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It's fascinating that you offer these suggestions in your blog, which most people enter from reading about your 4-hour work week. I myself have been reading your blog since a client told me about reading your book. Granted, people with a 4-hour work wee often have more time on their hands that other businesspeople may not have - but these 4-hr people may not have the finely-tuned multiprocessing mind that you so obviously have. In short, your brain runs very hot and at extra speed. Congrats - but you may be a rarity ;)
Back to the languages - I have just returned from almost 5 weeks in Shanghai, where I picked up a modicum of Chinese, probably a combination of Mandarin and Shanghainese and odd-assorted dialect pronunciations thrown in. I never fully got a handle on the language because its permutations were so vast - who was speaking what language? Laughably more, my international companions were often getting mixed up listening to other languages and trying to piece-out [English/American/Australian] dialects also. So meanwhile while I was trying to work out Chinese words and comprehension, the Chinese (and the other internationals) were off puzzling over our permutations of "English". I have even spent the last week back here in the states getting some things translated into Chinese - weeding through Mandarin and Shanghainese idioms to recreate the feelings of the phrases.
Let's just say that beyond sentence structure there is a lot of cultural comprehension, mind-multitasking, lingusitic scientific method as you describe - and LOTS of patience. Your brain works on overdrive, Tim, and at least there are a few of out there sometimes on the same page with you!
PS: Euskara (Basque) was so complicated that I'll stick to Spanish while I'm there ;)
I added you to my blogroll. I think that will give you a technorati bump. I linked to your site in a post last week where I mentioned the Low Information Diet.
I'm the guy you met at MIT who is working on a 2 year development project plan. We talked about Widgets and Facebook.
Breaking 1000 is great. I'm at about 17,000 right now, but I've only been launched for about 4-5 months so I feel pretty good about it.
Awesome article and I would defiantly like to see more like this. Being that I can read Cyrillic (though I speak Serbian but not Russian) I can totally relate to how you suggested learning it. That would indeed be the best way.
Just as a side note, when is your PR teleconference going to be held? I know a previous post mentioned some time in min Nov. but you haven't posted any updates for it? I haven't gotten anything in my email either? Some updates would be great!
Drasko
As it is, I'm interested in learning Burmese myself, and will make use of your tips in "deconstructing" the language. Thanks!
Wow, I think this is the best post you have ever put up... Brilliant! I started learning Japanese earlier this year when a certain book came out :) PLEASE do continue this language series, your insights on language are awesome. Also, thanks for the link to myhappyplanet.com, I have been looking for just such a resource.
great work, thanks for the inspiration!
Erik
James
www.marshalfirth.com
I'll add you to our blogroll...
As always, great stuff...
Chris
http://www.mobilediner.com/
NB, I have also linked to the article from my (Technorati Listed) blog (http://www.zachbeauvais.com). Best of luck!!!
-Z
Yea, the language learning is great, one of my passions as well! Perhaps you could do a post entirely about absorbing and learning Mandarin Chinese. And your take on what to learn 1st, speaking or character reading/writing or in conjunction with each other. Also, what do you feel are the best methods for being tutored and learning on a day to day basis. For example, do you prefer repetitious memorization of a few dozen loaded conversations or just a continuous flow of learning keeping in mind that you gradually absorb pieces of each sentence (such as the comics that you mentioned in an earlier post)?
Nevertheless, despite the method, probably the most important aspect to foriegn languages is simple a no-holds-barred trial and error with native speakers. You can't let embarrasment of butchering pronunciation stop you from conversing.
Do you agree? Ni de zhongwen shuode hao bu hao?
This question is unrelated to the post.
When you try to contact "celebrities" in a field, do you leave a message with the gatekeeper if you're unable to reach them or simply hang up and try again later?
Indeed if you deconstruct a language, you can quickly get an idea on how it will be hard for you to learn it, according to other languages you speak, and the point is : The more languages you speak, the easier it will become to learn a new one, as you will eventually be familiar with most of the rules you will encounter in a new language.
E.g., if you know english, german and french, you will be able to pick-up easily any language from western europe : spanish, italian, dutch, finnish, swedish, danish, portuguese...
For me, the progression goes like this with a new language:
- you should be able to read after a few days
- speak it after a few weeks,
- write it after a few months
- understanding... that's a whole debate... I think that's the hardest, but apparently languages teachers think it is easier to understand than to speak...
I don't agree... If you meet a native in a real situation, he will be able to understand you even if your sentences are broken... usually he will be even impressed that you can speak his language, so he will answer with his particular accent, his particular slang and languages specificities, and will probably be speaking way too fast for you to understand...
If you ever have some "tricks" to improve the "understanding" part, please post them, because the usual answer is "watch some news or listen to the radio in the native language"... I don't believe it helps, and I see that the biggest obstacle when it comes to learn a language is the fact that you usually have almost no opportunity to face your language skill with a native speaker... Until you go to the country, and it's when, despite your X years of learning, you feel that you can just speak like a 6 years old child! (i.e. you can only have basic conversations: "Hi, my name is Alan, I live in New York and I am hungry.")
You use the same method in languages as I use in technologies, but I've never thought about using it for languages as well. I'm going to try that today.
I wrote a snippet on my own blog about this: http://www.netfxharmonics.com/2007/11/Accelerat...
This is excellent info, definetly give us some more. I have highly enjoyed your diet and work out Colorado information. Thanks for taking your time. I have your book, I check your site every day. Great job.
Thanks,
Scott
I have a question that has nothing to do with your language topic but I know you don't check email so I'm exploiting the comments section a little, looking for an answer. : )
I read your book, I found my muse, I am about a third of the way through my To Do list to start the business, but my idea requires pre-purchasing a lot of merchandise and I know I'm going to need a loan to start it.
Your book doesn't address the dreaded concept of banks, lending and writing a business plan in order to get a loan. I have read a few other "entrepreneurial" books looking for business plan templates, but the authors are the antithesis of the NR and I feel like I'm getting off track.
Do you have any resources for extraordinary BP templates? I have already downloaded everything in the Reader Resources, and searching in the Reader Forums brought back nothing.
P.S. You'll be glad to hear I already quit my job at age 28 to take a 3 month mini-retirement in Europe last year and now I'm just starting to figure out what I want to do the rest of my life. Your book really helps.
Gracias / Danke / Merci / Spasiba / Arigato / Thanks
Lara
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/language...
Italian shares 85% of its vocabulary with French and 80% with Spanish.
If you want language profiles, check out how popular languages are and their difficulty:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/language...
If your first language is english (I'm guessing if you read this blog) then the closest ones to english to learn would be French, Italian, Spanish, Portugese, Norweigan, and Dutch in decending order.
~Marcie
I'm knee deep in learning German thanks to your teachings. I initially wanted to learn French, but am having an easier time picking up German. I'm already fluent in Spanish, so an extra language or two in my arsenal won't hurt a bit!
Tri-lingual, baby! ;-)
I was curious, where do you find your foreign manga for each language? Do you purchase the english version along with the foreign version?
###
LOL... some of the Arabic doesn't correspond to the English next to it. Most of that is by design, but there could certainly be some mistakes in there. On to hour 2... :)
Tim
This is a big step in that direction. Now if the experts can start building up fast courses from it... rather than the ass-backwards way languages are usually taught. My experiences with Hungarian, a language surely designed to fail your test for most English speakers, has definitely taught me that learning the rules is the best way forward.
I should add the usual disclaimer that I have nothing to do with Michel Thomas Language Centers, I just endorse the deconstruction process that you both use.
Saudações do Brasil.
Vou começar a estudar francês ano que vem e vou testar seu método para começar. Na verdade, eu prefiro dominar uns três idiomas (incluindo a língua materna) a saber como dizer "oi", "tchau", "táxi", "me dá um hambúrguer" em vinte.
A não ser "na sua casa ou na minha" que eu sei dizer em várias línguas. Mas isso é uma questão de prioridades. :p
-------------------------------------------------------
For all:
Some thoughts about languages:
Monolingual people tend to think that there is an one-to-one correspondence between the words of two different languages.
You know "suck" means to hold something in your mouth and pull on it with your tongue and lips. The word for that in Portuguese is "chupar".
But if you want to say that your job sucks, this verb (chupar) won't help. So first thing is to dismiss this myth. Words have several meanings. These meanings are mapped differently by different languages. The Enuit have several ways of saying snow because they perceive different kinds of snow, they need these distinctions. We don't have snow in Brazil (well, it is very rare), how many words do you think we need? One or two.
These things are kind of obvious but a lot of people don't realize them.
And the other way I think about it, I don't know all the words in English yet...
Enjoy,
Oh, and though I linked you at http://japanscan.blogspot.com/ apparently Technorati has the hiccups at the moment.
Cheers!
any help would be greatly appreciated.
And to answer your question: … no, this is not too dense.But a suggestion, if I may: What would be awesome is to see you use this specific method and explain several languages in a very verbose fashion(i.e. one post each). After you have done your method, then have some respected, arm's length educator(s) review, augment, amend, critique or whatever to provide even greater insight on learning that language.Hey, the Intertubes are about sharing ideas, and those of us wishing to learn a new language would appreciate it.
on a sidenote, have you read the language instinct, by steven pinker? a lot of your tips remind me of stuff i read in that book (which id reccommend if you havent).
Fascinating post! It will definitely help me choose which language to tackle next, or at least to help me know what I'm getting into. I would love more posts of this nature--not too dense at all.
One side note, though. I studied Sanskrit in college (not recommended according to 4hww principles). Learning a language that grammatically and semantically complex expanded the way I perceive the world, even though I never became close to "fluent". There are more puns and multiple connotations possible in very dense languages, and pleasure results from learning just enough to experience that. So fluency might not be the only goal in learning how new languages work.
One question: how do you know when learning a similar language will be easy and when it will interfere? I learned Spanish and French at the same time in high school with no interference at all. Now that I'm older, I'm starting to mix up the two. I'd like to try Italian next--will this be easier or harder than learning a non-romance language?
Thanks again for the post!
Jenny Cornbleet
Saludos de una Venezolana que ahora vive en Tejas.
Si, esta informacion no es solamente practica, sino interesante. Me gustaria saber mas sobre tus ideas linguisticas y como pueden ser aplicadas en negociaciones internacionles (talvez este sistema no es practico para negocios?)
This is wonderful stuff! Thank you!
Cheers,
Carolena
Did you know that American Sign Language use SOV.
Joe
Hi All!
So many cool observations and questions. Let me try and answer/comment upon a few:
-Joe, I didn't know that ASL uses SOV. That is too cool! Esperanto, anyone?
-Michel Thomas CDs are one of the few collections I recommend. Very, very good. The usual Pimsleur tend to be WAY too slow and repetitive for most brains. His CDs are Pimsleur on steroids.
-Celebs and gatekeepers. Make friends with gatekeepers. For many celebs and other high-profile folks, they make a lot of the decisions. Leave voicemail the first time, then wait a while before doing so again.
-Business plans for bank financing due to having to prepurchase lots of inventory. My rec's: #1 - reconsider buying lots of inventory upfront and look at other business models that don't require it. #2 - check out "guerrilla financing" http://www.amazon.com/Guerrilla-Financing-Marke...,
#3 - get "The Entrepreneurial Venture" http://www.amazon.com/Guerrilla-Financing-Marke...
-Where to find foreign language manga? Amazon, Amazon in your target country, or find a friend in that city via Craigslist or whatever and beg :)
Hope that helps!
Tim
Lara
I really enjoy the nuts and bolts stuff; it helps show me how you think as you approach things, and sparks my own experiments. That's the biggest takeaway from your book so far for me: changing the way you act, perceive, and dream so that your life becomes what you wish it to be.
Method not working? CHANGE IT!
Cheers,
Dameron
I enjoyed your article, it is very true! 2 years ago I just sat down and broke apart the Korean language, and it was so easy from then on to learn it. Then after I went to Korea and the whole experience was amazing!
Last summer I went to China, but at that time I wasn't as well prepared. I've found it more difficult to break down Mandarin Chinese, any advice or recommendations?
I have been using the Rosetta Stone software, I find it very helpful to keep me active at learning.
I think the main reason mandarin is so hard is because it does not have phoenetics like you mentioned in your article. I've used pinyin and understand that fine. But I still find the language more of a challenge.
Have you tried going to a foreign nation and testing out your knowledge? It is an amazing experience!
Thanks for the help
http://blueorchiddesigns.blogspot.com/2007/11/h...
C'est un article trés intéressant, je vais essayer d'apprendre le cambodgien grâce à votre méthode.
Je vous tiens au courant !
Merci
Alex
Sorry to be a party-pooper, but I honestly don't see the point of this post.
