Ask HN: Has anyone else learned English just by reading tech posts (like HN)?
9 comments
My journey is similar to yours. I am from Turkey and work in the industry for almost 8 years. My english level was B1 at the beginning. By reading and learning everything through articles and documentations I feel very comfortable right now. Especially in writing. Reading was not a concern for me but writing feels way more easy.
When I was in middle school my english skills were terrible, I barely passed my english classes. At some point I was interested to build my own PC, so I did research and watched tons of videos of other people doing it, those were mainly in english and helped me a lot to learn the language. Just like you I did not use a translator, it was not necessary to understand the key messages of the videos. After some time my english skills improved substantially and in school I never had problems with english again
[deleted]
Yes. Definitely add audio/visual material (TV, movies, video games), subtitles help. You will be surprised at the pronunciation of words and phrases.
I'm on the path of learning English, and I'm a newcomer here. Can you share your experiences?
I'm currently viewing this post through a translation plugin.
HN definitely helped me to improve my writing skills
I'm learning another language by watching videos. The term you want to search for is "comprehensible input."
The key to learning language I think is you have to write a lot.
Thank you HN !
I'm from Ukraine and started reading Hacker News about five years ago. At first, I understood almost nothing. I didn’t use a translator — partly because I was lazy, and partly because I wanted to see how much I could figure out just from context.
So I kept reading. I would see the same words appear in different posts and comments, and slowly, I began to understand their meaning. Sentence structures became clearer, and I started to “feel” the language. Eventually, I stopped being afraid of reading in English altogether.
I didn’t learn from a teacher or a course — just from the internet, and mostly from here.
Now I write posts, share my projects, and even chat with other devs here — all in English. It still feels surreal sometimes.
Have any of you learned English (or another language) in a similar way — just by immersion, without formal study?
Also: thank you, HN. You taught me more than just tech.