A faster way to start learning a language

You can get to the point where you can express yourself in a language by learning basic grammar and just 200 words.

My test for being able to express myself is: Can I keep a diary in this language? Can I talk about what I did today and my opinions on just about any subject?

Too often, people who have been learning a language for months or even years say “no.” However, in my experience, it’s possible after learning just basic grammar and the 200 most useful words. If you wanted to go fast and learn 20 words a day (the default rate of Anki), then you could learn 200 words in a week and a half. (In my experience, learning basic grammar doesn’t take as long as learning the words, so the total time could be three weeks. However, I didn’t teach myself my first foreign language, so I can’t speak to that case — if you’re teaching yourself your first, kudos, and let me know how long the grammar takes!)

The key is that you have to learn the right 200 words. When I was teaching myself languages before, I could never find a good answer to the question: What words should I learn first? If you use Duolingo, they’ll start by teaching you words like “apple”, which aren’t very useful. I spent a lot of time writing and talking in order to determine which 200 words would let you express the most. I think I finally got it. But don’t take my word for it — see this demonstration.

I personally tested this method out with Esperanto and French and I’m now able to keep a diary in both languages, writing about anything that happened in my day and any thought that crosses my mind.

To be clear: 200 words won’t make you fluent, but they’ll allow you to express yourself, and it’s a lot easier to keep improving from there. Feel free to adapt the method based on what works for you. Here are the steps:

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Also, please send me your feedback! I’d love to know if this works for you or if it doesn’t. I welcome all comments, criticism, and suggestions for improvement. And if you think this guide could help other people, please consider reblogging it. :)

Additional notes:

General:

Reddit Threads:

SRS  (Spaced Repetition flashcards): 

Arabic:

Bengali:

Burmese/Myanmar:

Chinese (Mostly/All Mandarin):

Gujarati:

Hindi:

Indonesian - Bhasa Indonesian:

Korean:

Japanese:

Malay:

Tamil

Thai:

So You Want to Learn… List:

Other:

I repost this every two weeks whether I need to or not. It too good not to and the original compiler deserves that much respect.

Amr Diab - Nour al Ain (Light of My Eye)

Besides re-jigging synthesizers for quarter-tones few could argue against this musician being amongst the most powerful forces to define the Middle-Eastern pop scene over the past two decades.

Languages Masterpost

Sharing my bookmarks with the Tumblr community. Have fun!

Linguistics

Many Languages (or General Resources)

Spanish

French

Japanese

Arabic

Hindi

Russian

Old English

Korean

Estonian

Finnish

Esperanto

German

Welsh

Xhosa

Mandarin

Native American Langauges

Other

And finally, I recently started a resources tag (here) that I think I’ll just link to rather than trying to transfer all that stuff over to this post.

I apologize that some of these headings have only one or two resources for them… but remember that the “Many Languages” category can not only provide a lot of further resources and information for the languages listed here, but can also provide stuff for languages not mentioned here!

If you guys have more stuff you’d like me to add for any language, send it to me and I’ll check it out and maybe update this post :)

Have fun and good luck :D

Thanks beaucoup beaucoup for the reference!

Ya Habibi Yalla - Alabina & Los Niños De Sara

This is one of my favourite songs. Why?

Because it incorporates a lot of aspects of my own ethnic background. The Arabic language (I’m part Arab), the French Romani band singing in Spanish in the style of Andalusian Cale (I’m also part French Romani and Spanish Romani), the fact that they mention Casablanca in the lyrics (My Moroccan family are from Casablanca).

Also, this is a song from my childhood. I first heard it when i was a kid :)

I feel like it’s a song made for me. Especially as North Africans and Spanish Romani have a lot of history together. Even now where i live in Spain, the Arabs and Romani still very much have a close bond with one another.

When i listen to this song i don’t know whether i want to belly dance or flamenco, haha.

