Learning another (human) language is like that. Almost anyone can do it. It requires no special skills, training, or experience. There are some tricks that you can use, but mostly it's just an enormous amount of work, not particularly challenging work either, that you need to persist at for years, even decades.
I'd like to think this is common knowledge, but I have many times talked with people who hope to learn French to fluency in six months, and people who are convinced they could never learn it no matter what. Both types are terrible with estimating their abilities.
When I talk with friends and acquaintances who say they want to learn a language, I always tell them it will be one of the most difficult and rewarding things they will ever do. Number one, you will literally vomit out words in the beginning that make no grammatical sense and stink to high heaven in terms of language non-ability. Two, you have to break away from Duolingo. Like learning Scratch for programming, Duolingo is only going to get you better at Duolingo type games and quizzes. If you really want to learn a language, you have to invest in live practice with a native speaker. In the near future, this could become a conversational AI. For now, go find a reasonable native speaker on iTalki. Practice at least twice a week. Do not practice with friends or family as it will be frustrating for both sides. Pay someone. Third, learning a programming language compared to a human language is difficult because there is shame and embarrassment connected with messing up for most people. As you continue to vomit out your beginner language, you will eventually ascend to the intermediate level. Like L5 at Google, many of you will never make it to advanced level. I think that is quite ok. You really do not have to be able to understand live standup comedy in your chosen second language. The ability to communicate thoughts, dreams, fears, and stories will be enough. It took me about 3 years to get to that level of being able to argue politics and economics in Spanish. I freely admit my accent is gringo (never gonna be able to roll Rs) and I still make mistakes and sometimes accents make it hard to listen. You are never going to get to 100% comprehension. 80/90% depending on the situation.
> You are never going to get to 100% comprehension. 80/90% depending on the situation.
Key insight, people should set the realistic goal of being at most as good as their native language.
I can confidently say, in my native language, there are many times throughout daily life where I have way less than 80/90% comprehension. The other key insight though is that I can remove that ambiguity with follow up questions and elaboration if I want.
And that's what people should strive for when learning a second language. Once you get to the point where you can learn in and with the language, then you're golden. That requires far far less effort than most people estimate.
I agree with you on the need for follow up questions when you don't understand the situation.
Yes, learning new content with the language is key. Laddering is a term used when you are learning a new 3rd language through your 2nd language. For example, learning French through French for Spanish speakers-type material.
The 80/90% comprehension ballpark figure was more about how much you can understand without looking it up. For example, when I watch a reality TV show like Gran Hermano (Big Brother reality TV series) where there is a lot of regional accents, rapid-fire repartee, idioms, street talk, I can struggle to figure out what was just said. The same goes for a standup comedy show in Spanish with the cultural contexts, inside jokes. On the opposite end of comprehension would be an evening news program where everything is said in a structured manner and the diction is as close to neutral/perfect for the greater region of the news broadcast.
Additionally, the environment matters. A crowded noisy bar can rapidly beat up your confidence of being able to communicate. The Foreign Service foreign language ability scales do account for this.
Duolingo is fine, you just have to be aware of its limitations. Getting the trophy isn’t going to represent the finish line of most peoples language goals, but it’s a decent start.
Duolingo is a great start. It takes a lot of effort to get those trophies. I think they are getting better with AI/ML to interactively tutor you as well. Personally, if you can afford in-person or virtual practice with a native speaker twice a week (about $30-40/week via iTalki), I think that is when you make the jump from dabbling in a language to becoming a serious student.
I’ve found it best to learn the basics through something like duolingo, and then follow that in with a tutor once there’s a base of vocabulary to go off of.
Obviously a tutor is great, but the cost and time of a tutor isn’t worth it at the beginning stages for me personally.
I'm learning a language now. It's tough and embarrassing, and what it takes to keep getting better seems to change as I move along.
Something that was formative in my understanding of language was visiting Glasgow years past, and realizing that just an "accent" could easily knock me back to understanding only 20-30% of words. Still, based on context it was possible to get around and after a week I was up to 70-80% comprehension with locals.
