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Prefer to only listen the second language during the first 3 months

In this post I explicitly said "Don't use the written target language in this phase".

Well, scratch that.
What I really wanned to say is "prefer listening over reading during the first 3 months".

There are 2 reasons for that:

1) The number one problem of language learners in the beginning is that they worry too much about not being able to understand spoken language.

Step 1 was designed to erase that completely.

Extensive listening during the first stage of learning a new language is a liberating experience.

It frees you to enjoy the language as stress free as possible: By effortlessly listening.

2) Learning the target writing system when you already know the sounds of the language. This makes learning languages with weird phonetics and cryptic writing (such as English) much easier.

Twitter!

Hello, guys!
Follow my twitter:
http://twitter.com/wuerges

I promise very low volume of twitting in both English and Portuguese. Not more than 2-3 twits per week.

Hearing disability and Language learning

Please check this awesome post from RevTK forums:

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=95421#p95421

Game Recomendation: Demon's Souls for PS3

A cheesy game, with a cheesy title. But a hell of a game: Demon's Soul it is.

Recently I got this game and at first it was a pain because althought it is a Japanese game, it is completely dubbed in English. It has no Japanese audio.

But the game is really interesting and really, really hard and it really got my attention completely during the last 2 weeks. Half because the game itself and half for reading these strategy guides from the internet. In Japanese, of course.

For Demon's Souls, this is the best:
http://www.geocities.jp/kouryakubo/ds/index.html

The sad thing is that I beat the game today =/
Now I need something else.

Btw, anyone knows what is the equivalent of gamefaqs for Japan?

Human Rights Declaration in 100 languages

Awesome page from librivox:

http://librivox.org/the-universal-declaration-of-human-rights-by-the-united-nations/

Quick Guide to learn any language effectively, enjoyably.

1) For 3 months, listen to the target language.  Audio books, Movies, Music.
- All you have to do is pick up one word here and there.
- Don't use the written target language in this phase.
- Translations are OK.

2) Learn the basics of the writing system.
- Memorize the alphabet/hanzi/hangul/whatever.
- Alphabets and syllabaries should not take more than 2 weeks to learn.

3) For a few months, try to learn as many new words/day as possible.
- You need about ~2000 words families.
- The faster you do it, the better.
- Mine these words from real, authentic, native targeted material.
- Prefer transcriptions of audio you have already listened.
- Also use Books, Comics, Articles, etc.
- Use Flashcards to memorize words within sentences.
- Translations are OK.

4) Forever, listen and read to the target language.
- Now on, translations are evil.
- Use only monolingual dictionary definitions in the new Flashcards you make.

How much words someone needs no know?

"Native speakers' vocabularies vary widely within a language, and are especially dependent on the level of the speaker's education. A 1995 study estimated the vocabulary size of college-educated speakers at about 17,000 word families, and that of first-year college students (high-school educated) at about 12,000."

Source: wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocabulary

"満年齢で6歳になる子どもの場合、理解語彙の総量は、およそ5000～6000語ほど。13歳では3万語前後。20歳ではおよそ4万5000～50000語ほどという調査結果が出ている"

Source: Japanese wikipedia http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%AA%9E%E5%BD%99

My translation:
"When completing  6 years of age, children have a vocabulary size of around 5.000 to 6.000 words. At 13 years old it is 30.000+. At 20 years old, it is around 45.000 to 50.000 words, according to the result of the research."

I'd say these numbers are pretty consistent with what I read before.
For some reason, Japanese vocabulary is larger than English's. Maybe because it is easier to learn new words in Japanese, after you know the language well enough?

Japanese vocabulary size

Well, I made this test:
http://www.kecl.ntt.co.jp/mtg/goitokusei/goi-test.html

And got these results:


あなたの語彙数は27000語です。
The size of your vocabulary is 27000 words.

中学生レベル： ２万～４万語。
Mid schooler level: 20000~40000 words.

Yes, yes. I like to believe in everything that says good of me.
If you know another japanese vocabulary test, please send me!

French project progress (2)

I listened to a bit more French this week. Basically I started to watch Ange et Demon twice.
I now know how "danger" sounds more exactly. =D

Btw, the title of the movie is quite intriguing. In the English dub, it is Angels and Demons.
Why in French it is not Anges et Demons, like it would be in Portuguese or Spanish:
"Anjos e Demônios" and "Ángeles y Demonios", respectively?
It is funny. I kinda understand it, the pluralized version sounds icky. I just don't know it exactly.

French project progress

Answer to the last comment: My French is going slow! Same for Mandarim.

I recently noticed that my last post was misleading.
The trick sentence is "Ok, after French I'm now going for Mandarin". This could give the impression that I actually learned French, but that is not the case. I'm just taking it slow. Once a week I listen to 1 hour or 2 of French. Maybe a bit more. 


