I'm mostly putting these here for my own reference but:
These videos on Spanish phonetics are GREAT, they actually describe what should be happening in your mouth with DIAGRAMS and shit
(They're intended for Castilian Spanish, but they have videos for Latin-American as well)
And jfc as someone with auditory processing issues this shit is a fucking GIFT. YES PLEASE just SHOW ME the sound I'm supposed to be making and explain it to me in detail because I cannot always understand it or differentiate it by just listening!!!
Like this is from the vowels video:
They're pointing out, in the audio, the differences between those sounds, and how to make the one in Spanish!
HAVE SOME USEFUL VIDEOS:
(lol he does admit straight-up that rolled r's are just difficult and are gonna take practice. I've noticed I default to the tapped r a LOT; I can roll/trill my r's but it always sounds weirdly exaggerated, like I'm making fun of Spanish speakers.)
they talk about when to use that hard b/d/g like American English and when to use those softer ones, like there's actually rules; I knew I wasn't imagining it
also I managed to download anki to my macbook and sign up for an account so if/when I get over myself and pay for the iphone app I can have the same decks on both and share the data woooo but yeah I paid for and downloaded the pronunciation/spelling decks from Fluent Forever bc I didn't want to pay a subscription for that app when I know I'm gonna need anki anyway because there's just so much you can do with anki
anyway I need to find decks for minimal pairs but I'm only finding Latin-American ones, hmmmmm
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Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It, Gabriel Wyner (2014)
The ultimate rapid language-learning guide! For those who’ve despaired of ever learning a foreign language, here, finally, is a book that will make the words stick. At thirty years old, Gabriel Wyner speaks six languages fluently. He didn’t learn them in school -- who does? -- rather, he learned them in the past few years, working on his own and practicing on the subway, using simple techniques and free online resources. In Fluent Forever Wyner reveals what he’s discovered.
The greatest challenge to learning a foreign language is the challenge of memory; there are just too many words and too many rules. For every new word we learn, we seem to forget two old ones, and as a result, fluency can seem out of reach. Fluent Forever tackles this challenge head-on. With empathy for the language-challenged and abundant humor, Wyner deconstructs the learning process, revealing how to build a foreign language in your mind from the ground up.
This is brain hacking at its most exciting, taking what we know about neuroscience and linguistics and using it to create the most efficient and enjoyable way to learn a foreign language in the spare minutes of your day.
Review
This book shows concretely how someone can learn vocabulary and basic structures in a new language using the system of flash cards. It gives knowledge of how a brain works and how it retains information, shares many interesting ideas and tips in an easy and light way, and explains in details how to build a deck of flash cards in order to learn new words and new sounds.
As someone who already masters more or less a few languages, I found this approach dizzying and tried applying it to a language I had no grasp on. What was perhaps the trickiest part, surprisingly, and took me a lot of time, was understanding how to build the flashcards so that they worked for me in the new version of the software used (a free open source one, dedicated to flash cards building, Anki). But once I managed Anki, and created the first cards, it worked a wonder to learn words I had no background for, to my great surprise! It even worked amazingly to help me learn pronunciation and to become used to the sounds of a language I didn't speak and had never heard before.
For learning new words, this technique works wonders. For more complex structures, I'd not be so certain.
For myself, after a while, it became really tiresome to build the flashcards, even more so the ones where I was supposed to enter fully-formed sentences in the language I was learning. The hours I spent doing that were many (maybe too many considering the learning progression ? I don't know yet). Another difficulty that showed up was with the amount of words that will pile up at first. But all in all, the work is there and the results can be surprising. For learning vocabulary.
It is clearly not enough as an approach to master a language and I am weary of the ideas that are promoted in the publisher's blurb. The author is in fact very much aware that it's a system that has its limitations, and he warns his readers of that quite well too.
This is again a great way to learn vocabulary and to get to work on specific structures of a language (such as word order, or how to use some prepositions etc) because it's all about repetitive learning. However, I feel like it hits its limit when it comes to mastering actual grammar, or let's say more complex forms. I'll however use the method to keep on learning more complex vocabulary in the languages I'm working on (such as synonyms, unusual verbs etc).
Is it an all-encompassing key to learning languages? nope, sorry there are no shortcuts for that (no matter what a book blurb claims!). You need time and consistent work (no "rapid language-learning guide" bullshit will be the thing ever). But is it a useful system for starting learning a language, or to grow your vocabulary ? I would wager it is !
Favourite reads of the year! I read 25 books this year. I definitely completed my goal of reading more non-fiction. My goal for 2023 is to read more non-English books.
Some of my 2021 to-read list. I took this photo in Dec 2020 and I've already completed 3 books this year. (Not pictured, The Golden Compass, Diary of Anais Nin V. II, and Mexican Gothic.) But, I really want to talk about Fluent Forever. I am about 2 chapters in and I'm genuinely interested in talking to other langblr's who've read it or know/use Wyner's language learning methods. FF also has a heavy psychology emphasis, which is my major. It's sort of got my gears going for a great course concept. A linguistics/psychology course that would be cross-paired with beginner language courses to enhance students' retention. (I forgot what this is called. Two courses, two professors, and two curriculums that are intertwined with the other.) I've been playing with the idea of being a professor already and this only adds fuel to the fire. If anyone out there is reading FF too, let's chat!
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Fluent Forever is offering free access to the beta version of their app when you sign up for a membership (you have to pick a payment plan but it’s my understanding that they don’t charge you until the official app is released in early 2019). They don’t have Russian but there are some other good languages there. This isn’t an official endorsement—I’ve only just downloaded it myself—but I’m excited to try it.
The first barrier to learning any language is in your ears; if you can’t hear something well, you can’t remember it well, and foreign-sounding words are extremely difficult to hear.
As such, we’ll begin the learning process by showing you how to rewire your ears to hear the new sounds of your foreign language.
Not only will this give you better pronunciation from the start, but you’ll find that words are much easier to memorize once they stop sounding so foreign.
Many of us have tried to learn languages by learning translations, and in the process, we’ve discovered that translation is hard to do and even harder to remember. It’s actually much easier to learn a language by skipping translations entirely.
I’ll show you how to speed up your learning and improve your retention by using images instead of translations for your early words, and then using your growing vocabulary to help you learn more complex words and grammar.
SRSs are flash cards on steroids. They supercharge memorization by automatically monitoring your progress, and using that information to design a daily, customized to-do list of new words to learn and old words to review.
This allows you to optimize your daily study time and maximize your retention of everything you’ve ever studied.
If you aren’t enjoying yourself when you’re learning something, you’re not going to remember it as well. One of the problems with many learning plans is that they’re not very entertaining, which makes them ineffective and hard to stick with.
Fluent Forever’s methods are fun, not only because that makes the method more appealing, but because fun is essential to rapid, effective learning. I’ll show you how to skip the grammar drills and drab vocabulary lists, and turn language learning into an engaging process of discovering a new language.
learn more about the Fluent Forever method and the Fluent Forever app
Today we are going to talk to Gabe Wyner from Fluent Forever about his app project.
1. Tell me a little about you.
I’m a 34-year-old author, living in Chicago with my wife and dog. I was born in Los Angeles and grew up as a nerdy kid obsessed with video games and science. I sang musical theater and classical music as a hobby, and in college, I got dual majors in opera and mechanical…