The process described above doesn't talk about learning a language at all (as indicated by the title), but about learning which languages are close to languages you already know. Everyone knows some languages are similar than others - and naturally it takes more time for an English speaker to learn Chinese than to learn French. This is even admitted by the author in the text ("how long would it take to become functionally fluent").
All this is nothing but the identification of several major grammatical traits (do cases exist, is the word order SVO or SOV), given the somewhat pompous name of "deconstruction" (which ignores the important meanings this term already has in the academic world).
So make no mistake - it's possible to learn several interesting facts about a language in an hour, even some facts that would allow you to gauge how close a language is to your own (even though this info is usually already readily available), but learning a language in an hour like the title say :) Please...
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-7902(1997...
or just go to the wikipedia article on GR, and look at the rferences;-)
If you need any help with that I can try to help.
Caveats: I know plenty of linguists who know all the trivia and little more. Also: listening?
First of all, not everybody – far from it – has linguistic knowledge enough to make the tests you suggest. Most of the people don’t have any idea what a case is, or even a direct or indirect object. But even people with more technical knowledge about language very often cannot suspect what the problems will be just by dealing with a few sentences – and the ones you choose are certainly not well designed to make you aware of the complexities of certain languages. Let’s take noun case as an example, since you talk about it: the sentences you propose will tell you if there is case declension only if that case declension is syntax-based, as in Russian or Latin, but what if the distinction is semantic, like in the so-called ergative languages? Even if you saw that the subject has different endings in, let’s imagine, “the soldiers fell” and “the soldiers fell upon their enemy”, you wouldn’t even probably understand why (or perhaps you would, but many other people wouldn’t…). But imagine that the problem is something that you don’t even know exists and these sentences don’t give you any clue about – a huge number of noun classes, for instance, or a fixed position in the sentence for some kinds of adverbs, or complex systems to mark time/mode/aspect/aktionsart, the list is endless… The same about phonetics: it’s not always the case that vowels are the problem. Sometimes, consonants are the problem and we can’t hear it, because we don’t recognize the relevant distinctive features – like difference between aspirated and non-aspirated occlusives, for instance…
Anyway, it’s good to try to be aware of what the problems will be, I repeat, but, as any language teacher knows, you don’t learn a language by being aware of its structure. Most of the learning process has little to do with awareness – although it cannot be bad to commit yourself and to study. Factors that can determine your success in language learning – or in specific parts of that learning, say, pronunciation – are far from any possible control – like age, which is one of the most important! Also other aspects of the learner’s background (like being used to learning languages, but also many others) can be of great importance. But not only: we don’t know exactly why, but some people are very fast at learning languages and some people don’t learn them at all – and my experience tells me that, in most of these extreme cases, the method used is completely irrelevant for success or the lack of it…
Another thing that, as someone refers in a comment to your text, you should take into account when determining how easy a language will be for you to learn is the amount of vocabulary that is similar to your language or one you speak well. One of the problems of learning Bahasa Indonesia for a normal English speaker – compared to learning French, for example – is to remember words that have nothing in common with the ones you already know, whereas 50% percent (or more) of the English words have some similarity to French ones; and, if I agree that too big a proximity between too languages can be a problem (like learning Danish after Norwegian, or vice-versa, or even simply learning Danish for a Norwegian native speaker), it is only a problem for speaking and writing properly: to know a very similar language is always a precious help to understand it and specially to read it.
Besides, most people do not (cannot!) choose if they want to invest on learning a new language and in which language they will invest based on some cost-benefit calculation. The reality in language learning is that most people learn languages they have not chosen to learn and for reasons beyond their control. Take the most obvious example – English. You do have to learn it nowadays, whether it is easy for you or not and whether you want it or not. You cannot simply decide that you’ll learn Chichewa instead….
By the way, there is nothing special about Brazilian Portuguese open vowels. They exist in most English dialects as well… What do you mean? Like in já, só e pé?
What a great article, I know what I'll be doing this weekend, thanks for the insight and advice! I added u to my favorites in TechnoRati and will (unless you object) list you as a 'recomended Blog' on my blogs (well the 3 of the 4 I keep updated)
~Dr. J. Robert M.
Excellent article, and I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who is fascinated by other languages. I'd like to think that I'm illiterate in French, German, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, Tagalog, and of course, English. I wish I'd had this article when I first moved to Japan 2.5 years ago...
More Please!
I think a lot of people would very much like to see larger images of the samples you have shown. It sounds all very well that you’ve deconstructed a language on one sheet of paper, but I can’t for the life of me make out anything you’ve done, so you can imagine it sounds very skeptical.
More personally, as a Japanese language learner for a few years now, I would be interested in how you’ve done the same for that language. I’ve been told that my grammar and pronunciation are superb, but my vocabulary is highly lacking and it seems like your method of deconstruction arrives at a similar situation. Hard to tell without some details ;)
What's more, you'll almost certainly end up better in a language you have a larger cultural interest/investment in, anyway, regardless of how tricky or weird it is.
Please write more - it's not dense at all, it's awesome. Grazie mille!!
Just thought of this after commenting. Would you be able to show your notes on each of the languages you have deconstructed. Similar to the pictures you have posted just plus the others as well. :)
Matt
I have to say this is interesting article and what is more, I think everyone can do that. For example in Lithuania everyone speaks three languages and it is matter of few months to learn new one. But I don’t agree that it is very easy to understand new grammar or spoken language. Technically - Yes it easy, but in reality You will face with problems like dozens and hundreds of exceptions in grammar and speech…
Good luck doing wonderful job!
(
Labas,
Turiu pasakyti, kad šis straipsnis yra ?domus, manau kiekvienas tai gali padaryti. Pavyzdžiui Lietuvoje kiekvienas šneka trimis kalbomis ir išmokti nauj? kalb? yra keli? m?nesi? reikalas. Bet aš nesutinku, kad nauj? gramatik? ar šnekamaj? kalb? suprasti yra labai lengva. Techniškai - Taip, bet realyb?je susidursi su problemomis kaip tuzinai ir šimtai gramatikos ir kalbos išim?i?…
S?km?s darant nuostab? darb?!
)
For example, Japanese's structure is not as simple as you state (it is not SOV). The closest (but right) you could state would be V.
Other langugages have totally different meanings (because of their culture and beliefs). For example, hebrew (biblical) has a very particular notion of time (in fact it is not organized as past, present or futur, but as "to be done", and "has been done").
So your analysis only works with very similar languages.
And is it that maybe bilingually raised children subconsciously use that sort of deconstruction approach? It is said that they are much better at acquiring fluency in a third language.
[To be continued?] Please!
Think I'll bookmark it for later.
I suggest you drink less coffee ...
In the UK, we are told at school that Spanish is really close to English and that, by learning French, languages romance like Spanish become easier to learn. And I think that overlaps with some of what you are saying.
I come from a 'memory techniques' background and so I am always interested to hear about ways of learning languages quicker.
http://www.nakedscience.com/articles/foreign language.htm
Kidding aside, a key thing you did not mention are exceptions.
For example: I have studied both Turkish and Finnish. They share similiar construction logic, grammatic rules and have similar pronounciation. Finnish is much more difficult to learn because they are so many exceptions.
Of course, this is important mostly if you intend to be fluent (i.e. not to sound like a monkey or make the sames mistakes as a 3-year old). Then if your objective is "just" to be able to have a conversation, you might chose different targets.
The initial learning curve is steep for some languages and easier after a while (e.g. for Westerners: Turkish, German, French?), while for others, it is easy to learn the basics but very difficult to speak really well (English, Spanish or other Latin languages when you already know one). Then of course, some have a steep curve all the way (Finnish)...
Stumbled!
^^^ make sure to fix this "subject-verb-object (SOV)" to '(SVO)'^^^
Good times.
I would recommend more examples or possibly going through one language as a simple reference.
And your thesis sounds really interesting, actually. Any way you could provide us with a way to read that?
"Second, I’m looking at the fundamental sentence structure: is it subject-verb-object (SOV)"
Excellent article.
I am a non-linguist learning Irish and I am watching my children (8 and 5) learn Hebrew with my wife. My children are also keen to learn Irish so, all in all, language acquisition strategies are very close to my heart.
As a matter of curiosity how did you find learning Irish and do you, or indeed anybody else, have a take on how easy or hard Hebrew is to learn compared to other languages?
Another question: would a moderately bright child learning Irish side-by-side with Hebrew be a mistake or a good thing?
Keep up the good work.
Thanks
Is it at all possible for you to post your deconstruction of Japanese, I don't have anyone to ask the favor, so i figure i ask you. If you, do that would be great.
thanks either way
Thanks for the post and please do continue with this subject!
That's basically what I'm reading out of this. You're saying that I should consider my own strengths and weaknesses, consider the various languages I might study, and choose the easiest.
What if I don't want the easiest? What if I want to learn Chinese or Japanese, because I'm interested in those cultures? How does your deconstructing technique speed up the learning process? How much vocabulary can I possibly memorize in 60 minutes?
That's another thing. Under one picture it says "Conversational Russian in 60 minutes?". But later you imply that meaningful speech takes 2-12 months.
So really, this is not how to *learn* a language in 1 hour, but rather how to *analyze* a language in 1 hour, to determine how long it will take to achieve fluency. That's useful, I guess. But what I really want is a method of *learning*.
Learning the art of shameless self promotion: In progress: i.e. my blog is Blink Of the Day at http://blinkoftheday.blogspot.com
Love the blog (your's and mine).
zanimljiv clanak. Ako znas ruski, mozda uspijes razumjeti :)
Great post! Can you post your thesis or any other writings you have on learning Japanese?
Thanks,
Jon
Would you be willing to break down a full example, and show your work so us laymen might have a better chance of understanding? I think I get it, but I'm certain I couldn't reproduce what you've done without a full example.
C
I'll tranlate your article to portuguese and I'll posting on my blog, ok? My blog (tradutorium.wordpress.com) is focused in translate the best Digg posts to portuguese, and your is very cool!
--Thanks
thanks
On the other hand, learning Spanish, French, German or other languages over a period of four years in high school (a pre-requisite for college acceptance, usually) and then more years in college just so I can speak the language for the six days of my life that I actually spend in one of those countries or for the rare occasion where I meet someone who speaks that language and I want to show off (all four times in my life), then that is a terrible allocation of resources.
Most people in the world that you will ever deal with can speak English. Especially in the professional world. If you're visiting somewhere, it doesn't hurt to pick up a few things, but unless you're going to spend months or years in another country, it's another waste of energy.
So if you have a specific obligation or situation that would necessitate the investment of your time and effort to learn a specific language for a specific purpose - great. Otherwise, it just seems like a lot of masturbation so that you can tell people "I speak four languages".
Learn to speak a different language in an hour - holy sh*t!!! I'm definitely interested in detailed step by step clarity that's in your books.
The integrity, credibility, and consistency you've built will mean that this is truly possible.
-Dave Ross
NYC
Your method sounds similar to that used by the 19th century explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton (no relation to the actor). In his book "The Devil Drives," he describes his method of deconstructing languages. From what I recall, he was fluent in 29 and passable in 72. Burton was the first Westerner in the forbidden city of Mecca, translator of 1001 Nights, discoverer of lakes in Africa among other achievements. I recommend his book to you if you want to compare methods.
This post is very good. Any suggestions about reading Chinese characters?
When I found out the Mandarin word for cat was 'mao1' I laughed and laughed, because my cat says that all the time ;)
Also, mother being ma1ma. Coincidence? Also, that the character is a woman and a horse together, i.e. a woman that does the job of a horse...another coincidence?
FOr languages where it makes sense, learn the conjugations of 'to be' and the gerund of everything else...so you don't have to say, 'I go, he goes, they go', but 'I am going, he is going, they are going', plus 'I will be going, I was going, I must be going' etc. My husband was studying (see, there it is again) Italian and struggling with the verb conjugations, I suggested he just learn the gerunds. He mentioned it to his instructor the last day of class, who agreed it would work but said, 'but we want you to learn the language properly'.
I lived in Italy for six months and could get through whole days with nothing more than 'Prego, dai, forza ragazzi, basta cosi'. And not just for sex either.
In Argentina, I've learned not to ask for a taxi by saying 'Donde puedo coher un taxi' because the reply (with much smirking) will be 'para el tubo'.
Anyway, I'd be interested to hear from native speakers which languanges the gerund shortcut works for.
Love & Gratitude,
Tina
Think Simple. Be Decisive.
~ Productivity, Motivation & Happine
keep on writing, please
Good work
Giulio
I'm a big LISTS fan. it would be neat to see 'lists' of useful things: favorite websites, top 5 things to do on a saturday if you're bored, a list of businesses you'd open if you had all the time/energy in the world, short tips for people who want to maximize their day, that sort of thing. the kind of stuff you talk about at dinner :)
Keep up the great work, I love your website!
