I intended a few days ago to have one more post before putting these all together, but it is the weekend and there is time.



To whomever has not been following the progress of this post: the following 101 language learning tips are ones I had come up with in 2010 for an app, and after a few years it is time to give them a larger exposure. The tips range from the general to the very specific, and are not assembled in any particular order. Hopefully about a third of these will prove helpful regardless of the language you have chosen to study.











1. Ted.com videos: TED is a conference featuring talks from interesting speakers from all walks of life, with talks ranging from a few minutes to 20 minutes and above. Ted.com has a page



When watching a talk it can be a good idea to first turn off the volume to see how well you can understand it reading the subtitles alone. You will be able to come up with your own preferred method for using the subtitles, but one good method is to first watch the video without volume, then to read the subtitles separately at a slower pace, and finally to watch the video in English with the subtitles again.



One other advantage to these videos is the ability to read the transcript on the right in full even without watching the video. This text can then be used like any other text - copy and paste it, print it out to read at a slower pace, whatever you like. TED is a conference featuring talks from interesting speakers from all walks of life, with talks ranging from a few minutes to 20 minutes and above. Ted.com has a page here called the Open Translation Project where all these talks are translated by volunteers into any language, from major languages such as Spanish and Chinese to even tiny ones like Bislama. Most major languages have at least a few hundred talks translated, and even smaller ones generally have a few dozen.When watching a talk it can be a good idea to first turn off the volume to see how well you can understand it reading the subtitles alone. You will be able to come up with your own preferred method for using the subtitles, but one good method is to first watch the video without volume, then to read the subtitles separately at a slower pace, and finally to watch the video in English with the subtitles again.One other advantage to these videos is the ability to read the transcript on the right in full even without watching the video. This text can then be used like any other text - copy and paste it, print it out to read at a slower pace, whatever you like.

















2. If making a trip abroad to a country with a large number of people fluent in English (Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, etc.) you will need to have a plan ahead of time on how to use the language while you are there, in order to avoid simply falling back on English to communicate all the time. If you are naturally stubborn about using foreign languages while abroad then this will be no problem, but otherwise it may be best to arrange ahead of time a daily session with someone you know where you teach them something in exchange for using their language for an hour or two, in what is known as a language exchange. One other option is to teach what you know using only the target language (if you are good enough to do so), so if you are learning Dutch in the Netherlands and are a history professor for example, you could meet up with someone majoring in history to tutor them for free, on the condition that the tutoring take place in only Dutch and not in English. In this way you would get to practice your Dutch, and the person you are learning Dutch from will receive tutoring for free. Whatever form the exchange takes, be sure to arrange it ahead of time or as soon as possible after arriving.

















3. How similar is the language you are studying to English? If studying a language closely related to English (Dutch, Norwegian, German...) then reading literature in Medieval English in your spare time will also provide some aid. The word eek for example can be seen in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and means also ; this is the same as German auch and Dutch ook . One other example:

Whilom, al olde stories tellen us, There was a duc that highte Theseus;

Highte here means "was named", and is cognate with German heißen , Dutch heten , Norwegian hete , and so on. The large French influence on English also means that you'll be able to find a lot of French words in older English novels that you will not encounter today. This technique will naturally not replace a good textbook or class, but if you are an avid reader anyway you may want to think about adjusting this to the language you are currently studying.

















4. Google Translate Google Translate, while not perfect, is a great way to get the gist of something in another language. If you don't feel like tackling a textbook but still feel like learning something new, find anything in the language you are learning, bring up Google Translate in another window, and simply type it out and watch it turn to more or less correct English. Since Google Translate now translates in real time, you don't even have to hit the translate button. Google Translate, while not perfect, is a great way to get the gist of something in another language. If you don't feel like tackling a textbook but still feel like learning something new, find anything in the language you are learning, bring up Google Translate in another window, and simply type it out and watch it turn to more or less correct English. Since Google Translate now translates in real time, you don't even have to hit the translate button.





Edit 2013: Google Translate now has an option to save words you look up.





















5. Google Translate as a dictionary: looking up new words in a dictionary takes time, and one option when encountering a new sentence with a lot of words you don't know is to put a period in between each of them, which will prompt Google Translate to look at them one at a time instead of translating the full sentences. This is especially good with languages that don't resemble English, especially when the word order is different. Take this example with Finnish:

Onneks mulla oli kuitenkin varasuunnitelma tilanteen pelastamiseksi.

Google Translate gives us the following:

But luckily I had an emergency plan to rescue the situation.

This is correct, but what if you're not sure which word represents which? Just add a few periods here and there. Now it looks like this:

Onneks. mulla oli. kuitenkin. varasuunnitelma. tilanteen. pelastamiseksi.

And now Google Translate gives us the following:

Luckily. I had. However. contingency plan. situation. rescue.

You've just saved yourself a lot of time otherwise spent looking up each word in a dictionary.

















6. Music: music is a great way to learn other languages, but there are a few things to keep in mind. One is that simply listening to music without paying much attention will not help a great deal; you need to spend time looking at and studying the lyrics before listening to a song will do you any good. After all, think of all the English songs people mishear lyrics to - listening to the song over and over again won't do you any good and it's only upon reading the lyrics that you know what is being sung. Because of this you will have to spend as much time reading the lyrics on your own as listening to the song. Since songs are easy to listen to over and over you can make this quite easy - listen to the song once, memorize three new words, listen to it again, memorize a few more words, and continue until you understand it in its entirety and have the song in your head, after which it will repeat over and over for at least the next few hours.

Also be sure to pick music that is fairly easy to understand. Radiohead may be a great band but the singing can be difficult to hear and much of the time the lyrics are too abstract to be of much use to a student. So if possible you don't want to choose the foreign language version of songs with lyrics such as "I'll take a quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide" (from their song No Surprises) that may be fun for a native speaker to interpret but a nighmare for the student who has no idea whether this is some new idiom or simply poetic license by the writers of the song.

YouTube is particularly good for multilingual versions of songs from cartoons and TV shows. Songs from classic Disney cartoons such as The Little Mermaid and Mulan can be found in dozens of languages there, and will often be subtitled and/or translated by the uploader. Even rare languages such as Icelandic are easy to find here.





















7. Are you sure you're learning the right language? Even relatively easy languages take years to master, and be sure that you aren't studying Language X when you know you would rather spend the next five years learning and using Language Y. This is especially pertinent if you are inclined to study one language for practical reasons (larger population, your family or friends or school have recommended you learn it) but the language you would prefer to study is related.

For example, you may feel obliged to study Spanish but would prefer to learn Portuguese or Italian, or you may feel the need to learn Russian but have a lot of friends in Bulgaria and want to learn their language. In this case you're in luck, because the language you truly want to study happens to be very similar to the language you feel obliged to study, so following your heart and studying the smaller language will still bring you much of the way towards knowing the larger language as well. Spanish and Portuguese is an especially good example as the two languages have a lexical similarity of 89%, meaning that most of the time a Spanish word will be present in Portuguese and vice versa, so learning one is to a large extent learning the other as well. Choosing the more 'practical' language may seem to be the right decision at first, but if you suspect that you will end up giving it up before becoming fluent, then maybe it's best to go with one you truly like. The decision is yours to make, but always remember that whatever you choose you will have to stick with it for years in order to become fully fluent.





















8. Do you enjoy reading Wikipedia articles in the language you are studying? Perhaps from time to time you would like to contribute but don't want to annoy the other users with any mistakes you might make. No problem: enclose any edits you make with the following tag and it will be invisible until it is removed:



For example, if you want to write "Calgary is the largest city in the Canadian province of Alberta" in French, you would write it like this to make it invisible at first:





Now you can contribute to another Wikipedia without worrying that you will end up annoying its readers. Editors on the Wikipedia of your choice often keep an eye on the most recent edits and they will notice the edits you make, and if your edit contributes to the overall quality of their Wikipedia they will not mind making the odd correction to what you have written, especially if you have made sure to make it invisible until they have corrected it.





















9. Do you spend a lot of time reading discussions on online forums or sites like Reddit? No sense in spending all your time doing this in English alone. Find a site in the language you are studying and look for the same content on forums there. Do you enjoy watching people debate about philosophy, religion, politics? They do that in other languages too. For one quick example, see or sites like Reddit? No sense in spending all your time doing this in English alone. Find a site in the language you are studying and look for the same content on forums there. Do you enjoy watching people debate about philosophy, religion, politics? They do that in other languages too. For one quick example, see this forum in Norwegian where discussions on all subjects take place - from serious subjects such as politics and world news, to recent TV shows, to people looking for jobs, and more.

In order to quickly follow the discussions it is best to install an add-on or extension that allows you to translate without leaving the page, such as GTranslate for Firefox or Translate this for Google Chrome. Now you can study your language while following the same discussions you enjoy reading (or don't particularly enjoy reading but can't seem to stop for some reason) in English.

















