Keeping up with a foreign language

I grew up speaking french in my house, and after a trip abroad to spain I picked up spanish.  After spending the last two years in NYC and SF, I realized unused languages get rusty.  To keep up to speed, I imagine theres a lot of ways you can immerse yourself in the language in today’s hyper connected world, so I’m going to list out some of the ways I’ve found to keep up.

1) Comics (fnac.fr comics)

This is how I learned to read French, when I was a little kid.  Asterix and Obelix, TinTin, Corto Maltese…. Reading in a foreign language is slow, and the pictures can help keep you motivated and making forward progres!

2) Childrens Novels (fnac.fr, amazon)

I’ve read 3 Harry Potter books, but none of them in English.  When reading is second nature in English, it can be a big drag to switch to another language, so keep it simple, and spend more time enjoying the story than worrying about the words and meaning.

3) Books based on movies you’ve seen (amazon international)

When reading a foreign language book, you spend so much effort on the details, that sometimes you miss the over arching plot.  Knowing what happens allows you to have more fun.

4) Podcasts (iTunes)

In iTunes, scroll to the very bottom of the store, and you can change the country.  I know that its not very good for discovery, but you can listen to a ton of podcasts till you find somethat are interesting.

Notes in Spanish is a particularly noteable podcast dedicated to teach spanish.  I followed the advanced podcasts, and  friend of mine did the beginner podcasts along with the notes, and found it very useful.

5) Movies/TV shows (netflix, iTunes, amazon)

iTunes and Netflix both have foreign movies and shows.  Watch these with the subtitles in a foreign language so you can start picking up the rythm of the speech.  At first spanish just blened together, and I couldn’t even make out the individual words.  Over time watching shows like Un Paso Adelante and Aqui no hay quien Viva, words just started to pop out and make sense.

6) Magazines

Yet again, keeping things short an interesting is the key.  They’re like grown up comics!

7) Blogs

I know there’s a ton of blogs in other languages, but its really tough to find the good ones.  The tools that we use for content discovery in english (delicious.com, digg.com, popurls, twitter) are mostly in english.  Breaking into that foreign language world online is tough.  You’ve got your habits and follow certain norms on the net, those change in foreign languages, and I’d love any tips that people have found for discovering this content, I’m open to suggestions.

Here’s a high level map of the french blogosphere setup by Patrice Lamothe using Peartrees.

8 ) News

Check your local news stand, and you’ll find news papers in a variety of different languages.  They’re easier to find than magazines.