This is fascinating. Two things.
First of all, as some of your commentators seem to misunderstand, there are those of us who think best in terms of structures. I have wanted to learn other languages for a while now, but am terribly daunted by a never-ending procession of vocabulary words and verb conjugations. I have often felt that if someone could simply offer me the theory of given language, its operative conceits and tropes, no matter how complex, I would be much better off, as this is how I learn. Thus, the assertion, repeated above, that this wouldn’t work because some people won't understand it ignores those of us for whom an approach like this might be the only option.
Second, as I am somewhat familiar with the term's origin, I don't think deconstruction is the word you are looking for. A deconstruction would aim to highlight precisely those aspects of a given tongue that your approach necessarily leaves out; idioms, local semantics, and various other irreducibles. Which is to say that deconstruction proceeds precisely by virtue of language’s ability to constantly elude or exceed a given architecture, and correspondingly that is perhaps its only virtue, strictly speaking. The proper term from the same lexicon for what your doing remains 'structuralist;' that is, highlighting and schematizing convergences and equivalencies across different contexts, with an aim toward easing learning and consumption - quite the opposite of a deconstructive praxis. Not that this is a bad thing, mind you, or that it really matters, but structuralist, though less sexy, is the more accurate term. (If it makes you feel better, if your structure is well founded, and becomes the standard, you can come back and deconstruct later if you like)
Anyway, found you on digg. Love the idea, please elaborate soon.
I just think that being conversationally fluent is one thing, but it's implied in the title sounds a bit braggy. One may be conversationally fluent, but is one sure of what they are saying? Not everyone is language oriented and I know my share of people who aren't.
You see (or possibly know, cause I don't know you at all), English is a very difficult language to translate into, despite the fact that it's still Anglo-Saxon. Anyhoo, I kind of see a problem with this because in China, there are so many dialects of Chinese, some with 9 sounds, some with 7 etc. and standard Mandarin has only 4. Furthermore, native speakers of Mandarin retain an accent from their own dialect, actually making it harder for the person who is using your tips to comprehend. Also, what about slang? Say that all the people you've met who spoke Mandarin spoke just Mandarin and no dialect. Simple right? Well, then comes the problem of local influence on the language. In Mandarin, there are 4 words for the exact same thing (Eg: Popsicle) and it's all depending on where you are.
Same with Slovenian. There really is no actual standard dialect because there are 48 dialects with a population of just above 2 mill.
In addition, the more esoteric a language is (Euskara anyone?) the (sooooo much) harder it is to pick it up in any method. Also, since there are language isolates, their sense of humor (Japan's for example) is much different, as well as semantics. Intonation also plays a big role. In French, it's much more common to say Tu as faim? Instead of As-tu faim? The voice rises instead of the obvious VSO. Or even in German: Ich muß viel studieren dafür instead of Ich muß viel dafür studieren. The purest of any foreign language is spoken in a classroom, not in the country itself.
And on a closing note, Pinyin is much much more natural. GR and Wade-Giles are (to me) nothing but a western take on Chinese romanization. It angers me to see everyone use Wade-Giles instead of what is truly Chinese. It annoys me just as much to see other languages get botched up too.
PS: Alex, Hungarian and Finnish are related and both are ridiculously complex since there are like no languages related to either of them.
On my fifth language (dutch) and using all kinds of "instinctive" technics to learn it without going to school (no time)
Nevertheless on learning my fourth one (danish) i went to the KISS (Kobenhavn International Sprog Skole). Their method although extremely boring was the most efficient one in order to gain sufficient fluency without being the best in grammar and spelling. The concept was based on repeting (hence the boredom) with a few "head sentences" where one word was change in order to form new sentances. (more or less your apple exemple, that is to say:
I like eating apples
I like eating fruits .....
It worked extremely well. No fantasy was ever allowed as how the teachers put it "we (student) were not there to express ourselves but to be able to comunicate in order that the personn in front get the message". It worked perfectly alright and the difference between students who went to regular danish schools and those who attended KISS was striking.
Now don't you think that some people have a natural ability to learn more and more languages?
Again i will take my own kids as an exemple and their best friends who are also brothers.
My kids were raised in one language with english and danish talked on regular basis around them. They've traveled and tend to have some kind of ease to pick up languages. But the older one has an accent in all languages even his mother tongue whereas the youger one seems to be a native of the three languages he speaks and the fouth that he is learing (dutch). My japanese sister in law also says that whenever he repeats words in japanese it is the perfect accent!!
Their friends were raised in three languages at the same time and the oldest one is actually on his 6th's one (spanish) wheras the second struggle more. They are both polish which has (if understood correctly) a huge phonem potential! (oh all those kids are only 10 and 12!!!)
So my conclusion will be that you may get the best method to quickly learn a new language, you may not be gifted with the potential of being polyglot!!
By the way, which musical instrument are you playing??
Cheers
One key point is that the learner has to learn to stop looking for comparisions to first language and instead look for patterns and tendencies in the new language.
And you finally got me to get off my butt, head down to my local indy bookstore, and buy the 4HWW.
Now to find the ways I can cut down my current 75-hour work week to something more reasonable.
Here are a couple of my tips specifically for Mandarin Chinese:
1. Syllables and words: First of all, Chinese is a language where virtually every syllable is one word (or at least carries meaning all by itself). And also virtually every syllable is represented by just one written character. Since it is a pictographic language, and new pictographs cannot be invented (they wouldn't become usable until after everyone learned them), they do not invent new words the way we do. Instead, they only invent new "compound words" (words made up of multiple smaller words). When you learn these, it does you well to learn the meanings of the individual pieces too, as that helps remember and notice patterns in how they are combined.
2. Pinyin and pronunciation: Don't treat pinyin like an "alphabet" of individual letters, each one having a sound! It is not designed that way and doesn't make sense that way, because the language isn't natural that way like it is for English and many other alphabetic languages! Instead, treat "initials" and "finals" as the smallest possible atomic elements of their phonetics, and each word is made up of a combination of one of each, plus a tone added. You will have a much simpler time with the pronunciation after learning this. See: http://yellowbridge.com/language/pinyin-combo.html for a table illustrating this.
3. Homonyms and context: By the way, notice how that last table of every possible phonetic word in the language is surprisingly small. There are a *ton* of homonyms. Everyone has to use context to understand the spoken language, much more so than many other languages. Even native speakers frequently ask each other which word they are referring to, so don't feel bad if you have trouble with that too. The normal written language (the characters) is not as bad in this respect.
4. Characters: If you learn their writing system, learn the parts of the character (called "radicals"), what they mean and where they come from. Sometimes the radicals give hints about meaning, and sometimes they give hints about pronunciation. Some are obscure and the etymology has been lost, but if you find a story about them (or even make one up if necessary), they're much easier to remember. I don't know of many good resources for this, very few people even in China ever think about this, they mostly learn them by memorization.
Speaking of memorizing... a big part of their culture is memorizing and following orders, not so much reasoning things out on their own using logic. So you will to a large extent be on your own if you use an analytical approach to help you learn their language. Good luck to those who attempt to learn Chinese, they will be enamored with you for taking the time!
Then you memorize those first not whatever your text says.
these lists exist on the internet.
you can find lists of the most common 1000 words too.
since most people converse using only a couple thousand words you are well on your way to the ability to communicate if not grammatically correctly - at least you can get the intended message across.
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Hi Kirk,
Please search for "Blogosphere Self-Defense" on this blog and I've listed them in the comments. Thanks!
Tim
great post...by the way I'm trying to spread 4HWW in Italy
where I live now, with great results between my friends...I do something similar to LitLib in Africa...but that's another story.
I just wanted to say that decostructing languages and phonetics are the key issues...and in particular I'm a big fan of Phonetics symbology...thanks to it when I was 19 years old I could already speak English fluently without ever being in an English speaking country before (I'm Italian)! Now (32 yrs old) I've been travelling a lot and I can really tell you you're absolutely right!
My fav website (hoping to help the readers interested) for this is the Website of IOWA Univ. dedicated to Phonetics...
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/
Brilliant for Eng (USA), German and Spanish...give it a try!
Enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!
My next big challenge is chinese and japanese...I'll keep you informed ;-)
Dani
I've linked to you in http://newmusicstrategies.com where I've talked about languages recently. My free ebook 'The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online' has now been translated into Chinese, meaning it's now available in six languages -- five of which I can't speak or read, which is a real shame.
I'm looking around for the 'right' language for me to learn, having invested a bit of time in French, and being reasonably fluent in English from a young age, since it was all that my parents, sisters, friends and schoolteachers knew how to speak.
Considering Dutch, though not because of the deconstruction. Just in love with the place and want to spend as much time there as I possibly can. It would seem rude not to try and speak the language, even though everyone there is pretty much fluent in English.
I really like this article but it sounds so businessy to me. God I'm such a critic. But it honestly sounds like it's just for business. Someone may know 6 languages fluently or even 29 etc. but the real question is, do they get the 'real meaning' of the language? I don't mean lexicon. I mean that innate feeling.
I think that this is a great jumpstart to learn a language but the time and true sense of a language will never develop properly. I mean you can say 'spa-see-ba' or 'xie xie' or 'arigatoo' but there will never be that native hold over a language.
I still think that although the language is covered, the meaning isn't. What's funny in one isn't funny in another. I can truthfully say that I'm funny in one language and flat in another.
And Russ, I was referring to the lack of languages related to the Finno-Ugric group. (Although I might have written it as none, my bad.) Didn't I say how fast you picked a language up depended on what language you spoke in the first place?
But I can't stifle my bemusement. Do you speak a few languages yourself? I mean, have you tested your ideas and found them to work, or have others confirmed your methods? I still think you may be onto something. But if you haven't tried it all out it strikes me as all a bit cheeky.
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Hi Steve!
Thanks for the comment. I've used this on quite a few languages -- see the beginning of the post -- but this is definitely a blog post. It is not intended to be a peer-reviewed clinical review of language acquisition, not by any means. This is my subjective take, and that's it. There have been a number of really angry posts and emails from PhDs and such with questions like "you're ignorant -- where is your clinical research?." It's just a blog post. All that said, I'm pretty cheeky regardless :)
Thanks for contributing!
Tim
Yes please, but you must include a link to larger versions of the images otherwise there's no point having them.
I'm always interested in learning new languages but my biggest problem has been those little technicalities or ways of structuring sentences ... but they were things I couldn't identify.
I'd love it if you could expand on this further. I'm on the edge of my seat.
I'd already started conventional Japanese lessons and been listening both to Japanese language podcasts and Pimsleur's Japanese audio lessons. Once I got there it felt like everything I knew went out of the window. For 3 weeks I used my truly terrible and meagre Japanese speaking ability at all times - I learnt more from this total immersion than I had from over a year's worth of scratching my head back in the UK.
I lived on noodles, raw fish, and custard donuts. I was lost in Tokyo, homeless in Kyoto, and set on fire at the Kurama Fire Festival. I stayed overnight in a Buddhist temple on Mt Koya (Koyasan), fed Deer biscuits in Nara (then a Deer ate my map in Miyajima!), and also traveled round Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Osaka, and Nikko, amongst many other places.
Thanks for the advice and inspiration. My goal is to be able to speak and read Japanese before I hopefully go back to teach there next year on the JET programme from July / August, so I will be looking out for your language articles with great interest. I'm registered with technorati so I will gladly link to those articles, especially if they use Japanese as the model language!
As you have written before, this method works very well with immersion learning. Drop into a foreign country and struggle with asking directions. There's more nuance and flavor in that conversation that can be learned than from any other contrived situation using the grammar translation method in a classroom. My wife taught German to elementary school students using "immersion", and their brains pretty much filled in the gaps in a fashion like you have described above. Cool stuff!
I added you to our blogroll: http://freshtilledsoil.typepad.com/
Good luck breaking the 1,000 mark.
Best, Richard
Kudos - great blog entry. I'm fascinated by learning languges and you're spot on. I just spent two weeks in China and was surprised by how quickly I could pick up a few basics. Enjoyed interviewing you after your keynote at The New New Internet in Reston, VA (Nov. 1, 2007). Posted the video here: http://www.blogwriteforceos.com/blogwrite/2007/...
Why ? This technique is void of the cultural content on a language and looks like it doesn't pretend to answer that question.
Language is all about communication.
Tonya Harding is doing a dinner for two with martial arts exhibition in Kansas City ands its on EBAY.
If she goes for more than you did recently, that's just... wrong.
Austin
I was so so so happy to see you in the Times today!!!
Great surprise on a cold Sunday morning in New York.
