Deconstructing Arabic in 45 Minutes
Conversational Russian in 60 minutes?
This post is by request. How long does it take to learn Chinese or Japanese vs. Spanish or Irish Gaelic? I would argue less than an hour.
Here’s the reasoning…
Before you invest (or waste) hundreds and thousands of hours on a language, you should deconstruct it. During my thesis research at Princeton, which focused on neuroscience and unorthodox acquisition of Japanese by native English speakers, as well as when redesigning curricula for Berlitz, this neglected deconstruction step surfaced as one of the distinguishing habits of the fastest language learners…
So far, I’ve deconstructed Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Norwegian, Irish Gaelic, Korean, and perhaps a dozen others. I’m far from perfect in these languages, and I’m terrible at some, but I can converse in quite a few with no problems whatsoever—just ask the MIT students who came up to me last night and spoke in multiple languages.
How is it possible to become conversationally fluent in one of these languages in 2-12 months? It starts with deconstructing them, choosing wisely, and abandoning all but a few of them.
Consider a new language like a new sport.
There are certain physical prerequisites (height is an advantage in basketball), rules (a runner must touch the bases in baseball), and so on that determine if you can become proficient at all, and—if so—how long it will take.
Languages are no different. What are your tools, and how do they fit with the rules of your target?
If you’re a native Japanese speaker, respectively handicapped with a bit more than 20 phonemes in your language, some languages will seem near impossible. Picking a compatible language with similar sounds and word construction (like Spanish) instead of one with a buffet of new sounds you cannot distinguish (like Chinese) could make the difference between having meaningful conversations in 3 months instead of 3 years.
Let’s look at few of the methods I recently used to deconstructed Russian and Arabic to determine if I could reach fluency within a 3-month target time period. Both were done in an hour or less of conversation with native speakers sitting next to me on airplanes.
Six Lines of Gold
Here are a few questions that I apply from the outset. The simple versions come afterwards:
1. Are there new grammatical structures that will postpone fluency? (look at SOV vs. SVO, as well as noun cases)
2. Are there new sounds that will double or quadruple time to fluency? (especially vowels)
3. How similar is it to languages I already understand? What will help and what will interfere? (Will acquisition erase a previous language? Can I borrow structures without fatal interference like Portuguese after Spanish?)
4. All of which answer: How difficult will it be, and how long would it take to become functionally fluent?
It doesn’t take much to answer these questions. All you need are a few sentences translated from English into your target language.
Some of my favorites, with reasons, are below:
The apple is red.
It is John’s apple.
I give John the apple.
We give him the apple.
He gives it to John.
She gives it to him.
These six sentences alone expose much of the language, and quite a few potential deal killers.
First, they help me to see if and how verbs are conjugated based on speaker (both according to gender and number). I’m also able to immediately identify an uber-pain in some languages: placement of indirect objects (John), direct objects (the apple), and their respective pronouns (him, it). I would follow these sentences with a few negations (“I don’t give…”) and different tenses to see if these are expressed as separate words (“bu” in Chinese as negation, for example) or verb changes (“-nai” or “-masen” in Japanese), the latter making a language much harder to crack.
Second, I’m looking at the fundamental sentence structure: is it subject-verb-object (SVO) like English and Chinese (“I eat the apple”), is it subject-object-verb (SOV) like Japanese (“I the apple eat”), or something else? If you’re a native English speaker, SOV will be harder than the familiar SVO, but once you pick one up (Korean grammar is almost identical to Japanese, and German has a lot of verb-at-the-end construction), your brain will be formatted for new SOV languages.
Third, the first three sentences expose if the language has much-dreaded noun cases. What are noun cases? In German, for example, “the” isn’t so simple. It might be der, das, die, dem, den and more depending on whether “the apple” is an object, indirect object, possessed by someone else, etc. Headaches galore. Russian is even worse. This is one of the reasons I continue to put it off.
All the above from just 6-10 sentences! Here are two more:
I must give it to him.
I want to give it to her.
These two are to see if auxiliary verbs exist, or if the end of the each verb changes. A good short-cut to independent learner status, when you no longer need a teacher to improve, is to learn conjugations for “helping” verbs like “to want,” “to need,” “to have to,” “should,” etc. In Spanish and many others, this allows you to express yourself with “I need/want/must/should” + the infinite of any verb. Learning the variations of a half dozen verbs gives you access to all verbs. This doesn’t help when someone else is speaking, but it does help get the training wheels off self-expression as quickly as possible.
