Tips for learning non Indo-European languages

January 8, 2009 7:09 PM

How do you get a foothold when trying to learn a non indo-european language?

I've been listening to French and Spanish language learning podcasts off and on and I've kind of gradually been learning enough to pick up the gist of conversations or to read articles in Spanish and French (my real goal in learning them), and I decided I'd browse around some Asian languages to see if I could learn anything casually. I'm finding I'm hitting a complete cognitive brick wall trying to pick up ANYTHING from podcasts though. The words just go in one ear and out the other, and I'm not just not retaining anything. Even just the introductory lessons are completely losing me, after multiple listens.

I think the complete lack of cognates is making it hard for me to remember anything, and the fact that words that sound like words I know almost definitely mean nothing like it.

Does anyone have any tips for just getting over the initial hurdle and simply being able to remember the words? Is it just a matter of brute force and memorization?

posted by empath to Writing & Language (14 answers total)

Yep, and human teachers can help too.
posted by JimN2TAW at 7:17 PM on January 8, 2009

It may help to get a sense of what individual words sound like (a website that reads aloud the words - perhaps a translation site) so you can insert some basic words, get a sense for how they sound individually, so they will help break up the gibberish into discrete sound blobs that might be more comprehensible. No links, since I don't know which languages you are looking to learn.
posted by birdsquared at 7:28 PM on January 8, 2009

When I was learning Polish, I found the "imagine a picture that relates the sound of the word to the meaning of the word" very useful. So rozumiem, which sounds like row-zum-ee-em was something to do with a bloke rowing past me with a "zoom", and me understanding him. Or something. Incredibly difficult and tedious to come up with something for every word, but once I used it to remember the word a few times, I didn't need it anymore.
posted by kjs4 at 7:31 PM on January 8, 2009

Response by poster: Mandarin was the most recent one I was looking into.
posted by empath at 7:49 PM on January 8, 2009

Get a textbook that comes with tapes-- oops, revealed my age-- CDs, or one that goes with a podcast so you can read along, aloud. Beginning textbooks often focus lessons around dialogues and vocabulary lists. That's how I learned Japanese and Korean. Plus, brute force and memorization.

If you're near a university, find a speaker of your language and do regular language exchanges-- 45 minutes English for 45 minutes Manchu, or whatever. Or, offer to correct papers a certain number of minutes* in exchange for conversational language lessons. But whatever you do work from textbooks. That structure is so important in the beginning.

*Otherwise, you will get sucked into a world of suck. Correcting English is hard, time-consuming work.

If Japanese is your language, I've got ideas, and a few for Korean. Feel free to me-mail me.
posted by vincele at 7:56 PM on January 8, 2009

Sorry, didn't preview, but my advice holds for Mandarin. Language exchanges and textbooks with audio. Empath, it can be done!
posted by vincele at 7:58 PM on January 8, 2009

Become literate in the language you're trying to learn. The language probably has several distinct sounds which, to your ears, will all sound the same. Learning to read and write those sounds is the first step to learning to tell them apart, which is important if you want to be understood by native speakers.

I've been learning Hindi for a few years (technically Indo-European, but different enough from English that it would be difficult to pick up from passive listening alone). There are at least five sounds which sound a bit like an English 'D', and I would never have learnt to hear the difference if I hadn't learnt to read and write them first.

Do take a class if you can. Learning the basics from a real live human will make it easier to learn independently later on.
posted by [ixia] at 8:37 PM on January 8, 2009

Retention is the hardest part because you need to link a sound with words in English. For most people, this just isn't enough to visualize. Rosetta Stone is expensive, but they try to set up lessons so that you can link sounds with words/phrases and pictures all at once. When I was learning Japanese our text had each character look like something that it sounded like in English. So the character for nu was a bowl of noodles (nu-dulls) with a chop stick in them. Sounds silly, but it's the only way I remember how to draw half of them.

Personally, I'm thoroughly enjoying My Japanese Coach, a game for the Nintendo DS. It does reading, writing, and speaking. (they have My Chinese Coach too)

To learn the basics I would get a workbook and CD/MP3 combo. One that is ridiculously simple with cartoon drawings. Oh and flashcards (either physical or online versions). It's really important to get stuff like basic sentence structure and vocabulary down, because it's so different from Latin based languages. Good Luck!
posted by CoralAmber at 8:55 PM on January 8, 2009

What little Maori I have is built on memorizing words, no more, no less. This works quite well for Maori, where words are not inflected and don't pile up huge accretions of suffixes and prefixes. Once you know words, you can start picking them out, guessing the subject matter, and so on.

Flash cards are good. So is mindlessly chanting word lists to yourself. I also like learning songs, because a catchy tune helps me remember the lyric.

Last week I finally got around to buying a student grammar though, and boy that makes a lot of difference.

There is no royal road to learning, sire.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:31 PM on January 8, 2009

For web based possibilities, one of the things I did in my early days of Chinese learning was listen the the BBC World Service's Mandarin news. The stories would be largely the same as the English broadcast and you would pick up vocabulary through familiarity with the context. Of course, you end up a bit stronger on the vocabulary of negotiating bilateral trade agreements than ordering your lunch, but helpful none the less.
posted by Abiezer at 10:03 PM on January 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

I tried the Japanese version of this book and found it very helpful.

If you're memorizing a vast amount of data, then you'll want a program that takes away the hassle of organizing a huge number of flashcards. Anki is very good.

If you're learning Mandarin, you'll definitely want to get a teacher before you try opening your mouth. Otherwise you could use the wrong tones and say something embarrassing.
posted by I_pity_the_fool at 6:48 AM on January 9, 2009

Sorry, didn't preview, but my advice holds for Mandarin. Language exchanges and textbooks with audio. Empath, it can be done!

And if you don't live near a university, I've heard skype can be pretty good for this.
posted by I_pity_the_fool at 7:19 AM on January 9, 2009

2nding the advice about learning to write the language first. I'm learning Japanese (in a classroom setting), and the first thing we did was learn to write in hiragana (the syllabic writing system). Knowing the range of sounds possible in Japanese, and how to write them, made it much easier to tackle difficult words, because I could just try writing it a few times.

The big challenge in Chinese, to my understanding, is the tonal structure, which is extremely difficult for Westerners to learn initially because there's no really corollary in Indo-European languages (since we use the stress accent). I would hazard a guess that focusing on learning to recognize, distinguish between and reproduce the tonalities is a good starting point, though I will qualify this by saying that I haven't attempted to learn Chinese, and thus would gladly be contradicted by somebody with better working knowledge of the subject.
posted by baphomet at 8:38 AM on January 9, 2009

When I was trying to get a basic grasp of Mandarin, I really like the ChinesePod podcasts. They go through the dialogue step by step, explaining words and tones and sharing anecdotes about certain words or phrases. They're accessible but informative, and I found that having specific words to mutter to myself and then listen for in the dialogue was very helpful.
posted by bassjump at 8:29 PM on January 10, 2009