10. Have you changed your language settings online to the language you are studying yet? If you are past the beginning stages (that is, if you are capable of muddling through most of what you read in the target language) there is no reason to keep Gmail, Twitter or anything else you sign into daily in English anymore. Think about how many places you could get a bit more study in every day by just changing your language settings from English.





















11. How standardized is the language you are planning to learn? Some languages like Icelandic are spoken with almost no variation throughout the country, whereas others like Arabic are extremely different depending on where it is spoken. This is not simply due to Arabic being spoken by more people though as many small languages vary by region too - Frisian with a population of just 500,000 in a small area has many dialects, as does Slovenian.

Norwegian is relatively easy for an English speaker to learn, but it has two official standards (Bokmål and Nynorsk) and a lot of regional variation. When planning a trip or long-term stay abroad, be sure that the area you are going to speaks the language you are studying on the streets as well, and not just on national TV.





















12. Sometimes, paradoxically, learning a lesser-known language can be easier than a large one. Why? Because learning a large language like German, Spanish or Chinese does not usually stand out, but learning a language spoken by just a few million (or even fewer) people will almost certainly guarantee you friends in that language that will be delighted to see you taking the time to learn it and will almost always want to help you progress. As a student of a much larger language it is difficult to stand out, but if you are learning a smaller language you will almost certainly make friends quickly by people from the country who are delighted that you are studying their language, and will do what they can to help you find places to use it.





















13. Three great sites for free language learning content for rare languages online are: the online are: the Defence Language Institute's Global Language Online Support System FSI Language Courses , and Eric.ed.gov . The first has a large collection of text and audio in rare and strategic languages, the second has pdf scans of language courses created by the US government for foreign service personnel, and the third has textbooks on a great number of languages, in particular those made for the Peace Corps. For rare and/or small languages like Armenian, Latvian, Uzbek and so on, these sites often prove to be invaluable.





Edit 2013: The FSI language course has gone down recently, and the content can now be found here





















14. When studying another language abroad where local friends of yours happen to speak English fairly well, try to meet up with at least two of them instead of one on one. When meeting one on one the tendency might be to fall back on English if their English is better than your command of their language, but if you meet up with two or three friends then there will be less of a tendency to do this as they will feel more comfortable talking with each other in their mother tongue, and you will have fun trying to follow along.

On the other hand, having too many friends at one time may make it difficult to follow along, because the more there are the easier it is for the discussion to switch to topics that pertain to them and not to you - inside jokes, old stories from childhood or school, and so on. Also, simply having more people will mean that you will have to speak up to be heard by the whole group and having to shout in a foreign language is not nearly as fun as intimate conversation with a smaller group. Meeting up with two to four people (in addition to yourself) is probably ideal.





















15. When talking in another language, be sure to take an active part in the flow of the conversation. Talking in another language is difficult enough, but if the subject turns to local politics or inside jokes that you could never hope to understand at this stage you may end up completely lost. You don't need to change the subject entirely, but a bit of careful steering away from these and towards subjects you know will help to keep up.

If you are in Germany for example and the subject of taxes comes up, everyone may start talking about vague subjects like filling out tax forms and the state budget. Here you might want to steer the conversation towards what Germans think of taxes in general compared to your country, and when that happens (especially if you are from the US) they will likely start asking you why Americans are so opposed to higher taxes compared to Europeans, and now you will be talking about a subject you know something about, while sufficiently general that you won't need a great deal of specialized vocabulary to participate.

16. When learning vocabulary , finding a frequency list showing the most common words used in the language you are studying can be very helpful. Generally one only needs to know a few hundred words in order to be able to understand 50% of the text in a language, and knowing a few thousand is enough to understand almost anything you see.





Word frequency lists can be found here on Wiktionary for a number of languages, but if you can't find one for your language you can create a quick one of your own using a site like wordle.net , where you can copy and paste a large amount of text which is then turned into a word cloud with the most frequent words in the largest font.





Depending the language you are studying, creating your own frequency list in this way can actually be better than using one from Wiktionary. Why? Because word frequency lists will usually have the words reduced to their uninflected (dictionary) forms. Children registers as child , fought registers as fight , and so on. When analyzing a language this is fine, but when learning a language you want to make sure you understand inflected forms as well, as that is what you will be encountering when using it. That is, knowing the word fight doesn't do you much good if you don't know that it is fought in the past tense, and knowing the word mouse isn't enough to say you understand the word if you think that the plural must be mouses instead of mice . This is particularly important for heavily inflected languages like Lithuanian, and agglutinative languages like Turkish.





















17. When learning vocabulary make sure you keep in mind how well you know words you have learned. There are certain levels of 'knowing' a word, and to truly know a word one must be able to use it almost without thinking.

Before this stage though there are a number of levels, such as: not knowing a word at all,

knowing it enough that you would probably understand it in a sentence,

knowing it well enough that you could recall it after a few seconds' thought,

knowing it quite well due to frequent use but still unsure of how to correctly use it, dânestan (دانستن), to know, may not be easy to remember at first, but if you look up the related words dânesh (دانش), knowledge, and dâneshgâh (دانشگاه), university (lit. place of knowledge), then all these words together may help make a stronger impression than just trying to memorize a lone verb. and so on. If a new word doesn't seem to 'stick' in your mind, you may want to spend some time checking to see if there are related words that may help foster a stronger connection in your mind. For example, the Persian word(دانستن), to know, may not be easy to remember at first, but if you look up the related words(دانش), knowledge, and(دانشگاه), university (lit. place of knowledge), then all these words together may help make a stronger impression than just trying to memorize a lone verb.





















18. How much money do you have? Keep your goals realistic when choosing a language to learn as most languages will eventually require a number of months or years abroad to become fluent (unless you live in a very ethnically diverse city), and if you don't have a great deal of money you will want to make this time abroad last as long as possible. In addition, if money is limited you also want to make sure that you have reached a certain level in a language before going abroad. The reason why is simple: the basics of a language can be learned anywhere, and you do not necessarily need to be in another country to do this. After a while though you will reach a level where outright exposure to the language and the culture in which it is spoken becomes a necessity, and this is when spending time abroad is most valuable. So if your funds are limited, try to do as much as you can back home, and only go abroad when you have reached a point where you are now fairly proficient but simply need more practice.





















19. If you are studying something else unrelated to languages (law, math, history, etc.) try to see how much of this can be done in your target language instead. If you happen to be studying Spanish and astronomy for example, then why not simply merge them together? Find a few astronomy textbooks in Spanish and simply use them, and now you won't have to divide your time between the two subjects anymore. The larger the language you are studying the easier this will be to do, but even when studying a small language see what you can find, and if you can combine another subject with the language at least some of the time then so much the better. YouTube is an especially good place to find documentaries in other languages. French and German for example are particularly good when studying Ancient Egypt (archaeology) and content on this subject is nearly endless online.





















20. Learning two languages at the same time: whether learning two or more languages at the same time is a good idea or not is a subject of much debate. If you intend to learn more than one language, you may eventually reach a point in the first language you are studying where you have become somewhat proficient, after which you may begin to wonder whether it wouldn't be a good idea to begin studying the second, while spending some time every day 'maintaining' the first. Whether this is possible, of course, will mostly depend on the amount of free time you have. However, there are a few things to keep in mind when considering studying more than one language at a time:

- How similar is the second language to the first one you are studying? If the two happen to be closely related (German and Dutch, Italian and Spanish, Turkish and Uzbek) then it is probably not worth it to embark on a second, as a deeper understanding of the first will do just about as much for your understanding of the second as beginning to study the second outright.

- How many dialects are there in the language you are studying? Some languages have regional variants that resemble other languages, and if they are well known by the population as a whole then to be considered fluent you will have to have a familiarity with them as well. For example, if you have been studying Norwegian bokmål (the main standard for the Norwegian language) and are tempted to learn Icelandic, you might want to think of familiarizing yourself with Nynorsk, the other official standard of the language which, being used more on the west coast of the country, resembles Icelandic a bit more. Some examples:

"I come from Norway” in bokmål is "Jeg kommer fra Norge” , in Nynorsk it's "Eg kjem frå Noreg” , and in Icelandic "Ég kem frá Noregi” .

"What's his name?” in bokmål is "Hva heter han?” , in Nynorsk it's "Kva heiter han?” , and in Icelandic "Hvað heitir hann?” (Note: hv- in Icelandic is pronounced kv-, whereas the h in hva in bokmål is silent).

"Rainbows have many colours” in bokmål is "Regnbuen har mange farger” , in Nynorsk it's "Regnbogen har mange leter/fargar” , and in Icelandic "Regnboginn hefur marga liti” .

- Can you satiate your urge to learn a second language before you have finished the first by reading about the second language and/or its culture in the first? If you want to study Persian after German but don't feel that your German is up to snuff yet, maybe you could find a German translation of the Persian national epic shâhname (شاهنامه) or the poet Rumi for example.