Linguistic approaches to language learning: link roundup

I suppose it’s okay to admit after three years of linguistics blogging that I actually am one of those linguists who speaks quite a few languages, and I’ve studied even more at various levels. Here are some of my favourite posts about language learning:

Tips for learning another language

How second language acquisition works

Learning Indigenous languages

Languages and linguistics

Bonus fun links: Now You’re Just A Language That I Used To Know (parody of that Gotye song) and Language Gothic.

Revised and updated with more links! 

Moana in Arabic!~

Moana - موانا

(Where You Are) أغنية الجزيرة

(How Far I’ll Go) المجهول يناديني 

(We Know The Way) نحدد الطريق

(You’re Welcome) عفوا

(Shiny) بريقي

(I Am Moana) أنا موانا

To my knowledge, Moana was dubbed in modern standard Arabic.

Just a quick note: A few of the videos weren’t available on mobile for me when I checked, but they all definitely work on desktop!    

Enjoy! x

Hey there! I’ve been getting a lot of questions recently regarding the way that I practice French and learn German at home. I decided to make a masterpost with all of the links I find helpful for learning a language for free!

I don’t like to learn in classrooms, it’s just way too much pressure. My French class last year was too hard for me, and it wasn’t fun at all since we were doing too much vocabulary and not enough fun stuff! I think that learning a language at home is your best option (from my experience), since you can go at your own pace, and not at the fast pace of a class!

I have used all of these links personally, so don’t worry, this isn’t a promotion in any way!

Starting your target language from scratch (beginners) 

When you’re ready to start using the language (reading, writing, listening)

Resources for studying your target language

Other masterposts regarding language

That’s all of my resources! I hope you all enjoy learning a language!

Assalamu-Alaykum! This is my very first masterpost, and I wanted to make it about a subject I only know too well. Arabic is my mother tongue and I’ve been into the Arabic culture for like my entire life. I am really eager to help people get more familiar with it, as I understand it might not be easy at all. The letters are different, the spelling is different, the phonetic is different, the culture is different… Thus I really admire people who chose to learn it. You rock!

Anyway, here are the basics (in my own opinion) for learning the language and the culture. I tried to give all the information I had, but I’ll edit this post and eventually add more stuff :

free websites + apps

specific arabic learning

useful links/docs

arabic keyboards

dictionaries

islamic references

Okay, i hesitated to put that one, but if you want to get into the arabic culture, it is very important to get to know the islamic side of it. (be careful, islamic culture does not necessarily mean arabic culture, but the two can easily be linked)

music

books

arabic art resources

a native speaker tips

I think I said it all. I may or may not add stuff in the future, so feel free to follow me, or suggest me other things!

I’ll probably do a moroccan masterpost later, ideas are welcome here as well!

pro tip: when looking up the meaning of a word first try going to google images and seeing what comes up. that way you aren’t learning by translating but by learning the way that you would in your native language!

Also, once you reach a certain level, try using a monolingual dictionary. It helps SO much!

Another tip: When writing down words from a dictionary, don’t just write down the word itself, if possible - if the dictionary has examples of that word used in phrases, compounds, etc., write them too! That’ll help you recognise the word in more places you will see it than just on its own :)

And if you’re wondering about things like names of organizations or technical vocabulary, try looking up the word or phrase on Wikipedia and then following the links along the sidebar to the equivalent articles in other languages. These other language articles can also be a good source of related vocabulary.

How to Learn Vocabulary in 12 Steps (using science!)

Step 1: Get some paper, and divide each page into two columns (see pictures above of my old Latin notes). Group your words somehow that makes sense to you: by lexical category (nouns/verb/etc), by inflection type (e.g. verbs that take similar conjugation endings, nouns by gender), by textbook chapter (especially for chapter-specific vocab quizzes), or by related topics (e.g family members, things around the house). EDIT: you could also use flashcards here, although the way I prefer to use small cards is to put a whole group of words per card (e.g. irregular verbs, colour words). Make sure to do groupings though, they’ll be important later.