In North England and Scotland, we pronounce words using short vowel sounds (bath, castle) whereas in the South, they use long vowel sounds (b-are-th, c-are-stle).
Not being able to easily pick out the vowel sounds makes it much harder for a non-native speaker to understand.
The so called "BBC English" that you probably learnt is based on a Southern England 'home counties' pronunciation.
You've got this. Try to remember to record yourself speaking periodically with others so that you can see how much you are improving.
> visiting Glasgow years past
I remember being in Gatwick airport and hearing my first heavily-accented English. Maybe it was a Scottish brogue. I could not really understand anything.
Curious about this. Presumably you've given it plenty of effort after more than 3 years of Spanish study. Where do you feel that you're stuck, and what have you tried?
I haven't tried recently. I always got stuck on the vibrating the tongue on/near the roof of the mouth. The technical term for rolling Rs is "voiced alveolar trill". I have tried a variety of techniques over the years and maybe it is time to revisit them again by trying out some Youtube videos. Right now, I just use the "d" sound as a substitute, as in a rapid "d-d-d" is an approximation of rolled Rs.
A few of my friends who know will tease me now and then by trilling their r's in conversation. It always simultaneously makes me jealous and in awe. I know that Spanish elementary schools have young students practice tongue twisters as maybe it is not a natural skill for all kids. "Un perro rompe la rama del árbol"
Perhaps related, I am struggle with unassisted lip trills [1] which is a key technique to improve your breath control/singing. Unassisted is when you don't press your fingers to your cheeks. I really struggle with unassisted lip trills and run out of oxygen quickly (5 seconds). The idea with unassisted lip trills is you can trill a song phrase on a single breath (15-20 sec, sometimes longer).
Nearly started making these sounds before I realised I'm on a busy train and caught myself. Oops.
If it helps at all, in my experience of learning to do alveolar trills, the key was finding the precise amount of resistance to apply with my tongue. That is, the muscles hold still and the flow of air is what moves it. I think that means that the base position for the tongue is forming a light seal against the alveolar ridge and upper gums. If you get the pressure right, when you vocalise, the flow of air will briefly push your tongue out of the way then allow it to snap back, and if you get the pressure exactly right, you'll get a pleasing trill sound.
>people who are convinced they could never learn it no matter what
Do these people actually believe that it would be impossible for them, or merely that they would give up before success. i.e. do they think that they would not be able to learn the language in five years if they were offered a billion dollars?
Because personally I doubt I will ever learn a second language, but I'm sure I could given enough time and the right incentive.
> Because personally I doubt I will ever learn a second language, but I'm sure I could given enough time and the right incentive.
Yeah—I know I can do it, and even know that I enjoy learning another language, but also know from experience that I don't have enough natural reasons to use anything but English, that I'll have any hope of keeping it up without committing to permanently spending 10+ hours a week doing nothing but practicing the language for the sake of it, all for the occasional few minutes a year (optimistically) in which it's actually useful, or for the once-a-decade trip I might take to somewhere it's widely spoken.
Au revoir my once-somewhat-decent French.
Europeans sometimes imply Americans are dumb or hopelessly provincial for being so persistently monolingual, but it's hard as fuck to keep up a second language when you can travel 1,000 miles and the locals are all still speaking English (at least, mostly). European learners of other European languages are doing it on easy mode, compared to us. It's hard to find a route anywhere in Europe that long that doesn't pass through at least three different languages, as primarily spoken by the locals, and even finding one with that few takes some effort.
So I'm both aware that I can learn another language, and aware that I in-fact won't short of some huge shake-up in my life circumstances, which may as well be the same thing as "can't".
>it's hard as fuck to keep up a second language when you can travel 1,000 miles and the locals are all still speaking English (at least, mostly)
Nonsense. I live in Latin America and English is a second language for me. I'm not sure if there are even any land routes I could take to reach an English-speaking country, as I believe the Colombian jungle interrupts the road. Learning a language is about four things: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. With the Internet you can do three of those four things right from home. Hell, I've been learning English for 24 years and for the first 20 I had maybe one or two conversations with native speakers.