In the end though, whether to study another language at the same time will be your decision and will depend more on personal factors such as drive and free time than anything else. It is certainly not impossible though. Learning and using two or more languages at the same time is very common in some parts of the world so it certainly can be done – in Luxembourg for example, people speak Luxembourgish (similar to German) on the street, use French and German in more official venues, and usually learn English as a foreign language on top of that, all from a young age.





















21. Are you an avid gamer? There is a good chance that many of the games you have have already been translated into other languages, and if so then you can play them for hours at a time without any guilt whatsoever that you are neglecting your studies. Some free strategy games like There is a good chance that many of the games you have have already been translated into other languages, and if so then you can play them for hours at a time without any guilt whatsoever that you are neglecting your studies. Some free strategy games like Freecol have been translated into dozens and dozens of languages, and online one can even find classic paper and dice gaming books like Lone Wolf translated into Spanish and Italian





















22. Since 2010, YouTube videos have become much more useful for language students with the addition of Google Translate and the ability to create off-the-cuff captions using an automatic service that creates them instantaneously from the video's audio stream. The accuracy of these captions will depend on audio quality and clarity of the speaker, so if the video you are watching is relatively clear and easy to follow you can then instantly create these captions, and then translate them into the language you are studying. The result should not be taken too seriously as it will contain more than its share of errors, but as a means to jog your memory and help you remember vocabulary it can be quite useful. Even better is if the creater of the video has uploaded English captions, in which case the automatic translation will be that much more accurate. Videos on accounts such as the White House will usually have English (and sometimes Spanish) captions added soon after a video is uploaded - for language students with the addition of Google Translate and the ability to create off-the-cuff captions using an automatic service that creates them instantaneously from the video's audio stream. The accuracy of these captions will depend on audio quality and clarity of the speaker, so if the video you are watching is relatively clear and easy to follow you can then instantly create these captions, and then translate them into the language you are studying. The result should not be taken too seriously as it will contain more than its share of errors, but as a means to jog your memory and help you remember vocabulary it can be quite useful. Even better is if the creater of the video has uploaded English captions, in which case the automatic translation will be that much more accurate. Videos on accounts such as the White House will usually have English (and sometimes Spanish) captions added soon after a video is uploaded - here is one example.





















23. Don't put too much faith into claims that one language is harder to learn than another, and that as a result one should choose the 'easier' language instead. The reason for this is simple: although difficulty certainly does vary, just about every language has its easy and difficult points, and simple interest and desire to learn a language can overcome any difficulty. Icelandic for example is said to be the most difficult Scandinavian language to learn due to its archaic and rather complex grammar, but on the other hand keep it mind that it has the least regional variation (almost none) of all the Scandinavian languages. In other words, while Norwegian is fairly easy to learn, going to another city you may find people speaking it in quite a different way from the Norwegian you have seen in books and on TV, while Icelandic hardly varies at all over the whole country.

Turkish is also said to be difficult to learn due to having a grammar nearly entirely different from English, but then again it is pronounced nearly as written, has but a single irregular verb, and no grammatical gender to worry about. Estonian is said to be difficult to learn due to its 14 cases, but what is often overlooked is that these 14 cases are for the most part just one case (the genitive) plus a simple unchanging suffix, and Estonian as well has no grammatical gender so the only two forms one has to consider when forming cases are the singular and plural.





















24. The type of language you should learn will depend a lot on your personality and the way you want to use it. Think about whether you want to know a language primarily for conversation, reading, studying another subject, and so on. Some languages like French, Dutch and German are fairly easy to passively understand, but using them properly can be tricky at times. These languages are thus worth learning even if you only want to use them to read news and don't have any plans to travel abroad. Other languages like Persian and Armenian are very simple and regular and thus easy to use after one has studied the grammar, but initial passive comprehension is close to nil.

This means that if you are able to be patient during the first stage while you are getting used to a new alphabet and somewhat unfamiliar grammar, you will be rewarded later on with a language that turns out to be surprisingly easy to use properly. Knowing what kind of student you are will help you to pick a language that most suits your study habits, as well as the use you want to get out of it.





















25. Constructed auxiliary languages are an interesting subject, and are brought up from time to time. Is it worth it to learn one of them? In terms of number of speakers the answer is of course no, but considering the short time it takes to learn them due to their nearly complete lack of irregularities it may be worth it.

The largest auxiliary language in the world by far is Esperanto, with speakers ranging from the tens of thousands to perhaps two million. The other two auxiliary languages of notable size are Ido and Interlingua; the former is a reformed version of Esperanto that was created in 1907, while Interlingua was created in 1951 and attempts to look as natural as possible, ending up resembling something like a cross between French, Spanish and Italian. The Esperanto community worldwide is an interesting diaspora-like subculture that is large enough that users can be found in any large city, and Ido and Interlingua while much smaller still have annual meetings that bring a few dozen people together over the space of a few days. Other notable auxiliary languages with a few dozen speakers include Occidental, Novial, and the new Lingua Franca Nova.

So why learn them? Simple: their simplicity combined with their propaedeutic benefits. Propaedeutic here means the benefit they give in studying further languages. In other words, their form resembles other European languages but without any of the irregularity. Imagine for example one has decided to learn the language Occidental, which like Interlingua resembles French and Italian at first sight. Here are some of the basics of the language.

To love: amar . "I love” - "yo ama” , "you love” - "tu ama” , and so on. Past tense: add - t , no exceptions. "I loved” - "yo ama t ” , "you loved” - "tu ama t ” . Future tense: va plus infinitive. "I will love” - "yo va ama r ” , "you will love” - "tu va ama r ” . Definite article (the) is li . The indefinite article (a) is un .

To learn the same concepts in French, you would have to learn to conjugate the verb aimer ( aime , aimes , aime , aimons ...) in different ways for the past, present and future tense, and in order to love something you would have to know whether it is masculine ( un/le ) or feminine ( une/la ). And this is only for the verb aimer : while in a language like Occidental verbs conjugate in the same way, in French you will have to know whether a verb is irregular, and memorize these conjugations along with the rest in order to properly use it. Interestingly though, in the end the two languages end up resembling each other:

French: Tu aimes l'école . (You love the school) Occidental: Tu ama li scola . (You love the school)

But switch a few words around:

French: Nous aimons le chocolat . (We love chocolate) Occidental: Noi ama chocolate . (We love chocolate)

and in French you are now dealing with a different conjugation ( aimons , not aimes ) and gender (now masculine, not feminine). The two languages continue to resemble each other but the knowledge required to correctly use the auxiliary language is but a fraction of the other.

The best way to think of auxiliary languages is as something akin to Linux distributions or keyboard layouts, or even the metric system (before it became popular). A certain Linux distribution may be fantastic and easy to use, but the smaller user base is its downside. In the same way the Dvorak keyboard may be faster than the Qwerty layout that most people use, but you will have to take extra pains to use it such as setting up your system to allow switching to Dvorak, carrying around a USB with a program that does the same when using another computer, etc. In the same way it is easy to pick up an auxiliary language and you will find a great deal of peripheral benefit in understanding other languages, but there will be few people to use it with.













26. Listening to the radio: having a 24-hour news channel in the language you are studying playing in the background is a good thing. However, be sure to spend some time actively listening as well as simply letting it carry on while doing other things.

The state of mind required to actively listen to a radio broadcast is actually quite simple to attain: imagine for a moment that you have suddenly been transported to the front of a group of people and are now responsible for interpreting the news that is being played into English. How well can you explain what is being said? Now instead of simply letting the language flow by you are in a focused state of mind where understanding as much as possible is of crucial importance; after all, your imaginary audience is depending on you.

Luckily you are not actually standing in front of a crowd of people and expected to do this, but imagining this to be the case is the best way to get into an active state of mind. Listen closely for keywords that will clue you in on the general subject, as once you latch on to this it will be that much easier. Is there a war going on? Is somebody on strike? Was a cat saved from a tree? Do your utmost to figure out the general subject first of all, concentrating on getting this first before worrying about this or that word that you may not have understood. If you can keep this state of mind up for a good ten to thirty minutes you will notice how intensive it is, as even after a short time of 'interpreting' (to your imaginary audience) you may begin to feel tired, and this is a good sign that you have been flexing your linguistic muscles.





















27. How old are you? Take a moment to think about what things you saw and heard while growing up. If you are 30 years old now, that means that you were a child in the 1980s, a teenager in the 1990s, and an adult after that. What did people your age in your target language watch as cartoons in the 1980s then, what music did they listen to, what shows did they watch in the 1990s when they were teenagers? People your age in other countries, with whom you are probably most likely to become friends, will share a collective knowledge about these periods of time.

Because everybody your age will have also lived through these periods of time you will also have to familiarize yourself with it to some extent. Imagine for example learning English but never knowing about Star Wars, Star Trek, Seinfeld, the Beatles, Nintendo, Sega, Madonna, all the things that (whether you liked them or not) you learned about growing up either directly or indirectly. Learning English from textbooks alone will not give access to this shared 'pop culture database' (for lack of a better term), and other languages have this as well. So when learning another language be sure to find out not only what people your age are interested in, but what they know about from their shared experience growing up.





