My friend took a picture of me reading it today
and said I was "glowing".
I'm so happy for you!
Anna
Tim, what would you say is the easiest second language for a native English speaker to pick up? If necessary, assume Midwestern American dialect and also that we have access to a native speaker of the language we are learning. A one word answer is fine. Thanks!
Background: Native speaker of (Canadian) English. Was a student of French from Grade 7 through to 2nd year university. Studied German for 4 years in high school, then majored in German at university. Studied Spanish for 4 years in HS (teacher was born/raised in Holland, French was his 2nd language, English his 3rd). Studied Mandarin Chinese for 2 years and Japanese for 1 year at university.
My first wife was German, born and raised. When exposed to snippets of Dutch, it completely baffled her. Conversely, I recall watching a documentary on current technology which was entirely in Dutch, and was able to understand at least 50% of what was being said.
I've heard Portuguese spoken, and it's completely befuddled me. Didn't sound like anything I should have recognized.
I also majored in Linguistics, so I got exposed to various other language snippets along the way.
I took a look at that GR Wikipedia reference and didn't find it intuitive at all. Granted, when I studied Chinese, I was only exposed to pinyin as a tool, but I found that looking at the symbol above the syllable, it was quite easy to figure out what tone was being used there. If anything (and I'm sure my Linguistics background helped), I just sort of loped along for the first part of the course, then it was like a light went on one night. After that, I breezed my way through the pronunciation. Blew away my instructor (native Chinese) the first time I read for the class after that epiphany, too. The only roadblock after that was the writing system.
Regarding Japanese, you left out the bit about the syllables being sliced up into equally-timed pieces called morae. And the bit about the spoken sentence consisting of raised 3rds and raised 5ths (musically speaking), which was a useful tip for me when I studied it. Not sure how you'd flesh out those details using your system. (Conversely, Chinese speakers learning English would do well to understand that the duration of a vowel gives English speakers a clue as to whether the consonant immediately following is voiced or voiceless, eg, 'beat' vs 'bead', or 'bit' vs 'bid'.
I tried Italian self-study about 7 years ago, as it was a language I'd always wanted to learn, and figured that given my French and Spanish studies in the past, it should be fairly straightforward. And it was. I was making progress (enjoyably so), but it's a lot like the difference between weightlifting in your boring basement, or weightlifting in a nice, well-lit gym with other people around to help motivate. It's also a little challenging to respond to a recording when the recording can't correct you. While I typically know when I'm mispronouncing words, a lot of newbies might not pick up on that when left to their own devices. Then they go forth into the foreign land and are puzzled when native speakers have no clue what they're talking about. ;-)
I like the sports reference, though. I've been doing various martial arts for years, and I always compare learning MA to learning 2 other things: language and music.
I haven't really taken any deep language dives in many years, and having been exposed to other dialects (eg, Quebecois, Cantonese) has taken its toll on my vocabulary.
Actually, this is probably my biggest issue. I can learn grammar, tones, etc and lock that logic away permanently, but when it comes to vocabulary, it's very challenging to hang onto those words I've learned. Doesn't seem to matter how many times I write down lists, write in margins, write on cheat sheets, the words are like smoke in the breeze. Could be because I have a touch of ADD. *shrug*
Thanks for this article. I'd love to see more on languages. I'm learning Serbian right now, and found the same thing...in 20-30 minutes I could read cyrillic easily. It was just a process of deconstructing the language, but I didn't realize that's what I was doing until I read this. Peace.
And I have to side with Ben on the pinyin thing. I've never heard of or been in any Chinese school using GR. It's disgraceful if they do.
My Mandarin tones are OK (check my name and Mandarin Chinese on youtube). Phonetic writing system is irrelevant to learning tones. Just listen repetitively to natural(not text book) content you like, that grabs you. Listen for the rhythm, even if you do not understand it all, over and over. I used comic dialogues (xiangsheng).
Re grammatical differences in languages, what seems strange at first, becomes familiar and natural thru listening and reading.Not the decisive factor. Nor are sound differences.
Choose the language you WANT to learn. Your desire to learn it is your biggest asset, which will connect you to the language and keep you going.
The biggest challenge is vocabulary. You need lots of words to sound intelligent in a language. There are no shortcuts. But some methods are more fun and more effective than others.
Treat language learning as an ongoing activity that needs to be fun, because you need to spend a long time at it.Listen to and read what you like,whenever you want, talk when you want, and avoid the classroom. Treat it like jogging or Sudoku.
My two cents...
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Hi R!
Thanks for the comment and good question. For the angry e-mails/comments: criticism is great can be great, and there is plenty of it on this blog... BUT, I view this blog like my living room. I invite people in to discuss and compare notes, and if there is someone who attacks not only me but others in an abusive way, I don't want them in my house.
This blog is a labor of love for me, and uncool angry people make me not love it. So... I delete them. Simple. I have plenty of time for disagreement and spirited debate, but there is a right tone and a wrong tone to use. If people are abusive, they can find another blog. I prefer to keep the blog more civil and less full of vitriol. Some bloggers feel they "have to" allow all comments to be published. Any they suffer for it -- they tell me. I just keep the cool people (including those who post criticisms/questions) and delete the uncool ones who seem like they'll be continued pains in the ass.
Hope that explains it!
Tim
Good for you keeping this blog free from negativity, I fully support that - there is plenty of time for that nonsense elsewhere. Plus it just gets in the way of those of us who want better things for ourselves... like logging into this blog after my first week long info-diet from Heathrow: just wanted to see what you have been up to :)
-Erik
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Thank you, Erik, and congrats on the detox! All of recovery information addicts salute you :)
Tim
I don't know if anyone else has pointed this out in the comments, but the process you describe leaves out a method for performing the required analysis. It's somewhat like telling someone to learn the layout of a city before they get there, but without a map.
Are there any books that describe these structures for specific languages? Have you published your own investigations? That sounds like an ebook, or series of ebooks that people would want to buy.
For instance, if I wanted to (re)learn German I would have a lovely time driving my family crazy saying things like "would you with me to the store and shopping do go?" all the time.
Are there resources for getting this material on various languages (that don't actually require me to do the work myself)? Most of what I find is (unsurprisingly) *in* the target language, not in English (English structure) to English (Foreign structure) format.
I would prefer Mandarin but since my daughter is learning French I might try that first; I don't want her to talk about me with her classmates in a language I don't understand...
Any suggestions?
Thinking in the other language as opposed to simply speaking means that the immersion is complete, and that is important because we don't often recognize that just because a person is responding to us in English, that they are still thinking in their own language.
That is where the bridge between SOV and SVO for instance is a good basic building block also when it comes to learning to synchronize thinking language with spoken language wherever that phonetic difference exists, something that we might otherwise ordinarily take for granted.
M.
Play or get played...........
Anyway, by his reckoning, I shouldn't bother with Arabic. Arabic has many sounds not found in English, but in fact I don't mind that. My biggest hurdle in learning Arabic has been the extremely poor materials available. The standard textbook is al-kitaab, but the authors have a very strange view of what words one should learn first. They include "United Nations" in their first chapter, although that is of limited value at the beginning. They give the verb "to be cut off" before they give the verb "to take." This is madness. "To take" should have been in the first chapter, or at worst the second. Instead, it is in chapter 12, and in my class we didn't get to that until the second year.
Also, I agree with #69 concerning open vowels in Portuguese. Is there a problem there that I missed? The nasal diphthongs were the problem, I thought, but definitely fun to produce once you learn how. Ditto for the q in Arabic.
Recommending that people use GR is actually detrimental to their learning, because there are absolutely NO study materials available using that system. Learning it would be a colossal waste of time.
I must say, however, that by recommending an obscure system that nobody uses, it does make it harder to find any real evidence to prove you wrong, and at the same time allows you to appear to be much more than a dilettante. Well done.
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Hi Kevin,
Princeton University has a great book series called "A Chines Primer," I believe, that uses GR beautifully. GR is a lot harder to learn than pinyin, but I've found -- again, just in my experience -- that GR learners have less re-learning to tones to do when they arrive in a native environment. No doubt that there are some great Mandarin speakers who learned on pinyin, but %-wise, I find the GR learners to have more accurate tones. Results may vary, of course.
Thanks for the comment and for adding to the discussion,
Tim
As for the Princeton textbook, I am aware that there are some materials available for GR, so I am certainly guilty of a bit of hyperbole. The problem is that once you move beyond the very basic lessons these books provide, your GR will be pretty useless, as almost all other truly useful material is in pinyin. The fantastic resources of Chinesepod, for instance, or any number of excellent online Chinese dictionaries, are all in pinyin. In fact, is there a single, modern Chinese-English dictionary available in GR?
And, anyway, like I said originally, pinyin really isn't that hard, and it's not worth all this trouble to avoid it.
I just have to find enough bilingual people willing to sit down and deconstruct their language with me first...
1) I feel like you're suggesting we give up on language that different too greatly from our own. I just don't agree with that.
2) I think the fact that you were a Princeton student says alot about your capability and capacity to learn. This may be simple puzzles for you, but for others, it's easier to learn quantum physics then language (and many do actually take a year of physics as opposed to a fourth year of language).
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Hi Kp!
Good comments. I'll address these more in a future post, but quickly: 1) I'm not suggesting one avoid "hard" languages, even if it might seem that way. My first real fluent second language was Japanese, and I'm glad I started with that. 2) I actually attempted Spanish in junior high school and didn't get anywhere with it, as I was only exposed to ineffective in-class methods. So, I don't think going to Princeton means I have a special faculty for language. More to come soon :)
Tim
For some reason 'deconstructing' reminded me a bit of Japanese Step by Step.
What I'm most curious about is your neuroscience research. There's been a lot of discussion/clashes on language learning and learning styles on the how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum site (search 'learning style'). Did you find any indication of this or do you believe more in a 'one style should fit most people' approach?
I'd like to link to this post re language acquisition, and perhaps help your Technorati rating! Do you have any larger jpg images than the ones in the post?
You see, I've lived all over the world and have struggled with Japanese, Russian, French, Malay (ok, not much of a struggle) and Spanish. Although the opportunities were there, I knew better than attempt Chinese and Mandarin.
I'm now living in Thailand and dealing with tonal Thai. But, in Thai, it's easier to learn to speak by reading first so I'm coming in from that angle. Wish me luck.
"Is this helpful or just too dense? Would you like me to write more about this or other topics? Please let me know in the comments."
Too dense? No. I found it amazing. I can already see how it fits for Thai.
For more? I would love see what you come up with for Thai.
ps: I have your book. I just didn't think about reading your blog. After this, I certainly will.
Great article! I have always been interested in deconstructing languages I don't speak, but it's interesting to see how you can use that information to select the next language to learn.
As a native Turkish speaker and fluent in English and German, I bet you are a good candidate to learn Turkish in less than 6 months, which has similar grammar to Japanese, I have been told, and has its roots common with Finnish and Hungarian and although it is somewhat complicated and has a few unique sounds, the lack of exceptions should make it easy to learn for a methodical learner like you are.
Let me know if you need help deconstructing.
Main question: Once we've chosen a language to learn, what's the best way to go about it (short of plopping yourself down on foreign soil and having a trial-by-fire)?
You went to Princeton. Been a dream always.
My Latin book used this neglected deconstruction the other way round: Simple construction - and after the first hour I knew - learnable. My English book did, and I knew: learnable, easier - after my first hour of French, I thought: learnable, but a little bit more complicated, due to the differences/exceptions - I am Austrian.
To be honest, I think you describend what anybody who wants to learn a language will figure out during his or her first hour: Basic sentence building.How complicated is this language - spelling...
Teacher or book. No idea what webcasts or podcasts are like
But there is something strange going on today - are you all serious about what you describe?
Maybe you can help me - the last article I read complained, that you could not really tell how to talk fluently within an hour. so i clicked, thinking wow, what could be a decent excuse for the guy to expect it ? And the article before was this one:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/120/at-frog...
Excuse me, if this sounded rude, I just wondered.
I read "about" now.
Success with your (psycho)linguistic pursuits, all!
I did already feel sorry for my harshness/being nosy short after, or maybe even before having pressed "send".
I was in a strange mood.
But though: Personally, I always experienced construction and deconstruction at the same time - and have still problems to see the big difference, to me it seems to be more a "congruent perspective", though "put into words from a different angle" (dangerous expression :-)in this post.
I think you have to deconstruct in order to be able to construct, somehow naturally - we focussed on grammar first, and that did not stay with simple structures, it just started there, similar to "This is John's apple", going on, and never neglecting the rules.
(I am sorry Tim !:)
I just do not think that the deconstruction method is neglected, more included.
If tim's method would allow to tell quite exactly how long it takes to learn one language compared to another, I would be more convinced of the approach, but 2-12 months seems to be a sign for huge individual differences - still.