The question is not how far you need to travel to speak to a native, but whether there's anything in that language that interests you. Language after all is just a tool to move ideas between people's brains. If there's not then yeah, you would have no reason to learn a language. And I'm sorry to say that does make you provincial. Please don't take it the wrong way; I don't mean it as an insult, just as a statement of fact. You were born into your culture and you're satisfied with ignoring everything else. You've never thought "oh, I wish I could read this, but it's not in English" or "I love this book/show/movie/etc.; I wish I could experience it as a native would", or at least not to the point that it inspired you to learn.
English is a bit of a special case, being the modern lingua franca (LOL), having two top-tier media producing countries behind it (plus several smaller but not-insignificant ones), and representing an incredible proportion of the world's wealth and economic power. It's telling that a lot of successful creators of foreign-language film, in particular, end up switching to English—it's where the money is, which brings a lot of other benefits to speakers of the language (native or otherwise).
I remember at one point, when I was a still trying to keep up my French, I spent a fair amount of time trying to track down some equivalent to what Friends has been (so I gather, anyway) for English-language learners—every option seemed much worse (far shorter, lower quality—which, Friends isn't even that high a bar) and even those were nearly impossible to get ahold of, because the rights holders just didn't care about foreign markets (since no-one who can speak English well is going to care much about a mediocre French sitcom, unless they're like me and trying to learn the language). Music's a little easier, but hell, even there half the time they sing in English. Maybe it's improved since about a decade ago, but at the time, there was just nothing.
Meanwhile there are dozens of shows with many, many episodes that could help provide daily exposure to colloquial, conversational English, that are relatively easy to come by (just don't pick The Wire—even Americans have trouble with that, between the authentic Baltimore accents and slang and the pervasive cop-talk).
I actually think another language that's got a huge advantage here, for foreign learners, is Japanese. It was hard not to be envious of the Japanese resources and media readily available, even back in the '00s (let alone now), compared with even a language as important and heavily-studied as French. Which is really surprising and impressive when you consider that Japanese is probably the most insular of the major world languages—one might expect French, German, and Spanish, at least, to do at least as well on that front, given that they're read and spoken widely on multiple continents by far more people than live in Japan, but no. I think it's in part because they've been able to resist the shift to preferring English media that other countries have experienced—you look at French TV schedules and there's a lot of translated English media on there, for instance, while I don't think the same is so broadly true in Japan, with the result that they have a stronger domestic media market than many other states.
>I remember at one point, when I was a still trying to keep up my French, I spent a fair amount of time trying to track down some equivalent to what Friends has been [...]
Like I said, language is a tool. I have to wonder why you were learning French if you had no use for it. Can you imagine, say, picking a computer before you know if it will be able to run the software you need?
That said, you don't have to limit yourself to professional productions. I'm sure there are French-speaking YouTubers or streamers out there nowadays. That's even better exposure than high-budget productions because you'll hear a variety of local accents. And again, oral is only part of the story. You can get a lot of grammar practice by talking to people on forums and such.
>I actually think another language that's got a huge advantage here, for foreign learners, is Japanese. [...]
Japanese is actually my next language, and I've been half-seriously considering Korean because some of the artists I've been following lately happen to be Korean. Right now it's probably the best time in history to learn either of the two.
I don't think it's accurate to say that the Japanese have been "able to resist" English-language media. Like you said, Japanese culture is insular; xenophobic, to put it bluntly. It's a combination of Japan being hesitant to embrace culturally foreign media and thus producing more locally, and western cultures being more willing to embrace foreign things.
> I don't think it's accurate to say that the Japanese have been "able to resist" English-language media. Like you said, Japanese culture is insular; xenophobic, to put it bluntly. It's a combination of Japan being hesitant to embrace culturally foreign media and thus producing more locally, and western cultures being more willing to embrace foreign things.