28. Proficiency tests are a great way to focus the mind on a goal if you are studying a language on your own. Many large languages have standardized tests administered a number of times per year and given by the organizations that promote the language (Alliance Française for French, Goethe-Institut for German, and so on), and if you find your studies to be somewhat vague and lacking in focus then you may want to think about simply up and registering for one of these tests and then trying your best to pass it. Passing one of these tests also makes it easy to describe your proficiency in a language to others, especially potential employers. Of course, only do this if you think it will help. If you simply do not enjoy taking such tests then you should not feel the need to do so as this may end up turning the language you love into just another academic subject.





















29. Mnemonic cues can sometimes help when learning new vocabulary. Some words more or less have their own mnemonic cues built in, such as the Lithuanian word for boa constrictor, smauglys (think of the dragon Smaug from the book The Hobbit). Others you may have to be creative with in order to come up with a cue that you can remember – perhaps you could remember the Lithuanian word mokyklos (school) if you grew up watching Fraggle Rock and thought that Mokey was the smartest Fraggle ( Mokey must have gone to the mokyklos a lot...). The simple act of coming up with a mnemonic cue is in itself a good thing, as it means you are giving a word the attention it deserves and are creating a nice kind of familiarity in your mind, making it a part of the neural net you already have set up.

However, before a word can be said to be perfectly learned you must be able to recall it almost instantaneously, and so the mnemonic cue should eventually become unnecessary. A mnemonic cue is mostly useful for a word that you know you will end up forgetting soon after seeing it, and need some sort of trick to retain.









30. If you have a website or a blog, or discuss on forums a lot, you may want to try to find a way to work the language you are studying into that. Perhaps you study Japanese and are interested in technology. If so then you are in luck, as using it you will be able to find stories on new technological developments in Japan (high-speed rail, robotics, etc.) that haven't been published in English yet. Translating this into English will not only be a good way to practice Japanese, but it will also provide a service for those that are also interested in such developments but don't know Japanese. In this way you can make your language skills useful from an early stage, and further motivate yourself to continue studying.





Learning Persian would also help you find information not found in English on the latest developments in Afghanistan and its neighbors (Iran and Tajikistan), and so on, so this would be a good language to choose and a method to study it with if you are interested in geopolitical subjects. In short, try to find information in the language you are studying that isn't available in English. If such information is only available in the language you are studying then you will have no choice but to use it to learn whatever it is you want to know.























31. Good pronunciation when learning a language is a must, but the pronunciation found in textbooks is not always the only way to speak a language. Most languages have a variety of pronunciations in different regions that are considered correct, and while some of them are not recommended to imitate (certain regions are often looked down upon and one will come across as uneducated when imitating their speech patterns, unfair and unsubstantiated as this may be) many others may be easier for you to pronounce and may feel more natural. Think for example of the non-rhotic r used in Boston (" that was a wicked hahd test ") or how British English is pronounced versus standard American English - all of these are correct English, and speakers from one linguistic background may find one more comfortable than the other. The same is true with other languages too.

Consider the French r as an example. In textbook French this is pronounced as what is known as a voiced uvular fricative, which is a sound made near the back of the throat. However, certain varieties of French pronounce it instead as a flap or a tap, which is the same as the t in the way Americans and Canadians say water or butter . If the textbook French r just doesn't seem to agree with you, you can pronounce the r in this way and there will be no problem. On the other hand, simply pronouncing it as an English r (as in war , or roar ) will never sound good, so there is a limit to how much one can deviate from a language's standard pronunciation and still sound acceptable.

Keep in mind that while extremely thick accents are painful to hear, a certain amount of accent can actually be a good thing. Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't be the same without his accent, and apparently he even takes pains to maintain it even after all this time. A good teacher will be able to tell you which parts of your pronunciation are perfect, which are accented but sound fine, and which parts definitely need to change. Parts of your pronunciation that need to change (anything that just sounds awkward and not the least bit cool) you will need to work especially hard on, while parts that simply give you a nice accent in your target language you can leave alone, and indeed speaking in this way may become part of your charm.









32. Languages such as Chinese and Vietnamese where a change in tone can result in a word meaning something completely different require a good amount of attention to master. The easiest way to learn tones is to find examples of words with differering tones not on their own, but inside a sentence. English speakers in particular have a tendency to raise their voice at the end of a sentence when asking a question, but in a tonal language this may result in a completely different meaning so this habit needs to be broken. The best way to do this then is to find many examples of: 1) declarative sentences (not questions) that end with a raised tone, and 2) interrogative sentences (questions) that do not end with a raised tone. In other words, examples of sentences with tones that differ from your speech habits in English. Find as many of these as possible and repeat them over and over again, until your mind begins to subconsciously understand the large difference in how tone works in a tonal language compared to English.

Also, do not overly stress out about tones either. While the wrong tone can result in a completely different meaning and learning to properly to use tones is crucial, context is still very important and nobody in Chinese will think that you 'bigged' a telephone call (我大电话了 wǒ dà diànhuà le) when you said that you 'made' one (我打电话了, wǒ dǎ diànhuà le) even if you mistakenly used a falling tone for the second word.









33. Have you decorated your room or your entire house with vocabulary yet? A common technique suggested when learning a language is to put post-it notes everywhere or use some other method to surround yourself with the language you are learning. You would put a note on the door with the word for door, a note on the window with the word for window, and so on.You should also give some thought to how much more information you can squeeze into one item though. For example, instead of just learning the name of an object you should also try to add a verb or two, so that you can properly use the word as well and won't just learn it in isolation. Doors for example can be opened , shut , slammed , knocked on , a tv can be turned on and turned off , with a chair you sit down and stand up , and so on.

If you are learning a language like German where there are three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) but generally no way to tell which word is which, you could use three colors to write the name of an object. Blue crayon for masculine, pink for feminine, grey for neuter, for example. In languages with irregular plurals (once again German), indicating that as well would be a good idea. Tasse (cup) then would be written with pink crayon, and with ( Tassen ) in parenthesis to show the plural.









34. One type of language not often studied but worth looking at are creoles. Creoles are languages created by the mixing of a number of other languages over time (usually at least three) in a setting where peoples of different linguistic backgrounds begin living together and find a way to create a common language. The development of a creole begins as a jargon (a set of words used to communicate between peoples), then later on becomes a pidgin (a fuller language with its own rules that develops from the jargon), and finally becomes 'creolized' after it acquires its first native speakers. In other words, a creole is a language that has been broken down and then built up again. Creoles usually have a vocabulary that strongly resembles its source languages, but the grammar will be quite different.

One example of a creole is the language known as Papiamentu, spoken in Aruba and Curacao just off the coast of South America. Papiamentu is mainly Portuguese and Spanish, but with a large Dutch influence as well as words from other local languages, and it ends up giving the first impression of a kind of easy Spanish or Portuguese. For example:

"Kon ta bai?" is "How are you?" In Portuguese this is "Como vai?" and in Spanish it is "¿Cómo te va?" " Ainda no" is "Not yet", which in Portuguese is "Ainda não" .

The English creoles of Tok Pisin and Bislama are spoken in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu (near New Zealand) and serve as a unifying language in these countries where there are more than 700 (!) and 200 local languages, respectively. Looking at part of the national anthem of Vanuatu it is easy to pick out the English vocabulary in spite of the different spelling and usage: God i givim ples ia long yumi , -- God has given this place to us (you me)

, -- God has given this place to us (you me) Yumi glat tumas long hem , -- We are very glad (glad too much) in it

, -- We are very glad (glad too much) in it Yumi strong mo yumi fri long hem , -- We are strong and we are free in it

, -- We are strong and we are free in it Yumi brata evriwan! -- We are brothers, everyone The most spoken creoles, however, are French creoles. Haitian is the creole with the largest number of speakers (approximately 12 million), and nations such as Mauritius use a French creole in daily life but hardly at all in writing. French creoles also look like a type of French without complicated grammar, as these examples from Haitian creole show:

Li sé frè mwen - He is my brother (French Il est mon frère ) Nou sé zanmi - We are friends (fr: Nous sommes amis ) Mwen sé on doktè - I am a doctor (fr: Je suis un docteur )

Papua New Guinea even has a German creole known as Unserdeutsch. Unfortunately, it is hardly spoken at all anymore.









35. Two of the best places online to obtain long samples of recordings in languages are in languages are Librivox , and Spoken Wikipedia . As both of these are created by volunteers the amount available in each language will depend entirely on the motivation of those recording the files, but for most major languages you will be able to find hours and hours of content on each. The Dutch and German Wikipedias have a particularly large amount of recorded content, and Librivox has recordings in not only most languages but also some extremely rare or extinct ones, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Old Church Slavonic, and Old English. If you can't find any content in your language on Librivox you may be able to ask around on the forum to see if anyone knows of somewhere that you can.

