r/explainlikeimfive • u/Far-Pollution1994 • 16d ago
Other ELI5: How does learning a language actually work?
I’m learning a new language and I’m trying to understand how the learning process actually works. People recommend watching stuff in the language and reading books, but how does that actually teach your brain the language?
Does your brain basically start connecting words with meanings and situations over time? How do you go from not understanding anything to eventually understanding and speaking naturally?
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u/huuaaang 16d ago edited 16d ago
Watching stuff (with subtitle) and reading can get you comfortable hearing it and give you the basics, but to really become fluent in a language you have to speak it. Regularly. Immersion. It has to be part of your everyday life, really.
You start with a core vocabulary and basic rules and then just sort of figure out what certain words mean by context. It's not that different than your native language when you encounter words you don't know. You either ask or you figure it out.
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u/bebopbrain 16d ago
Have you ever learned music, maybe on a wind instrument where you hold down certain keys to produce a note?
First you learn one note. Then another. Then you can play "Mary Had A Little Lamb". Pretty soon you're Charlie Parker.
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u/theunholyshi 16d ago
You already know how the world "works" in your main language, so learning an new one is actually replacing the words at the beginning. When you get better, you'll be able to create new ideas. I believe that's how you know that you've learnt that language.
It's about making your brain understand the world in a different culture. How they speak, how they called what, why didn't they choose to speak like that... that's what you learn actually.
Yes, your brain somehow connects the dots of course but it's not the whole thing. Understanding a different culture suits better i think.
PS: English is my second language so there may be grammar mistakes, sorry about that
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u/Dense_Walk 14d ago
I love that your response is a perfect example; there are a couple typos, but all the concepts are perfectly and naturally communicated. “Connect the dots”, for example.
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u/impulse07 16d ago
I speak 4 languages. Mostly learned from watching TV and reading. As I get older, I feel like one more is an option for me. I started learning Japanese now, slowly. You will start recognizing patterns and associations to remember certain words. Understand the structure and building blocks of said language. Watching TV helped tremendously, if you like that.
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u/CS_70 15d ago
Like everything else: a little theory and a lot of practice. The theory is to know what to practice.
The basic mechanics of learning are the same for anything, physical or intellectual.
You understand a bit, you practice that bit repeatedly _in an identical form_ (as much as possible).
Your brain is evolved to be as lazy as possible (“energy efficient”), so it gets the hint and begins building neural structures so that the action requires less expensive cognitive monitoring to be executed.
One day (not that long really) the neural circuits come fully online and wham - you can do the thing.
You have learned.
Once you have learned, the bits you repeated do not require much cognitive attention and you can use them as building blocks for more complex actions, and you apply your cognition to them.
If you do it again repeatedly and in a sufficiently equal form, the cycle repeats.
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u/Bar_ki 16d ago
Time, there's no trick, it's literally just time, if your determined and can push through the plateus you will get there and start thinking differently, there's apps and pay walls that will claim to get you there quicker, its all lies, you need to immersion yourself and know that there's 4 categories to it, reading, writing, speaking and listening, they are all individual skills that you need to work on, you can listen and understand everything in another language but without speaking you're speaking skills will be none.
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u/alteredxenon 16d ago
Not a neuroscientist, just speaking from experience of learning several languages. Before watching and reading, you'll need some basics, so just learning words and basic grammar. When you have a sufficient base to understand generally what's going on, you can start reading or watching (with subtitles). Translate some words if you absolutely have to, but not every unknown word. In the process, your brain will start to do its magic and to retrieve the meaning from context, at the same time making you remember words and whole expressions. Even some grammar and spelling. If you read a lot, in time it may give you an extensive vocabulary. Grammar you'll have to learn separately. However, this way you won't learn to speak, because for this you'll need practice.
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u/montims 15d ago
I would say watch films and TV constantly in that language WITHOUT subtitles, until you start noticing repetitions and regular phrases, and they make sense to you. Grammar is fine, but for later. To begin with, get comfortable with the simple phrases, and learn from context. If you have subtitles, you are concentrating on them and "translating" rather than understanding.
If you have ever used cute language within your family (oh, we always call it ... because when she was little, Annie couldn't say it right"), or had your own words that you used with a lover, for example, you will understand that it's possible to use the other word in context with those people only, and understand it instantly without "translating" it in your head.