And are there really a lot of people who invest hundreds to thousands of waisted hours until they find out that Chinese is harder to learn than Spanish ? (Starting from English)
I seem to have got into that strange mood again :-)
I should start to learn a new language now, before I go on being (maybe unfounded) nosy here and maybe I will come back soon,in order to tell: I was wrong.
I try to approach my 4-h week first ;-)
Is your ability to market it!
I mean really, if a linguistics geek had written this same post on their blog, they'd have titled it something like:
"How to efficiently deconstruct the grammar, phonemes and other elements of multiple languages."
Not nearly as sexy, eh?
This post floored me. I already held you in the HIGHEST regards, but this post gave me a glimpse into the brilliance of your incredible intellectual (and marketing) skills.
BTW, your post reminded me of something--
My wife used to have a friend in college who made it his ambition to know how to say, “The Cheese is in the restroom” in as many languages as he could find… (he was up to 12 or 13).
The force is strong in this one...
David Gonzalez
Anyway I've got mine. I fell in love with Spanish at a young age, and have finally mastered it so that I can usefully read and write it. I, didn't know it then but I do now, what a perfect choice. My access to the world through especially the internet, has practically doubled since I started surfing the web in Spanish. I don't want to learn chinese - that's too much. And I don't need to deconstruct to know that. The size of the vocabulary, which consists of for me entirely new words is far too large. That is actually an aspect of the difficulty of learning a language that you left out. It is much more the size of unknown / (unrelated to yours) vocabulary that is the biggest obstacle to learning it. For example in the language that you are close to, Spanish, but probably as a learner - what is the meaning of "lograr"? - this is a word that I have serious problems in remembering the meaning for, because it is not connected, that I can see, to any of my other languages, Nordic, English, German, French, Italian, (Portuguese).
I think I disagree about your super claim - deconstuct and four hours, nonsense. The idea is good for the grammar but most of the language is vocabulary, so you are wrong.
It merely helps to DECIDE which language you could pick up quickly if you wanted to try.
Amy
I think this article is great, however, I started learning Arabic this summer, and while being close to fluent in 7 weeks, at 16 hours x 5 days a week, i don't see how you can say it is possible to learn any language in 1 hour. Although that really depends on your definition of "learn", which from your book is one of the most important things to do, define. :)
Sure, the basic greetings and the essential "where is the bathroom", but more than the basic 10 phrases or so seems the problem. Sure, the equivalent of the first chapter of a language book is reasonable, but even with mapping out the tensing can be more than an hour unless you have resources available that have pre-consolidated all of it into only one location.
But, I am going to be learning another language this spring, probably Portuguese. Any advice? I already speak English, Español, ????????
I live in Prague and have written some learning tips to allow someone to understand and speak Czech (and I'm sure other Slavic languages) quickly, mostly because it is written from and for an English speaker's perspective.
Czech is easy and it is possible to not only recollect words you might have heard months before, but to also invent perfectly acceptable words according to the system of the language.
I don't know how to make the information readily available for download, but I'll send it to anyone interested.
Pedro
I was tweaking my BlogLines account for any new feeds on language learning and this post on your blog came up several times (so, I guess that is one advantage of being in the Technorati top 2000). I am a language teacher and technologist and run a blog (with a very small Technorati score) called Language Lab Unleashed. I blogged your post over there and thought you might be interested to see what the responses are... they are slow in coming, indeed, but we have an audience of teachers who are slowly, carefully and thoughtfully taking exception to your "learning but not mastering" ideas. C'mon over and take a look sometime.
In the spirit of sharing related knowledge, those of you who are interested in more links related to the subject of language-learning should check out the follwing websites (I am not affiliated with any of these websites...I'm just a keen langauge teacher and learner):
Dynamic "language and media immersion called YABLA:
http://home.yabla.com/product/home.php?
BICS & CALPS explained in easy-to-understand format:
http://www.everythingesl.net/inservices/bics_ca...
Yes, there are NEW approaches to teaching second languages in schools based on new research about how additional languages are acquired (i.e. AIM method by Wendy Maxwell):
http://www.aimlanguagelearning.com/hot-topics.htm
For those who want to learn on their own, another simple resource is LanguageGuide:
http://www.languageguide.org/eng/
Happy learning!
> The apple is red.
> It is John’s apple.
These two are OKish, if slightly unnatural (I doubt you'd ever say either of these.
> I give John the apple.
> We give him the apple.
> He gives it to John.
> She gives it to him.
But these four subscribe to the curious myth of a present simple in English. In modern English, that's led to the curious existence of a "present historic" (that you're seemingly using), which only exists in stories and sports commentaries, not conversation.
If you fail to respect the "normal" form of English, then your correspondent won't be able to equate the norm in your target language with that of English.
Furthermore, while you've examined the complexity of the noun case system, you've not explored the range of tenses of verbs, which can also contribute to the complexity of a language.
Very intriguing approach! I look forward to giving it a go.
Cheers,
Tristan
Most people don't give a gnats fig about the structure of their own language so this is essentially a useless idea.
Clever people will work out how to deconstruct (even without a knowledge of grammar etc.) in their own way using their own special strengths, and may be just as successful but not the same. Not so clever people will follow what you describe to the letter, and wonder why it doesn't work for them.
You are obviously smart but do you have the ability to look beyond your own brain. Your comment about pinyin? I hope you haven't led anybody astray. Some people can easily remember via the normal pinyin because they are already used to languge with diacritical marks. I couldn't but my solution was to quickly get used to five new letters (1,2,3,4,5) very easy then for me to remember ni3 as a word with three letters. Glad I didn't learn an obscure system that I would not be able to use in online dictionaries, in my handheld electronic dictionary, in my paper dictionary and wouldn't be known by Chinese people I language exchanged with.
Regards,
Mitch Ronco
Immortality International, Inc.
Thanks and regards,
Michael Rivers
The problem is getting from the basic level to proper fluency: this means an increase in vocabulary of at least an order of magnitude. To be able to use a language professionally needs at least another 5x increase in vocabulary.
Thus it's clear that, whereas the problems in starting to learn a language are related to how different it is from one's native language, these differences soon disappear. By far the biggest problem in learning a language properly is learning the vocabulary.
Romance languages are easy in this respect because more complicated, abstract English words usually come from Romance roots (via Norman French). However Hungarian is also surprisingly easy. Although the vocabulary is entirely foreign, it is built up of a core vocabulary of pure Hungarian roots using very logical rules. Thus, while it is extremely difficult to get started in Hungarian, it is not so difficult once once gets over the initial hurdles.
Again, very good points Castle Steps. I will one day be fluent in at least 4 languages too. 0 down, 4 to go.
The force is strong in this one...
David Gonzalez
This is the first article I read from you. I found it while looking for better techniques to teach ESL in Japan. Sadly and truly ESL in Asia is a joke students pay big bucks to attend one hour a week and ultimately learn almost nothing after YEARS of study. The same is true in China and Korea in my experiences there. Most people here have been convinced by school owners that grammar is the way to learn a language, I believe grammar is the HARDEST way, and I think most school owners know that, so they stay in business forever. I am striving to get out of the industry mainly because it is a meaningless jobs since either the student don't care to learn or the schools have a vested interest in teaching students as slow as possible English. I really like this article,and would ESPECIALLY like any suggestion you have about applying this to teaching ESL, while I MUST do it in the mean time, I want to make the most positive difference that I can. I am going to take these sentences and their gender, tense... variants and try using them in my classes, I will report back anything of note.
Tim
alors ça parle le français ou bien?
^_^
j'espère qu'tu te décourage pas, tu sais il y a aussi des tonnes de langues "non officielles", parlées juste par quelques minoritées, qui sont dignes d'intérêt.
Ce que j'aimerai savoir c'est si il est possible de les apprendre de la même manière sans que cela ne vienne perturber les langues déjà apprises??
allez, kiss kiss.
__________________________________________________________
Hey hey hey guy!
So you know french, don't you?
I hope you will stay so hard-worker. You know there are still tonns of "unofficial" languages, so interesting at all.
What I want to know is if it's possible to learn these dialects with the same method, or if it would conflict with previously learned languages??
????!
.-SrB-.
(ps: what is the reliability of a site such as www.mangolanguages.com ??)
What really bugs me about language learning is that 80% or more of using a language usage depends upon memory recall and I suck at that. I surely do wish that someone would come up with a language learning system that recognized that and built it into the process. I would have thought that in this day and age we could come up with something better than parrot-fashion learning.
Does anyone know of a system that builds memorization right into the heart of the process?
I am an ESL teacher in Japan and have been looking for the same so that I can teach my students better (it's how I found Tim Ferris and his site).
Though it is specific to ESL there is a guy out of the U.S. who has a website called "Effortless English" and his ideas seems excellent to me, he may well be able to give you a template of how to apply his ideas to learning other languages. At the very least sign up for his 7 day newsletter which has some excellent suggestions, some of which may surprise you other's you have seen before. I have come to several of the same conclusions as this guy, but from my psychology and learning background instead of his ESL background. This principles in this newsletter could be applied to learning language.
I recently demonstrated some of the same ideas he discusses in my adult classes and had my students tell me a classic Japanese fairytale in English, they won't forget it and neither will I (my memory also sucks;-) Remember BEFORE writing people told stories and remembered the there NOT a rote list of words. I bet you remember near every fairy tale you ever heard as a kid :-)
Hope this helps,
Tim
bin nicht der beste Sprachenlerner, aber versuche es gerade mit Spanisch, weil ich in vier Wochen nach Argentinien will. Kannst Du mir ein gutes Sprach-Institut in B.A. empfehlen? Und ein paar gute Tangoclubs?
Habe Dein Buch verschlungen und warte jetzt auf die deutsche Übersetzung. Kommst Du auf Tour nach Deutschland? Und wenn ja, wann?
Hi Timothy,
I am not the best learner of languages, but your advice (and your additional hiodden material on your website) makes a lot of sense to me after being frustrated with usual learning material. However, I am embarking on a trip to Argentina. Can you recommend a good school in B.A. (comparable to Hartnackschule in Berlin)? And, while you are at it, would you have some tango clubs, you could recommend?
Thank you and I am looking forward to rereading your book in German. Are you going on a reading tour in my country?
Best wishes
Holger
If that's the goal, why not just ask a native speaker of your language who learned the target language how difficult it was to learn? That lets you skip the deconstruction and save 55 minutes. Or have I overlooked something?
Loved the article. I would love to see more on the subject. Formal classroom study (at least in my experience) is one of the worst ways to get your foot in the door and start using a foreign language.
Loved the concept!!
You would love it if you are an Indian as I am doing now, coz all of our languages are so similar....
I can surely try out this stuff on the languages!!
Here's a website for your Japanese that you might find interesting.
www.uebersetzung.at/twister/ja.htm
Kaeru pyoko-pyoko
mi pyoko-pyoko
awasete pyoko-pyoko mu pyoko-pyoko.
Take care
--John
I'm in the midst of putting together a site on the best methods available around the world for learning anything faster and better. I found your information fascinating because, in my opinion, it forms a great left brain foundation for how we learn languages - through our right brain functions.
Let me explain in as few words as possible for the sake of these reading.
We actually have more than five senses. The senses our left brain are associated with are: Sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. What many do not know is our right brain functioning is associated with the "inner" senses of: Perfect memory, computer-like math calculation, rapid language acquisition, perfect pitch (musical aptitude) and subconscious intuition. Many call these inner senses "the 6th sense."
My site (not launched yet) goes into each of these right brain senses in detail, but, when focusing on "rapid language acquisition", I've found that immersion in the language is the best way to "pick it up". I've witnessed families where both parents speak a different language, yet their young children can speak both fluently without mixing them up. That's because most of the brain functioning of these young children takes place in the right hemisphere, where they are easily able to synthesize the subtle patterns of rhythm, frequencies, tone, pitch and accents. All these are stored in their subconscious mind and are easily accessed by their outer consciousness.
As we grow and learn, especially in our American culture, our left brain functions become dominant and it becomes difficult to tap into the vast knowledge locked in our subconscious mind where everything we see, hear, taste, touch and smell are stored as images.
I have many right brain-based games and training methods to help develop our natural right brain senses including rapid language acquisition, but let me end by echoing that your formula seems like a key that can open the door to the brain functions responsible for learning any language, especially when immersed in the language through recordings, foreign TV, culture, music and environment, where all our senses are stimulated and the synapses between left and right brain functions are formed - the bridge between subconscious and conscious thought.
