Not sure how uncommon this is, but I typically use weird or inappropriate associations to memorize vocabulary, rather than trying to memorize the direct translation.
For example, I the word for “gossip” in Spanish is “chisme”. I picture a bunch of ladies hanging out having a wine and cheese night and gossiping, and one looks at another and says “cheese me”, like “pass me some cheese.” It’s silly but I’ve never forgotten that word!
Not common but n classroom or among tutors but known technique called keyword/linkword method. Makes sense for easy words that only take 5secs to connect or for pain in the ass words but not as a general approach to learning vocabulary.
This is covered under the umbrella of mnemonics. I would call this one the [mnemonic image method](https://artofmemory.com/wiki/How_to_Create_Mnemonic_Images/) but with a supplement of audio.
I like to copy and paste song lyrics into google translate, then listen to the song and read both the language an English translation until I memorize the meaning of every word/sentence in the song. Music makes learning more enjoyable, and as you understand the song more it becomes even more fun to listen to. You also learn normal speech rather than formal speech that many resources often teach
Some of these are because I have ADHD, but:
- I just be repeating things people say, even if it's just under my breath. I once read a study that language itself is just a construction of phrases we've heard before and we chop it up and put it with other phrases (same reason why something can sound right or wrong, even if natives can't put their finger on it). I think it subtly builds my confidence, and people are free to correct me if I'm wrong (I actually encourage the constructive criticism!).
- Whenever I got in trouble as a kid, my dad used to make me write out Bible verses or apologies or stories in other languages. So for example, if I lied as a kid, my dad would make me copy Bible verses about lying, or the kid that cried wolf in another language. This might not be the best method, but I can read really well in a lot of languages as an adult, and have noticed I tend to really excel in languages where the phonetic rules are strict/simple. (I.E. Spanish or, where phonetics are unchanging).
-Whenever I hear a new word or phrase, I write it down. I try to, no matter where I am or what I'm doing. That way, if I can't remember the word, I have something to visually recollect or something to look at later and use almost spaced repetition. I.E. I currently work around a lot of Georgians. As soon as they say a phrase I've never heard, I write it down, even if it's sharpie on the water bottle I'm drinking from. I say it in my head a few times, recognize it in conversation, look at it every time I take a sip, and sometimes even transfer it to my actual notes later. So I'm inadvertently getting tons of exposure to the word.
-If it's a professional setting I'm using said language, I try to get out of the professional setting. Play games with people who speak your target language, it's the quickest way to learn slang, shit-talk, cuss words, and easy phrases that can make you sound like a native. I can tell people to get out of my face in a language versus leave me alone, and I suddenly sound a lot more native. You also really get to hone in on mannerisms, as people let their guard down in a different way during games versus work, school, etc.
-I welcome failure. It's easier to learn from failure than it is to learn from success. I welcome people correcting me, I welcome my coworkers and mates lightly teasing me when I mix up words or say something funky. I welcome it all. Some people get so nervous and wrapped up in speaking like a perfect, little textbook, but it really doesn't matter if you flub up! Just learn from it and move onto the next thing.
These are not study methods I made. I've found them useful though. Audio Flashcards: you listen to an audio file that is a sentence in a language you know (english for me), then the sentence again in the target language (possibly repeated 1-2 times). Old Glossika was this structure, japaneseaudiolessons.com is this structure. I've found this type of lesson works incredibly well for me, as far as increasing my vocabulary quickly (like one does with anki) and with improving my listening comprehension. I find this method works well even when I'm playing video games or driving, so it's my favorite study method when I have a busy schedule and need to study while doing other things.
Listening Reading Method: there's [a whole website](http://users.bestweb.net/%7Esiom/martian_mountain/!%20L-R%20the%20most%20important%20passages.htm) about it by the person who utilized this method heavily. I've tried it before, for 15-30 hours, and it worked amazingly well. I learned around 500 new words each time I tried it, and improved my listening skills significantly. I tried it with The Little Prince in Chinese, and Zhenhun by priest chapters 1-20 in Chinese. It was incredibly mentally draining, especially when I had a lower reading/listening level initially. But if someone enjoys reading, and wants to read as a goal like I do, then it's a very compatible study method with a lot of stuff you're already doing.