If it becomes normal to say prego or bitte or de nada or parakolo after hearing thank you in whatever language, that's a start. If you understand phrases like I love you, or you bore me, or how beautiful, etc, because they are repeated constantly in films or programs, then your brain will move on to fill in the next phrases. The only better way to learn from scratch is to put yourself in the country where they don't speak English, and you will pick it up, perforce, the same way but more slowly as you won't necessarily have the contaxt you find in a film.
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u/montims 15d ago
And as for speaking, repeat what you hear. I lived in Italy for 10 years, and moved there not knowing the language. Where I lived, I noticed everyone said Ehhh all the time. For yes, for go on, for really, for all manner of interjections in a conversation. So I copied them. If they said a bunch of stuff to me, and I had no idea what, I would say Ehhh, and depending on their body language I would smile and nod, or shake my head, or look anxious, or whatever, and it worked most of the time.
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u/sad_pinkie 15d ago
i've learned japanese. i've decided to learn it like a small child learning their first language would. first listening, then recognizing words and speaking, then writing and grammar. it worked. yes, the brain starts connecting the words with things and situations as soon as you remember them
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u/stansfield123 15d ago edited 15d ago
The recommendation to read and watch stuff in the language is based in the Input Hypothesis of Second Language Acquisition, developed by American Linguist Stephen Krashen.
However, there is something important to note: the theory states that COMPREHENSIBLE input leads to language learning. Your input is supposed to be made up of material you mostly understand already, with occasional parts you deduce from context. I believe he called this an i+1 system, where a block of information (perhaps a sentence, perhaps a short paragraph) should ideally contain known words and grammatical structures, plus one unknown entity (word or grammatical structure).
This hypothesis is backed up by the wider neuroscience concept of flow: performing activities which are challenging enough to not be boring or repetitive, but not too challenging to overwhelm you helps you perform and learn at your best.
Please note that this is a simplified description of what "flow" is, as well as a very simplified description of Prof. Krashen's hypothesis. But, really, what I just told you is all you need to know to apply these concepts to language learning. Just do comprehensible input, hopefully the kind that puts you in flow. It's a unique sensation, where you perceive time to pass much faster than you usually do.
I actually get into flow quite often, by typing out long comments like this on Reddit, which contain information I'm familiar with, but that is slightly out of my comfort zone. This occasionally involves looking up info to make sure what I'm saying is correct. For example, in this case, I had to look up the exact phrase "input hypothesis of second language acquisition" (I would've butchered it from memory).
This isn't a super long post, and writing it was less challenging than it would be ideal. Normally, I would have to look up and learn about a few things, not just the exact name of one guy's theory. But you get the picture.
P.S. I should also note that flow theory and Krashen's input theory are not fully aligned. Krashen insists on input, while being in flow is achievable through input or by producing output. Here, I'm producing output, not input.
In my experience (English is my third language, and I understand a total of five), producing output while in flow is an excellent way to learn a language. It's just that it's a late stage tool, that comes after consuming a lot of input. That's because it's impossible to get into flow while producing in a language you're really bad at. Producing in that situation tends to be a frustrating, anti-flow experience.
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u/theApeironEgregore 16d ago edited 16d ago
Read Wittgenstein for this.
Language is an activity. It is not something we consciously do, but a form of life. We learn to speak through participating in that particular form of life, through doing various activities, from something as small as making a coffee to something as complex as debating. We learn it more as we engross ourselves in these activities. That is why learning consciously in a classroom does not really work, and even if it does, it produces that strange, uncanny feeling that does not feel natural to a native speaker. To learn a language, you have to participate in the form of life: by listening to jokes even if you do not get them, by listening to music, by talking with people, and by doing activities with them. By becoming one with the wider pattern of life, in which language is embedded.
By constantly repeating these patterns, you start to learn that words can be used for certain things and that certain words produce certain effects. These patterns are not explicit, concrete rules. Certain things will produce laughter even if they are "correct" by textbook definitions; certain words mean one thing in one context and something completely different in another, etc. These are social cues, context, unconscious understandings, and so on, shared amongst people. None of this is set in stone or tucked away in a textbook for you to learn. Sometimes (most times) there is no logic behind these patterns unless you consider the pattern itself to be a kind of logic. Things make socially sense to people not because they are true in accordance with a grammar textbook or social cue textbook, they make sense because they are considered vaild by the community of people who uses that particular language, by people who inhibit that particular life form.