Right, that's... how they've been able to resist it. Even the French, probably the most infamously-jealous and protective of their culture and language in Europe (and against whom accusations of xenophobia are leveled pretty regularly!), haven't been anywhere near as successful, because they don't take it nearly as far as the Japanese. For all its other downsides, a strong culture of xenophobia seems to be the only way to resist this aspect of globalization—even top-down heavy-handed laws don't work, historically speaking, even before the Internet. A genuine (if somewhat cultivated) culture of reflexively dismissing the foreign seems to work, and not much else.
I do agree that Youtube has probably closed the gap somewhat, though that became a usefully-well-populated resource long after I gave up. Even with dedicated instructional material on Youtube, it's goddamn hard to maintain motivation when all the media you genuinely want to read/watch are "high" art and come with language/complexity barriers to match (Proust, Racine, Molière, Renoir, Godard, et c.), with little material to provide the sugary-sweet, approachable appeal of sprawling, crappy anime series, or American sitcoms. Best the French language has for that is comic books, and even that's got nowhere near the volume and selection of, say, manga.
About the only media I still consume in French is the occasional French news article, just because their slant on things or selection of what to cover is sometimes interesting—no coincidence that the ability to stumble through reading a French news article is currently where my French tops out, much reduced from where it once was.
>For all its other downsides, a strong culture of xenophobia seems to be the only way to resist this aspect of globalization—even top-down heavy-handed laws don't work, historically speaking, even before the Internet. A genuine (if somewhat cultivated) culture of reflexively dismissing the foreign seems to work, and not much else.
I don't think it's a good thing overall, though. They get to maintain a very strong national identity, but when they do end up interacting with people from other places they appear disconnected. For example, if you've ever tried to interoperate with Japanese software, it's like going back to the '90s. They just do their own thing over there.
Yeah, I'm not saying it's "the right thing to do", but it does seem to be the only approach that works if you really want to keep the allure of English-language money and the vast wave of English-language media from being a huge influence on your country's media.
> For example, if you've ever tried to interoperate with Japanese software, it's like going back to the '90s.
Hey, I thought you wrote that it wasn't a good thing! ;-)
> Europeans sometimes imply Americans are dumb or hopelessly provincial
Indeed, and not only because of monolingualism.
During my time abroad, one thing frequently caught my attention: when I first met someone, they'd always said "I'm from country A"... except people from US. They introduced by mentioning their cities instead.
I always wondered why is that so? Do they assume people around the world know their geography? Do they don't learn at least a little about other countries at school?
And on monolingualism: granted, English is currently the de facto international language, so the economic incentive for them to learn a second language might be lower. But don't they generally feel curious about other cultures, reading foreign original works, or simply getting a grasp on how other languages express ideas?
I think when we travel abroad, we're aware everyone can tell we're Americans without our having to say so :-)
> I always wondered why is that so? Do they assume people around the world know their geography? Do they don't learn at least a little about other countries at school?
It's habit. It's how we talk to one another about where we're from—major city, or nearest major city. Aside from a few states where people like to lead with that (mostly Texas and California—meanwhile, if someone says "New York", they probably mean the city; there's a little easy-to-miss comic jab about this in the show Archer, where Archer a couple times corrects someone who says "New York City" with "you can just say New York", as the latter usage reads "higher" in a social-class sense). It's a consequence of our largely-homogenous culture being spread over such a huge land area, I think.
Recall, again, that we generally have way less experience talking to people who live in other countries, on account of how very far we have to travel to encounter many such people—and even then it's mainly Canadians, who can and do sometimes pass for American pretty well (we're much worse at passing as Canadian) and Mexicans, those being the only two countries that share a land border with us. 99.9% of the time when we're telling someone where we're from, it's someone who is familiar with US geography.
Besides, "American" doesn't narrow things down very much. It'd be like someone from Germany leading with "Europe" when describing where they're from. Right, I guessed that already—but where? Germany? Austria? Switzerland? Belgium? Our nationality is far less specific, geographically, than those in Europe.