The only thing to be careful of when using Librivox is the age of the document used to make a recording, as having all content in the public domain means that there is a large amount of material that is fairly old, or at least quite formal. Different languages change over time at different rates so a 100-year-old book in one language may look almost the same as a language's modern form, while in another language a document of the same age may not look the same at all. Consider for example the readability of Sherlock Holmes; in comparison, Turkish at the time was written with an entirely different alphabet (the Perso-Arabic alphabet, compared to the Latin alphabet now) and the vocabulary was quite different as well.

Edit 2013: See Lingq.com as well.









36. The economic value of a language (if this is your primary goal) does not necessarily depend on simply the number of speakers, or even the total GDP of all the speakers put together. Certain languages are also sought after for their strategic value. For example, the CIA offers hiring bonuses of up to $35,000 for those fluent in so-called 'mission critical' languages, namely Arabic, Chinese, Dari (Persian as spoken in Afghanistan), Korean, Pashtu, Persian, Russian, Urdu, Indonesian, and Turkish. The reason for this is simple: not only are speakers of these languages needed, but it is extremely difficult to carry out the needed background checks for most speakers of these languages before hiring - one needs to provide proof of residence for the past five years plus a great number of references before being hired for classified positions, and long periods of time overseas without sufficient proof of activity will almost always disqualify a candidate. The value in these languages does not extend merely to intelligence gathering though. Other examples abound of agencies that require speakers of rare languages, such as overseas aid agencies or media outlets.









37. While it is difficult to find content for smaller languages online, in person when studying abroad they can actually end up being easier to learn, due to the zeal by which they are often promoted. Languages such as Welsh, Irish, and Basque in particular that faced extinction but are beginning to thrive again are easy to find support from, as local governments are very eager to promote them and will do their utmost to help out someone who truly intends to learn them to fluency. So if you are studying a language with a few hundred thousand to a few million speakers (Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Albanian, Luxembourgish...) be certain to announce it on a blog of yours or somewhere else online in order to receive as much feedback as possible, and if you are learning a language such as Welsh or Basque you should contact the local government to see what sort of aid they can provide, including low-cost homestays where you can be completely immersed and won't have to worry about being spoken to in English. Learning one of these languages to fluency is also often a quick route to local celebrity as you will certainly be interviewed time and time again after having invested the years it takes to learn it, in order to discuss why you chose to go with a language like Welsh or Basque instead of German, Chinese or another language more often studied.









38. How helpful are movies for learning a language? While better than nothing, they are unfortunately not nearly as helpful as other methods such as listening to the radio or watching more general shows such as soap operas or comedies. Repetition is extremely important when learning a language, and the predictability one finds with radio news or a 30-minute program is much more helpful than a single movie, where plot twists, noisy special effects and other such intricacies are much more common. Movies are also far more likely to have long periods of time with little or dialogue than a TV or radio program. A movie can be somewhat helpful, however, if you are able to find the original subtitles (not a translation). Otherwise, watching four 30-minute episodes in a row is a much more effective use of two hours of your free time.











39. Though only containing single words and short phrases, forvo.com is now the best place online to find audio samples in a large number of languages. As contributors can help out by uploading just one word at a time participation is easy, and thanks to this the site now contains samples in hundreds of languages. This makes it one of the most valuable resources on the internet for rare languages, sich as Micmac, Nauru, Ossetian, Abkhazian, and many more.

Edit 2013: rhinospike.com is another good site.









40. Languages such as Japanese and Korean that use intricate levels of speech to indicate politeness or lack of it may seem intimidating at first, but there is an easy way to overcome this. Most pro-drop languages (languages where speakers don't have to use pronouns to indicate who is doing an action) show who is doing an action by the ending of a verb, whereas Japanese and Korean are often pro-drop without this. Instead of a verb ending though to show the doer of an action, one often simply knows who is doing what by context. For example the Japanese onaka suita? (お腹すいた?) or Korean baegopa? (배 고파?) mean "are you hungry?" but there is no pronoun there - both of them literally just mean "stomach empty?". However, depending on the level of politeness you can tell who is being talked about and who is talking to whom, so if you think about these levels of politeness as providers of extra information rather than simply cultural straitjackets that must be followed, you should have an easier time figuring out how they work. The two examples given here of "are you hungry?" show that the question is being posed between people that are friends or similar in age.

One good example of extra information provided is in the sentence 뭐 하시는 분인데? This means "what does that person do?" but this mode of speech is used by two speakers of about the same age or who are close to each other (friends or family members), talking about a person they respect. It is the form of speech you would use for example when asking a friend about what his grandfather does for a living. On the other hand, "뭐 하는 사람인데요?" which also means the same thing ("what does that person do?") is being used by two people who may not be so close (co-workers, people who have just met) about a person that doesn't necessarily require an extra amount of respect. It is what you would use to a person you have just met when asking about their friend that just left.

Also note that languages like these will usually have a standard form of politeness that, while not always perfectly correct, is polite enough that you will be able to rely on it as a failsafe in most situations. Students of a language are given a fair amount of leeway when it comes to politeness, as long as they do not always use the most casual and intimate forms of speech all the time.









41. Some languages are well-represented on the internet, while others have a much smaller representation in comparison with their real population. The site while others have a much smaller representation in comparison with their real population. The site internetworldstats.com provides a great deal of information on this, and may help you in ascertaining the future potential of a language you are considering.

Languages such as Finnish and Norwegian for example have a relatively large presence on the internet compared to their population, but have almost reached full saturation - as of 2010 a full 95% of the population of Norway has access to the internet and 85% in Finland. Iceland is the highest at almost 98%. Languages such as these have reached almost their full online population, aside from growth in the language itself.

On the other end of the scale are found languages with large populations but almost no online representation. The most extreme example of this is certainly Bengali, spoken in eastern India and Bangladesh. Surprisingly one of the most spoken languages in the world (usually ranked at around sixth to eighth), under 1% of the population in Bangladesh has access to the internet and India is still at 7% nationwide.

French is another interesting case. While study of French has gone down in Europe over recent years, the language itself is actually growing very rapidly. Due to the large population increase in sub-Saharan Africa the French-speaking population has grown by 20 million over the past three years (200 million in 2007 to 220 million in 2010), and thanks to this growth there are expected to be another 500 million French speakers in the world by 2050. Rumors of the demise of French are certainly exaggerated.









42. International broadcasters are often the best place to learn languages, and this includes not only the target language but other languages at the same time. For example, the German international broadcaster are often the best place to learn languages, and this includes not only the target language but other languages at the same time. For example, the German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle has an amazing selection of German courses, as well as daily news selections with text, recorded both at regular and slow speed. However, these language courses are also available for speakers of other languages besides English, and using them it is possible to practice other languages at the same time. If you are fairly good at French but would like more practice, for example, then you can use the French edition of its online courses to learn German. The same is the case with the French broadcaster Radio France International , where French courses are available for English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Persian, and many other speakers.











43. Many languages that go under the same name can actually be quite different, while other languages called by different names may be quite similar, or nearly identical. "Chinese" is an example of the former. Cantonese, Wu and others are said to be types of Chinese but (especially when spoken) hardly resemble Mandarin Chinese at all. Different types of spoken Arabic will also differ from each other just as much as different Romance languages (French, Italian, Portuguese...) differ from each other, but are all said to be Arabic due to the large cultural and religious cohesion between Arabic-speaking countries. On the other hand, Serbian and Croatian are nearly the same, as are Hindi and Urdu (though these two use different scripts), and Bulgarian and Macedonian. For political reasons they are given different names but by learning one, one is able to understand the other as well.

So when choosing a language be sure that you are receiving unfiltered information about what learning one will mean for you as an individual, in order to avoid either choosing a language that is said to be universally spoken somewhere but is not in practice, or overlooking a language that may seem small but is actually spoken in nearly the same way in a lot of other countries as well.









44. If you are partially proficient in a language but are having a hard time finding enough information on its grammar and syntax, consider doing a reverse lookup by searching for information in that language for students studying English. Korean is an example of a language that is notorious for not promoting itself as well as it could (even now, many in Korea are surprised that anyone would want to learn Korean in spite of its large population, economy and cultural influence), but content in Korean for English students is everywhere and a quick search will turn up a nearly endless amount of content in Korean explaining how English grammar works. Using content of this nature you should be able to learn nearly as much about Korean grammar as Korean students learn about English grammar from it. And in the same way, reading an explanation in French of how English word order works when using adjectives, you can learn how they work in French as well.

For example, on the French Wikibooks one finds the following: "A small blue German car" is "une petite voiture bleue allemande" (lit. a small car blue German), and "a young French player" is "un jeune joueur français" (lit. a young player French). Reading about how a French textbook explains word order in English adjectives will help you just as much in learning how word order for adjectives works in French.

45. If you are able to spend some time abroad,

runned

fighted

blowed up

mouses

childs

46. The large French influence on English over time has caused it to diverge from the original Germanic dialect continuum. Before the Norman conquest of England, English, Icelandic and other Germanic languages were for the most part mutually intelligible; this is not the case anymore with English. However, in spite of this the large majority of words used in everyday speech in English are Germanic as these have a much higher frequency of use.





