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How do you memorize words and phrases?

ya JaiLo, 18 Juni 2014

Ujumbe: 13

Lugha: English

JaiLo (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 18 Juni 2014 8:14:10 alasiri

I plan on trying to learn Esperanto and I just want to make sure it really stays with me, and not that I spend a bunch of time learning different words just to forget them ten minutes later.

So how do you memorize different words and phrases?

erinja (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 18 Juni 2014 8:21:59 alasiri

A lot of people have had good success with Memrise, which is free and available as an app or simply at a website.

I did barely any of that when I was learning, however. I used flash cards to learn some basic things (numbers, months, body parts, etc) but beyond that, I learned simply by writing in Esperanto. In my case it was online chat, e-mail correspondence, and paper letters. I learned words simply through having to look them up a million times. Since whatever I was looking up was whatever I wanted to talk about with my correspondents, it was also vocabulary relevant to my life.

Some people do a thing where they keep a notebook and write down every word they need to look up in a dictionary. Then they put those words into a word learning app like Memrise or they do flashcards. It is a good way of identifying words that you use a lot and focusing on learning them first.

The most important thing is to keep at it. 10 minutes per day will keep the information fresh in your mind better than an hour once a week, even if your daily learning is nothing but reading a paragraph of text or reviewing a vocabulary list.

sparksbet (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 18 Juni 2014 10:29:45 alasiri

I agree with Erinja - using the language is the best way to learn new words. I learned the vast majority of my Esperanto through translating one of my favorite books (albeit very poorly). I'd look up each word and any abnormal grammatical structures as I needed them, and those which I used often stuck to my memory. I kept a list of words I'd need often - prepositions, numbers, and colors were the ones I used most, I think - so that I wouldn't have to look them up too constantly, and now I've got them almost entirely memorized.

danielcg (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 18 Juni 2014 11:04:17 alasiri

JaiLo:I plan on trying to learn Esperanto and I just want to make sure it really stays with me, and not that I spend a bunch of time learning different words just to forget them ten minutes later.

So how do you memorize different words and phrases?
How did we memorize the words belonging to our native languages? By using them!

So, my best advice is: once you have the basic knowledge of a language, start reading, writing and (if possible) talking in that language! As soon as possible, use the language in "real life", no matter your limitations at the beginning. If you read books, articles, etc., which really get your interest past the language they are written in, you'll soon absorb the language almost without noticing it. (I'll tell you a secret, but let's keep it between you and me: at this very moment, I'm doing precisely that in Lernu's English forums. )

Regards,

Daniel

RiotNrrd (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 18 Juni 2014 11:37:31 alasiri

Same here as with the others: I didn't really start learning Esperanto until I started writing it. Reading, by itself, will only take you so far. Reading is good for learning about style, but for vocabulary it's too passive to have good "stickability".

When you start writing, at first it will feel like you do nothing but look words up. That'll pass. If a word doesn't stick on the first lookup, it probably will by the fifth. ridulo.gif And then that's one more word you won't have to look up again.

What should you write about? Anything. Don't even bother making it interesting. You're doing it for you, not for anyone else, and the practice is the important thing, not how interesting you are. I personally started a blog, and forced myself to make three entries a week for quite a while. I didn't consider an entry "done" until it was at least three sentences long. Three sentences doesn't sound like much, but at first it will definitely do (when I got better at Esperanto, I changed that to three paragraphs instead of sentences, but at first simple sentences can be challenging enough). Making interesting posts was not a goal - the early days of that blog are truly dull. But that's how I learned.

danielcg (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 19 Juni 2014 12:03:14 asubuhi

In the good old days when Internet didn't exist (in case you haven't noticed it yet, I'm speaking tongue in cheek), corresponding was a very good way of practising the language. I used to look forward every day to receive the mail (paper mail, that is) which came from all corners in the world. I'm not sure whether I was learning a language while getting in touch with foreign cultures, or if I was getting in touch with foreing cultures while learning a language, but anyway, it was a very pleasant and fruitful experience in both ways. It was specially moving when, after just a few hours' study, I was able to at least basically communicate with people I had no other language in common: Chinese, Hungarians, Russians, French, Germans, in short, anyone speaking neither Spanish nor English (at that time, I already spoke English, which I happened to study before I even knew that Esperanto was actually a living language; however, it was Esperanto who opened me to the joys of corresponding with people in other countries just for the sake of doing it). Back then, UEA had a service named KSM (Koresponda Servo Mondskala = Worldwide Corresponding Service) which one could use to get in touch with people with similar interests in the lands of one's choice, and which I used several times.

Now e-mail, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, forums, blogs and whatever I'm forgetting to mention, make it even easier to have a real life use of a language. However, immediate feedback perhaps lacks some of that magic waiting for the mailman to deliver the envelopes with nice stamps from all over the word and friendly letters and postcards from both profficient Esperantists and beginners. (Don't pay too much attention to this, Jailo, it's just old man's talk).

Regards,

Daniel

RiotNrrd:Same here as with the others: I didn't really start learning Esperanto until I started writing it. Reading, by itself, will only take you so far. Reading is good for learning about style, but for vocabulary it's too passive to have good "stickability".

When you start writing, at first it will feel like you do nothing but look words up. That'll pass. If a word doesn't stick on the first lookup, it probably will by the fifth. ridulo.gif And then that's one more word you won't have to look up again.

What should you write about? Anything. Don't even bother making it interesting. You're doing it for you, not for anyone else, and the practice is the important thing, not how interesting you are. I personally started a blog, and forced myself to make three entries a week for quite a while. I didn't consider an entry "done" until it was at least three sentences long. Three sentences doesn't sound like much, but at first it will definitely do (when I got better at Esperanto, I changed that to three paragraphs instead of sentences, but at first simple sentences can be challenging enough). Making interesting posts was not a goal - the early days of that blog are truly dull. But that's how I learned.

ruth3209 (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 19 Juni 2014 2:49:51 asubuhi

I agree with all the suggestions above. In addition, the free iphone app Intense Esperanto (which may also be available on Android)is very well designed and is an enjoyable, effective way to learn basic and intermediate vocabulary.

sudanglo (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 19 Juni 2014 12:27:41 alasiri

I have no empirical evidence for this, but it seems intuitively obvious that words and structure will be more easily retained if they relate to your own communicative needs.

If your teeth are perfect don't bother with the Esperanto for filling, root canal, crown. If football is your thing learn matĉo, golo, avanulo.

If you want to hammer home structures try translating sentences you might use. If you get stuck, use the forum for help.

ruth3209 (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 19 Juni 2014 2:07:06 alasiri

One of the best features of Esperanto is that its vocabulary is a lot easier to learn than that of other languages. It was specially designed with prefixes and suffixes to let you build words easily, and that helps with learning and understanding vocabulary. For example, someone learning English has to learn 3 unrelated words to express "to eat", "food" and "dining room". In Esperanto, these words are mangxi, mangxajxo (eat-thing), and mangxejo (eat-place). Also, if you have studied any other language(s) in school, you probably already know or would recognize a lot of Esperanto vocabulary words, which are mainly derived from English and from European languages such as French, Spanish and German.

Alkanadi (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 19 Juni 2014 3:34:48 alasiri

Try to read a lot. Keep looking up the words you don't know. Read the same stories many times over.

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