> But don't they generally feel curious about other cultures, reading foreign original works, or simply getting a grasp on how other languages express ideas?
Sure, but it's a big commitment to both learn a language and keep up that skill, and it mostly has to be maintained kind-of "artificially", for Americans. Conversational skills and accent in particular can be very difficult to maintain.
Americans remain strong aspirational speakers of second languages, it should be noted—Spanish and sometimes a few other languages (French is common, Chinese increasingly so, others like German or Italian sometimes) are taught, to some degree, to nearly all our kids, but it's hard to even find good teachers because there's just no culture in which to keep up those skills, so a lot of the time those classes are taught by people who aren't good speakers (let alone native) themselves. The kids, for their part, promptly forget everything except a phrase or two, since they never use the language outside class, and even the ones who try to go farther find it both practically difficult and, lacking much extrinsic motivation or a kind of natural need, discouraging.
> reading foreign original works
I mean... very little reading happens these days, period, aside from trash-tier online reading, romance novels, and self-help books. At least in America. We're far removed from a time when "author" could practically be counted a blue-collar profession, there was so much demand for fiction. Among the same groups of people in which reading remains semi-common, you're likely to find folks trying desperately to hold onto their grasp of one or more major literary foreign languages (and mostly failing at it).
[EDIT] Actually, now that I think about it, you may also be seeing some class bias—Americans who can travel abroad are more likely to have at least some of their culture and norms influenced by the set of people who think in cities (if not more specific!) everywhere—they don't visit France, they visit Nice, they don't visit Italy, they visit Milan, they don't have a modest apartment in America or even New York (City) but Manhattan, and so on.
> I think when we travel abroad, we're aware everyone can tell we're Americans without our having to say so :-)
Why? And how you do that? I believe it's not from the looks, right? I met a guy in Berlin who was from New York. When I first saw him I even thought he was Brazilian, because his hair and skin color were exactly like mine.
> It's habit. It's how we talk to one another about where we're from—major city, or nearest major city
I believe this is everybody's habit, as long as they are in their own country.
I live in a large country too, and we don't have a lot of contact with people from neighboring countries (so the fact we share borders with many countries is irrelevant), but I don't know, when I go abroad something just switches in my mind, it feel just too obvious that I'm talking to people with perspectives other than what I find in my own country. And I notice the same behavior in people from other nations too. That's why this habit from US nationals calls my attention.
> Besides, "American" doesn't narrow things down very much. It'd be like someone from Germany leading with "Europe" when describing where they're from. Right, I guessed that already—but where? Germany? Austria? Switzerland? Belgium? Our nationality is far less specific, geographically, than those in Europe.
"American" really don't narrow things down to the city level. Not even to the country level. But this is what I find strange: why would you narrow things down to people who are not aware of your geography? When you visit another state and introduce yourself, would it make sense to tell them your street name, number and apartment instead of your state or city, to narrow things down?
Mostly because of Europeans constantly telling us that we stick out like a sore thumb, when traveling—it seems to feature in most every discussion of Americans and international travel. It makes some of us really self-conscious about not "seeming American" abroad, which I guess maybe we do semi-successfully if you're in-fact having trouble picking us out, more often than not. Hell, what is leading with a city when asked "where are you from" if not exactly one of those boorish (they always are boorish, aren't they—that's why some of us are self-conscious about it) tells? This current exchange is about, exactly, one of these things!
> "American" really don't narrow things down to the city level. Not even to the country level. But this is what I find strange: why would you narrow things down to people who are not aware of your geography? When you visit another state and introduce yourself, would it make sense to tell them your street name, number and apartment instead of your state or city, to narrow things down?
This is not a great application of reductio.
> I live in a large country too, and we don't have a lot of contact with people from neighboring countries (so the fact we share borders with many countries is irrelevant), but I don't know, when I go abroad something just switches in my mind, it feel just too obvious that I'm talking to people with perspectives other than what I find in my own country. And I notice the same behavior in people from other nations too. That's why this habit from US nationals calls my attention.
