I wouldn’t call myself a language prodigy, merely natively very good. My childhood development didn’t make the news or anything.
It’s almost 10 years since high school when my proficiency at languages was tested, and I never used flashcards back then. Memorizing vocab lists mostly happened minutes before the exam in the hallway. I didn’t just read through the words but also minimally tested myself for the more difficult words. I learned Swedish, English, and German this way, but have forgotten most of the Swedish and German vocabulary because I never use them.
Grammar and pronunciation I just somehow absorb by listening and reading, in almost all the cases I couldn’t name the rules I’m using and never tried to explicitly learn them. Verb conjugation in Finnish, my native language, is pretty complicated so me being good at that in other languages wouldn’t tell you much. I’m pretty sure I don’t forget grammar with time like I forget vocabulary.
These days I only need Finnish and English, and if I encounter an unfamiliar English expression, I check it in the English wiktionary, and rarely forget it. I suppose medical language for my work as a doctor counts too, but that’s mostly just simple vocabulary, and I can’t say I’ve put much effort into learning that either, although it’s thousands of words. I started learning to speak Russian for fun a couple of years ago using an audio program, but found the program too slow and repetitive and got bored.
I know I make mistakes in my English, and wish people would correct me more often. It’s difficult to judge your own proficiency and I find I’m the laziest at improving in stuff I find easy, so pointing out a few stupid mistakes might motivate me to improve a lot.
A couple of mistakes I know I make consistently: I forget which prepositions I should use with certain verbs, and probably use commas more often than I should.
By the way, I think my episodic memory is also pretty good. To your previous post I replied with the people forgetting discussions thing. For some of those discussions, I also remember exactly where we had it, what our physical positions were, and what we were doing at the time. Of course, that could be mere retrograde reconstruction, and can’t be tested without documentation.
Memorizing vocab lists mostly happened minutes before the exam in the hallway.
Holding a list of vocab words in my head for an hour based on a few minutes of study is something I might be able to do too, depending on the length of the list. Terrible approach for long-term retention, though.
Grammar and pronunciation I just somehow absorb by listening and reading, in almost all the cases I couldn’t name the rules I’m using and never tried to explicitly learn them. Verb conjugation in Finnish, my native language, is pretty complicated so me being good at that in other languages wouldn’t tell you much. I’m pretty sure I don’t forget grammar with time like I forget vocabulary.
I can definitely pick up basic grammar (for example the most commonly used very forms) just by getting a lot of experience with the language. But in high school Spanish class (I’m American), we had to know grammar rules explicitly, as well as knowing more obscure conjugations. In more advanced classes, this literally knowing first/second/third person singular and plural for a half-dozen tense-mood combinations for multple irregular verbs. And that kind of thing is very difficult to just pick up naturally, if for no other reason than that you’re unlikely to come across the most obscure verb forms in conversation or media.
Don’t get me wrong, I got As in Spanish. It just required a lot of time with homemade flash cards and time spent staring at a blank sheet of paper, testing myself on how much of the table of conjugations I could write out, then studying the ones I missed extra-hard. I didn’t know anything about fancy spaced repetition software back then.
And I didn’t even hate Spanish all that much. Especially not compared to (English) spelling. English spelling is the worst.
Just sharing data points here, the impressiveness was in your head to begin with :) You said memorization is labour intensive and I don’t find that to be true.
Holding a list of vocab words in my head for an hour based on a few minutes of study is something I might be able to do too, depending on the length of the list. Terrible approach for long-term retention, though.
Well, I didn’t say I forgot them in an hour and those exams did include conjugations. We had bigger exams including grammar on top of those vocab exams, and I didn’t really study for those excluding the classes. Earlier vocabulary was naturally needed for the later classes. The lack of serious initial repetition could be the reason I don’t remember them 10 years afterwards, but I doubt anything can be forever remembered without repetition and long term retention really can’t be called the labour intensive part of memorization.
I have other experiences that suggest initial repetition for a couple of months doesn’t help much in the long term.
English spelling is the worst.
In Finnish you spell it almost exactly the way you say it and I don’t think many languages do that. I’ve always enjoyed English and one of the reasons is the spelling and the pronunciation. Vocal acrobatics was one of the reasons I wanted to learn Russian for fun :)
An example from medicine: I make flashcards in bursts, and sometimes make hundreds of them in a day. At the end of the day I usually remember something like 90% of them on the first try. Should I call memorization difficult?