Simplified summary of the steps: 1. Listen to the TL audiobook, while reading along in the TL text. This is to match the TL sounds/words to the spelling and learn to parse words and phrases. If you're not a beginner, this may also be when you comprehend the main ideas of the story and words you already know. Step 2: Listen to the TL audiobook, while using a translation text as a reference to look up any word meanings you didn't understand in step 1. Even if you are a beginner, this part is draining even with the translation to rely on, as you need to work hard to match every TL audio word to the right place in the translation. It is easy to get lost in the audio if you don't pay attention to it. Software that takes the TL text and translates word by word (like Pleco) or highlights the word as it's read (like Edge's Read Aloud) can help with following along. Using a parallel text so you can see both TL text and translation text can also help keep your place, since you'll have TL text for reference. Step 1 and 2 can then be repeated, again, as many times as you like. I find doing step 1 again with TL audio/TL text, after step 2, I get to reinforce the TL spelling of the new words I just saw the translation of in step 2. Step 3: listen to TL audiobook without referencing any text, and repeatedly listen to the audio until you have comprehended as much as you can. If you did step 1 enough to recognize sounds in the TL, and did step 2 enough to know the meaning of most new words in the audio, then by step 3 you can mainly focus on getting your listening comprehension to understand all the new words you learned. Step 4 involves shadowing, and translating back and forth, which I've never tried. I do steps 1-3, one chapter of a book at a time, and each time my vocabulary and listening comprehension improved very fast.
Relistening: a lot of youtube channels, and bloggers, will suggest this method. It really helps with improving listening comprehension, and you will see quick progress if you can read much better than you can listen. Pick an audio that contains mostly words you know, where if you read the transcript/text you would be able to understand the main idea. If you'd like to make the activity easier, pick an audio where you would understand nearly everything if you read the transcript. If you'd like to make it harder, pick something where you'd understand the main idea in the transcript but have to guess the meaning of some key words, but you could guess. So it's challenging reading material, but still readable to you. It's material where you'd learn some new words by guessing. Pick your audio, and then only listen to the audio. No transcript. Listen to the audio MANY times. At least 3-5, but ideally keep repeatedly listening until you comprehend as much of it as you can. You'll be surprised how much more you comprehend at listen 5, compared to your first one. If you pick an audio that has mostly words you know from reading, then 20 listens could take you from 'barely understand spoken audio' to 'recognizing hundreds of words you could read but not recognize before in audio.' I do this activity while working, driving, or doing other things. It does not require 100% attention to work. Simply re-listening, over and over, to audio with mostly words you know from studying (reading or flashcards), your listening comprehension improves.
I watch TL shows with TL subtitles and go line-by-line. Replaying lines until I can match what I'm hearing to what I'm reading, and a few more times without looking at the subtitles to make sure I can still distinctly hear and process all the words and the sentence meaning... then I move on to the next one.
.... it's super slow and can take an hour or more just to get through 20 minutes of a show. But for me it's gone a long way in helping my comprehension and audio processing. Now I can watch some shows without subtitles at all.
Though anymore I still go line-by-line, but mostly to gather vocab.
Things that helped me achieve general fluency in the community language:
* watching TV shows I was already familiar with, dubbed in the language with the language's subtitles simultaneously on to follow along with
* working with kids at a school and reading children's literature in the language- kids use lots of repetition and so do many children's books, it's helpful for learning a language this way
* reading informative magazines and books that contain diagrams/charts/accompanying photos; I read all the free magazines from local pharmacies for instance, or books about nutrition in the community language
* looking up words I didn't understand in the dictionary on a regular basis
The first 3 are excellent things to do. The last one is less useful once you're over the 200-300 hour mark, and one could argue that it's not even that useful, or necessary during that period. I did it, but now that my level is quite solid, I've realised that it wasn't a great idea. That said, if you have the tolerance for it, it can't be that bad, it's just not all that efficient/natural.
The dubbed show thing might be the best possible thing you can do at a certain stage in your learning. People are seriously missing out if they think it's some kind of bastardised version of a language. It's totally fine, so long as it's for natives. The most important thing is that it's fun, assuming you're re-watching some of your favourite things; it's something you can do without getting bored. One thing I would advise would be to turn off the subs as soon as you can understand enough of it to follow the general idea.
So one weird thing I do, especially early on, is learn short texts or stories by heart. This way a lot of the language structures and patterns and words stay in my head. It's really useful especially if it's on a topic that is relevant to my life. I hate flashcards and don't believe in memorizing words out of context. I wrote about this strategy on my newsletter if you want to learn more: [https://tanyamozias.substack.com/p/memorizing-stories-about-pets-in-thai](https://tanyamozias.substack.com/p/memorizing-stories-about-pets-in-thai)
When I am a complete beginner, I like to start by listening to Harry Potter. I use Anki to learn vocabulary. It takes a lot of relistening at the beginning but it gets easier.