Take care,
Brad
I have a degree in neuroscience and feel you should use some of your statements with care. This whole left right brian thing is a simplified version of the way it actually works. Saying the subconcoius, or x function resides at y locations strictly speaking isn't true. Brain functions for virtually all things is distributed throughout the brain with EMPHASIS (more activity)on some areas who's location can vary form one person to another for various reasons. I'm not debunking what you are doing here only suggesting to be careful how you state what you are doing and how it works. Most people don't know or care about the details, BUT to position yourself as a potential expert on learning and brain function be careful how you word it so as not to debunk your own expert status with your wording.
That said, I am interested in what you are doing and a long time student of learning techniques and strategies. Please post your URL when you are ready to, I am FAR MORE interested in valid and effective methods I can USE for stuff like this (I'm currently and ESL teacher, and perpetual student of ....almost everything), rather than neuroscience technicalities no one but a neuroscience geek like myself would pick up on. Do a little homework on brain plasticity and you'll probably have it covered. Academic experts are a pain in the butt, and often don't have any USABLE information outside their lab, but know some details could prevent you from losing credibility as an expert on brain stuff. Again please post that URL!!! I want more more more ways to teach and learn better.
Take care Brad,
Tim
Thank you for the clarification. I appreciate your follow up.
I believe what we might call right and left brain functions span throughout the brain rather than residing in one particular area. Millions of cells scattered throughout may hold one memory. In my opinion, simplification is a way to bring this concept down to earth. I'm no expert in neuroscience and appreciate your expertise.
What has fascinated me about brain function are the subtle hidden features that we all have in one form or another. For example: (Giving no credit to myself), I've always wondered why I can add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers without thinking. The answer just pops into my mind. Doubting the solution, I check with a calculator and I've always been correct. My wondering ended when I saw young children in a Japanese academy solving even larger math problems in the exact same way. What they told me is it's a natural right brain function called "rapid math calculation". (Google Shichida Child Academies)
There's a lot more that I share on my site based on my experiences and the experiences of others which point to functions of the brain that go beyond what science has been able to prove. I feel the unique gifts we all being to the table can be developed by almost anyone. In my opinion, rapid math calculation, and other "genius" abilities, are brain functions that can be developed with the proper training, which I will be putting on my site.
The site will include exercises, games, tips and training methods which help develop what some call "right brain senses" (please see my last entry). I have a lot to write and prep before it's launched though. I'm building the entire site myself while holding a full-time job, holding a family together and helping others through my freelancing business. It's taking some time!
What I can add is, these controversial and unorthodox learning methods I hope will spur interest and experimentation. They just may awaken abilities we never knew we possessed.
Again, many thanks for your tremendous insights!
Take care,
Brad
###
Hi Brad,
Thanks. Just one thing: please don't put your URL in the body text or it comes off as comment spam. These will be getting deleted/blacklisted in the future, so please keep your URL to the URL field.
Thanks!
Tim
"[German/Russian noun cases] This is one of the reasons I continue to put it off."
This is only one example why I found your article uninteresting.
Treating languages as sports? Fine, but giving up on a particular sport/language before you begin just because you gained the insight that you won't ever become a true master of it is ... unsportsmanlike.
If you are interested in another culture and thus its language you just won't care about the difficulty. As most foreign speakers won't really care about your mistakes as long as you can communicate at all.
So the only gist of your article I really find interesting is the decomposing and "... pick your target".
You are on the right track on this and I wish this technique for learning a foreign language was abailible to me a few years sooner (it would have make it easier for me to learn the 3 extra languages i'm conversational in)
PS, I just found your blog yesterday and am really enjoying it.
OBI-WAN: These are not the droids you're looking for.
STORMTROOPER: These are not the droids we're looking for.
TIM FERRISS: This blog post will teach you how to learn any language in 1 hour.
HUNDREDS OF COMMENTERS: This blog post taught me how to learn any language in 1 hour.
Teach me your secrets, o Jedi master!
Are there any locations where one could find such information for particular languages? How would one go about utilising this method?
Just a vote for you to please continue this series and post more on it if possible. A list of your Language Hacking tips tricks and resources would be great.
JD
Regarding Danish, i have learned it a few years ago in DK in a school called KISS (Koebenhavn International Sprog Skole) and it has been the most efficient way for me to learn a language (maybe not in 4 hours but in a few months). I already mentionned that school before on this blog. Although it was a very boring way to learn danish, it has been the most efficient so far. (on my fifth language) Unfortunatly i have heard it is closing (or is closed) but you might be able to get the course and/or teacher that will be willing to help you . The way they teach was basically to repeat sentances as many times you could and change just one word in it. No creativity but tremendously efficient!
Good Luck!
Farvel!
This article was how I found you, your book and the inventright guys. You mention in the original article that the sentences listed are some, but not all of the sentences you use in your language deconstruction. I would love to see a list of ALL of the sentences you use, so that I might use them as a basis for teaching my ESL students English as well as a basis I can use to learn Japanese.
Thanks Tim
I just want to weigh in on the Mandarin Chinese debate here, and support calls for an article specifically dealing with Chinese learning - in particular, I'd like to see your take on learning to read Chinese. I've been learning Chinese for many years and my speech is near fluent, but I still struggle with reading; I'm a long way from being able to read everyday media and just using Chinese versions of software and Chinese websites is a struggle that requires 100% attention. As on blogger already commented, the Chinese culture currently doesn't really fit with anlaytical techniques for language learning - ask a Chinese person and they'll just tell you to sit down and memorize characters, because that's how they did it.
Re: Portuguese and Spanish, could you elaborate on why learning Portuguese is bad for your Spanish? I also speak Spanish proficiently, and am considering attempting to cross-over to French, Portuguese and Italian (and the sad thing is, after all these year of Chinese study, I can still read more French!), because, like you said, it's a path of less resistance. Do you have any caveats about doing this?
I would like to answer your two questions, 1) how to improve your reading skills in Chinese and 2) how much of an obstacle Spanish is to learning Portuguese.
The simple answers are:
1) to get better at reading Chinese you need to do two things. a) have an efficient system for learning the first 1,000 characters and b) do a lot of reading while continuing to add characters efficiently. You need to get to the point where you can enjoy reading Chinese, and even enjoy reading a novel. It will always be easier to read an alphabetical language. I speak Chinese fluently and have been studying Russian off and on for 2 years. I do not speak well but can read Tolstoi. I prefer to read Russian, even with 10-20% unknown words, to Chinese where I have very few unknown words. Our (non-Chinese) brains have been trained on reading alphabets.
Still, I learned 4,000 characters in 8 months and read Chinese quite comfortably and can provide more information about what I did if you want.
2) Spanish is a the easiest entry point to the world of Romance language speakers, a world of close to 750 million people. The biggest task in learning a language is mastering the vocabulary. Once you have one Romance language, and Spanish is the easiest in my opinion, the others are all "low hanging fruit." Again I can elaborate on a strategy for leveraging your Spanish to learn the other Romance languages if you are interested.
Steve Kaufmann
please "elaborate on a strategy for leveraging your Spanish to learn the other Romance languages".
You can click on my name and read my latest blog post on how I choose the next language to learn. Here is what I said in answer to your specific question.
I briefly tried to learn Portuguese a few years ago, since it is so similar to Spanish. I did a lot of listening to content from the Living Language course book, and the Colloquial Language series. It really did not penetrate. I dropped it. Recently, because of the large number of LingQ learners from Brazil, I took it up again. This time I took a different approach.
You need a certain amount of beginner learner content, in short doses, in order to get your brain familiar with a new language, so that it is no longer just noise. Then you have to move to interesting authentic content as soon as possible. In other words, language learning is content based, not lesson or instruction based.
If you know a very similar language, with very similar vocabulary, as is the case with attempting Portuguese when you know Spanish, you can essentially skip the introductory stage. You do not need a course book. Living Language or Colloquial Portuguese etc. are unnecessary and boring. You just need to listen and read and save words and phrases from content that you like. You can do short articles at first, but then you should move to lengthier content, including novels. You can listen and read at the same time, and you listen while not reading, and you also read without listening. The main thing is to enjoy it and do a lot of it. If you like, you can even listen in Portuguese while reading in Spanish, using translations of famous books, for which translation and audio books are available. Otherwise you just do a lot of listening and reading, and reviewing new words, word forms, and phrase patterns. I ordered audio books from Brazil and after a few weeks of listening and working on LingQ my Portuguese improved quite rapidly.
With a lot of listening and reading, and a systematic review of words and phrases that come from this listening and reading, you will be surprised at how naturally the language starts to penetrate your brain, without you having to think of grammar rules or needing to identify the differences between the two languages. It is important not to convince yourself, as Tim Ferriss tries to do, that it is going to be difficult. You also need to be motivated, to like the language and to choose content that you like. I found some really interesting material in audio form, where the text was available. We have also been increasing our Portuguese content at LingQ thanks to our helpful Portuguese speaking members.
Unfortunately ( for my Portuguese) I remain more motivated to learn Russian for now, since I have not yet reached the level I want to get to. When I do, I will get back to Portuguese, unless I go after Korean first (if we have it on LingQ by then).
###
Dear Steve,
Please don't use my blog to plug the bejesus out of your products. It puts off both readers and bloggers (me). I really like some of your suggestions, but especially after bad mouthing my approaches to language elsewhere on the web, I'd appreciate it if you didn't use the comments on my site to sell people.
I appreciate the contributions that don't call me an idiot, but I will have someone delete your comments if you start to constantly refer to your products and site.
Cheers,
Tim Ferriss
I agree with your comment that "You need a certain amount of beginner learner content, in short doses, in order to get your brain familiar with a new language, so that it is no longer just noise".
When I 1st heard some languages they sounded like the people were from outer space. It's only after some meaning is acquired that the learning begins, and as you said, "the language starts to penetrate your brain".
I also agree with you regarding attitude: "It is important not to convince yourself, as Tim Ferriss tries to do, that it is going to be difficult. You also need to be motivated, to like the language and to choose content that you like." Negative thoughts impede the learning process, regardless of the subject.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Paul
###
Hi Paul,
Just to defend myself here, I'm not advising being negative at all. I'm suggesting that people know and expect the challenges in each language they pursue. If you expect a dip in proficiency in country around month 6, which is my trend, than I can overcome it rather than quitting out of frustration.
Hope for the best but plan for the hard stuff is what I was trying to convey.
Cheers,
Tim
In my view you need to focus on one Latin based language for a while. If you only "speak a bit" of a language it is easy to get confused when learning a little bit of a similar language.
Spanish is the best "entry door" into the world of Romance languages, because of its consistent spelling, relatively easy pronunciation and wide use. Just go for Spanish, spend a year on it if necessary, do a lot of listening and reading of material that you find interesting. Try to do a little bit almost every day, listening in the car, while doing chores etc. Always carry a little Spanish reader around with you.
Do not worry too much about how well you speak, at least for 6 months. Do not try to nail down the grammar. You may want a small grammar book for reference, but mostly you just want to get used to the language and learn words. And try to find a way to enjoy the language. Use the Internet where you can find lots of content and use online dictionaries. Your bits of French and Italian, and the Latin based words of English will help you.
Once you have a good grasp of Spanish, you can go back to French and Italian and you will find that you have improved in those languages without having studied them.
I will respect you wishes and will keep my comments constructive and general. Although we have our areas of disagreement, we also agree on many aspects of language learning. I think it makes for a lively discussion of language learning if a variety of perspectives are available for the readers.
Regards
Steve
i had latin in mid. along w/ english, spanish, and french (native). the latin has been a tremendous help for thinking in roots.
i can read italian (main), portuguese (and speak), then catalan, aragones, occitan, navarres, languedoc, lombard, normaound, they are juste the same language...
but what is the code?...
once i was working w/ some chinese friends on a project...they blurted out some directives to one another...and i understood!....didn't know any chinese at all.. where is that from...i also picked up some tagalog, thai, and others...
so i figured this :
a child knows nothing but start speaking around age 1 1/2...
