreign sounds that you're hearing in constant time, is... theoretically a fun-sounding idea, but IMO practically requires the skillset that only comes with being an experienced realtime translator; in other words, it requires the realtime analysis capability to already exist. It cannot bootstrap it, I don't think.

I've tried to do this once, and immediately wrote it off as something that would be frustrating to seriously attempt for the reason I have mentioned. I might be utterly wrong (I have learning difficulties as a side-effect of other issues), so YMMV, grain of salt, etc etc. But I think that, at the very least, not having subtitles makes the brain work that much harder to figure out what it's hearing, AND it removes the noise of "hey! look! instantly parseable text right there on the screen!" which the brain must work incredibly hard to ignore because it associates with neural paths that are significantly stronger than the fledgling routes being developed to learn the new language.