Language learning discussion

[curiosity]

I believe it is a common problem for people who start to learn new language. I've been studying English for almost 15 years now, and it's only been two or three years since I can listen to the actual speech, not classic and slow pronounciation on the recordings for students, and understand up to 95% of what is said. Sometimes it is hard to understand everything, especially when the speed is high and the accent is unusual and distinct.

So in my humble opinion, everything is up to practicing and your personal ability to comprehend new information quickly. Also, from my own experience I can tell that watching movies in foreign language (preferably without subtitles) really improves your skills.

[kjeks]

Shame on my government...:
http://www.focus.de/politik/videos/niveau-eines-grundschuelers-ei-lahf-ju-csu-mann-gerd-mueller-blamiert-sich-vor-200-000-zuschauern_id_4638582.html?fbc=fb-shares

This is why one should learn english propperly

[Fen Shen]

I don't know why, but I can only see the ad spot for cookie ice cream, the video itself doesn't play... maybe it wants to save me from too much fremdschämen. 

[Fen Shen]

from my own experience I can tell that watching movies in foreign language (preferably without subtitles) really improves your skills

I second that, because in movies you have the body language and the general context action to help you guess the meaning, even if you don't understand every word (or understand only half the words). However, I prefer adding subtitles in the same language as the spoken language because I'm a fast reader and this helps me memorize how to pronounce words I know in written form.
As for speech, the only advice I can give is: try it anyway. Don't worry if you butcher the language you're learning, don't worry about mistakes. Don't wait for the perfect word to come to your mind, use the other ones you know instead to work around the missing word.
I don't know if that is any help...

[Sunflower]

What I find helpful is listening to radio in the target language.  (Here in California, the only overlap between local radio and languages I've learned is Spanish.)

Radio is good because it's faster and more realistic than student recordings (as curiosity pointed out), but slower and more distinct than face-to-face conversation.  Plus, they repeat a lot. 

The only downside is that you might start sounding like a radio announcer.  Sometimes, in an echolaliac mood, I pop out Mexican wrestling ads:  "La Lucha LIIII-Breeeeeh!!  *crashing sounds* VIERNES VIERNES VIERNES!!!!"

[Solovei]

That's definitely a common problem When you're a child, your brain learns to distinguish phonemes of the language that's spoken around you, and that's how you know when one word stops and another begins. Obviously this is harder to do as you get older, but not impossible! Exposure is key, like people said. Watching movies can help because people tend to pronounce their words more clearly than in real life, and radio like Sunflower said. Music also, I found - I listened to a lot of Japanese music as a teenager and while I admit I don't know the language any more than I did, I find it easier to follow the speech patterns than with, say, a language I have less experience with - Spanish, for instance.

[ruth]

Watching movies can help because people tend to pronounce their words more clearly than in real life, and radio like Sunflower said.

this is really interesting because i think my experience is almost exactly the opposite! for me, i've been finding listening to things like radio to be easier than watching movies for the very reason that people don't speak quite so clearly. but it means that it takes people a little bit longer to get to the point of what they're going to say, when they're—they're, you know, s-stumbling over—over words and such, figuring out what they're trying to say and kind of speaking around the point a few times before settling on a final point.

i would definitely agree with everyone else that exposure is the key. it can definitely be frustrating to sit down and listen and not be able to understand much, or to lose whole sentences because you can't catch the rhythm, but it happens less and less the more practice you get with it. speaking is for sure the hardest, and that too is a function of practice. (even if you're sitting in the shower wrapping your tongue around the confusing sounds of a language...i learned how to make the swedish sj-sound while hiding in the shower because my partner was beginning to think i was crazy muttering "sju sjösjukliga sjömän sköttes av sjutton sköna sjuksköterskor" dozens of times in a row.)

[ruth]

while the guy's english left something to be desired, i tried not to laugh too much—i probably don't sound so much better.

but i love that the link below that was for italian products horribly mispronounced in german. nothing like a "Pizza Vier Bahnhöfe."

[Inconjugable]

I'm learning Icelandic because I kinda just fell in love with its sound and look, not to mention that the fact that it's proving painfully hard to learn is making me go on and continue with learning it out of sheer and pure spite

[DB (f.k.a. DaveBro)]

I'm learning Icelandic because I kinda just fell in love with its sound and look, not to mention that the fact that it's proving painfully hard to learn is making me go on and continue with learning it out of sheer and pure spite

It took me 3 days to get a sound out of my first flute (a souvenir military fife).  Yay for sheer bloody-mindedness!!   

[Inconjugable]

Skål for stubbornness: it helps people achieve that which's irrational just to prove the universe wrong!

[Lalligaattori]

Speech is impossible, because the word I'm looking for always eludes me until three weeks later when it's irrelevant.

Don't wait for the perfect word to come to your mind, use the other ones you know instead to work around the missing word.

i think this deserves highlighting as a particularly useful skill to develop when speaking. a few generic words can be used for several meanings, eg. 'money you can only use in one place' when you don't know how to say 'gift voucher'*. using similar words you can say 'the place you get money from' to mean 'bank'. so you needn't spend ages learning/searching for specific vocab and it often ends up being pretty funny, kind of like a real life version of taboo or articulate

*yes this one i have had to use myself

[kjeks]

I will fix the link when I get home

[Laufey]

i think this deserves highlighting as a particularly useful skill to develop when speaking. a few generic words can be used for several meanings, eg. 'money you can only use in one place' when you don't know how to say 'gift voucher'*. using similar words you can say 'the place you get money from' to mean 'bank'. so you needn't spend ages learning/searching for specific vocab and it often ends up being pretty funny, kind of like a real life version of taboo or articulate

*yes this one i have had to use myself

Yes, do this! Besides getting the point through I also tend to remember the words easily ever afterwards.

My biggest problem with understanding spoken language is often in either dialect or some bad habit that people have when they use their mother tongue. Icelanders are particularly horrific at non-pronouncing huge parts of words, either dropping bits and pieces, smashing the words together or just leaving out entire words, even. A friend of mine is one of the absolute worst when she speaks fast, once heard her pronounce "Ég veit það ekki" (= I don't know that) as something resembling "Veihggi"...

That said Finns are also horrible in this sense, especially when it comes to dialects. For a super fun party game isolate a West Finn and an East Finn in a small room and watch them suffer as they try to understand each other. 

[Mélusine]

You're so many learning a lot of languages ! I'm just trying to improve my english.
German was my first foreign language at secondary school, but not my choice : I wanted english because I started it in nursery school and it was like a game, my parents decided german was more difficult so it was better to begin with it. Serious error : seven years later I was still lost and still unable to understand the declension.
English became my second foreign language at secondary school, I remember the look of my teacher when she discovered I was reading Harry Potter in original version ^^
Spanish was a third foreign language because my high school hadn't the theater option I wanted. I understood I was bad in learning a new language because grammar had nearly no sense for me : I was the girl very good in french dictations but unable to explain why she wrote it like that unless by a "Because it's the good way to write it", which complicate the learning of new rules in foreign languages.
But maybe, one day, I'll try another one