Tower of Babelfish Method

Recently I came across this gentleman's post giving advice on learning new languages. On it, he linked to his blog where he details the method that got him functional in a few languages in a relatively reasonable amount of time.

The method seems reasonable and mirrors in part what many on this forum do. Learn the pronunciation, use Anki, try to learn only using that language, learn common words and grammar first. What he really does that's actually different is try to stay strictly in the target language using images. He doesn't encourage full immersion in life, however the hour or two you study should be in that language.

Some things stood out about him that I appreciated. He's learned multiple languages. He's actively been tested in these languages via standardized proficiency tests. Even then, he recognizes that passing tests don't mean fluency, it makes sense that anyone that's fluent should be able to pass the tests. He made his various Anki decks available for others to download and look through. Still, he cautions people to not use them and to make their own. I'm not wanting to start an Katzumoto debate, but these are two notable things Katzumoto did not do despite requests.

Only thing missing in his blog which I think is something he may not be aware is subs2srs.

So what's other peoples' take on this guy and his method?

I'm definitely going to try this.
Not for Japanese, when there are already so many resources, but with Hindi, which I'm learning.

Hindi has pretty much no resources out on the web, so I'm making my own sentence deck. I think the major take away from this is to use the target language and pictures at all costs. I'm going through a textbook that teaches grammar in English, using English to explain grammar points is inevitable. But, using Pictures to explain vocabulary is interesting.

I'm tempted to try it for Korean and Spanish. We've been almost spoiled in Japanese with the useful resources from iKnow, Tae Kim, UBJG and other resources that crowd sourcing turned into spreadsheets for easy Anki decks. Trying this method means going back to hard work.

I was amazed looking at that guy's French deck realizing that every day he was adding words in the manner he is suggesting to others. Doubly so that I realize what he added means more to him than to me as I wouldn't make the connection with the photos. Could similar to subs2srs where each person would need extra notes depending on their own language level. That also means that sharing decks is likely going to be useless outside maybe a generic one for basic 350 to 500 words.

The part I'm not getting just yet is how you test abstract portions of the language. He mentions it, but I'm guessing its more about clozed deletions helpful hints and notes in the target language meshed with good old fashion memory.

Interestingly the guy talks about using textbooks... Textbooks?! That's heresy!!!

Great link Nuke- thanks. I've watched a couple of his videos and read some of his posts. I think I'm going to try this to start out Spanish.

It's pretty clear that grammar will have to be studied independently, but I also don't get how to deal with abstract portions of the language. A lot of concepts don't map well to pictures.

Clever and interesting guy. He also has a book deal at 29 years old- not bad.

Yes just what I needed. This right here has made me realize all the mistakes I made before and are still making.

For Spanish I'm going through the list he linked here (1000 most common words): http://wordsgalore.com/wordsgalore/langu...h1000.html which all have audio files.

In Firefox (had issues with Chrome), I am then searching for an image on Google images, drag it to Anki, and you can also drag the .mp3 link from the page above straight into Anki.

Front: picture
back: word in Spanish + mp3

Captal, great suggestion. Too bad the Korean list is not done yet (don't really trust .exe files though).

Just for S&G's, I took the Spanish list, put it through Google translate (Spanish to Japanese and Spanish to English), altered the kana only words to a kanji word if available, copied all three columns into a spreadsheet, then sorted the Japanese words.

It does put the words into nice themed groups. Not perfect, but probably gives you an enjoyable order. It's also possible to use his 350 common words (grouped into themes). Big reason is that words seem easier to learn if there's a logical order to learning them in mass.

Wanna share that spreadsheet Nuke?

Spanish looks like it's going to be about 12 orders of magnitude easier than Japanese. I'll probably be fluent by Monday

not to be a party-pooper or anything, but i fail to see anything particularly innovative in his method...

And he's overstating the avoid translation thing. It really doesn't matter whether you use translation initially to learn something, as it's the subsequent understanding it in different situations that really cements it.

nadiatims Wrote:not to be a party-pooper or anything, but i fail to see anything particularly innovative in his method...

And he's overstating the avoid translation thing. It really doesn't matter whether you use translation initially to learn something, as it's the subsequent understanding it in different situations that really cements it.

It's not innovative to anyone on this forum. I'd even add he's missing some things that'll help out such as subs2srs. However, he's posting both his methods and his results (willing to back them up). That, for some people, may be the ignition to get them started.

About the no translation, I think he's saying avoid making flashcards where the question is about translating from one language to another. He says to use translation to go from the English word (top 350) to find the equivalent in the target language. Use the target language to find images in google, but use google translate to make sure you're getting the right image.

Use your primary language to aid the search for the info, but make the cards to test and reinforce your knowledge in the target language. From what I saw on his French cards, he still used a little English, but most of it was image(s) plus cloze delete as the question.

I have a sudden urge to deliver one of those rants along the "are we too spoiled" line.