Step 2: Write each word in the language you’re learning in column 1, with its translation(s) in column 2 (or if you’re learning more vocabulary in your native language, put definitions in column 2). You can also put extra information by the word, like its gender or conjugation type, irregular things about it, etc. Whatever you need/want to know about it. You could draw pictures in the translation column, but I find that this ends up taking more time and being less effective in the long run. Don’t worry, you’re going to move past translation by the end anyway.

Step 3: Cover all the words in the translation column with your hand or another piece of paper. Starting at the top of the other column, read each word out loud and try to say its translation out loud. Guess if you can. You’ll probably know at least some of them from class and from making the lists.

Keep reading

Bringing this back, with minor revisions, for language exam season. 

Tips to learn a new language

The 75 most common words make up 40% of occurrences The 200 most common words make up 50% of occurrences The 524 most common words make up 60% of occurrences The 1257 most common words make up 70% of occurrences The 2925 most common words make up 80% of occurrences The 7444 most common words make up 90% of occurrences The 13374 most common words make up 95% of occurrences The 25508 most common words make up 99% of occurrences

(Sources: 5 Steps to Speak a New Language by Hung Quang Pham)

This article has an excellent summary on how to rapidly learn a new language within 90 days.

We can begin with studying the first 600 words. Of course chucking is an effective way to memorize words readily. Here’s a list to translate into the language you desire to learn that I grabbed from here! :)

EXPRESSIONS OF POLITENESS (about 50 expressions)      

NOUNS (about 120 words)

PREPOSITIONS (about 40 words)    

DETERMINERS (about 80 words)  

ADJECTIVES (about 80 words)    

VERBS (about 100 words)    

PRONOUNS (about 40 words)

ADVERBS (about 60 words)

CONJUNCTIONS (about 30 words)

Oh i love this concept!

I love it too! I love it mostly because it makes me feel less overwhelmed. When you break it down like this, everything seems so much more manageable. Like, hey, I could memorize 20 words at a time (even if ‘at a time’ varies wildly for me), and just do that like ten times. That’s a HUGE chunk of a language.

(And since I have the habit of doing languages that are similar to ones I’m already familiar with, the grammar part usually comes pretty easy, too.)

As a writer, this also strikes me as useful to know if you are constructing a language.

I can’t believe how simple and useful is this approach ❤️❤️

If you do some searching you can probably find the most common words in your target language, rather than having to translate from English.

Also find a spaced repetition system like Anki (basically a fancy computer flash card program) and use it for learning the vocab. It will make your life so so much easier.

“if you have a bit of stress then you can use this, but if you have a lot of stress use this one”

oh god I just lost it laughing

My favorite method of learning pronunciation in another language is singing. 

I spent the hours I travel on the bus singing reggaeton and have almost no accent when speaking Spanish. 

Bollywood soundtracks helped me master the ड़ sound. 

One of my students struggled with the English w sound and I had him sing the song “I Want It That Way” and he can say it almost perfectly. 

Sing. Even if you suck. Sing.

Seriously, my pronunciation for French and Danish improved so much just by listening to their versions of Disney songs. Singing is an invaluable language resource!

True story!! This works! I blast Finnish music all day and learn the songs and it helps SO MUCH!

Honestly, this. I’ve found that singing helps not just with pronunciation, but also with various paralinguistic and prosodic aspects of the target language, and recognising and using different registers of the language (formal, casual, etc).

And this works for both translations (say, Disney songs), and original songs. In fact, I think a mix of both would be the best resource of all, because you have the mix of unfamiliarity and familiarity.

I’ve definitely found that to be true. I was struggling with grasping the changes in word order in Irish and my pronunciation was embarrassing but listening to songs has helped. 

children’s songs CHILDREN’S SONGS

10 unusual language learning tips !

i see a lot of the same (sometimes unhelpful) tips being thrown around, so here’s my two cents:

1. write shopping lists/to do lists in your target language - often you don’t learn this vocab but it’s conversational & v useful! also writing yourself notes (lil pep talks on the bathroom mirror, for example) can work.