2 to be more certain.
well to master anything, that seems to be the magic number...2 yrs...
to get your black belt...2 yrs; to get proficient in dancing...same..
but what is mastery and proficiency?...
how is it related to a child?
when thinking of the meaning of a black belt...it is only the certification on having learned the basics...only!
thats when and only then that the real journey begins..
same at 2 yrs old...there comes the click for the child..
begining of independance.
i had been dancing salsa for 15 yrs..and i decided to take formal salsa (rueda) lessons.. first, thought i new nothing!!! looked like i could not fit my 2 feet together for a few weeks...8 mo later i was excellent...but the real epiphany happened 2 yrs later...
exactly what i had been told at the beginning by the instructor.
so how does that apply to cracking the language code?...
well the 2 yr break out got me thinking... what had changed?...wasn't the knowledge a month earlier and a month later had not made a difference...
salsa had become me.. so i happened to hag out w/ some old filipinos friends of mine...and same...tagalog was part of me.... i can think in portuguese (recent for me)..as if i came from brazil.. i don't translate..
so i got to read some of the above languages..and same thing...some i had never even heard of... where is that coming from?...
well as most of you know ( i see lots of pro linguists in here) language is just the expression of inner emotions. and so all living beings have these basic emotions... even plants...
so how can a dog/cat understand your command...as well as your state of mind...
how ca a horse know your intentions?
or koko the gorilla could look at a pic of an animal and tell the feelings of the animal?
how can we 'get' that from writings of an unknown language? the refined thoughts and emotions behind the pen?..
physically, sounds and words accounts for 7-10 % of communication...but when written?
breaking the pattern of thoughts...
formed by cultural point of views...
deformed by personal experiences..
reformed by other beliefs..
and tainted by local idiosyncrasies.
so fun!
in the end...what is being said is more important than how... or is it!
salut...
F.
I had a few of your other articles from some time back - How to Learn Any Language in 3 months, Why Language Classes Don't Work....., and The Art of Wrapping Your Mouth .......
I've found them all really good, informative and thought provoking.
I'd love to see more.
I'm going to Vietnam to teach spoken English in May and I hope you don't mind if I use some of your insights and techniques. If you object, please let me know.
Would you be interested in a JV, to see if your tehniques work in the other direction? Or won't it matter that English has so many phonemes?
Please keep up the great work.
Regards,
Rob
###
Hi Rob!
More coming, for sure. I'd LOVE to see what you can do with English in Vietnam! Ah, the jealousy :) I hope to be in Vietnam in late 2008 or early 2009.
Good luck!
Tim
"I will not change" [intransitive]
Ni ez naiz aldatuko
"I will not change my name" [transitive]
Nik ez dut nire izena aldatuko
"The dog wants to eat" [transitive]
Txakurrak jan nahi du
"Dogs are good" [intransitive]
Txakurrak onak dira
2) Grammatical number of subject and direct object:
"The dog wants to eat a cat"
Txakurrak katu bat jan nahi du
"The dogs want to eat a cat"
Txakurrek katu bat jan nahi dute
"The dog wants to eat cats"
Txakurrak katuak jan nahi ditu
"The dogs want to eat cats"
Txakurrek katuak jan nahi dituzte
Basque not only has the "much-dreaded noun cases", but it has a hell of a lot more than German does. It distinguishes subjects of transitive sentences from subjects of intransitive sentences [Ergative case/Absolutive case], it has a behemothly complex auxiliary verb system, and that's not even the most exciting part.
I think your system would work well for languages like French or Spanish, but I would be more cautious about touting its efficacy, as it seems a bit euro-centric [despite the fact that it "works" with a language like Mandarin.... which is admittedly much like English in syntax].
What do you think about the impacts of trying to learn two languages at once -- is it your opinion that this would result in a net increase or net decrease in the efficacy of learning each one?
My own guess is that it depends on the languages....two very disparate languages would not be good, but two very similar languages...Spanish and Italian for example...would be good.
Thoughts?
On the other hand, a recent visit to Barcelona, rendered me completely tongue-tied, despite my light knowledge of French, and classes in Castilian Spanish. I was mixing up french and Spanish constantly.
As I have discovered in the past, the method of mastering a skill can be acquired in numerous ways, so this discussion was of particular interest to me. I'd love to hear more.
I have a proposition for you:
you teach me to dance the Tango like a pro and I show you around in Amsterdam and teach you how to hand paint 17th century tulips. It's all about having fun in life, learning and loving, right!
How about it....... would you like to take this chance?
GR is not suitable for most people, simply because of pinyin's dominance; and also because some find GR too complicated or less natural, or because they are less visually-oriented learners who pick up the tones more by listening. But for people who are good at spelling, GR can be very useful, because the tones are embedded in the spelling.
McGinnis's study, which found that GR did not lead to better tonal production accuracy, did not take into account individual differences in people's learning styles or their proficiency in spelling. I would suggest that people who have good visual memory, and can recall the shape (spelling) of words would benefit from GR. Those who struggle with spelling might find GR frustratingly complicated, but may learn the tones well by listening to spoken Chinese.
I am just reading your book now and have found it so far to be one of the most inspirational I have ever read. And I have read many!!!
Most of the suggestions are really step by step and self-explanatory which is awesome. With regard to the languages... aside from this blog post do you have a recommended system for actually learning the language after you've chosen which one to learn? Any tips on learning conversational French quickly (aside from the obvious one of going to France!)
Thanks in advance
Rachel Henke
I didn't.
Russians think language is a method, not a goal. You treat language acquisition as the goal, so you pick and choose which trophy you will hang on your shelf.
I agree with you, one thing that Russian has taught me is Russians are kind of mean spirited little buggers.
But, I will point out that I learned Russian. You didn't. So in internet parlance, I basically own you.
[From Tim: You own me? LOL... try learning to read and write Japanese and Chinese, then we'll talk :) ]
The key to learnign Russian is to follow none of your advice by the way. Learn to speak it first, then go back and learn the rules.
Here is my advice, in a nutshell:
Brute force memorize about 5000 words.
Now, you have enough you can start picking up sentences.
It will be rare for a Russian to have the patience to help you, but if you find one, that person is gold, treat them as such. If not, just bully your way into conversation after conversation while they relentlessly ridicule you...so what, you can get them back later)))
Then, after this awkward phase which lasts a year or two, you can begin normal conversations...once you are at a certain level, you can escape the ridicule that Russians heap on top of all learners.
(You say, thats not my experience!...if its not, you aren't actually a learner, as the author of this blog noted: if you are talking in English about your DESIRE to learn Russian...you are escaping ridicule because you are not actually a Russian learner...to see my point about Ridicule, never leave the Russian language...and see what happens:)))
OK, finally when you get to a certain level, go back and learn those grammar rules and get the academic background, etc.
After that its all gravy.
###
Ola Simonsen,
I recommend you learn English first, since you can then use English books to learn Japanese and Chinese. I hope that helps!
Um grande abraco tamben :)
Tim
I'm one who has put off learning a second language for a while and your article may be just the thing to help motivate me to actually do it.
Tim
PLEASE!!
But please give some idea to learn SINHALA......as well
itz very important to me
I hope you will take steps
I think your sugestion of learning Language is very good.
But, I think it is just for basic grammar and expressions.
After mastering basic grammar and expressions, how can I enlarge vocablary and many expressions?
I'm Korean, and I learned English more than 10 years during my school time. But, I always have difficulty in English, especially in hearing and speaking. Can you sugest good Idea?
This is a great post and I think a semi-detailed example would really drive the point home... Or at least let us view full-size versions of the images in the post!
I bet there are a lot of Mexicans that can talk but can't read spanish. However, give me a Mexican that can read spanish and not speak it and I'll give you... I don't know what I'll give you...something nice.
So check it out. Pimsleur created a new language learning experience based on repetition and anticipation. In other words, he makes you think. Instead of telling you to repeat after him all the time, he teaches you how to say something and 5 minutes later asks you to say it once more but without telling you how you're supposed to say it.
Anyway, more info here. Nice blog. I'm looking forward to buying and reading your book!
Dario
(spanish, english, italian, japanese, chinese and some german)
Partly after being prompted from your book, I was able to go on a study abroad trip this summer in Berlin. I´m leaving in a few days, but I have to say I understand why this is one of your favorite cities. Anyway, the type of learning you described here helped me significantly during my study of the German language. Since I speak decent Spanish, I just put everything in context of what I knew of that, and then spent extra time focusing on things that were different i.e. Ich möchte ins Kino gehen vs. Yo quisiera ir al Cine. Good post. Also, I´ll be gone by the time I read it, but for next trip, what was your favorite thing in Berlin? I´d have to say mine was the Paul Löbe Haus, even though I didn´t get to go inside. Finally, do you know any Dutch? Neat language.
Auf Wiedersehen,
Doug
After excellent traditional grammar instruction without much progressI realized I needed to understand and get a grip on the written alphabet before I could move ahead with the grammar and vocab. For typewriting there is an excellent, very good though pricey program, Virtuoso, that really drills the correct fingering. Be sure to enable Russian typewriter, though, as at least one character will not function in the program without it.
just let you know this site italki.com
Not sure if you guys have seen
italki.com is a global online community for language learning. - With italki.com, you can learn a language naturally by talking with native speakers of that language. It's a great way to practice what you've learned in class and to study how native people really speak. - You can also make friends from all over the world, and learn about foreign countries and cultures.
Thanks for the inspiration. As a language teacher, I couldn't agree with you more - the way languages are taught traditionally is mind-numbing and ineffective.
I also love the Michel Thomas series - has anyone tried the new Arabic and Chinese courses that they published?
I was wondering if you would give me permission to publish your article "Why Language Classes Don't Work" in my free e-zine "Language Learning Express." I'm going on vacation and a guest article would be most welcome :)) Plus, it's right on the mark and I think our readers would greatly benefit from it.
Do you know about Vera Birkenbihl? She wrote "Sprachenlernen leichtgemacht," which I think is brilliant. ("Language Learning Made Easy," not available in English...)
Thanks for your commitment to live life to the fullest - it's the only way!
Nathalie
It has been my experience that if I at least focus on the 'action' in the words I'm trying to communicate, the listener can pick up the rest.
Esperanto encodes specific grammatical functions into each word. In theory it can be SOV, SVO, VOS, VSO, or whatever you like. In practice it tends to mirror the sentence structure of the speaker's native language. Because most of the Esperanto that I read comes from native speakers of western european languages, it is mostly SVO.
But the word order can (and does) change radically when needed for poetic effect.
Try Esperanto sometime if you haven't already. It's sort of like a highly simplified Latin derivative with a healthy dose of eastern euro vocabulary, some germanic agglutination, and a major shot of English helper-verb influence. You'd probably find it easy and fun.
Thanks!
An Idea:
To illustrate the point you make in the post, how about any "non-English" people out here translate the sentences above into their languages and we can all get a taste and understanding ?
What are the short-cuts to succeeding with ajapa (ceaseless mantra of Divine name) and/or meditation to experience and function from that all-knowing, ever-new, continuous Bliss, the Brahman?
*Also how do you feel about the GMO/cloned foods that are filling supermarkets and fast-food? Or the fluoridation of drinking water? I remember reading somewhere that Japan rejected some of these GMO foods because they found it could cause a resistance to certain antibiotics. Japan, Greece, and some other countries also don't put fluoride in the water because of bad effects, as Nazis had used it to keep others more docile. Do you use really good water filter? BTW it does not seem that Japan or Greece have worse problems with cavities.
One thing I'm curious about in your "test sentences"--why no passive voice ("The apple was given to John (by me)")? I remember learning that in German and it just completely threw me. For a lot of language learners, that's a tough thing to grasp and acquire.
this language thing is really cool :)
i am working on French with this home study curse.
Thank you for this insightful article.
Sincerely,
Prof. Larry M. Lynch
Santiago de Cali University
Cali, Colombia
First, where is your article “Why Language Classes Don’t Work”? I would like to read that article. Nathalie mentioned it, in her comment of July 29th, 2008.
To get back to your article "How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour", I have been looking for detailed explanations concerning why, for a particular student, some foreign languages might be easier or more difficult to learn. Since I am not fluent in anything but American English, your post gave me specific reasons as to why effective foreign language teaching needs to be tailored to account for the structure and idiosyncrasies of the student's native language, as well as the target language. That would seem obvious, right? Well, it is not, for many people.
But more important, and harder to find, are suggestions on how, exactly, to develop effective lesson plans and drills that will ease the transition from the student's native language to the target language. Your article took that extra step.
It is also very interesting that some criticized your original post as not useful, because you made "complex leaps in thought-processes" that “normal people” cannot be expected to understand, although "academic linguists draw the inferences all the time".
This ignorance, or deliberate disregard of differences between languages, has led to the adoption of some stubbornly simpleminded and unproductive methods of language teaching. These methods unfortunately became long running fads, such as the direct method (used by Berlitz), audio-lingual method (Harcourt's ALM), and most recently, Rosetta Stone, with their dynamic immersion method. Why people continue to deceive themselves with these ineffective methods is a mystery to me.
The very strange case of Rosetta Stone throws an additional cloud of doubt over the truthfulness of anonymous online reviews, as well making me doubt the accuracy of reviews published in reputable newspapers and magazines. Whether online or in reputable print media, those who review Rosetta Stone are praising and recommending it, rather than criticizing it, by a margin of a hundred to one.
Please share more of your thoughts on the subject of how to effectively teach languages to students of different backgrounds.