Back when I was learning English (before the Internet, when trees were greener, legs longer and skirts shorter) I used to watch VHS tapes of American movies with subtitles, pause and write down phrases into my notebook. I recorded English radio broadcasts on cassette tapes and then transcribed them. I did shadowing, vocab reps right before falling asleep and immediately after waking up, etc. I tried all sorts of techniques even though I didn't have the internet to enlighten me. I was simply excited to learn so I tried whatever came to mind.

These days we have so much media in the target language just a click away, so much information out there on effective learning techniques and time management. Yet somehow when I think back to those evenings I spent huddled next to my short wave radio with the signal fading in and out and using a paper dictionary (gasp) I'm not sure I can learn any faster today than back then.

The techniques? I think they all work. Some could be more effective, some could work better for some people, it probably doesn't really matter. It's the motivation that does, the "just do it" thing. If you apply yourself you'll make progress. You'll make up techniques as you go.

shinsen Wrote:I have a sudden urge to deliver one of those rants along the "are we too spoiled" line.

Back when I was learning English (before the Internet, when trees were greener, legs longer and skirts shorter) I used to watch VHS tapes of American movies with subtitles, pause and write down phrases into my notebook. I recorded English radio broadcasts on cassette tapes and then transcribed them. I did shadowing, vocab reps right before falling asleep and immediately after waking up, etc. I tried all sorts of techniques even though I didn't have the internet to enlighten me. I was simply excited to learn so I tried whatever came to mind.

These days we have so much media in the target language just a click away, so much information out there on effective learning techniques and time management. Yet somehow when I think back to those evenings I spent huddled next to my short wave radio with the signal fading in and out and using a paper dictionary (gasp) I'm not sure I can learn any faster today than back then.

The techniques? I think they all work. Some could be more effective, some could work better for some people, it probably doesn't really matter. It's the motivation that does, the "just do it" thing. If you apply yourself you'll make progress. You'll make up techniques as you go.

I feel so much the same. People are looking for better tools and methods but in the end the weakest link in this tool chain is their brain. You do need to work on it and no method or tool will fix it.

Nukemarine Wrote:However, he's posting both his methods and his results (willing to back them up). That, for some people, may be the ignition to get them started.

He's not really posting his results though. There's no videos posted of him speaking any of his languages. He claims to have learned 4 languages in 8 years. Only 2 of those were to the C1 level (French and German) which by his own admission does not equal fluency. He says elsewhere on his site that fluency will take 2-5 years. He also claims his 5 years of high school russian don't count...I'm sure he would've learned something in that time.

I just really don't get this no translation language puritan approach you occasionally come across online.

nadiatims Wrote:I just really don't get this no translation language puritan approach you occasionally come across online.

Amorey Gethin and David Bond provide a pretty convincing argument:
http://www.lingua.org.uk/voc.html
http://www.lingua.org.uk/vocdb.html

the writer of that article appears to have little understanding of the concept of trade-offs...

And what trade-offs would that be?

JimmySeal Wrote:

nadiatims Wrote:I just really don't get this no translation language puritan approach you occasionally come across online.

Amorey Gethin and David Bond provide a pretty convincing argument:
http://www.lingua.org.uk/voc.html
http://www.lingua.org.uk/vocdb.html

Very interesting articles, especially the one from Gethin.

I would roughly summarize his (her?) points as follows:
- only study the most basic vocabulary “traditionally”
- reduce use of translations and dictionaries to the very, very minimum
- from then on concentrate to study through exposure to written and spoken sources (he mentions books, children textbooks, and radio, for example)
- do not study individual words. If at all, study full sentences to get a feeling for correct usage

First of all, is my rough summary correct, or did I misunderstand something?

Such approach combines elements of buonaparte's learning method with the so-called “sentence” method.

Secondly, if one wanted to follow this approach for studying Japanese, how would one approach this best?
1) Kana, RTK1, and RTK2
2) Study basic vocabulary (first x-hundred most frequent words), best with pictures and within full sentences, no or only very limited use of translations. I think there is another discussion going on with this topic
3) follow buonaparte's ideas

Any thoughts?

matsu Wrote:Secondly, if one wanted to follow this approach for studying Japanese, how would one approach this best?
1) Kana, RTK1, and RTK2

I'm not 100% sure what you meant by "this approach" as the original article is basically bullet points of advice on various techniques. One of those techniques - "crawl-reading" (start reading when you know only like 500 words and just keep reading anyway to learn the language from context) works beautifully in the phonetic alphabet languages but with Japanese not so much. I used crawl-reading extensively for learning Finnish and it worked great. The authors are understandably excited about this but I think they are yet to try crawl-reading Japanese at 500 words that they know phonetically. The Great Wall of Kanji will crush their little crawl-reading toy.

JimmySeal Wrote:And what trade-offs would that be?

I actually didn't read the first article (the extract from Amorey Gethin and Erik V. Gunnemark's book). So I was talking about the second article by David Bond.
Now, I've read the first article, I think it's actually very good and a lot less dogmatic than the second.