What this means to the student is this: everyday speech (discussions on chat forums for example) in Germanic languages such as German, Dutch and Norwegian will soon be easy to understand, whereas Romance languages such as French are very easy to follow along when one picks up a newspaper, but daily conversation is an entirely different matter. Some examples:





German: Der Mann, der auf dem Wasser ging . (The man who walked on water). In French this is " L'homme qui a marché sur l'eau ". The French when spoken is even less comprehensible: " homme " is cognate with human and homo sapiens , but when spoken l'homme simply sounds something like "lome", and l'eau for water sounds like "lo", nothing close to the word water. The German " der Mann ", however, looks and sounds almost exactly like the English "the man", and Wasser is nearly as immediately comprehensible. On the other hand, in a newspaper terms such as "referendum on independence" look almost exactly the same in French ( référendum d'indépendence ), but in German it is a nearly unrecognizable " Volksabstimmung zur Unabhängigkeit ".





Thus, when learning a Romance language it is best to pay particular attention to daily conversation where English cognates lack, whereas when learning Germanic languages you will have to spend more time learning unfamiliar technical terms. Luckily most technical terms in Germanic languages will still be cognate with English, just in a less direct manner. The word independence for example ( Unabhängigkeit in German, onafhanklikheid in Dutch) can be thought of as "un-off-hangey-hood", or in otherwords the state of not having to "hang on" or depend on another. Many Germanic words are quite easy to remember in this way after a bit of investigation when their common origin with English is made clear. One other good example is the Norwegian word snikskytter (sniper), which looks quite strange in the beginning but actually simply means " sneakshooter ".





















47. When comparing two or more languages, there is a difference between classifying a language according to its linguistic character, and what this will actually mean to the student in practice. Comparisons between languages are usually made in order to properly classify them in their respective linguistic families, but have little to do with the point of view of the student.

For example, consider the fact that German, Bulgarian and Romanian have three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) while French, Spanish and Latvian have two (masculine and feminine). It is tempting to think that vocabulary in those with two genders should be easier to remember and use properly than those with three, but in fact these languages use grammatical gender quite differently. In German the gender of a word is almost entirely arbitrary, and so represents an extra piece of information that must be learned with each new word. However, in Bulgarian and Romanian the gender of a noun almost always matches up with its ending, and so the student only needs to keep an eye out for exceptions to the rule. The same is true with the other three languages with two genders. While the gender of a French noun can be tricky to determine at times, Spanish and Latvian are almost always regular in the same way that Bulgarian is.

One other example of linguistic classification not being all that helpful for the prospective student is the phenomenon of shared vocabulary and some overall characteristics. Turkish and Persian are unrelated languages, in the sense that Turkish is Altaic and Persian is Indo-European; they also use different scripts. However, the two have had so much shared history over time that learning one is very helpful in learning the other, in spite of the fact that they do not share a common origin. Much of this comes from a common Arabic influence, but also much borrowing back and forth as well.





















48. Which modern languages provide the most insight into the English language itself? As English began as a language mutually comprehensible with other Germanic languages but first began to drift apart after the Norman invasion and rule over the following centuries, the answer is easy: Icelandic and French provide the most insight into English.

Icelandic has preserved an archaic character that other Germanic languages have lost over the years (including the letters þ and ð formerly used in written English, representing the th in "think" and "though" respectively) while French (or more precisely, Norman) has changed the entire character of the language from one that strongly resembled Icelandic into the one it is today. Latin has also had an unmistakable influence on English, but considering the difficulty in learning it to fluency nowadays as a language without any native speakers, French would be a more practical choice.

























49. If you are really ambitious about learning multiple languages and intend to spend some time abroad but haven't yet decided on an ideal location, be sure to look beyond national borders and major countries, as many parts of the world will offer the opportunity to learn much more than one language.

The tiny country of Andorra for example located between France and Spain has Catalan as its official language, but given the number of tourists from the two larger countries on both sides there are many languages spoken there.

While Moldova speaks Romanian as its official language, there is a small autonomous region within the country known as Gagauzia where a language known as Gagauz is spoken, a language that is nearly the same as Turkish.

Luxembourg has three official languages (Luxembourgish, French, German), and is located close to the Netherlands as well.

Estonia has but a single national language, but one hour by ferry to the north is Helsinki (the capital of Finland), St. Petersburg is close to the east (and Estonia itself still has a large number of Russian speakers), the Latvian capital of Riga is just a few hours to the south, and Stockholm just across the sea to the west.

While the island of Curacao off the coast of South America speaks Papiamentu (a Portuguese/Spanish creole with some Dutch influence), Dutch is also an official language there and is often used in education and the media. This makes it the closest place to learn Dutch for anyone from the United States, especially those in the south.

These are but a few of the many examples that abound, so if you are ambitious and intend to go abroad be sure to do a lot of looking into which location would suit you best, especially if you don't like the idea of having to move to an entirely new place (leaving behind the friends you have made) every time you embark on a new language.





















50. While small languages do not have a great deal of content and the student must make do with whatever can be found, if you are learning a large language you have a much greater selection to choose from and should take advantage of this. If you haven't done so yet you should take the time to look for things you truly enjoy in the language you are learning if it is sufficiently large. As a student of German, for example, you do not have to stay within the confines of textbooks if what you really are interested in is architecture or astronomy, as both of these can be and are learned through German alone. In the same way, with a large language you can take the time to search for music you truly like (as opposed to simple top-40 or folk songs), authors that really speak to you, anything that turns the language you are learning into something real and not just another subject. If you find yourself less and less enthused by the thought of studying but are learning a language with a large number of speakers, it may be time to take a day or two, or even a week, to just search for things you truly like in the language you are learning.





















51. There are various ways to study throughout the day, and you can use different techniques depending on the setting you are in and the time you have. The usual way to study is to find a free hour or two (or 30 minutes if you are busy), sit down, remove other distractions, break out the books and simply keep at it. Outside this, however, you have a lot of time during the day that you could be using that you may not be making the best use of. If you study before work on the bus or subway, be sure to jot a few notes down on a piece of paper (new vocabulary for example) that you want to focus on. You can then put this in your pocket and look at from time to time during the day, even if you are at work. It is much easier to slyly peek at a scrap of paper in your pocket from time to time when in the office than to pull out a book that says something like Learn German in Six Months in large font. A scrap of paper is even better than using an electronic device to do the same thing for the same reason, as constantly looking and poking at your phone is much more noticeable than a tiny bit of paper.

If it is late at night and you feel too tired to tackle a textbook lesson, you can still read something in the language you are studying without worrying about how much you understand - simply read what you can read, and don't worry about what you don't understand. Pretend that you do (imagine that this is your native language and this is the language you read in when you want to relax), and simply rely on the words you already know to try to follow the content. Even this amount of exposure will prove to be helpful if kept up. Consider other interesting methods to expose yourself to your language as much as possible - you could send yourself a time-delayed SMS earlier in the day that you will receive later at night, or some other time during the day when you least expect it.





















52. A number of virtual flash card freeware programs have been developed over the past years, and if you enjoy learning vocabulary using this method then be sure to look around for one that most suits you. One program known as over the past years, and if you enjoy learning vocabulary using this method then be sure to look around for one that most suits you. One program known as Anki (the Japanese word for remember, 暗記) uses an interesting method whereby the user does not simply mark words as known and not known; instead, words that you guess correctly will still appear over time, but less and less frequently. This method is quite effective in that often a student will "learn" a word and retain it for a while, but then over the next week it will be mysteriously forgotten due to not using it again. Every student has had this experience, where he or she has aced a test but a few months later has forgotten nearly everything due to moving on to different units and never applying the knowledge from the former test again. But by testing the student on a word that has already been learned (but very possibly almost forgotten) a few days later, one's memory is thereby jogged and the word becomes easier to remember over time. Many other programs use some clever methods like this to make memorization more effective, so be sure to compare and find one that works best for you.





Edit 2013: Readlang.com is a new site that is somewhat similar to Anki.





















53. How does the language you are learning deal with foreign terminology? Some languages have a tendency to take in words from other languages without changing them, aside from altering the pronunciation a bit when necessary. Japanese is a good example of this, gleefully using English words such as Space Shuttle (supe-su shattoru, スペースシャトル ), guide (gaido, ガイド ), energy (enerugi-, エネルギー ), and so on. While occasionally helpful, sometimes knowing whether to use a local word or a loanword in a certain situation can be confusing.

On the other hand, languages such as Icelandic will almost always adapt foreign words by adopting their meaning, but through Icelandic terminology. This means that words such as "grammar" and "anthropology" will become málfræði and mannfræði , which seem unrecognizable at first but given that the word mál means language, mann means man and - fræði means "study of" (same as - ology ), the meaning is not very hard to guess. In fact, this often will end up teaching you about the origin of the word itself: the word þrælahald (slavery) is cognate with the English word thrall , which nowadays is used in the sense of "to enthrall" but also refers to a type of slave in Scandinavian society during the Viking Age.