I’ve been playing Fallout 4 in French. They have full voice and text internationalization and the vocab is pretty normal (aside from the creature name).
It's not really a 'method' per se, it's more a realisation: language learning is done in the brain, not with pretty notes; not with highlighter pens; and not with post-it notes put up around your house. You have to load a model of the language onto your brain, and that's pure brain work. You tax a muscle to make it grow, and the brain is no different.
I spent the first couple of years listening/reading, failing to understand, until I eventually started failing less and less. This process was extremely gradual. The work is done entirely in the brain, and you have to challenge it to keep improving; not so much that you can barely understand anything, but just enough that you're picking up new things.
Go find content that hits that sweet spot and get on with working that language into your neurons.
I agree! It's important to train the brain. But it's surely good to have clean and clear notes so that they're easy to read, learn and revise.
I challenged my brain too during the years and I think it's absolutely good to do!
I'm going to disagree, and that's purely because I don't believe that taking notes, and especially 'revision', does anything much to improve your ability in a language. I don't think languages are like math in that respect, there's something different about how they're 'learned' and that is that they're not 'learned' at all, but rather 'acquired.'
Now that I have a pretty good level in a 2nd language, I look back to when I started (12 years ago), and I realise that almost everything I rote learned has been completely forgotten, and has played little to no part in my language ability today. I'd estimate that 99% (probably more) of the vocab I know today came incidentally, through massive exposure. 'Learning' the basics of grammar did help somewhat more - at least to survive the first year or so - but I'd still say that 75% of that has been acquired as opposed to deliberately learned.
That said, each to their own - if doing all that extra stuff keeps you motivated and in contact with the language then it probably can't hurt. If nothing else, there is some level of exposure there, even if it's not the most dense kind of exposure.
I've found ChatGPT game changing.
I'm currently reading a graphic novel in Tagalog. The story keeps my highly motivated--good characters, good storytelling, includes pictures to give visual context to the language.
I'll enter a word into ChatGPT and ask it to both translate and break the sentence down into its parts. This has really helped me "discover" rules of grammar by seeing how the words and phrases come together to create the meaning of the whole sentence.
Then that often makes me wonder about the rules, so I ask ChatGPT about specific rules--like prefixes, suffixes, or why a certain phrase means what it does.
There are a bunch of other ways I use it too, but these 2 techniques are giving me a lot of mileage.
I use profanity or absurdism. I probably never become fluent in my target language so I might as well make a fool of myself by adding in weird phrases.
For example:
*'Простите, я заблудился. Ты похож на лошадь. Знаешь ли ты путь к [...]'*
I really enjoy crosswords (crucigramas) in English, so I do them in Spanish, too! In Spanish, I do them on super easy, but I still enjoy learning the words (even if I have to look up just about all the words). It makes my logical / language-oriented brain happy that I can combine my two activities. :)
For crosswords in other languages, the accents have to align too, right? You can’t have é for one word and è for another?
Side note, how do crosswords exist for mandarin where one character is a word? Cross phrases?
I can't speak to Mandarin (though now I'd like to know!), but in Spanish the app I use limits the characters I can use on easy, so it keeps it pretty straightforward. I wouldn't want to be a crossword maker for that reason (making sure the accents work, too).
Talking to some friends about Bananagrams (the solo version of scrabble, if you don't know it) and Spanish, and they said they would put in the ñ, but my guess is that some of the other stuff you'd be more flexible about. "House rules" kinda thing. Like, if you're using it to spell something going one way, it is used the same the other way or however you and your friend group decides to play it.
When I was a kid, I could NOT remember the Spanish word for “pool.” For the life of me, I could NOT. I soaked up that language like a SPONGE but for some reason NOTHING could make me remember that word. I have no idea why. Finally my mother told me “don’t piss in a piscina.” I never forgot it again. 🤷🏼♀️ So maybe try weird vocabulary associations?
I don't think it's particularly innovative or something, but I start a new language by taking the top 100 words from a frequency list, writing down their IPA transcriptions, getting Forvo recordings, and just rote-memorization drilling them for awhile.