If these auxiliaries are expressed as changes in the verb (often the case with Japanese) instead of separate words (Chinese, for example), you are in for a rough time in the beginning.
Sounds and Scripts
I ask my impromptu teacher to write down the translations twice: once in the proper native writing system (also called “script” or “orthography”), and again in English phonetics, or I’ll write down approximations or use IPA.
If possible, I will have them take me through their alphabet, giving me one example word for each consonant and vowel. Look hard for difficult vowels, which will take, in my experience, at least 10 times longer to master than any unfamiliar consonant or combination thereof (“tsu” in Japanese poses few problems, for example). Think Portuguese is just slower Spanish with a few different words? Think again. Spend an hour practicing the “open” vowels of Brazilian Portuguese. I recommend you get some ice for your mouth and throat first.
The Russian Phonetic Menu, and…
Reading Real Cyrillic 20 Minutes Later
Going through the characters of a language’s writing system is really only practical for languages that have at least one phonetic writing system of 50 or fewer sounds—Spanish, Russian, and Japanese would all be fine. Chinese fails since tones multiply variations of otherwise simple sounds, and it also fails miserably on phonetic systems. If you go after Mandarin, choose the somewhat uncommon GR over pinyin romanization if at all possible. It’s harder to learn at first, but I’ve never met a pinyin learner with tones even half as accurate as a decent GR user. Long story short, this is because tones are indicated by spelling in GR, not by diacritical marks above the syllables.
In all cases, treat language as sport.
Learn the rules first, determine if it’s worth the investment of time (will you, at best, become mediocre?), then focus on the training. Picking your target is often more important than your method.
[To be continued?]
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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. Here’s something from Harvard Business School to play with in the meantime…
Other Popular Posts on this Blog:
How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise
From Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks
Relax Like A Pro: 5 Steps to Hacking Your Sleep
The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen (and Weapons of Mass Distraction)
How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again
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I would love to have more language learning info. Looking to learn German myself.
that was a pretty insightful article, i am trying to learn Japanese some-what on my own could you e-mail me what you have broken down yourself? –Thanks
wow! i just started studying language at university and what you wrote catapulted me like into next year's matters. thanks
I've never gone out of my way to learn another language, though I've picked things up here and there. For me, it's an issue of investment and return. If I know that I will spend my career dealing with Japanese speaking people, living in Japan or otherwise indulging in their culture, then the strong return on the time and effort invested in learning the Japanese language would be a necessity. 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".
Absolutely – this is very much why I read your book, your blog, and think you're a hero for the modern age – you're maximizing time and turning what was impossible into the possible. 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
Tim, 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.
Hi Tim, 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.
I learned Spanish and English simultaneously as I was growing up. Those two have given me a good base to go on and learn French and then Portuguese. I want to learn Arabic and Japanese next. I really enjoyed the article. I want more.
It's funny I came across this today. Great post! I was thinking of learning Russian. I've been browsing through music and sites but this is helpful. If you have better images of your notes, I'd love to see a copy. Thanks again!
What a great idea. I really enjoy the content of your blog. Keep up the awesome work. Love & Gratitude, Tina Think Simple. Be Decisive. ~ Productivity, Motivation & Happine
please continue. I'm fascinated by your idea, I would like to learn how to learn new languages. I speak fluently Italian, Spanish and English and I would like to go for Germanic, Arabic and Chinese. keep on writing, please Good work Giulio
You may want to add Hungarian at the top of the list where Russian and German are. Ridiculously complex language from what I hear, though sounds similar to Finnish.
Please, more language articles. This was great.
Please keep writing about language. I enjoyed this article very much.
This approach is intriguing. It would be very handy if you had the time to post your deconstructions of the languages you mention.
i have to agree with Lauren Muney's comments about the density of your post. it was so Interesting but very academic as well – a good thing in many ways but a bit intense. (however, people knew what they'd be reading in the heading.) 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!
Tim – 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 find it almost too simplistic. I don't mean to say that this article isn't useful, but it almost sounds misleading to me. Maybe it's just how I interpret the article. 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.
Fascinating! 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
Good article-I have used many of the same points in my teaching and language learning. 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.
Tim: thanks for the article. I would very much like to see more of this. 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.