The trade-off I'm referring to is speed and practicality. Even if his premise is true that one somehow learns better by avoiding translation and dictionaries (and I disagree with this idea), the fact remains that when you're learning, you have to be getting meaning from the target language from somewhere and dictionaries/translations/subtitles while imperfect are one of the fastest ways to absorb a lot of meaning quickly. Your first language is an asset.

@shinsen
I thought that this, what you call bullet points, sums up to a pretty concise method for studying foreign languages.

But I fully agree, I also don’t think that Gethin considered the extra hurdle of Kanji.

That’s why I included in step 1 the study of Kana and RTK. Basically, I believe, in order to follow his advice, one would “only” need to know KUN and ON-yomi, that’s why I added RTK2. It could be any other method, such as the Movie-method, or Kanji-chains or whatever else works to get to there.

One alternative might be:

Step 1- kana
Step 2- Basic vocabulary with pictures
Step 3 -Spoken input and written input from children's books, children's manga, the internet assisted by Rikaichan, and other sources that include furigana for everything.

nadiatims Wrote:The trade-off I'm referring to is speed and practicality. Even if his premise is true that one somehow learns better by avoiding translation and dictionaries (and I disagree with this idea), the fact remains that when you're learning, you have to be getting meaning from the target language from somewhere and dictionaries/translations/subtitles while imperfect are one of the fastest ways to absorb a lot of meaning quickly. Your first language is an asset.

They're drawing on their experiences with European languages that are so close to English you can actually ditch the dictionary very early. They mention Swedish as an example. Consider the phrase "Throw stones in glass houses" and try to understand the following text in Swedish: "Kasta sten i glashus".
You can probably deduct that 'throw' is 'kasta' and make a connection to 'cast' in English without any dictionary. How is that even counted as learning a foreign language! No offense to our Swedish friends, your language is very nice.

Learning European languages is a joke comparing to Japanese. Except if you're French then English is apparently impossible to master for some strange reason, lol.

shinsen Wrote:They're drawing on their experiences with European languages that are so close to English you can actually ditch the dictionary very early. They mention Swedish as an example. Consider the phrase "Throw stones in glass houses" and try to understand the following text in Swedish: "Kasta sten i glashus".
You can probably deduct that 'throw' is 'kasta' and make a connection to 'cast' in English without any dictionary. How is that even counted as learning a foreign language! No offense to our Swedish friends, your language is very nice.

Yes, for certain European languages there is a lot of similarity in vocabulary (David Bond cited Greek as the language he learned almost entirely from context, and despite Greece's place in the history of the Western world and Greek's use in a fair number of big English words, there's a reason why people say "it's Greek to me").

Yes, depending on what you already know, some languages are easier to divine just by looking at them, but that doesn't mean you should write off others. As long as you can figure out the better part of a sentence, it's possible to use interpolation to make an educated guess at the rest.

I think it's a good idea to start off with stories that you already know. This makes it even easier to interpolate the meanings of things without translating, for example if you came across a sentence like this:

[Harry Potter watched the] 貓頭鷹 [fly in through his] 窗 [holding a] 信 [in its] 嘴巴.

That's pretty much enough to figure out all four of those words intuitively. If you still weren't sure what a 信, was, it would be pretty obvious after Harry opened it up and started reading it.

Gethin's arguments against using L1, that it creates an extra obstacle in the process, makes a lot of sense to me. I've met people who have been learning a foreign language forever, and still speak in a stilted manner and can't understand things very well because they're constantly translating in their heads. I think avoiding that is worth some loss in expediency in the learning process, and it has worked well for me. There are of course, people who reach high proficiency in a language while relying heavily on L1 during the learning process, so there are no absolutes. To each his own.

If anyone's interested, I'm working on a deck for a 'first 400' list for Simplified Chinese. So far I have a spreadsheet that contains the original English word; Chinese expression; pinyin; part of speech; and category.

My plans are to add an audio file name and image file name for each entry in the spreadsheet, create a deck and make it available on the anki server.

I'm thinking of setting up the cards as follows:

Card type 1
FRONT: Image(s) with occasional clues in Mandarin
Back: Expression and audio (testing vocab as hanzi)

Card type 2
FRONT: Image(s) with occassional clues in Mandarin
Back: Pinyin and audio (testing vocab as pinyin)

Card type 3
FRONT: Hanzi
Back: Image pinyin and audio (testing hanzi recognition)

Does anyone have any suggestions regarding the card types? Are 3 types sufficient?

Also, I already have many of the audio and image files (and filenames) in separate spreadsheets. Is there a simpler way of lining up the matches in MS Excel so I don't have to do a lot of copying and pasting? For example:

[dog 狗 Gǒu noun Animals] + [dog feg8wffe.jpg] --> [dog 狗 Gǒu noun Animals feg8wffe.jpg]

Obviously, my image and audio spreadsheets have more than just the 400 vocab words (and are also missing some of the entries too); so sorting alphabetically and deleting extra rows would be tedious. I'm sure MS Excel has a way of doing this, but my OS is in Mandarin so I have no idea how to do it. I also tried downloading Calc, but the file always refuses to install.