For instance, yesterday I watched the move "Decalage Horaire" with Jean Reno and Juliette Binoche. Btw, I strongly recommend it. It was a very nice movie. 


I watched it half with subtitles, half without. I could understand a few complete sentences already hearing for the first time, but its not something substantial. 


I'm more around the "catch a few words" phase. I still simply can't process half of what I hear. I still can't identify some sounds as words. French sounds are still not natural for me.


For instance, the word "danger" meaning danger =D. Right now I can't remember if it is more like "donger" or "danger" or "denger".


Ah, I started making sense of some things, like when verbs end with "i" its the past form. But I'll worry more about this later, I'm still not ready for it.

Japanese great success

I could talk! Yesssssss!

This week I was helping in the organization of an event, and there were a few japanese presenting their papers. I could talk a bit with them about their work and tell a bit about the city I live. Easily! Hurray!

Mandarin project begins!!

Ok, after French I'm now going for Mandarin.

I think I'll have more success now because I'll manage to do the study from Chinese to Japanese, that's it, I won't abandon Japanese, like I was more or less doing with French.

So for 1 week I watched Taiwanese TV and I'm already getting used to a few sounds. Unlike Japanese, Chinese sounds are really different from Portuguese and I'm finding them quite challenging to get used to.

Well, I grabbed this sentence pack (http://smart.fm/lists/132095) from last.fm and used the anki plugin to withdraw them. I now have a deck with 540 cards with 2 models.

Reading: Chinese sentence -> Japanese translation

Listening: Chinese audio sentence -> Chinese with Japanese translation

Handbook of Bilingualism

This is a book recommendation for those wanting to learn about second language acquisition.
It is not about learning languages it is about how people learn languages.

Check it by yourself and be surprised on how much it tunes in with AJATT and Kaufman's views.

It is really fun how it debunks old research, specially about grammar based learning and the critical period hypothesis.

The first chapter is about learning vocabulary!
One thing that I found really interesting is that it says that each word generally has about 25 meanings and more than that, these meanings evolve with time.

There are 2 chapters that talk about brain function and have pretty pictures of brain imaging comparing Early Second Language learners and late second language learners with poor or great skills. It seems the brain gets less and less active with the improvement in skill in the language.
The book didn't got to this conclusion, but isn't it maybe the vocabulary solidifying?

Btw, the link is here:
http://tinyurl.com/o5tjvb

Final Fantasy XIII news and Famitsu

If you like games you might like to follow a few new sites to be aware of what's going on in the scenario.

This generation, for the XBOX 360 and the playstation 3, unarguably the best games are coming from west, so for most of the games you'll want to read the news in English, as they were written, not a clumsy translation to Japanese.

But there are still many Japanese titles you don't want to miss, one of them might be Final Fantasy XIII. So, welcome to Famitsu:

http://www.famitsu.com/review/title/0000/0000/0001/9553/

Btw, the thing I don't like about it is this:
※詳しくは週刊ファミ通2009年9月10日号（2009年8月27日発売）をチェック！

Does someone know a better source of news?

New, blank anki deck + New anki kicks ass

I just created a new, blank anki deck. I still have my old one somewhere, but it's been some time I don't open it anymore. There still vocabulary I'd like to use anki to learn so I threw that out and created a new one.

Btw, new Anki ROCKS!!!
This new reading generation system + furigana is AWESOME.
5 stars of 5.

Also I read the first volume of Kimi no Todoke. Even if you don't like Shoujo manga (like me) it is very entertaining. I give it 4 stars of 5.

Claymore chapter 94

Wheew, very tense. When will this act come to an end? And how?

The secret to speech

When I find out I'll tell you!

I new reached a stage that even thought pronunciation is super easy, my speech ability is still very weak. But I do I feel it improves a bit everyday, even without virtually no effort. So I just keep doing what I always did.

When I'm closed in my mind I can speak what I want, but when I face a real opportunity I simply can't maintain the pace. I can't come up with words at the required speed. Like an iceberg, the words are there, but very little shows up on the surface. I'm afraid of doing mistakes or I feel ashamed of what I might say.

I feel what I need now is not really output training, it is social interaction.

Claymore chapter 93

Claymore was one manga that I started to read in English and then reread it completely in Japanese. Definitely worth it. Specially these last chapters are getting more and more tense.

Professor Layton for DS

Warning: This post is for you, even if you are not a gamer/anime freak.

Unless you lived under a rock, like me, you probably heard about Professor Layton games for Nintendo DS. I just started it yesterday. I'm in the 7th riddle (very beginning). It is an adventure game that requires you to solve small riddles, unrelated to the story, in order to progress. The game has an inexplicable charisma.
I strongly recommend it. Even if you are not a gamer.