i, indeed, had to learn english grammar in order to learn spanish. When they taught us french as kids in school, it was just an exercise in memorization and I had ZERO conception that the various verb tenses actually mapped onto something in english!
This book (English Grammar for Students of Spanish) was useful to me. I assume there's ones for other target languages as well
no, i think its almost universal that you can listen better than you can speak. To speak, you sort of need to be able to express a full thought (even if it has mistakes in it), whereas to listen you generally only really need to get the gist of it.
I think the parent comment was really just about finding it difficult to hear/distinguish words when spoken at a native speed. In which case, sure, you might find it easier to stammer out a few words. But once you get even a basic level of the language, listening is easier.
I learned Spanish just by being immersed and not really worrying about anything.
I mostly just focused on real, practical vocab. And the verb conjugation came with time.
I ignored verb conjugations at first - eg "He eat food."
Then learned present tense and used tricks to speak past and future tense "Tomorrow he eats food" (but you don't even need present tense for that!)
Then learned the simpler of the two ways to speak in the future - it's equivalent to "I am going to __" rather than "I will __" (in Spanish each verb needs conjugation when saying I will, but you use infinitive when saying going to.
Likewise I picked one of the past tenses (one refers to specific point in time, other is just "in the past"). Doesn't matter, in practical usage.
The rest - progressive, imperative, etc all comes with time. You don't really "need" them though. I still don't know the subjunctive tenses (which are sort of hypothetical, feeling etc) and effectively communicate with people about literally anything.
Most important of all, you just have to be humble, get rid of your pride/shame, and be willing and eager to make mistakes. I've spoken with thousands of native speakers and never had a bad experience due to lack of proficiency, even when I knew nothing. This is what most learners of language (or anything) lack, and they therefore are too afraid to ever actually practice. They need a psychologist more than a language teacher.
for sure. along with just gestures etc... Communicating an idea is generally not all that difficult - you definitely dont need anything even remotely resembling proficiency.
His successor is https://languagetransfer.org, which is just a labour of love by a genius polyglot and language teacher.
So much so, in fact, that the owners of the Michel Thomas IP tried to sue him for stealing the methodology. The EFF, back when they actually did anything, shredded them.
I _loved_ Language Transfer when learning Greek. I haven't used it in many years, but at the time remember that I went from just being able to say "Hi" and "How are you" and "Good" to speaking full sentences with my boyfriend at the time in one day. And when visiting Greece later that year I could get by with strangers in everyday interactions easily. It was a mind-blowing learning experience, as someone who is not highly gifted in languages, and I donated to the LT creator.
Now I am learning Swedish. It has been taking me _way_ too long and unfortunately LT doesn't have a Swedish course. Looking at one of these documentaries about Michel Thomas it does indeed look like exactly that kind of approach! And I see he has a Swedish course. I'm excited to give it a try!
I've been following Surrealdb for a while as it has huge potential Looking forward to checking out v3 to see if it adequately resolves previous performance issues.
One of the effects of communicating this way is that people who are not operating in good faith will tend to quickly out themselves, and often getting them to do that is enough.
I was reading up on head-carrying the other day. Here's some fantastic articles on the topic, and especially about the use of "tumplines" (strap on top of head with ropes that go around the thing being carried)
I started training with one and a 33lb bundle of firewood the other day, and my back and neck haven't felt this good in a long time. I'm going to continue increasing weight, and might also try carrying things directly on top of my head without the tumpline.
This book (English Grammar for Students of Spanish) was useful to me. I assume there's ones for other target languages as well
https://archive.org/details/englishgrammarfo0000spin_q0j9_05...
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