The US is really isolated. An American who travels outside the US, Canada (where the people largely are semi-familiar with our geography, on account of most of them living very close to the US and the strong media ties between the two countries) and (maybe) Mexico more than a countable-on-one-hand number of times in their whole lives is a major outlier. A very high proportion of our population never, ever does. Mexico might manage to counter our cultural isolation a bit, but it's regarded as unsafe, so travel there outside of well-tended resorts isn't common (see e.g. Wikipedia's list of global military conflicts for why we might have that perception—yes, yes, I know, our own drug war policies probably contribute, et c., but the why hardly matters for someone who's just trying to plan a family vacation)
Reasons Americans rarely travel abroad include:
1) Long flights are necessary to reach almost anywhere else. 6+ hours (best likely case) on a plane is really unpleasant, bordering on impossible for people with health issues (this will matter in another point).
2) Most Americans don't get much time off in a year, and often struggle to take even what they have as a large block of time. Short trips overseas suck (see: point 1 about how long the flights are)
3) We do have time off in retirement, for those of us who manage to retire—but by then, the difficulty of long flights is much-amplified (see point #1 re: health) for many.
4) The cost of flights makes such travel way more expensive than a road trip—and we're not short of interesting places to drive (especially natural attractions). It becomes hard to justify several hundred dollars per person for a flight when you still have a list of dozens of great places in the US you've yet to visit... so, travel abroad competes with some very-good, cheaper alternatives.
The result is you see basically two types of American abroad: seasoned, usually pretty-rich travelers (if not committed ex-pats), and people for whom this is one of maybe two or three trips beyond North America they'll ever take. Those latter aren't likely to develop much in the way of overseas-travel habits. And, see my edit on the prior comment for why some of those richer travelers might tend to lead with a city—it's a class-cultural thing, they also tend to name cities when talking about other countries (they don't even go to "the Alps", or Switzerland, it's always somewhere more specific like "St. Moritz"; the same set don't go to Colorado, like the rest of us would tend to say in the US when visiting Colorado, they go to Vale or whatever)
I could learn another language. But I can't learn a second language insofar-as I can't foresee a situation where I"d be willing or able to dedicate the mental capital toward the task.
I think most people who say that probably consider it "not economically viable". That is, their assessment is that the expected reward doesn't justify the expected investment.
I've also been wondering if this isn't similar to the boiling frog idea, just on its head.
Practically speaking, I don't think I made huge, noticeable progress in my guitar skills over the last 4-5 days, at least I couldn't really point out anything that has been a huge jump. And in fact, many if not most weeks are like that. And focusing on this part tends to be a bad idea.
On the other hand, 4 months ago, after I got my guitar adjusted and fixed, I was just a mediocre bass player with some object with way too many, way too tiny, way too sharp strings. Just 1 or 2 weeks ago, something in my head suddenly went "Jo, this actually sounds like a slow and terrible version of the rythm section that song you're working on covering at the moment". And these are the more important insights to look at.
And sure, I'm also starting to realize how long the road might be to good, own original songs, but at the same time, the progress over some 2-3 years plus half a year on the guitar is a lot, looking at it over a longer time.
This is also something healthy we do at work every 6 - 12 months too. Stop wondering about the daily grind of incidents and service requests and smaller scale improvements for a moment and consider where we were a year ago.
"but I have many times talked with people who hope to learn French to fluency in six months, and people who are convinced they could never learn it no matter what."
It is a question of intensity. If all you do is speaking french and learning grammar and are surrounded by french people, you could reach some level of fluency in 6 months. But not while learning it on the side (unless you are very talented).
Applies to almost everything (bar a few things with physical limitations)
Some people define themselves as someone who "can't draw", but drawing is literally just making a mark, comparing it to what you see, adjusting the mark or making another
A few months ago I stumbled across a Star Wars comic [0] that perfectly explained Talent vs. Training:
"Think of yourself as a door. The wider you open [training], the more easily the Force flows through you [learning something]. Some people just start with their door a bit more open [talent]. But any door can open wide"
As someone who has learned several languages but who has never been able to draw, I don’t think it’s that simple.