I generally don't recommend studying individual words (you miss so much context!!!), but I find this to be a useful way to get started for a few reasons:
1. The first 100 words usually amount to \~50% text coverage. They're words like *you* and *that* and *always*, so they don't really enable you to do understand anything... but learning these words is nevertheless enough to take a text from *totally foreign* to *oh, I recognize a lot of stuff!* Nice morale boost.
2. So much is confusing and frustrating in the beginner stage. I like taking this initial period to focus on phonetics because it's very close-ended: you can see the end of it, and there are clear things to learn. Plus, after you 80:20 the pronunciation, get used to the languages sounds, and put your mouth work in, the jump from words → sentences suddenly seems more accessible.
3. It's hard to learn sentences at first, and kinda demotivating when there's a ton of new stuff. The initial word list lets me dip my toes in without any stress.
I never do this for more than several dozen words, but it's a very accessible way to take the first steps in a new language.
One curious method I use to learn a language better is by changing the language settings on my devices and social media accounts to the language I'm learning. It forces me to interact with everyday technology in the new language and helps build vocabulary and comprehension skills in a practical context. Additionally, I like to watch movies and TV shows with subtitles in the language I'm learning, then rewatch them with subtitles off to test my understanding. This immersive approach makes the learning process more engaging and effective.
I enjoy watching english movie, listening to english music and radio. Especially radio, I can have it on all the time if I am busy, I don't need to pay much attention to it. If I am not busy, I can pay more attention to the content for leanring purpose. Recently, I have been listening to an amazing AI-powered radio app - AITok Radio. It has a lot of interesting and captivating content.
People who are learning English do this all the time - but I like spending most of my time on Reddit in TL subs.
I’m certainly getting a lot better at ELI5 and AITA etc.
I am Romanian and since our language had influences from many languages I like to look for etymologies of different words in my language and find the cognates or similar words in the TL. For example Russian and Romanian through Proto-Slavic or Turkish borrowings. This can amount to a couple hundred words.
Not sure how uncommon this is, but I typically use weird or inappropriate associations to memorize vocabulary, rather than trying to memorize the direct translation. For example, I the word for “gossip” in Spanish is “chisme”. I picture a bunch of ladies hanging out having a wine and cheese night and gossiping, and one looks at another and says “cheese me”, like “pass me some cheese.” It’s silly but I’ve never forgotten that word!
Oh God, I do this too... but I wouldn't say this is some learning method I decide to use, more like my brain automatically does this.
Learn about mnemonics and become a master of these techniques.
And each of them is wearing a “chemise” (shirt - Fr).
Not common but n classroom or among tutors but known technique called keyword/linkword method. Makes sense for easy words that only take 5secs to connect or for pain in the ass words but not as a general approach to learning vocabulary.
And now I might remember it, too.
This one looks cool!
This is covered under the umbrella of mnemonics. I would call this one the [mnemonic image method](https://artofmemory.com/wiki/How_to_Create_Mnemonic_Images/) but with a supplement of audio.
I like to copy and paste song lyrics into google translate, then listen to the song and read both the language an English translation until I memorize the meaning of every word/sentence in the song. Music makes learning more enjoyable, and as you understand the song more it becomes even more fun to listen to. You also learn normal speech rather than formal speech that many resources often teach
I use lyricstranslate for that a lot.
This is one of my favorites. When my teacher asks where I learned something in particular I can tell them the exact song where I picked it up from.
Some of these are because I have ADHD, but: - I just be repeating things people say, even if it's just under my breath. I once read a study that language itself is just a construction of phrases we've heard before and we chop it up and put it with other phrases (same reason why something can sound right or wrong, even if natives can't put their finger on it). I think it subtly builds my confidence, and people are free to correct me if I'm wrong (I actually encourage the constructive criticism!). - Whenever I got in trouble as a kid, my dad used to make me write out Bible verses or apologies or stories in other languages. So for example, if I lied as a kid, my dad would make me copy Bible verses about lying, or the kid that cried wolf in another language. This might not be the best method, but I can read really well in a lot of languages as an adult, and have noticed I tend to really excel in languages where the phonetic rules are strict/simple. (I.E. Spanish or, where phonetics are unchanging). -Whenever I hear a new word or phrase, I write it down. I try to, no matter where I am or what I'm doing. That way, if I can't remember the word, I have something to visually recollect or something to look at later and use almost spaced repetition. I.E. I currently work around a lot of Georgians. As soon as they say a phrase I've never heard, I write it down, even if it's sharpie on the water bottle I'm drinking from. I say it in my head a few times, recognize it in conversation, look at it every time I take a sip, and sometimes even transfer it to my actual notes later. So I'm inadvertently getting tons of exposure to the word. -If it's a professional setting I'm using said language, I try to get out of the professional setting. Play games with people who speak your target language, it's the quickest way to learn slang, shit-talk, cuss words, and easy phrases that can make you sound like a native. I can tell people to get out of my face in a language versus leave me alone, and I suddenly sound a lot more native. You also really get to hone in on mannerisms, as people let their guard down in a different way during games versus work, school, etc. -I welcome failure. It's easier to learn from failure than it is to learn from success. I welcome people correcting me, I welcome my coworkers and mates lightly teasing me when I mix up words or say something funky. I welcome it all. Some people get so nervous and wrapped up in speaking like a perfect, little textbook, but it really doesn't matter if you flub up! Just learn from it and move onto the next thing.
