by John Maxwell

Created on: September 12, 2009

Learning another language is a great way to broaden your horizons. Traveling to foreign countries is always fun, and it's always nice to be able to read a classic book in the language it was originally written in. There are three things you need to focus on when learning a new language: vocabulary, structure, and colloquial usage.

Vocabulary is the raw material that languages are made up of. It's probably the biggest obstacle to learning a new language due to the sheer amount of memorization involved in mastering it. In addition to a pronunciation and meaning, words often have ancillary data such as gender, nonstandard pluralizations, unusual spellings, and irregular conjugations that must also must be memorized. To memorize words as efficiently as possible, I recommend using open-source software like Mnemosyne or Anki which uses scientifically proven techniques to ensure you learn a word with the fewest repetitions possible.

To supplement this memorization approach, I recommend reading things written in a language and listening to people speaking the language. This will give you a feel for the connotation of it's words, which can be difficult to describe explicitly. (For example, how do people decide whether to use "small" or "little"?) But since vocabulary is going to be your biggest job in learning a language, it makes sense to go at it using efficient methods like the software I mention above. I still remember flipping through a shoebox full of vocabulary cards I made for a Spanish class I took years ago. Naturally, I remembered only a small portion. I kept thinking how much effort I had wasted. Don't be like me! Use Mnemosyne or Anki!

Structure represents the way the vocabulary of a language is put together. Most language-learning programs won't explicitly describe a language's structure to you. Instead, they'll have you infer it over time the way children do. I actually disreccomend this approach. As an adult, you've got a fair amount of analytical intelligence, and you're better off learning a language's ground rules explicitly.

Examples of structural differences in languages: whether the adjectives come before or after the nouns, what tenses exist for verbs, when to use articles like "a" and "the".

Colloquial usage includes everything from local accents to the fact that sentences in Spanish often lack subjects because the fine-grained verb conjugation often means that the actor is obvious. For this stuff, you really need to read material written in the language, listen to things spoken in the language (e.g. podcasts), or travel to a country where the language is spoken. I think it really is best picked up by osmosis, unlike the language's structure.

Anyway, good luck in all your language-learning endeavors. And if you only remember one thing: be sure to try out open source flash card software like Mnemosyne or Anki!

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