German also does this to a certain extent, whereby words such as carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen are known as Kohlstoff (coal stuff), Wasserstoff (water stuff), and Stickstoff (choking stuff, because it sticks in the throat and makes one choke: verstikken = choke in Dutch). So while the vocabulary may not be exactly the same as that used in English, the interesting internal derivation nevertheless makes it very easy to remember, and indeed may teach you more about the meanings of these words that are usually used without any thought to their origin or true meaning.





















54. Finding a good dictionary is now as much about finding a good dictionary online as one in paper format. While online dictionaries are often the easiest to use, a good paper dictionary is still worthwhile for its convenience (especially if it is small), and the ability to browse. Electronic dictionaries are usually based on searching for a desired word, but paper dictionaries have the advantage of having related terms often listed next to the one you are looking for, thus making it easier to jump from word to word and learn more than just the word you originally intended to find.

Because online dictionaries are almost always better when simply searching for the meaning of a word, paper dictionaries are now most useful when they provide context and examples. The best paper dictionary to buy nowadays is thus usually a lightweight student dictionary, with perhaps fewer entries than a massive dictionary of old, but very user-friendly and with example after example of how to use each word as opposed to just providing the English equivalent and little else.





















55. While contributing to a Wikipedia in another language can be a difficult task, Wikisource may be worth considering as well if you like the idea of contributing to a language but don't feel comfortable writing your own content yet. Wikisource is an online collection of copyright-free texts, and for most languages this means a large number of texts ranging from the development of the printing press to around the early 20th century. A well-organized Wikisource will often have communal projects that one can take part in, which are books that have been scanned and uploaded but not yet typed out. Even if you are not fluent in a language it is not too hard to type out a scanned image, and as created pages are checked by other users before they are finally confirmed, you do not need to worry about the odd typo.

Wikisource is often a great resource for free books even if you don't contribute (as is Project Gutenberg ). On Wikisource one can find translations in other languages of Sherlock Holmes, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Plato, Moby Dick, and just about any copyright-free classic.





















56. If you live in a large city and live on your own (or are planning to), there is a good chance that you may be able to find a roommate that speaks the language you are studying and is in your country to study English. While it is true that politeness dictates that you should speak English with people that have made the effort to come all the way to the US/Canada/etc. to study it, it is also true that many students go overseas to learn English but end up never studying it outside of school due to having too many friends that speak their own language. This is often the case with students from Japan, Korea and Taiwan in cities such as Vancouver and Sydney, where it is far too easy to simply make friends with non-English speakers and only meet them after class. Thus, people in this situation often seek out an English-speaking roommate in order to avoid using their own language too much, and your motives in looking for a roommate that speaks the language you are studying will actually be very welcome.





















57. Not sure whether what you wrote is correct? Using quotation marks when doing a Google search can often tell you whether you're wrong or not. Let's pretend for example that you want to write "I want to go to the movies" in French, and aren't sure off the top of your head whether the word cinéma is masculine, or feminine. If it is masculine then the sentence would be "je veux aller au cinéma" , but if feminine then it would be "je veux aller à la cinéma" . So which is correct? You don't need to ask someone from France to find the answer to this, just put quotes around them and see how many results you get.

"Je veux aller au cinéma" gives 39,500 results. "Je veux aller à la cinéma" gives... one result.

Obviously the first is correct.

This method will not work with lengthy sentences, but even when writing a long sentence you can check it bit by bit by dividing it up and using the the same method.





















58. When choosing books or other content in a language you are learning, be sure to check for those made specifically for children or young adults. Japanese is a good example of this, as while an adult needs to know the 1945 joyo kanji (Chinese characters) in order to be considered literate, children can still read books with kanji in them that they haven't learned yet, as the pronunciation is indicated above in small characters known as furigana. This makes comic books for young children to young adults particularly useful for learning Japanese, as instead of having to look up individual characters (which requires counting strokes, looking up radicals, and other time-consuming methods), since the pronunciation has already been provided you can look up the word in alphabetical order instead, and you will be able to type it out instantly as well.

Note that this doesn't necessarily mean you have to find child ish content, just content that has been made easy for children and youth to understand. A good example of a comic book series is the Japanese BASARA, which has furigana over each character, but is about a dystopian post-apocalyptic Japan that has been reduced to a feudal civilization with medieval technology, and is not the least bit childish or boring.

The same applies to other languages in different ways as well. Perhaps your Russian is not yet good enough to tackle Dostoevsky, but if that is your favorite author then the next best thing is to find an abridged or simplified version written for elementary students, and likely with pictures as well which will help you keep track of what is going on.

59. Most people when they begin studying a language intend to learn it to fluency,

60. Reading books that you have already read before in English, or know about indirectly, is often advisable over lesser-known literature or poetry in the language you are learning if you are not yet fluent. Because you are already working at understanding the language you are studying, it does not help to add an extra layer of cultural vagueness on top of it. Works with a lot of conversation and repetition are especially advisable, and a great example of this is Plato. Unlike most other works of philosophy the works of Plato are essentially just Socrates debating with his friends and acquaintances in a very informal manner, and the logical structure (the Socratic Method) present in the dialogues makes it very easy to follow. Some sentences in the dialogues are even but a single word in length. Here is one example from a translation in French that shows how easy Plato can be to understand:

Socrates: "Qu’en dis-tu ? Cela ne te semble-t-il pas vrai?" (What do you say? Doesn't this seem true to you?)

(What do you say? Doesn't this seem true to you?) Criton: "Fort vrai." (Very true.)

(Very true.) Socrates: "A ce compte ne faut‑il pas estimer les bonnes opinions, et mépriser les mauvaises?" (To this account should we not highly esteem good opinions, and despise the bad ones?)

(To this account should we not highly esteem good opinions, and despise the bad ones?) Criton: "Certainement." (Certainly.)

(Certainly.) Socrates: "Les bonnes opinions ne sont‑ce pas celles des sages, et les mauvaises celles des fous?" (Aren't good opinions those of wise people, and bad opinions those of fools?)

(Aren't good opinions those of wise people, and bad opinions those of fools?) Criton: "Qui en doute?" (Who would doubt?)

61. One good rule of thumb when getting used to the way another language is pronounced (especially when you've never learned another language before) is this: if you don't sound awkward to yourself at first, you're going to sound awkward to speakers of the language. The proper French pronunciation of the word croissant may sound pompous when talking in English, but in French this is the only way to properly say it.





On the other hand, be sure that you are not overly exerting yourself. People tend to slur their speech or soften words here and there in their own language too, and you don't want to be the only one constantly striving for a perfect textbook pronunciation. Remember that every language is the most comfortable language in the world to speak for those that grew up speaking it as a mother tongue, so if you find yourself constantly exerting yourself to pronounce everyday words you may be trying too hard.





















62. When choosing to spend time abroad, longer is almost always better. This may seem obvious, but far too many people cut their overseas experiences short due to one personal reason or another (assuming they will be able to reach fluency through keeping up their studies back home), but as long as these personal reasons aren't absolutely critical it is better to stay abroad for as long as it takes to become fluent. The internet (and real life) is full of accounts of people that had gone abroad, stayed for a while but then returned early for some reason or another, but then found upon returning home that they wished they had spent more time abroad instead of cutting things short and coming back so early. Reverse culture shock is also quite common, where upon returning home things aren't quite as fun as you remembered them to be, and you begin to actually find yourself missing the other country you were living in and may regret leaving it.

















63. Vocabulary in languages that have grammatical gender (words that are masculine or feminine, as well as neuter) can be difficult to remember if the gender is mostly arbitrarily assigned (as in Danish or German) as opposed to mostly easily identifiable by the ending (as in Spanish or Latvian). There are some methods you can use to deal with this.

With Scandinavian languages where the definite article (the word "the") is written after the word, consider writing down words you learn with the definite article attached. For example, the word for house in Danish is hus , and as a neuter gender noun "a house" is "et hus" , while "the house" is "hus et " . When writing down this word, then, write it down not as "hus" but as "huset" ; remember it that way. The word "areal" (area) is the same gender as hus so you would write it down as areal et , while with common gender nouns ( en -nouns) you would write such words as ambassade (embassy) and konvention (convention) as ambassad en (the embassy) and konvention en (the convention) on any vocabulary lists, flash cards etc. you make.

Other methods for remembering grammatical gender include marking up a document with color (even crayon if you wish), or simply finding example after example of the word in use. The world for world in German (die Welt) is feminine, so you could go to a page such as its Wiktionary entry and then find examples online of the word being used in as many declensions as possible.