That's not true, Eva. You get Mari, Chuvash… all incredibly easy for any native speakers of Delaware…
I really like your analytical approach to languages in general. If more language courses taught this kind of thing, instead of mainly just "wrote memory" or "repetition" tactics, I would have learned a lot more at a younger age. When I was younger I lived in northern China (learning Mandarin) for a couple years before "discovering" various ways that helped me learn the language better. It was very frustrating to waste so much time first. 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!
I have found that finding a list of the 100 most commonly used words in any language is very helpful. 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.
I would like to know which MMA opponents you have fought–dates, names…..thank you ### Hi Kirk, Please search for "Blogosphere Self-Defense" on this blog and I've listed them in the comments. Thanks! Tim
I've always wanted to learn a lot of languages – ever since I met a guy (he worked with my folks) who spoke something like 16 languages. Thanks for the great intro to a fascinating method. I would love to know more about this method and others that would help me learn more languages. I've studied French, Arabic, Swahili. Can't speak any of them!
How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour. Translation: you have a very good memory.
Dear 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
This is a fascinating article. I'd love to know, in your experience, which are the easiest languages to learn for a native (American) English speaker.
Thanks, Tim. 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.
Thanks for put a voice to something that "looked" to be true to me for years. Native English speaker and book-fluent in German, I have been able to pick up some French, Spanish, and Italian vocabulary here and there. Lately I've been learning the Korean alphabet, whose sounds are very easy and whose syllabic structure is very logical. I am looking forward to tackling the grammar (variant of SOV).
VERY interesting and helpful! Thanks for writing this, and please do write more detail about this subject when you have the time.
So…is this article mainly to pick up a language quickly and for future use or just for a short period of time? 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?
As a speaker of several quite different languages, I must admit I feel compelled to bookmark your page for later reading. 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. ### 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
"To be continued?" Yes please, but you must include a link to larger versions of the images otherwise there's no point having them.
Really interesting stuff. 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.
Eva: No offense, but a sense of humor is an important personal asset…
Hey Tim, The language articles are great. Please keep them coming. I've just got back from 3 weeks in Japan – having packed light and even bought a Paktowl based on the advice of a previous article on your site 🙂 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!
Loved this post!!! These heuristics you've developed are similar to a concept in software development called "design patterns" where you identify analogies of your problem domain to a more generic set of principles. 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!
Tim, I added you to our blogroll: http://freshtilledsoil.typepad.com/ Good luck breaking the 1,000 mark. Best, Richard
Okay now you're #965. What do you win?
Tim, 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/2007/11/tim-ferriss-aut.html
Post 171 – Interesting to test this on Korean. Hangul (Koran characcter set) may be esy to learn. That's the only easy part of the Korea language. 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.
Tim, 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
Congrats on breaking the 1000 technorati rank barrier Tim!
I would definitely love more language articles, so you can get more in depth with the subject, this was a great article.
The Navy paid a few hundred thousand dollars to send me to language training 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for a year and a half to learn arabic. Maybe I should send a link to this post to them 🙂
Hey, sounds good. I will put it into practice. Tim, I just purchased the book and read it 3x and I am having problems developing a "product" to put on autopilot. The things of interest or from fields of work are a dime a dozen on the internet…any suggestions? From anyone? I am 38 and lost everything I had and worked in "blue collar" telecommunications. I go into heart surgery soon and I wanted to buy myself a new FJ Cruiser for surviving the surgery with no complications. Since I will have to leave my field of experience and start from square 1 and now have absolutely no credit to speak of, this is the perfect time to live life instead of living to work.
Hey Tim, 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
This is interesting. 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!
I am curious as to how you came to your conclusion that Chinese learners who use GR have better tones than those who use pinyin. Tones are THE most important part of learning Chinese, and ultimately only way to properly learn them is by imitating native speakers speech, not reading them off paper. And if you use GR, you will be handicapped by the fact that native speakers do not use/know this system. Pinyin, however, is learned and mastered by Chinese students in elementary school. I learned Chinese by asking for help and assistance from many native speakers, and I think it would be virtually impossible to do so to any degree of success, without the help of native speakers. Using GR will just confuse those people who are necessary aides in your course of study.
What the heck, I'll throw my $0.02 into the ring. 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*
Tim, 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.
