Sorry for late reply I missed this earlier. I'm a bit fortunate since I don't have to commute most days, but I find when you reduce television and movies and then also take short breaks throughout the day it adds up to a lot of time. And a phone obviously is such a useful device beyond social media and email.
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
I've been trying to learn Japanese for 25 years and it is such a struggle! You've given me a couple of new ideas though. Watching YouTube etc in my target language seems such a a great idea.
My concern with changing the language of my devices to Japanese, however, is that everything will be in Kanji and Hiragana/Katakana. How will I ever work out how to retrace my steps if it is impenetrable?
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.
By the way, I'm curious how much cross-over vocabulary there is between Persian and Turkish. Was learning one helpful for guessing the meanings of words in the other?
Sorry for late reply, been traveling this week. Your journey has also been impressive. Regarding overlap, surprisingly there is some but not as much as you’d expect from neighbors. The language reform by Ataturk in the 1920s took out a lot of the Perso-Arabic and replaced it with Latin equivalents. So weirdly knowingly French and English is somehow more helpful! Or at least equally
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.
Thank you! Very inspirational. But still intimidated by the fact that you read 100 books a year (I follow you on Goodreads).
Haha I think I’ve slowed down now
I am honestly curious and amazed by this as well. I assume you don’t have kids (if you do I am awestruck, please tell me how you do it)
Sorry for late reply I missed this earlier. I'm a bit fortunate since I don't have to commute most days, but I find when you reduce television and movies and then also take short breaks throughout the day it adds up to a lot of time. And a phone obviously is such a useful device beyond social media and email.
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
✌
Hey I’d really appreciate that! I always need to brush up on Urdu especially since I grew up abroad and can get rusty
helpful, and, yes, inspiring.
thanks for the inspiration Maz!
Thank you for sharing !
I've been trying to learn Japanese for 25 years and it is such a struggle! You've given me a couple of new ideas though. Watching YouTube etc in my target language seems such a a great idea.
My concern with changing the language of my devices to Japanese, however, is that everything will be in Kanji and Hiragana/Katakana. How will I ever work out how to retrace my steps if it is impenetrable?
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!
My pleasure. And good luck! German I think will be good transition for English speaker.
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.
Pimsleur is good but really any repetition program will do. It’s a bit pricey and you could find free ones on YouTube
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.
By the way, I'm curious how much cross-over vocabulary there is between Persian and Turkish. Was learning one helpful for guessing the meanings of words in the other?
Sorry for late reply, been traveling this week. Your journey has also been impressive. Regarding overlap, surprisingly there is some but not as much as you’d expect from neighbors. The language reform by Ataturk in the 1920s took out a lot of the Perso-Arabic and replaced it with Latin equivalents. So weirdly knowingly French and English is somehow more helpful! Or at least equally
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.
Let me know how it goes I’d be curious. a good teacher is a game changer