I love learning languages. And given that I’m a total grammar geek, grammar comes pretty quickly and easily to me. Unfortunately, vocabulary tends to go a much longer way in terms of actual human communication than grammar does. I have a pretty hard time memorizing vocabulary. I have a good grasp on Latin roots, so I get a lot of mileage out of guesswork as far as Romance languages go, but other IE and non-IE languages present a great challenge to me in that regard
So what are your techniques? Flashcards are supposed to work wonders, but frankly, I never can bring myself to actually get around to making them. Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of reading texts in the target language, relying heavily on a dictionary, and this helps a lot with comprehension, but does very little to help increase the pool of words that I have at the ready for extemperaneous linguistic creation. I guess that’s my main goal-- to increase not just the words I can recognize, but the ones I know inside and out, well enough to spontaneously employ.
Mostly, by relating the new word to whatever related words I already know, either in my native language, the new language, or any other language in which I happen to know a related word. Another fun way is through music; find some music you like in the language you are trying to learn, and sing it over and over again - it’s a relatively painless way to learn new vocab (at least if you are a music lover). Films are good for that too - subtitled at first, and then without subtitles as you gain proficiency.
Of course, then there’s the more fun technique: falling head over heels for someone who doesn’t speak your native language, but speaks the language you are trying to learn.
What language are you trying to learn at the moment?
Finding someone who speaks the language you’re trying to learn is essential. I forgot almost all my German because I don’t know any German speakers. Once I left the class, it just left me.
Also, if the language is one that uses word endings, try to remember them. If you know (for instance) that “sabor” is flavor or taste and that “-oso” is like the English “-ous”, then you could figure out that “sabroso” is probably tasty or flavorful. This can significantly expand your vocabulary. Like in German, you have Metz (=meat) + ger (=an agentive ending, or “one who does or works with”) + ei (like the “-y” at the end of bakery), which gives you “Metzgerei”, or butcher shop.
Music’s a good one, and probably the best – that’s how I was first introduced to a lot of Spanish vocabulary, including phrases I might never have seen in a bilingual dictionary. The nice thing about music is that you’re supposed to listen to it over and over and over and if you’re like me, you want to sing along too. So you say it over and over and over as well. That helps.
Early on in my Spanish education, I would yank the lyric sheets out of the CD cases, type them out, and translate them. I learned so much vocabulary this way, but I also learned a lot of grammar. Shakira (don’t laugh) taught me a lot about the uses of the subjunctive, and that’s something that can take a lot of effort to learn.
Flashcards are great for memorization and short-term information security.
When was the last time you saw a grammarian using flashcards to remember words, though? If you want to get something hard-wired into your brain, you’ve got to force it in there if necessary.
Go a day without saying a single word in your native language. Have everything you write be in the language you’re trying to learn. Don’t worry about grammar rules (verb tenses, mostly); just focus on using the words you need.
Start out doing that once a week or once every other week. If you can do it with someone who has a comfortable handle on the language you’re trying to learn, even better.
As you get more comfortable with things, increase your non-native day to once every 10 or five. By sheer force of habit, you’ll remember the words; your brain won’t be able to forget them.
flashcards flashcards flashcards. Even just making them is helpful.
But, of course, you then have to use the word. Fortunately (?), my Bulgarian is weak enough that pretty much all the words I memorize are useful in everyday life. I’m not exactly up to the more obscure level of the language.
I didn’t see flashcards until I was in my twenties.
I’ve learned English pronunciation mostly by listening to a lot of English speakers; first language tapes, later movies, records, native speakers in their native setting, TV. Sometimes I’ve had to change my pronunciation, like when I went to New Hampshire and people there got the giggles if I said “twenty” with that second t, like we’d been taught.
Thanks God every other language I’ve learned has simple spellling rules, I can look at how something’s written and know how it’s pronounced. English is like learning two languages.
I used to be pretty good at French when I was learning it in High School, but I’ve had almost zero contact with anyone French-speaking since then and I’ve now almost completely lost the ability to understand more than a word or two of spoken French.
I can manage a bit of written French, but it takes me a lot longer than it used to, and it’s based on recognising key words and working a lot of the rest out from the context. It’s quite sad, actually…
If you want to get something hard-wired into your brain, you’ve got to force it in there if necessary.