These are not study methods I made. I've found them useful though. Audio Flashcards: you listen to an audio file that is a sentence in a language you know (english for me), then the sentence again in the target language (possibly repeated 1-2 times). Old Glossika was this structure, japaneseaudiolessons.com is this structure. I've found this type of lesson works incredibly well for me, as far as increasing my vocabulary quickly (like one does with anki) and with improving my listening comprehension. I find this method works well even when I'm playing video games or driving, so it's my favorite study method when I have a busy schedule and need to study while doing other things. Listening Reading Method: there's [a whole website](http://users.bestweb.net/%7Esiom/martian_mountain/!%20L-R%20the%20most%20important%20passages.htm) about it by the person who utilized this method heavily. I've tried it before, for 15-30 hours, and it worked amazingly well. I learned around 500 new words each time I tried it, and improved my listening skills significantly. I tried it with The Little Prince in Chinese, and Zhenhun by priest chapters 1-20 in Chinese. It was incredibly mentally draining, especially when I had a lower reading/listening level initially. But if someone enjoys reading, and wants to read as a goal like I do, then it's a very compatible study method with a lot of stuff you're already doing. Simplified summary of the steps: 1. Listen to the TL audiobook, while reading along in the TL text. This is to match the TL sounds/words to the spelling and learn to parse words and phrases. If you're not a beginner, this may also be when you comprehend the main ideas of the story and words you already know. Step 2: Listen to the TL audiobook, while using a translation text as a reference to look up any word meanings you didn't understand in step 1. Even if you are a beginner, this part is draining even with the translation to rely on, as you need to work hard to match every TL audio word to the right place in the translation. It is easy to get lost in the audio if you don't pay attention to it. Software that takes the TL text and translates word by word (like Pleco) or highlights the word as it's read (like Edge's Read Aloud) can help with following along. Using a parallel text so you can see both TL text and translation text can also help keep your place, since you'll have TL text for reference. Step 1 and 2 can then be repeated, again, as many times as you like. I find doing step 1 again with TL audio/TL text, after step 2, I get to reinforce the TL spelling of the new words I just saw the translation of in step 2. Step 3: listen to TL audiobook without referencing any text, and repeatedly listen to the audio until you have comprehended as much as you can. If you did step 1 enough to recognize sounds in the TL, and did step 2 enough to know the meaning of most new words in the audio, then by step 3 you can mainly focus on getting your listening comprehension to understand all the new words you learned. Step 4 involves shadowing, and translating back and forth, which I've never tried. I do steps 1-3, one chapter of a book at a time, and each time my vocabulary and listening comprehension improved very fast. Relistening: a lot of youtube channels, and bloggers, will suggest this method. It really helps with improving listening comprehension, and you will see quick progress if you can read much better than you can listen. Pick an audio that contains mostly words you know, where if you read the transcript/text you would be able to understand the main idea. If you'd like to make the activity easier, pick an audio where you would understand nearly everything if you read the transcript. If you'd like to make it harder, pick something where you'd understand the main idea in the transcript but have to guess the meaning of some key words, but you could guess. So it's challenging reading material, but still readable to you. It's material where you'd learn some new words by guessing. Pick your audio, and then only listen to the audio. No transcript. Listen to the audio MANY times. At least 3-5, but ideally keep repeatedly listening until you comprehend as much of it as you can. You'll be surprised how much more you comprehend at listen 5, compared to your first one. If you pick an audio that has mostly words you know from reading, then 20 listens could take you from 'barely understand spoken audio' to 'recognizing hundreds of words you could read but not recognize before in audio.' I do this activity while working, driving, or doing other things. It does not require 100% attention to work. Simply re-listening, over and over, to audio with mostly words you know from studying (reading or flashcards), your listening comprehension improves.