Even among children, where the difference in experience is negligible, some people are able to analyze the input they receive from their eyes or ears in a way that others can’t. My friends who are artists amaze me by reducing a 3D object to a series of deformed polygons, or drawing a perfectly straight line with a pencil, and I amaze them by mimicking accents or memorizing song lyrics on one listen. For both of us, these are things that we’ve always been able to do.
I don’t propose that this barrier is insuperable, but there’s only so many hours in the day. There is also likely to be a hard limit on how good I can get compared to someone with natural ability. Spending 10 years going from 0/10 to 7/10 is a particular kind of commitment to make.
Flip every mention you made about language with drawing and you'll see it's the same thing. Likewise if someone said they've "never been able to speak a foreign language", you'd quite rightly say that's absurd, of course you can't speak a foreign language naturally. Same with drawing, sure some people are perhaps more gifted but everyone is able to do it
And some people don't got that kind of patience, so they can't do it. Or, today we have pills that helps with patience, but I'm not sure if that counts.
Patience is the wrong aspect here. What you need isn't patience, it's a reminder that this is a long process.
If all you can muster is 20 minutes per day, that still adds up hugely. No patience required. Although of course, you improve faster if you can actively practice for longer periods. But nevertheless, it is just about showing up every day. In the case of drawing, it's about drawing every day, and wanting to improve some aspect of it. Simply doing the same thing over and over again won't get you anywhere.
That's what patience is, though. It's the willingness to wait. "It's just 20 minutes a day so it's not so bad" is a thought that comforts the busy person, not the impatient person. The impatient person hears that and thinks "so I have to do this every day for 7 years to see results? Can't I get it down to 1 year somehow?"
Yes exactly, the willingness to wait. But we're not talking about waiting, we're talking about taking it day by day by focusing on what you can do during that day to the best of your abilities.
Hence, patience is irrelevant, if anything a wrongful framing of the situation that doesn't help anybody. Show up as much as you can every day for yourself and you won't need a single drop of "patience".
We are talking about waiting. The time between when you start and when you reach a level of useful proficiency is time you wait through. You don't wait doing nothing, but you certainly do wait. Yes, it's not a useful way to frame the situation, but that's what makes impatience a flaw. If an impatient person could distract themselves from how much longer the task will take and concentrate on actually performing the task they would not be impatient, they would be a normal person coping with the impatience everyone feels.
I've spent shitloads of time drawing but there's something mechanically wrong with how I do it—my marks don't come close enough to resembling what I'm trying to do. Weird lumps and squiggles everywhere.
I'm sure I could fix that, but the focused practice on just making straight lines or circles or re-learning how to hold a pencil or whatever would be boring as fuck, so I'm never going to.
Actually you've brought up the next challenge of an artist, which marks to make!
Look at the paintings of David Hockney (or even his iPad doodles), there's not a straight line or neat circle in sight. But he's a relentless doodler. As Hockney says himself, art is just seeing. The more you practice, the more you see, the better you are at knowing which marks to make. I'd recommend this doc if you're interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdqch3-D94A
Yes and I suppose patience is directly correlated with the amount of interest one has in the subject. When people talk of talent I sometimes think obsession is a better metric, are they obsessed enough to keep going when others give up. Or rather; are they obsessed enough to become talented
Yeah it's funny. 25 years ago I could manage working in English easily, and have English conversations, and I could read entire books. Gradually I went into more complex books, but the hardest thing was watching any movie without the need for subtitles, took me several years of constant listening of English language material, that's really what made a difference.
When my kids were born everybody warned me that the time would fly, they would be teenagers before I know it.
That’s why I bought a banjo. If these year are going to fly by then I might as well insert 10 years of banjo practice into the blur. I might be bad now, but by the time my kid is 12 I’ll be 10 years in.
