[hamletdrc2]

I moved to a German speaking country about a year ago. I'm not brilliant at languages, but I've made great progress and most people are surprised to find out how little German I spoke a year ago. Here are some of my tips:

1) Use Mnemosyne every day. It is computerized flash cards based on the SuperMemo algorithm. Do not skip days. At around 2000 words memorized (9 months) the 'switch flipped'. At 2000 words you can have conversations with about anyone. Business is still hard, but smalltalk easy.

2) Read trashy literature - People, In Touch, Celebrity Rags... these are all written so 10 years olds can read it. Newspapers use bigger words and don't have pictures. Reading about celebrities is a hassle, but it helps and it an appropriate level.

3) Got kids? Turn the Wii and Cartoons to the foreign language. This makes your play time also a learning process.

4) Do Not turn your computer to a foreign language. This will cripple your productivity. I am forced to work in German on a Windows box now and it is really awful and frustrating. Not recommended at all. Not one bit.

5) German Tuesday - Deutsche Dienstag - Every Tuesday was German Tuesday. Anyone caught speaking English to me had to pay a Franc into a Jar. If I spoke English then I paid. This make my German a fun game in the office. Plus we had Bier Freitag at the end of the week. I stole this idea from an outsourcing company I worked with where Tues and Thur were English only days.

UPDATE: For those learning German, the Mnemosyne flash cards on the website are mine. If you have any issues I am glad to update or help.

[galuggus]

For me thinking in a foreign language came through immersion and doing a lot of talking to myself.

The following helped a lot also

1)Watch films dubbed into your target language. Turn on English subs if you find it difficult. choose films you actually want to see.

2)Watch infomericials. Seriously. they repeat the same phrases over and over again in a clear accent. The downside is you will randomly find yourself talking about the plus points of the world greatest mop.

3)Read comics before books: the pictures and context will help you figure you meanings

4) Forget fast and relearn by using srs like anki/mnemosyne

5)study mnemonics - roman room is very useful

talk to everyone

Skritter for chinese literacy; pimsleur for beginners

someone please develop some language learning software that isn't glorified flashcards, matching games. The stuff I've come across out there is lazy and unimaginative.

my dream is language software developed by Nintendo. Fun and intuitive.

[reeses]

I had great luck with the "opposite" of #1. I happened to watch some English language movies subtitled in French and it was a great way to slam a lot of written vocabulary into my head very quickly in an engaging way. That and some other techniques (living with three French girls helps ;>) had me thinking and dreaming in French at the end of a month.

I had a horrible accent, but I could get through basic conversations. A year later I was fluent, with a much better Parisian accent.

After gaining fluency in an additional language, I "disengaged" English as my translation layer and have been able to think in a foreign language much more quickly. At this point when speaking, whatever language I'm using sort of scrolls past the back of my eyes, including English.

[ewan]

And for subtitles, have a look at http://universalsubtitles.org - anyone wanting English subs created should drop me a line. I've done a small number of these now, eg http://universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/xPy3pbVWResd/info/Ze...

[Natsu]

> my dream is language software developed by Nintendo. Fun and intuitive.

Like "My Japanese Coach"?

[galuggus]

I haven't played My Japanese coach but I have played my Chinese Coach.

It's is exactly the kind of boring, unimaginative software I was referring to.

The games are incredibly joyless. Matching cards gets old soon.

These games were not developed by Nintendo

I was thinking more along the lines of a cross between a Nintendo RPG and warioware

[w1ntermute]

> a German speaking country

> a Franc

I take it you're in Switzerland ;)

Are there a lot of other foreigners where you are? That can make language learning difficult.

Also, there is a whole website called All Japanese All The Time[0] (AJATT) for learning Japanese via an SRS, although they use Anki rather than Mnemosyne.

0: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/

[hamletdrc2]

If you seek out English speaking peer groups, then yes learning German will be harder. Luckily(?) for me I am one of only two English speakers in my company, so none of my friends are English speakers. My wife, on the other hand, has an almost entirely Anglo peer group, making picking up German casually near impossible.

[mdemare]

I like to read Harry Potter in various languages - works great for learning to read well.

Also, I created a website where you can practice vocabulary and verb conjugations: http://inglua.com

[maw]

Reading a book you've already read is definitely a good idea. Seeing the grammatical forms you might have heard, and even tried to use, written out (and well-edited!) was for me immensely helpful.

It also helps that you already know what happened: if you don't understand a passage, no big deal. Just skip over it. It beats checking the dictionary many times per page. There's some truth to the notion that you can figure out what words mean from context, but it's often not possible. However, if a word is used over and over, as many important to the text you're reading are, you might get enough context to work out what they mean. If you can't, then reach for a dictionary.

[denzil]

I tried something similar recently. I am learning Japanese and so I dumped audio track from anime to my mp3 player. It seems to help with understanding the language. And it was fun to guess what is going if I haven't seen the series for long time.

[cdr]

You're definitely not alone - "read your favorite (series of) book(s)" is an old trick.