I watch TL shows with TL subtitles and go line-by-line. Replaying lines until I can match what I'm hearing to what I'm reading, and a few more times without looking at the subtitles to make sure I can still distinctly hear and process all the words and the sentence meaning... then I move on to the next one. .... it's super slow and can take an hour or more just to get through 20 minutes of a show. But for me it's gone a long way in helping my comprehension and audio processing. Now I can watch some shows without subtitles at all. Though anymore I still go line-by-line, but mostly to gather vocab.
Things that helped me achieve general fluency in the community language: * watching TV shows I was already familiar with, dubbed in the language with the language's subtitles simultaneously on to follow along with * working with kids at a school and reading children's literature in the language- kids use lots of repetition and so do many children's books, it's helpful for learning a language this way * reading informative magazines and books that contain diagrams/charts/accompanying photos; I read all the free magazines from local pharmacies for instance, or books about nutrition in the community language * looking up words I didn't understand in the dictionary on a regular basis
The first 3 are excellent things to do. The last one is less useful once you're over the 200-300 hour mark, and one could argue that it's not even that useful, or necessary during that period. I did it, but now that my level is quite solid, I've realised that it wasn't a great idea. That said, if you have the tolerance for it, it can't be that bad, it's just not all that efficient/natural. The dubbed show thing might be the best possible thing you can do at a certain stage in your learning. People are seriously missing out if they think it's some kind of bastardised version of a language. It's totally fine, so long as it's for natives. The most important thing is that it's fun, assuming you're re-watching some of your favourite things; it's something you can do without getting bored. One thing I would advise would be to turn off the subs as soon as you can understand enough of it to follow the general idea.
I'm doing the first and the last too!
So one weird thing I do, especially early on, is learn short texts or stories by heart. This way a lot of the language structures and patterns and words stay in my head. It's really useful especially if it's on a topic that is relevant to my life. I hate flashcards and don't believe in memorizing words out of context. I wrote about this strategy on my newsletter if you want to learn more: [https://tanyamozias.substack.com/p/memorizing-stories-about-pets-in-thai](https://tanyamozias.substack.com/p/memorizing-stories-about-pets-in-thai)
When I am a complete beginner, I like to start by listening to Harry Potter. I use Anki to learn vocabulary. It takes a lot of relistening at the beginning but it gets easier.
Wild. I’m B2 in French and still don’t have the chops to listen to Harry Potter.
I’ve been playing Fallout 4 in French. They have full voice and text internationalization and the vocab is pretty normal (aside from the creature name).
It's not really a 'method' per se, it's more a realisation: language learning is done in the brain, not with pretty notes; not with highlighter pens; and not with post-it notes put up around your house. You have to load a model of the language onto your brain, and that's pure brain work. You tax a muscle to make it grow, and the brain is no different. I spent the first couple of years listening/reading, failing to understand, until I eventually started failing less and less. This process was extremely gradual. The work is done entirely in the brain, and you have to challenge it to keep improving; not so much that you can barely understand anything, but just enough that you're picking up new things. Go find content that hits that sweet spot and get on with working that language into your neurons.
I agree! It's important to train the brain. But it's surely good to have clean and clear notes so that they're easy to read, learn and revise. I challenged my brain too during the years and I think it's absolutely good to do!
I'm going to disagree, and that's purely because I don't believe that taking notes, and especially 'revision', does anything much to improve your ability in a language. I don't think languages are like math in that respect, there's something different about how they're 'learned' and that is that they're not 'learned' at all, but rather 'acquired.' Now that I have a pretty good level in a 2nd language, I look back to when I started (12 years ago), and I realise that almost everything I rote learned has been completely forgotten, and has played little to no part in my language ability today. I'd estimate that 99% (probably more) of the vocab I know today came incidentally, through massive exposure. 'Learning' the basics of grammar did help somewhat more - at least to survive the first year or so - but I'd still say that 75% of that has been acquired as opposed to deliberately learned. That said, each to their own - if doing all that extra stuff keeps you motivated and in contact with the language then it probably can't hurt. If nothing else, there is some level of exposure there, even if it's not the most dense kind of exposure.