2. buy a small whiteboard and practice verb conjugation (esp. romantic languages) or script writing 

3. talk to pets in target language if possible!

4. look for quotes in your target language - often the turns of phrase are  more colloquial, and is a good opportunity to see how things are translated from your native language 

5. find a fairly easy news headline (in target lang) and try to re-write it w/ vocab you already have. you’ll quickly find gaps - this is a good thing! (if you’re feeling extra spicy, try writing a small subheading or description about the article).

6. create an imaginary friend who you speak with on the shower, or on the train, doing the laundry etc. talk w/ them in your target lang (in your head, obvs) about your day, future plans, etc etc.

~for more advanced learners~

7. when you’re more advanced, and have some grasp of past/future tenses, buy a children’s/tween’s/YA book that you’ve already read. highlight and annotate the shit out of it. you’ll know the general gist already, which makes context clues easier to find.

8. change wikipedia settings into target language - same goes for any social media site. this can be a mega challenge, but is so good for vocab, plus you’re more likely to remember the info since you worked so hard for it.

9. write a review for a book/film/record/whatever you’ve most recently consumed. maybe start a diary of them, or just have an ongoing word doc.

10. find a bilingual edition of poetry/literature if possible. you might find you can spot translation differences, but you’re sure to find some new vocab.

BOUT TIME

I am excite

This is the best guide to making alveolar trills (like the Spanish “rr”) that I’ve come across, and believe me I’ve been trying to make them for over a decade.

The previous best advice I’d gotten about alveolar trills was, if you can make bilabial or uvular trills (which I can), you can carry the trill feeling forward or backward as applicable. Which worked for me, but is not terribly practical for doing inside each word.

○ 625 words to know in your target language ○

There is a really interesting blog called “Fluent Forever” that aids foreign language learners in tricks, tips and techniques to guide them to achieving fluency “quickly” and efficiently. One of the tricks is to learn these 625 vocab words in your target language, that way you have a basis to start delving into grammar with ease as you can understand a lot of vocab right off the bat. Plus this list of words are common across the world and will aid you in whatever language you are learning. Here is the list in thematic order :

• Animal: dog, cat, fish, bird, cow, pig, mouse, horse, wing, animal

• Transportation: train, plane, car, truck, bicycle, bus, boat, ship, tire, gasoline, engine, (train) ticket, transportation

• Location: city, house, apartment, street/road, airport, train station, bridge, hotel, restaurant, farm, court, school, office, room, town, university, club, bar, park, camp, store/shop, theater, library, hospital, church, market, country (USA, France, etc.), building, ground, space (outer space), bank, location

• Clothing: hat, dress, suit, skirt, shirt, T-shirt, pants, shoes, pocket, coat, stain, clothing

• Color: red, green, blue (light/dark), yellow, brown, pink, orange, black, white, gray, color

• People: son, daughter, mother, father, parent (= mother/father), baby, man, woman, brother, sister, family, grandfather, grandmother, husband, wife, king, queen, president, neighbor, boy, girl, child (= boy/girl), adult (= man/woman), human (≠ animal), friend (Add a friend’s name), victim, player, fan, crowd, person

• Job: Teacher, student, lawyer, doctor, patient, waiter, secretary, priest, police, army, soldier, artist, author, manager, reporter, actor, job

• Society: religion, heaven, hell, death, medicine, money, dollar, bill, marriage, wedding, team, race (ethnicity), sex (the act), sex (gender), murder, prison, technology, energy, war, peace, attack, election, magazine, newspaper, poison, gun, sport, race (sport), exercise, ball, game, price, contract, drug, sign, science, God