Thank you for the excellent comment and intelligent observations. Thanks also for the reminder. I'll try and track down that article and put it up soon.
More to come :)
All the best,
Tim
I agree on the limited usefulness of Rosetta Stone. However, as someone who speaks 10 languages, Asian, Romance, Germanic, Slavic, I feel that the differences between languages do not matter that much, in terms of how to go about learning them. The key issue is your motivation to learn the language. After that, the next most important thing is to avoid being obsessed with grammar or perfection. Just focus on exposing yourself to a lot of content, listening and reading, some writing and talking, and try to accumulate words.
It is easier to learn a language with a lot of vocabulary common to languages you already know. It is the common vocabulary, rather than any "deconstructing" that will determine how easy the job is. But it is motivation that will determine success, based on my experience as a learner and from watching others.
I look forward to the article on "Why Language Classes Don’t Work”? I firmly believe that the emphasis on classroom instruction for language and literacy teaching represents a tremendous waste of money ( I am talking billions of dollars of public money alone) and ends up discouraging many people from learning another language.
Unfortunately the established language teaching establishment, including Adult English instruction for immigrants and general literacy teaching is based primarily on the expensive and ineffective classroom model.
The Internet offers many ways to enable people to learn languages more effectively and with a much smaller expenditure of money. I wonder if the people involved in public education will ever get the picture.
Your articles and the book are very inspiring and we love the way you think about language learning/teaching.
We are a start up business and put language courses onto mobile phones. We want to make learning available for everyone, everywhere, ideally for free (at least the basics). This will be big- and you would be the ridiculously most suitable (English) language course creator for our adventures.
We know you are absolutely too famous for us, but if you are interested we would be delighted hearing from you.
Julia
Is your Princeton thesis research available? How much did your research focus on that neglected deconstruction step, for language learning?
And you were involved in redesigning curricula for Berlitz?
When I encountered Berlitz and ALM, many years ago, it was mostly listen and repeat, and wait for a miracle to happen. No analysis, please! It was against the rules of the methods, at least according to the instructors that I encountered. Perhaps some students experienced the long awaited flash of comprehension, but I never saw either method work, with anyone. Lately, the old fads are back, recombined as Rosetta Stone.
Interesting, that you drew the analogy that ones brain needs to be "formatted" for a new language.
I am not a teacher. However, I have always felt that language learning requires four steps.
-- First, learn model sentences. Understand the individual words and how the words work together, to produce any idiomatic meanings. (Of course, we assume capable instructors have chosen the model sentences.)
-- Second, learn how the language's grammar puts words together into sentences.
-- Third, learn as many idioms as possible.
-- If one wants to converse in person, a fourth step is required, learning pronunciation.
I don't know exactly how and when pronunciation should be blended in. Your article pointed out that the optimum study strategy will vary, depending on each student's prior knowledge base.
For the first step, learning the model sentences, your "Six Lines of Gold" analysis could be one technique for picking the model sentences.
For the second step, grammar, it seems like learning grammar might be the brain formatting task that you mentioned. Get the formatting right, and we ease the task of pouring in the content. However, not every expression that is grammatically correct has meaning. And often, if it has meaning, the meaning might be completely contrary to what you might expect.
Hence, the third step, idioms, which is rarely mentioned. As hard as grammar can be, learning idioms is probably the most difficult and time consuming task, in my humble opinion. There is no rhyme or reason to idioms, and there are so many of them, some with slippery nuances of meaning.
What is your experience with learning idioms? Any insights? Or is it the grim march that I envision?
And idioms continue to provide material for comedy writers. To choose a rather coarse example, don't ever do a word for word translation of the innocent sounding English phrase "I am hot", without prior verification of the possible meanings.
Casey
From my experience in learning lots of languages, I have to disagree with you.
Stage 1:
Listen to and read a limited amount of simple content for which translation is available. Do this repetitively, to get over the strangeness of the language. Consult a simple short reference grammar if necessary. Speak and write ery little
Stage 2:
Move to interesting authentic content, again listening and reading and learning vocabulary. Speak and write a little more.
Stage 3:
Continue listening and reading, and focus on refining the grammar using material written in the target language.
The pronunciation and ability to speak will come. Avoid focusing on idioms, they are hard to use and a distraction. Do not try to understand or remember the rules of grammar, you won't be able to until you have had a lot exposure to the language.
Drop all congegations...they are unnessessary. Just learn a broken language...as long as you can communicate ...thats the point.
QuinnDarrin
Italy, China, Korea, Japan
I train people on how to speak english....(kind of)
I am possibly going to spend 6 months in CHina and am looking for the best way to prepare myself to learn the language. I'd like to spend several hours before I go and once I arrive I'll use a combo of classes and practice as per Tim's suggestions...
Can anyone direct me to a good beginners Chinese course that I can use asap?
I currently speak French and SPanish and am English
If you would like to speak fluently any language at a conversational level, give a serious thought to the Pimsleur Method.
It is a bit expensive, (about $150 when I bought Russian and German courses) but I can personally attest of its efficiency.
It will require initially about 30 minutes of your time daily; just follow the instructions and repeat the words and phrases at the required intervals.
Before you know it the whole world opens up and you start picking up the rest. Of course you must be among natives to get the most out of it (as with any other method)
The principle of this method is that anybody, even babies pick up any language or dialect phonetically, before understanding alphabet symbols and rules such as declensions, which tend to clutter our initial learning.
Regards
Joe
Would only add that if you use a system that can help you memorize words more quickly, you would be up an running speaking a foreign language in a very short time. You can check out my site, for I typically spend 40 to 60 minutes a day memorizing foreign words, being able to learn 100 words in that hour. With about 100% recall rate.
Of course, living in the country itself would be a bonus, but the way I see it it's 1) Grammar, 2) Vocabulary and 3) Pronunciation. Well, and 4) Practice.
By the way this question is not only intended for Tim, but to everyone out there that can help.
Thanks Everyone
Jeremy
I am a teacher of Japanese (11 years) as a second language and recently started studying Spanish. What helps me is that the phonetic pronunciation of Spanish is very similar to Jpn and it has the same vowel sounds plus my knowledge of French and English helps me in guessing the meaning of many Spanish words. I think in any language it helps to understand sentence order but first mastering the sounds is also crucial to being understood. Some languages seem daunting-yes Jpn has 3 writing systems but so much of the grammar and verb conjugation is so easy that once you learn the writing overall it is quite basic. What I do is use a lot of mnemonic devices to help my students learn words plus repetition so that in time they are speaking/understanding without much hesitating. Last but not least it does help having the ability to mimic sounds and of course use the language with real live humans.
The reality is, in context of the enormity of learning a language, it really does no harm, and probably does a lot of good to take command of the grammar.
Just spend one evening to map it out, what I did, was simply place all the russian cases on a chart, what they mean, and what the endings become...both plural and singular. I did this for nouns and adjectives.
Then I spent an evening reading a book. I've already gotten where I can read fairly well...amazingly enough without ever doing this before (I don't recommend my method, its far too slow a way too learn).
To my surprise, suddenly the choices were making sense. Take a movie title like ?????? ? ??????? You cannot understand this title by context, if there is no context and all you have is the title. Is it letter in america, or letter to america? And if it is 'letter to America' where is the verb of motion?
Well, after mapping it all out, obviously the accusative case, implies a verb of motion. It makes sense, a letter travels.
I thought this was great...why didn't I just spend one little day on this.
However, this 'learning about' a language in one hour, is not the same as being able to speak a language, which will still take one year of immersion, or 5 to 10 years of traditional study (if you cannot get immersion possibility).
Figuring out how to allow someone without immersion opportunities to also master a language within a year....would be most helpful.
Focus on committing to memory conjugations at first, in only 2 tenses. Present and Past. For future, simply conjugate the infinitive 'to go', and use the infinitive. Take for example the phrase "I shall speak". Traditionally this would be the future first person conjugation "hablaré". No no no. If you said this in Mexico, it would be very clear you were not a native speaker. Instead, conjugate "to go", "ir", and add the infinitive for "to speak", or "hablar". The result is "voy a hablar", or the equivalent of "I am going to speak". Bang, done.
My note on learning only past will have some of you saying "But the past imperfect is the correct tense in many cases." And you're right. It's the difference between relaying a story to someone and saying "I was speaking to my son..." and "I spoke to my son..." The first is the past imperfect and the right tense. The second is the past simple and is not... BUT PEOPLE WILL UNDERSTAND YOU and you get off the ground in the language that much faster.
Learn Present simple, and Past simple, and for future conjugate 'to go' and use the infinitive verb.
I've used techniques like these to become fluent in Spanish in 2.5 months. The other languages came easier once the patterns are recognized.
Hope this helps!
Im Christine 22 years of age and a registered nurse here in the Philippines. I enrolled myself into a norwegian class here in my native land but I have found it difficult to learn. Can you give me the sites where I can learn the language faster and easier? I am very eager to learn so I can work in Norway. Please help about this matter. Thank you and have a good day!
Sincerely,
McNeill
I'm learning a new language and when I'm a bit busy ( but not too busy !) I would open winamp or last.fm with my favorite French songs and have the French lyrics in front of me and sometimes it helps to have also the translation. It's very subtle and not demanding activity but subconsciously you still learning the language.
So I created a small utility - "Sing and Study" to help me organize the whole process of having everything on the screen. The lyrics + finding the lyrics + translating them :)
It's free utility , install and enjoy .
For learning foreign languages, I highly recommend the "Pimsleur" and "Berlitz" courses. Basically with both there's a lot of repitition done, which allows you to absorb commonly used words and phrases within a relatively short amount of time (I remember once reading somewhere that in most every language there are a 100 words that come up in about 90% of everyday conversation, so if you're keen on learning a foreign language it's important to learn these words, words and phrases such as
"I," "good," "thank you," "I want," etc.).
With both of the above-mentioned methods, one of the things I find helpful is that there's much less of an emphasis on grammar than in others on the market. I think many get discouraged because of the gramar of a foreign language, which can seem quite daunting, but once you begin to recognize patters then the process of learning the foreign language becomes much easier.
I also find that music is very helpful, as you get to learn a lot of simple phrases. I learned Portuguese mostly by listening to songs in the language (of course it helped that I grew up speaking Spanish, which is closely related, at home). I'm currently trying to learn Russian and have learned a lot by listening to (a lot of times in bed right before sleeping!) pop music in the language, and find that I've learned many words and phrases this way.
And most important--don't get discouraged! It's not easy to learn a foreign language, but neither, in my opinion, is it as difficult as many may think it is.
Thanks.
Tristan
Thanks
Mark Brown
anthropologists, etc. studying origins of language, etc.
english professors studying deconstruction, etc.
etc.
same subject, right? what's different about these groups, or approaches?
maybe... it's the language they speak. vocabulary.
chomsky may be right that there is uni grammar. but that may be more to do with how people think. that is, how they communicate with "themselves". in other words, how they "see the world". the metaphors they employ. metaphors are built from language. deep structure (chomsky) may give clues to another person of one's thinking, to one's metaphors, to intent, to whatever you fancy to know about them, but....
the anthropologists and their colleagues in "closely related fields" know (or should know) there's a form of communication that predated language. it didn't disappear when language evolved. we still use it.
unlike language, and all the cognitive debate, it is (or at least we expect it to be) *transparent*. no 'guesswork' involved.
it starts with an "e".
@mitch ronco - this is what would be 'worth patenting'. going with the IP metaphor. the language patent holder would need a license. because (effective, or should i say 'affective') language uses this 'other means of communication'.
soon come
Is prescribing *one* way to learn the wisest or most effective course to take?
An oversimplified example that illustrates this fact, i.e. that people learn differently, is the typical live lecture/home study options of many courses, be they language, exam preparation, etc.
This is a very simplified example. I believe it goes much deeper than this. The more you know yourself the more you may understand how it is you learn. And it may not be the 'prescribed ways' that you have been exposed to, whether you're earning a degree at an Ivy League university or studying a language on your own or... the list is endless.
I undertand it's very difficult to go outside the prescribed methods. Especially if you are in academia.
I sometimes see a tremendous amout of effort placed by students in what amounts to learning someone else's learning technique. This is wholly apart from learning the subject matter. But they are only doing what they are told to you, and indeed compelled to do. Some adjust to the system of learning, some do not. Again, this is wholly apart from the subject matter.
The point is that the system is not what's important. Learning the subject matter is what's important.
I advise people to aim, at all points along the path, to understand how they learn. Pay attention to what works. Forget about what doesn't work, no matter what anyone tells you. Develop your *own* system, tailored by you, for you.
Like your article, those examples are killers in Russian. IMHO : Do not postpone Russian for too long - it gets more difficult with age. For me *why* ( motivation) is the most important factor.
THX
Katya