[alexsb92]

This also works if you pickup a series halfway through, having read the first half in your native language, and then finishing it in the new language. I've done this with Harry Potter. Before moving to Canada at 14, I read the first 4 in Romanian and the 5th and/or 6th in English. Since many of the terms were found in previous books, or since i knew them from the movies (example quidditch which the translators decided to translate. Still not sure how they got with the Romanian term from quidditch)

[Natsu]

That's a great idea, because you already know the story, so you can sort of figure out the words you don't know due to your knowledge of the story.

[marquis]

I just spent 30 minutes on your advanced section of your website, I like how it gets competitive with strangers, very compelling!

[pbhjpbhj]

KDE have several desktop apps for language training - http://edu.kde.org/applications/language - including a couple of flash-card based memorisation apps.

KDE can now be installed on MS Windows in addition to the usual 'nix installs.

[anffyddiwr]

Anki is also worth checking out (an app similar to Mnemosyne, available on Win/Mac/Linux/FreeBSD/iPhone).

[wahnfrieden]

Anki is indeed very nice. It's based on the same algorithm as Mnemosyne, but has made considerably better progress, IMO.

[zeke]

regarding "Read trashy literature", the tabloids are harder to read than normal newspapers. They seemed to just be colloquial ways of saying, "crazy, wild", and never had a point. I found lay science magazines to be great practice; interesting, clearly written and short enough to work through.

[ugh]

“4) Do Not turn your computer to a foreign language. This will cripple your productivity. I am forced to work in German on a Windows box now and it is really awful and frustrating. Not recommended at all. Not one bit.”

That’s interesting. I never thought about it but it makes a lot of sense. The problem with software is that you often need to know the exact translation, especially when you are looking for something in a menu. You might know a correct translation but it won’t help you if that’s not the particular translation the translator picked. The weird vocabulary software often uses only amplifies the problem.

That’s why switching from English Photoshop to German Photoshop (my native language is German) was so hard for me.

[neves]

I've started using computers a very long time ago. Almost all the computers were in English. Now when I have to use a software in my native language everything fails, specially the keyboards shortcuts. In Office, Ctrl-S make things become underlined! I've even did a macro to make Ctrl-S to save.

[marquis]

I have my computer in English, but all my Google settings to Spanish. I know the layout well enough that it doesn't hinder productivity and getting a new error message always leads to learning a new word.

[enanoretozon]

Thanks for making me aware of Mnemosyne!

One thing that helped me to learn English was to watch movies (especially stuff with cool oneliners) with both subtitles and close captions on when possible, so I get a transcript of the dialogue and a translation at the same time. Later on I only needed the English subtitles to verify that what I heard was correct.

Movie quotes are great because they lend themselves to repetition (much to the annoyance of everyone else in the room).

[HSO]

> Read trashy literature - People, In Touch, Celebrity Rags... these are all written so 10 years olds can read it.

Had to laugh in agreement when I read this. I never thought of this before but I guess it's directly related to my little "trick": I never watch TV except when it's in whatever language I am trying to learn. Same principle there. Indeed, TV is for 10-year-old equivalent brains, otherwise it wouldn't work.

[shortlived]

Does anyone know of a tool like Mnemosyne for the iPhone/touch/pad?

[nick_dm]

I use Anki (http://ankisrs.net/).

The app store version is $25, but the desktop version is free. There's also a free web app that can be used from handheld devices with internet access and a free Android app. You can sync across multiple devices via the web app.

[jomohke]

The iPhone version has drastically increased my use of Anki.

I do most of my Anki revision through my iPhone: I can use it anytime I have 30 seconds to spare. Such as waiting for the dentist, waiting at a pedestrian crossing, waiting for breakfast to cook, waiting in line for lunch... etc.

I'm a very patient person as I'm extremely happy to wait for things now :)

[littlefishchan]

I have used Supermemo for five years and learned thousands of Japanese words, and now I'm working through Chinese. Use whatever program you want (Anki, Mnemosyne, Supermemo, etc.), but stick with whatever you are doing, and use SRS to save your progress.

[nodata]

4) Do Not turn your computer to a foreign language.

I don't agree entirely. I recommend changing one of your computers to the foreign language.

[_delirium]

It depends on the language, but I haven't found that useful with Greek, unless you specifically want to learn the formal Greek words for computer-related things. In casual conversation, nobody uses that vocabulary, and it'd be seen as very stilted/old-fashioned (English loanwords are more common, and even where Greek's used, it's often not the same words).

[nodata]

But if you're in Greece and can speak and read Greek, but are then put in front of a Greek computer and can't use it, that looks pretty bad...

[_delirium]

Eh, I haven't found it to be a major problem. I speak fluent oral Greek (learned it when I was a kid to talk to my grandparents/cousins), and can read some Greek, but nobody really expects me to be able to read formal Greek. It's slightly diglossic in that formal Greek is substantially different than the spoken language, partly a relic of the days when it was an actually different language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharevousa

[citrik]

Thanks for mentioning Mnemosyne, looks really useful!

[jules]

How do you get the words you put in mnemosyne?