Heh. One of her methods for learning a new language sounded very familiar.
> Even she was bored with the fabricated dialogues of coursebooks, so her favourite method was to obtain an original novel in a language completely unknown to her, whose topic she personally found interesting (a detective story, a love story, or even a technical description would do), and that was how she deciphered, unravelled the basics of the language: the essence of the grammar and the most important words. She didn't let herself be set back by rare or complicated expressions: she skipped them, saying: what is important will sooner or later emerge again and will explain itself if necessary.
Certainly sounds like my experience reading some code. Moreover, the more familiar you are with the language itself, the more transparent different dialects become. (Makes me wonder if she could understand Scots)
As well— the growing ability to read and generally understand some code in a language unfamiliar. IE, for a C expert, D or JavaScript is probably intelligible enough to understand what the program is intended to accomplish, even if there are parts of the code or syntax that are less intelligible. I'm sure that's been written about enough by now.
It's interesting you draw this parallel; I've pondered the same for a while now. After programming for several years, I wonder how I would fare trying to pick up a second spoken language using similar tactics to learning a programming language.
I've wondered that as well but approach the subject with much more apprehension. With programming languages I just get it set up and blow things up until I get something to work, and carry on. Largely out of impatience and moxy. No fear! Then again I don't just hop into writing memory allocators. Similarly I suppose her first experience with a language isn't to attempt to translate at the UN. It's also more fun that way.
It sounds like she had a similar attitude with written languages.
I’m in the middle of this process right now, actually. My programming background has helped a lot with the written language— using dictionaries and grammar references to write sentences is very similar to writing code in a new language by referring to its manual. The transfer to speaking and listening is much less pronounced, as my brain hasn’t fully realized that the spoken and written languages are the same.
Reading is always easier than listening because you can control the rate while reading. With a live conversation partner, you cannot do that yet, until we have accurate, real-time subtitling, perhaps with AR.
The hack is to find video material that has exact or near exact subtitles in your target language. By using a short, repeatable video, you will be able to associate sounds with the words, not the other way around. Since spoken language is sounds, you have to start with the sounds. It can be easy to get frustrated as it is a process of repeated listening. For that reason, choose something you like.
> Even she was bored with the fabricated dialogues of coursebooks, so her favourite method was to obtain an original novel in a language completely unknown to her, whose topic she personally found interesting (a detective story, a love story, or even a technical description would do), and that was how she deciphered, unravelled the basics of the language: the essence of the grammar and the most important words. She didn't let herself be set back by rare or complicated expressions: she skipped them, saying: what is important will sooner or later emerge again and will explain itself if necessary.
Certainly sounds like my experience reading some code. Moreover, the more familiar you are with the language itself, the more transparent different dialects become. (Makes me wonder if she could understand Scots)
As well— the growing ability to read and generally understand some code in a language unfamiliar. IE, for a C expert, D or JavaScript is probably intelligible enough to understand what the program is intended to accomplish, even if there are parts of the code or syntax that are less intelligible. I'm sure that's been written about enough by now.
edit: grammar