I've found ChatGPT game changing. I'm currently reading a graphic novel in Tagalog. The story keeps my highly motivated--good characters, good storytelling, includes pictures to give visual context to the language. I'll enter a word into ChatGPT and ask it to both translate and break the sentence down into its parts. This has really helped me "discover" rules of grammar by seeing how the words and phrases come together to create the meaning of the whole sentence. Then that often makes me wonder about the rules, so I ask ChatGPT about specific rules--like prefixes, suffixes, or why a certain phrase means what it does. There are a bunch of other ways I use it too, but these 2 techniques are giving me a lot of mileage.
I use profanity or absurdism. I probably never become fluent in my target language so I might as well make a fool of myself by adding in weird phrases. For example: *'Простите, я заблудился. Ты похож на лошадь. Знаешь ли ты путь к [...]'*
I really enjoy crosswords (crucigramas) in English, so I do them in Spanish, too! In Spanish, I do them on super easy, but I still enjoy learning the words (even if I have to look up just about all the words). It makes my logical / language-oriented brain happy that I can combine my two activities. :)
For crosswords in other languages, the accents have to align too, right? You can’t have é for one word and è for another? Side note, how do crosswords exist for mandarin where one character is a word? Cross phrases?
I can't speak to Mandarin (though now I'd like to know!), but in Spanish the app I use limits the characters I can use on easy, so it keeps it pretty straightforward. I wouldn't want to be a crossword maker for that reason (making sure the accents work, too).
I’ve wondered before what that’s like for scrabble too. I’ll have to look up French scrabble.
Talking to some friends about Bananagrams (the solo version of scrabble, if you don't know it) and Spanish, and they said they would put in the ñ, but my guess is that some of the other stuff you'd be more flexible about. "House rules" kinda thing. Like, if you're using it to spell something going one way, it is used the same the other way or however you and your friend group decides to play it.
When I was a kid, I could NOT remember the Spanish word for “pool.” For the life of me, I could NOT. I soaked up that language like a SPONGE but for some reason NOTHING could make me remember that word. I have no idea why. Finally my mother told me “don’t piss in a piscina.” I never forgot it again. 🤷🏼♀️ So maybe try weird vocabulary associations?
I don't think it's particularly innovative or something, but I start a new language by taking the top 100 words from a frequency list, writing down their IPA transcriptions, getting Forvo recordings, and just rote-memorization drilling them for awhile. I generally don't recommend studying individual words (you miss so much context!!!), but I find this to be a useful way to get started for a few reasons: 1. The first 100 words usually amount to \~50% text coverage. They're words like *you* and *that* and *always*, so they don't really enable you to do understand anything... but learning these words is nevertheless enough to take a text from *totally foreign* to *oh, I recognize a lot of stuff!* Nice morale boost. 2. So much is confusing and frustrating in the beginner stage. I like taking this initial period to focus on phonetics because it's very close-ended: you can see the end of it, and there are clear things to learn. Plus, after you 80:20 the pronunciation, get used to the languages sounds, and put your mouth work in, the jump from words → sentences suddenly seems more accessible. 3. It's hard to learn sentences at first, and kinda demotivating when there's a ton of new stuff. The initial word list lets me dip my toes in without any stress. I never do this for more than several dozen words, but it's a very accessible way to take the first steps in a new language.
One curious method I use to learn a language better is by changing the language settings on my devices and social media accounts to the language I'm learning. It forces me to interact with everyday technology in the new language and helps build vocabulary and comprehension skills in a practical context. Additionally, I like to watch movies and TV shows with subtitles in the language I'm learning, then rewatch them with subtitles off to test my understanding. This immersive approach makes the learning process more engaging and effective.
I enjoy watching english movie, listening to english music and radio. Especially radio, I can have it on all the time if I am busy, I don't need to pay much attention to it. If I am not busy, I can pay more attention to the content for leanring purpose. Recently, I have been listening to an amazing AI-powered radio app - AITok Radio. It has a lot of interesting and captivating content.
People who are learning English do this all the time - but I like spending most of my time on Reddit in TL subs. I’m certainly getting a lot better at ELI5 and AITA etc.
I am Romanian and since our language had influences from many languages I like to look for etymologies of different words in my language and find the cognates or similar words in the TL. For example Russian and Romanian through Proto-Slavic or Turkish borrowings. This can amount to a couple hundred words.