Fascinating. How effortless are we talking? Do you even need flashcards for vocab lists or complicated conjugations?
I wouldn’t call myself a language prodigy, merely natively very good. My childhood development didn’t make the news or anything.
It’s almost 10 years since high school when my proficiency at languages was tested, and I never used flashcards back then. Memorizing vocab lists mostly happened minutes before the exam in the hallway. I didn’t just read through the words but also minimally tested myself for the more difficult words. I learned Swedish, English, and German this way, but have forgotten most of the Swedish and German vocabulary because I never use them.
Grammar and pronunciation I just somehow absorb by listening and reading, in almost all the cases I couldn’t name the rules I’m using and never tried to explicitly learn them. Verb conjugation in Finnish, my native language, is pretty complicated so me being good at that in other languages wouldn’t tell you much. I’m pretty sure I don’t forget grammar with time like I forget vocabulary.
These days I only need Finnish and English, and if I encounter an unfamiliar English expression, I check it in the English wiktionary, and rarely forget it. I suppose medical language for my work as a doctor counts too, but that’s mostly just simple vocabulary, and I can’t say I’ve put much effort into learning that either, although it’s thousands of words. I started learning to speak Russian for fun a couple of years ago using an audio program, but found the program too slow and repetitive and got bored.
I know I make mistakes in my English, and wish people would correct me more often. It’s difficult to judge your own proficiency and I find I’m the laziest at improving in stuff I find easy, so pointing out a few stupid mistakes might motivate me to improve a lot.
A couple of mistakes I know I make consistently: I forget which prepositions I should use with certain verbs, and probably use commas more often than I should.
By the way, I think my episodic memory is also pretty good. To your previous post I replied with the people forgetting discussions thing. For some of those discussions, I also remember exactly where we had it, what our physical positions were, and what we were doing at the time. Of course, that could be mere retrograde reconstruction, and can’t be tested without documentation.
So now your case seems much less impressive:
Holding a list of vocab words in my head for an hour based on a few minutes of study is something I might be able to do too, depending on the length of the list. Terrible approach for long-term retention, though.
I can definitely pick up basic grammar (for example the most commonly used very forms) just by getting a lot of experience with the language. But in high school Spanish class (I’m American), we had to know grammar rules explicitly, as well as knowing more obscure conjugations. In more advanced classes, this literally knowing first/second/third person singular and plural for a half-dozen tense-mood combinations for multple irregular verbs. And that kind of thing is very difficult to just pick up naturally, if for no other reason than that you’re unlikely to come across the most obscure verb forms in conversation or media.
Don’t get me wrong, I got As in Spanish. It just required a lot of time with homemade flash cards and time spent staring at a blank sheet of paper, testing myself on how much of the table of conjugations I could write out, then studying the ones I missed extra-hard. I didn’t know anything about fancy spaced repetition software back then.
And I didn’t even hate Spanish all that much. Especially not compared to (English) spelling. English spelling is the worst.
Just sharing data points here, the impressiveness was in your head to begin with :) You said memorization is labour intensive and I don’t find that to be true.
Well, I didn’t say I forgot them in an hour and those exams did include conjugations. We had bigger exams including grammar on top of those vocab exams, and I didn’t really study for those excluding the classes. Earlier vocabulary was naturally needed for the later classes. The lack of serious initial repetition could be the reason I don’t remember them 10 years afterwards, but I doubt anything can be forever remembered without repetition and long term retention really can’t be called the labour intensive part of memorization.
I have other experiences that suggest initial repetition for a couple of months doesn’t help much in the long term.
In Finnish you spell it almost exactly the way you say it and I don’t think many languages do that. I’ve always enjoyed English and one of the reasons is the spelling and the pronunciation. Vocal acrobatics was one of the reasons I wanted to learn Russian for fun :)
An example from medicine: I make flashcards in bursts, and sometimes make hundreds of them in a day. At the end of the day I usually remember something like 90% of them on the first try. Should I call memorization difficult?
Hmm, I too have the feeling I use commas more often than I should. I wonder how others would judge themselves in that regard...
I just love commas, can’t help it.