I feel that. I bought a guitar in 1996 and took a community college introduction to guitar class, then took private lessons from a teacher for a couple of years, then signed up for lessons at a Suzuki school for a year, then took weekly lessons from a teacher at a Guitar Center store for a few months. In between I’ve bought books and apps and followed online lessons. Right now I’m working through a rhythm fundamentals class from Justin Guitar. I have almost no sense of rhythm.
I have a guitar at home and one at work so I’m often picking it up and messing around when I need a break from work.
I still don’t know a single song from start to finish (other than nursery rhyme songs that are just a few bars long). I’m pretty close though on Nirvana’s About a Girl.
I’m also essentially tone deaf but my kids, on the other hand, both have perfect pitch somehow. They can hear a microwave beep and tell you it’s a b-flat the same way I can say a car is red. I am going to see an audiologist soon because I’m wondering if the crazy squealing I hear non-stop is related to my difficulties.
One nice thing about getting over the hump in guitar is, once you can manage a few shapes (barre chords in particular), you can play thousands of new songs without having to learn any additional technical skills.
I’m okay at barre chords. I can barre the Emajor, Eminor, Amajor, and Aminor shapes and move them around decently. Power chords as well. I know lots of major, minor, and 7th chords on open strings.
It’s hard for me to describe, but I can do one thing at a time pretty well. I can tap my foot to a metronome. I can strum muted strings (so it’s just a percussive sound) in time to a metronome. But I struggle with tapping my foot and strumming in time to a metronome even when all I’m doing with my fretting hand is muting the strings.
I can play parts of some songs and some riffs but if I try to play it along with the original track, I lose the rhythm after a bar or two. I don’t seem to be able to extend that length. I end up strumming with the rhythm of the lyrics (syllables) rather than the drum beat.
Right now, I’m mostly working on trying to establish some sense of rhythm. The Justin Sandercoe’s course on this is probably the best resource I’ve found. He has some exercises that are almost meditative.
> But I struggle with tapping my foot and strumming in time to a metronome
Why would you both tap your foot and use a metronome at the same time while playing a piece? I play piano, not a guitar, but foot tapping is usually for when you don't have a metronome.
Sure, tapping and using a metronome at the same time is good, if you are trying to get your foot tapping to be more consistent. But actually practicing a music piece and using a metronome+tapping your foot feels weird, I cannot do it well either. For me, it is either tapping foot or using a metronome.
When I’m tapping my foot and strumming to a metronome, that’s all I’m doing. There’s no music being played.
My metronome app has a timer. I set a 5 to 15 minute timer and then repeat the same strumming pattern for that entire time (usually down, down-up, up, down which corresponds to the count 1, 2-and, -and, 4 and I play it between 60 and 100 bpm). The strum is just a percussive strum on muted strings. I’m not playing chords or any kind of melody. The goal is to get the strumming and foot tapping to be automatic so that I can add the next step.
I remember talking with someone, who expected engineers to be proficient in new computer languages "in two weeks."
For myself, and, as some folks here have pointed out, I am possibly developmentally challenged, I've found that I can learn the basics of a language in a short time (maybe two weeks? I've never clocked it).
Becoming good with the language, on the other hand, takes years.
I've been writing Swift, every day (and learning new stuff, just about every day), since it was announced, in 2014, and there's still a ton that I don't know. The language is still evolving, so I'll never know it all.
Also, in my experience, the difficulties are really with learning frameworks and SDKs. I've been learning the ins and outs of the various native Apple SDKs, along with Swift, all that time, and I still have a ways to go.
That's the key behind success with using something like Duolingo. Establish a daily habit with it and keep at it for very long streaks. The app is the tool to keep your habit intact.
Well, if nothing that explains why i'm so against learning another language.
I know 2 languages and learning English has been an incredible painful process started in my childhood and peaked in my adulthood. That's like 30 years of pain and I still make extensive mistakes.
Your description fits and really explain why i never even considered learning another language, despite all people saying "it gets easier"
I'd like to think this is common knowledge, but I have many times talked with people who hope to learn French to fluency in six months, and people who are convinced they could never learn it no matter what. Both types are terrible with estimating their abilities.