i had started learning german on my own, mainly through duolingo but at some point given up on it (due to one of the reasons you mentioned). reading this has actually motivated me to restart this process. so cheers for that!
also, always happy to help converse or share a discussion on urdu if you ever want
Awesome. This is inspiring me to resume German, which I’d tried to learn maybe a decade ago and found hard to do on my own, but now it seems like there are a lot more online resources. Thank you for this!
For starting out in Turkish, I found Pimsleur to be amazing, did you have any exposure to it? Was able to travel to Turkey after doing the pimsleur curriculum and had quite a bit of success hitting the ground running speaking to folks.
Congratulations Murtaza. I look forward to reviews of Persian and Turkish books ;) I've been doing something similar over the last few years with German and Dutch. My main lesson has been that learning a language is both easier and harder than it sounds. Easier in the sense that there is no magic trick, you simply have to put in the mahi every day. Harder in the sense that you begin to realise how much depth there really is to language and how you would need a lifetime to truly master it. The reward is absolutely worth it though. It feels like a bit of the world that was previously inaccessible opens up to you.
I personally didn't find flashcards very useful. I only used them to drill stuff I knew I was going to encounter at work. I did have native speakers to talk to everyday, but as you say, the internet makes it so much easier to get exposure to native speech. Having someone to talk to is essential though, because there seems to be a huge gap between comprehension and production. It seems like when you first learn a language, even if you (theoretically) understand what's grammatically correct, when you open your mouth it just comes out in a jumble.
Lastly, you write about the day you realised you could understand a BBC Persian newscast. This has to be one of the most magical feelings. Sometimes I will hear someone talk, won't know or hear any of the individual words they used, yet somehow I'll understand the message as a whole. It makes me think of a mate I had growing up. He spoke English to his mum, who spoke Khmer back to him. Neither could speak the other's language. I was always confused as to how this was possible. Now I can really *see* that it just is. There's a whole bunch of shit in your mind that you can't just pull out on demand, but if you're consistent and determined and direct your attention towards the things that matter, it will surprise you when it has to.
Thanks for sharing Muratza. As someone who’s tried to learn languages in the past (although I’m not as proficient as I’d like to be) I agree with most of what you said. I find Duolingo and flash cards quite helpful but I’ll definitely try and get a private tutor from one of the websites you mentioned and change settings on my phone. A lot of your strategies are similar to Barry Farber’s Multi Track strategy that he talks about in How to Learn Any Language.
How to Teach Yourself a New Language
Thank you! Very inspirational. But still intimidated by the fact that you read 100 books a year (I follow you on Goodreads).
i had started learning german on my own, mainly through duolingo but at some point given up on it (due to one of the reasons you mentioned). reading this has actually motivated me to restart this process. so cheers for that!
also, always happy to help converse or share a discussion on urdu if you ever want
✌
helpful, and, yes, inspiring.
thanks for the inspiration Maz!
Awesome. This is inspiring me to resume German, which I’d tried to learn maybe a decade ago and found hard to do on my own, but now it seems like there are a lot more online resources. Thank you for this!
For starting out in Turkish, I found Pimsleur to be amazing, did you have any exposure to it? Was able to travel to Turkey after doing the pimsleur curriculum and had quite a bit of success hitting the ground running speaking to folks.
Congratulations Murtaza. I look forward to reviews of Persian and Turkish books ;) I've been doing something similar over the last few years with German and Dutch. My main lesson has been that learning a language is both easier and harder than it sounds. Easier in the sense that there is no magic trick, you simply have to put in the mahi every day. Harder in the sense that you begin to realise how much depth there really is to language and how you would need a lifetime to truly master it. The reward is absolutely worth it though. It feels like a bit of the world that was previously inaccessible opens up to you.
I wrote a bit about my language learning experience, which I leave here only because I think it is interesting to compare: https://apposition.substack.com/p/gesprekken-met-vrienden
I personally didn't find flashcards very useful. I only used them to drill stuff I knew I was going to encounter at work. I did have native speakers to talk to everyday, but as you say, the internet makes it so much easier to get exposure to native speech. Having someone to talk to is essential though, because there seems to be a huge gap between comprehension and production. It seems like when you first learn a language, even if you (theoretically) understand what's grammatically correct, when you open your mouth it just comes out in a jumble.
Lastly, you write about the day you realised you could understand a BBC Persian newscast. This has to be one of the most magical feelings. Sometimes I will hear someone talk, won't know or hear any of the individual words they used, yet somehow I'll understand the message as a whole. It makes me think of a mate I had growing up. He spoke English to his mum, who spoke Khmer back to him. Neither could speak the other's language. I was always confused as to how this was possible. Now I can really *see* that it just is. There's a whole bunch of shit in your mind that you can't just pull out on demand, but if you're consistent and determined and direct your attention towards the things that matter, it will surprise you when it has to.
Thanks for sharing Muratza. As someone who’s tried to learn languages in the past (although I’m not as proficient as I’d like to be) I agree with most of what you said. I find Duolingo and flash cards quite helpful but I’ll definitely try and get a private tutor from one of the websites you mentioned and change settings on my phone. A lot of your strategies are similar to Barry Farber’s Multi Track strategy that he talks about in How to Learn Any Language.