• Art: band, song, instrument (musical), music, movie, art

• Beverages: coffee, tea, wine, beer, juice, water, milk, beverage

• Food: egg, cheese, bread, soup, cake, chicken, pork, beef, apple, banana, orange, lemon, corn, rice, oil, seed, knife, spoon, fork, plate, cup, breakfast, lunch, dinner, sugar, salt, bottle, food

• Home: table, chair, bed, dream, window, door, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, pencil, pen, photograph, soap, book, page, key, paint, letter, note, wall, paper, floor, ceiling, roof, pool, lock, telephone, garden, yard, needle, bag, box, gift, card, ring, tool

• Electronics: clock, lamp, fan, cell phone, network, computer, program (computer), laptop, screen, camera, television, radio

• Body: head, neck, face, beard, hair, eye, mouth, lip, nose, tooth, ear, tear (drop), tongue, back, toe, finger, foot, hand, leg, arm, shoulder, heart, blood, brain, knee, sweat, disease, bone, voice, skin, body

• Nature: sea, ocean, river, mountain, rain, snow, tree, sun, moon, world, Earth, forest, sky, plant, wind, soil/earth, flower, valley, root, lake, star, grass, leaf, air, sand, beach, wave, fire, ice, island, hill, heat, nature

• Materials: glass, metal, plastic, wood, stone, diamond, clay, dust, gold, copper, silver, material

• Math/Measurements: meter, centimeter, kilogram, inch, foot, pound, half, circle, square, temperature, date, weight, edge, corner

• Misc Nouns: map, dot, consonant, vowel, light, sound, yes, no, piece, pain, injury, hole, image, pattern, noun, verb, adjective

• Directions: top, bottom, side, front, back, outside, inside, up, down, left, right, straight, north, south, east, west, direction

• Seasons: Summer, Spring, Winter, Fall, season

• Numbers: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 30, 31, 32, 40, 41, 42, 50, 51, 52, 60, 61, 62, 70, 71, 72, 80, 81, 82, 90, 91, 92, 100, 101, 102, 110, 111, 1000, 1001, 10000, 100000, million, billion, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, number

• Months: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

• Days of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday

• Time: year, month, week, day, hour, minute, second , morning, afternoon, evening, night, time

• Verbs: work, play, walk, run, drive, fly, swim, go, stop, follow, think, speak/say, eat, drink, kill, die, smile, laugh, cry, buy, pay, sell, shoot(a gun), learn, jump, smell, hear (a sound), listen (music), taste, touch, see (a bird), watch (TV), kiss, burn, melt, dig, explode, sit, stand, love, pass by, cut, fight, lie down, dance, sleep, wake up, sing, count, marry, pray, win, lose, mix/stir, bend, wash, cook, open, close, write, call, turn, build, teach, grow, draw, feed, catch, throw, clean, find, fall, push, pull, carry, break, wear, hang, shake, sign, beat, lift

• Adjectives: long, short (long), tall, short (vs tall), wide, narrow, big/large, small/little, slow, fast, hot, cold, warm, cool, new, old (new), young, old (young), good, bad, wet, dry, sick, healthy, loud, quiet, happy, sad, beautiful, ugly, deaf, blind, nice, mean, rich, poor, thick, thin, expensive, cheap, flat, curved, male, female, tight, loose, high, low, soft, hard, deep, shallow, clean, dirty, strong, weak, dead, alive, heavy, light (heavy), dark, light (dark), nuclear, famous

• Pronouns: I, you (singular), he, she, it, we, you (plural, as in “y’all”), they.

The original blogpost I copied this list from (it includes more tips & tricks to learning vocab) : https://fluent-forever.com/the-method/vocabulary/base-vocabulary-list/

I’m going to be making my own vocab lists using these words for my target languages of Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese. I’ll be posting the vocab by theme on my blog, so make sure to follow me https://asian-lang-stubyblr.tumblr.com if you are interesting in seeing those!