"What's The Best Way To Learn A Language?" or "Q'uest que... LEARN FRENCH GOOD!?"

[Seil]

So the two languages I want to master are French and Canadian Sign Language. (It's like American Sign Language, but it has the proper signs for "Eh," "aboot" and "double-double." Mostly because a lot of my family are either natively French, Quebecois, or otherwise fluent, and CSL will give me an opportunity to work with the hearing impaired and disabled at work.

So I ask you Lords and Ladies Sharks and Charlatans as to the best way to learn. Should I just immerse myself in French music (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHoT4N43jK8) and French TV? (http://www.vbox7.com/play:0271a30c?r=google) Subliminal tapes? Make friends with French kids? Backpack Europe?

How should I go about this?

[JackBlack]

I'm French and slowly learning (oral) Japanese through watching subtitled animes.

Japanese is a tough nut to crack for us Occidentals, but I heard that French ain't too easy for the English either. So based on my experience with Japanese, I would guess that watching French TV isn't gonna be enough.

Music will be especially worse. I'm fluent in English and I still can't get words every now and then because you pronounce things differently when you sing.
Heck, I don't even get what French songs say, sometimes !

You are lucky enough to have French natives around you. The fastest way to learn is to ask them to speak ONLY in French with you from now on. If you see them often you will learn extra fast, provided you also work on your own in a more scholar way.

If you don't see your French friends/family often enough, TV will help to improve your accent and recognize individual words. It's more important than it sounds because even when you know a word, it's not guaranteed that you can spot it when it's spoken out loud in a conversation.


Finally if you're willing to come to France, living there for 6+ months will of course be the best way to learn both culture and language.


Edit: I don't know anything about sign languages, but maybe you should volunteer to help in a place where you can find deaf people ? You'd learn from nurses or semi-deaf people I guess...

[Aldurin]

Silly Seil, all you need is Japanese and Latin. Japanese so that you're no longer subject to the whims of translation groups in animanga, and Latin so that you can drive home a pretentious scholarly asshole act whenever you feel it is necessary.

[Azisien]

Practice. Hard work.

[rpgdemon]

J'ai etudié francais pour cinq ans a l'ecole, et je le souviens un peu. Si je vais au Quebec, je pense que je pourrais le parle.

I think that's all correct french. In any case, I have no idea how to learn it best. I learned it back in middle school/high school, because I took it for five years.

Maybe Rosetta Stone? I have no idea how effective it is though. One tip I have is to make yourself speak it as often as possible. You want to get to the point where you're not just trying to translate english into french, then speak the french, but instead where you can natively express your thoughts in french, like you do in english.

[PyrosNine]

Best way to learn a language is to continually put yourself into a situation where observation, comprehension, and conjugation are necessary, otherwise you will forget everything after a week or two of not speaking the language.

Learning the basics of linguistics helps, as understanding how language "works" makes learning a new language easier because once you get the gist of a new language and understand what makes that language's rules different, you're able to fill gaps and learn new words just like you did with English at a young age.

Pyros speaks terrible spanish, but I can read and write it halfway decently, and I can watch most spanish dubbed anime with no problems. Language classes can only do so much even if your parents and heritage is fluent in the language, as I am teh Half-Mexicat.

[batgirl]

I was born and raised in Montreal, so I started learning French at an early age. Now I've been picking up as much Spanish as I can for work because the area I service is mostly Spanish speaking. I just speak as much as I possibly can with people and I pick words up here and there. I also ask people who speak English as well what words mean when I hear them.

What I can suggest that helped me a lot is to be around French a bunch. Watching French TV with the subtitles on is good, read French books and newspapers, and speak French with your relatives as much as you can. It'll be slow going, but you'll get better and better.

I don't know about rosetta stone's effectiveness, but you can get a free demo online I think and give it a try.

[Bells]

So, i learned most of my english via Dubbed pokemon cartoon, NES and Playstation...

Of course, that was refined over time (lots of time) but i learned a few things that worked well with me.

1- Take it outside of class. You have to learn it not as if it was a new language but a new set of words in YOUR language. So it needs to be part of your daily life. Music. movies, conversations with yourself... just do it.

2- Expose yourself. Most won't remember this, but i used to do a silly Abridged series for Final Fantasy Unlimited on my first youtube channel. It was fun (and a ton of work) but the reason why i did that was to force myself to speak English TO english speaking people. That forced me to work on diction and pronunciation.

3- Social networking. Part of the reason why i joined NPF... English writen forum, english speaking crowd. Regular people on their daily life won't give a fuck if you can't follow up on conversation. very different from a class or tutor that is suppose to teach you at your pace... being on that enviroment helped me understand more on mannerisms, slang, contextualization, sarcasm, tone of voice... tons of good stuff.

It takes time though, so starting early is better. But those 3 steps helped me a LONG way.