Learning a language is a dream of many people, whether it’s for school, or to connect to the cultures of your ancestors, and I get why anyone would love to! I’ve been learning German, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Te Reo Maori, and I was taught a few words in Tagalog by some friends.
Yo amor espanol, aber ich lerne Deusch en schule, ko Te Reo Maori te reo o toku whenua, e hiahia ana ahau ki te hono atu ki tera, wǒ zhèngzài xuéxí pǔtōnghuà, yīnwèi wǒ zuì hǎo de péngyǒu zhī yī láizì zhōngguó, ér tā zhèngzài nǔlì xuéxí yīngyǔ, at halos wala akong alam na tagalog.
All jokes aside, I have some tips for learning langauages. I have been researching learning languages for ages, because my goal is to become fluent in five languages before I retire, and to travel to one country where each language is the main language, my goals being German, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic. I also want to learn Te Reo Maori, but that’s not part of my five langauge goal. So here are some tips for learning langauges.
For this one I can’t even take my own advice, I’m learning 3 languages on Duolingo, German, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, but I have a friend teaching me Chinese too, and a German teacher. But I will say it can be annoying to mix up words when you’re learning a language, not when someone is speaking the language to you, but when you are writing a translation or thinking a translation then you may mix the words up. For example, wo, which could mean Me, in Mandarin Chinese, or Where, in German. So just learn on langauge at a time!
Hypnopedia is learning a language by playing stories, podcasts, or songs in that language while you sleep. To do that, you need to have a basic vocabulary in that language, but studies have shown it can help train your brain to think in that language rather than translating it into your mother tounge.
If you have been learning a language completly by yourself, and you are fluent, but you’ve never spoken with a native speaker, it may mean your pronounciation, tense, or you may be putting unnecessary stress on certain words. It’s so much easier to learn a language if you can communicate with someone, a person not an app, that can correct you, and help you practice.
It has been proven that total emmersion is the most effective way to learn a language, which is when you move to a country where they speak the language you are learning. I’ve done some research around it, and it’s pretty simple science. Basically, your mother tounge or natural language that you speak the most, is your survival language. But when you go to a country where the main langauge isn’t your survival language, your brain is soaking up as much information as possible, and after a certain amount of time, it can swich your survival langauge to a learned langauge, but this can take months if not years.
Good luck learning your language! I hope these tips were helpful to you!