Simply thinking about the word and why it happens to have the gender it has can also be helpful. Consider for example that in German the moon is masculine ( der Mond ) while the sun is feminine ( die Sonne ), and since this is completely the opposite of the case in English it is easy to remember these words in tandem. Water ( das Wasser ) is neutral because water is good for everybody and holds no bias...even if there is no seeming logic behind the assignment of grammatical gender, you can pretend that there is, make it up for yourself and use this to remember a word.





















64. When learning languages with fairly complex grammar (German, Russian, Lithuanian, etc.), printing out samples of writing and marking them up with pencil can be a good technique. There is no uniform technique for doing this as each language is different, but you could for example mark the dative case ending with an arrow underneath, the accusative with an arrow pointing down, the genitive with a connecting sign or underscore, and so on. The Lithuanian "my name" is mano vardas , and -o is the ending that indicates the genitive. It would then look like this:

man o vardas

The locative could be shown with parenthesis, so Lietuva (Lithuania) which becomes Lietuvoje (in Lithuania) would become:

Lietuv(oje)

Other possible signs are a Mars sign for masculine nouns and Venus for feminine, a tiny spear to mark the past tense but a planet for the future tense, and anything you can come up with. Since each language differs it is impossible to come up with a single system to do this, but since this is meant to help you learn a language as an individual you should come up with your own system. Don't worry about marking up parts of the language that you have already learned well and have no problem using (this would be a waste of time), just use this to concentrate on parts of the language that you are having difficulty solidifying inside your mind, or are particularly irregular.





















65. When learning a language with a different alphabet, getting used to reading this new alphabet as quickly as possible will be your first and most important task. Luckily this will not be a difficult job, simply a repetitive one: the best way to familiarize yourself with another alphabet will be to simply read pages and pages and pages (and pages and pages) of text in the language, without worrying much at all about the meaning. Also be sure to alternate this with following along with recordings of texts by native speakers as much as possible.

Your ultimate goal will be the ability to recognize words at a moment's notice in the way you do in English. This ability is what gives one the ability to read sentences such as this in spite of it being jumbled up:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Now, it is not entirely true that a word can be jumbled up in any which way and still be readable if only the first and last letters are in the right place (turning "aoccdrnig to rscheearch" to "anodriccg to rcrseeah" actually does make it unreadable), but the point still stands that native speakers by and large do not read words one letter at a time but rather their overall appearance, and this is the ability that you will want to foster as soon as possible early on.

Even while not studying, you could familiarize yourself with the alphabet you are working on by plugging anything you read in English into a transliteration applet, and continue until you have become almost 'fluent' in reading this other form of English - English in Cyrillic, Armenian, Greek, Georgian, or any other letters.





















66. If learning Japanese or Chinese, do not hesitate to plunge straight into the writing (kanji / hanzi) as soon as possible, as there is no way around this - they are an essential part of the language. There is a great deal of disinformation about Chinese characters, however: they are not letters in the same way that other languages use them and it is not quite accurate to say that Japanese people must learn over 2000 'letters' to be fluent while other languages get by with just a few dozen. Each Chinese character is actually a word, or a part of a word, and is more like learning a word root than a letter. Take for example the English word internationalize. This is composed of the following:

inter- (between) nation (country) -al (turns it into an adjective) -ize (to make, turns it into a verb)

In Chinese, the word internationalize is composed in a similar way, 国际化 - country -- between -- make / to make something become. The first character is then used in similar constructions such as 国内 (local/national, from country + inside), 国外 (foreign/abroad, from country + outside), and an almost unlimited number of other examples. A good character dictionary will show a sufficiently large number of compound words that you can make with it, which will make it that much easier to remember.

One other point to keep in mind when learning Chinese characters is that an extremely large number of them are simply composed of two radicals, where (in the most common type of character formation) the one on the left indicates the meaning and the one on the right the pronunciation. The Japanese characters 紹 招 沼 照 紹 (and many more) all have the onyomi (imitated Chinese pronunciation) shou , while all the characters 海 浴 沐 沢 all have something to do with water due to the water radical on the left. While there are many exceptions, or meanings that aren't always obvious at first (the character for rest, 休 , is a man next to a tree which may be easy to remember when pointed out but not quite obvious at first), it is often possible to guess at the meaning or pronunciation of characters that you haven't even learned yet.

Learning characters by frequency is also a better idea than learning them according to the levels set for students in the country. Chinese characters at the lowest levels are often chosen for their simple form in order for children to be able to write them, but may not be commonly used and will not serve you well in the beginning. An example of this is the character 貝 in Japanese which means shell - a simple character, it is learned early on...but is not very frequently seen. On the other hand, the character 議 (consult, discuss, meeting) while more complex is one of the most frequently used characters in Japanese. While it looks intimidating at first, it is not difficult to remember if you magnify and break it down into parts, which it resembles exactly except for the vertical stroke in the second character which does not pass all the way through in the compound character:

議 --> 言 + 羊 + 我

Indeed, in the beginning one or two complex characters may be enough for a full day's study as you will actually be learning five or more separate characters if you look up the meaning of the component parts as well.

























67. In languages that have irregular stress, like those with tones, proper stress is important but not nearly as important as context and simple common sense. Lithuanian is one example of a language with variable stress, and one example often given in the beginning is that the word yra when stressed on the second syllable means "is" or "are" (as in "they are" ), while when stressed on the first syllable means "it decays" or "they decay" . True, but will saying "Mano vardas yra Johnas" (my name is John) cause people to think that you are saying "My name decays , John" if you stress the wrong syllable? Not likely.

In the same way, saying "I am a photo-grapher" in English instead of "ph'tawgrapher" will not confuse people into thinking that you have a strange job that somehow involves "graphing photos", whatever that means. So while stress is important and learning proper stress is essential to become fluent, do not be afraid to pronounce words just because you aren't absolutely sure where the correct stress falls. At worst you will be corrected.





















68. Don't be discouraged by people that claim that their language is somehow harder to learn than others. This seems to be a common occurrence on online forums, where claims are made by people that their language is difficult or impossible to learn due to a variety of reasons, such as:

- the presence of a large number of dialects - weird orthography - strict grammar - loose grammar - some flimsy cultural reason ("our culture is difficult for foreigners to understand") - alphabet

and just about any other reason one could think of. First of all, keep in mind that many of these reasons can be found in English as well - English has British/American/Australian/ South African/Nigerian/Indian and dozens of other types of English plus dialects within each of these countries, and any language that pronounces through and queue , though and mow , tough and huff in the same way can be said to have a pretty weird orthography as well...and yet hundreds of millions have learned English.

In fact, instead of being discouraged you should be eager to prove statements such as these wrong. If Chinese is difficult then why do over a billion people speak it? If Russian is difficult then why does it maintain a strong presence in Central Asia and other countries where it is learned as a second language? No, the only true barrier to learning a language is motivation.





















69. If you have studied one language for a while and are tempted to begin learning another closely-related language, keep in mind that there is little benefit in doing so and is not advisable unless you have a concrete reason to switch (plans to move to that country, you truly like Language B more than Language A, etc.). Many languages are mutually intelligible, either entirely or partially, and if you have not yet taken advantage of all there is to learn in a first language it will still be easiest to learn about the second language you now want to study by remaining with the first and learning it in greater depth. If, for example, you have been learning Norwegian for a while but have become attracted to the idea of learning Swedish due to its larger population and opportunities to use it, unless you are planning a trip to Sweden anytime soon it would still be easiest to stay with Norwegian and become good at it, as once you have become fluent in Norwegian learning Swedish will be little more than a tweaking of the Norwegian you already know, as opposed to a foreign language.

Use common sense here though, of course. If you began with Faroese (population approximately 70,000) and love it but simply aren't having any luck finding content in the language, then by all means switch to something larger yet related (Icelandic, or Norwegian Nynorsk).





















70. When studying abroad or meeting speakers of a language you are studying for the first time, be sure that you are not lulled into a false sense of confidence about your abilities due to the compliments you will almost certainly receive for your effort. Given the low number of English speakers per capita that study other languages, people from some countries will tend to compliment English speakers for just about anything - basic greetings, being able to read a different alphabet, simple verb conjugation, just about anything. Asian countries (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, etc.) tend to do this in particular, along with countries with small populations. While nice, it is best to think of these compliments as compliments on your effort and not necessarily a serious evaluation of your abilities. You will know yourself when you are approaching fluency as you find yourself becoming more and more comfortable in the language you are using. If you can read the newspaper without a dictionary, laugh at comedy shows on TV, get your news from that language alone, and often trick people on the phone into thinking you are a native speaker, then you will know that you are nearly there.





















71. If you don't have the money at the moment for a few months abroad, then a plan involving as much immersion as you can create for yourself in your hometown may be necessary. For fairly large languages (French, Spanish) it is often not too hard to find immersion trips where participants go to a location somewhere for a week or so, agreeing ahead of time to use only the language they are studying and nothing else, and these programs are just as good as spending the same length of time abroad. In fact, they sometimes prove to be more effective given that each participant will be interested in using the language they are studying as much as possible, whereas spending an actual week abroad you may encounter a large number of people tha