Russ…I'm bilingual and I speak Mandarin and English fluently. It's not a matter of a sense of humor as much as the language it's interpreted in. The Kancho in Anime is regarded as basically sodomy here. I'm not even kidding you. I'm hilarious to my friends in Chinese but in English, it's kind of a dead silence going on. Language and culture play a huge part. Sorry to say this but judging from your posts, you don't seem to know what Chinese people see as humor. American humor isn't universal. Since I actually know what Chinese humor and American humor is, I can safely and honestly say that the language barrier issue isn't resolved here. 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.
I speak nine languages well, working on three more. 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.
Tim – This has been a fascinating post. You said earlier that you received "angry" responses from PhDs, but I haven't seen anything like that here. What am I missing? Are they posted to another part of the site, or did you just not allow them to be posted? If the latter, why? I think we can make up our own minds about what is and is not reasonable on this topic. My two cents… ### 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
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 ### Thank you, Erik, and congrats on the detox! All of recovery information addicts salute you 🙂 Tim
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.
Thanks Tim! I can support fully that your method works. I have myself learn to speak 6 languages in a rather short amount of time. I've created a course on the subject called "How To Learn Any Language in a Flash" and I'd be happy to send you a copy if you are interested. I did interviews with people who learned 25 languages and included them in my course. I imagine you must not read all of these comments but if someone on your staff would be kind enough to forward this comment to you I can certainly send you a copy of this course and maybe you'll find a few ideas useful for you in it as well. Keep up the great work! Fred
I was very glad to find this article! I have been asking around (posts on other blogs, mostly) looking for stuff like this. My plan to learn a new language is to start with the foreign grammatical structure *in English*, then fill in the actual words later. 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?
Identifying patterns is the name of the game in breaking any kind of activity down, that applies to language as much as it applies to life goals, but when it comes to language there is one other thing that is helpful and that is learning to think in the foreign language. 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.
Very interesting method. I will give it a try.
This is excellent. Many thanks for taking the time to breakdown the structure of any language and post it up in such a simple way. This is like having a master key to the door of languages.
By the way has anyone else been able to put 34lb of muscle in a day? Bwahahahahahahaha. Play or get played………..
Sorry, I mean a 'month'
I agree with a couple of the previous posters who said that there is no method of language-learning mentioned here and that what is given instead is a method of choosing which are the easiest languages relative to a given language. Several people posting here (#130, #154, and #155, for example) have given actual advice, and the only useful thing this blogger said was to try Michel Thomas's CDs instead of Pimsleur. 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.
After two and a half years living in China, I've never met anyone who's used GR to learn Mandarin. I have, however met huge numbers of people whose tones are perfect and who've only used pinyin. Why? Because pinyin is easy. 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. ### 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
I am a Spanish teacher and languages fascinate me. My husband forwarded this to me and I really enjoyed reading it. I would love to hear more!
Tim, thanks for the quick reply. Sorry for my slightly hot-blooded response initially, but I tend to have very short patience for suggestions that any language (especially Chinese) can be learned quickly by an average or even highly intelligent person. I've met many people here who do speak Chinese well, and the only thing that they have in common is that they have spent years and years studying it. 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.
Thanks, this is really useful! I've been trying to figure out what language to learn next, now I'm going to try this out before committing to my first non-Romance one (besides English!). I just have to find enough bilingual people willing to sit down and deconstruct their language with me first…
Very interesting. I'd like to see an analysis from anyone who knows Polish and a bit about grammar/linguistics. The only person I know who speaks it is not too knowledgeable about grammatical structures.
These are great, great, great tips. However: 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). ### 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
Interesting – I'd love to see higher quality scans, also. Along with the others I think this post is more about picking a language to learn…funnily enough I happen to be learning Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. Bad choices by this method. [PS, got any info on people who learned Mandarin through zhuyin? Exceedingly rare but I don't think it's as rare as GR] 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?
Hi Tim, 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?
I came over from Copyblogger. When I read the subject title, it was a loud "FOOF!" from me. So I came over to lurk. 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.
wow, amazingly helpful. i speak english and mandarin yet do not know how to read/write in the latter. this will help me as i study mandarin 🙂
Tim, 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.
That's not your handwriting in Arabic, is it? Is it?
Fascinating – and, I echo some other comments, in that I'd like more about how to go about learning a language. French is on my plate next; I've studied German and Italian many years ago. 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)?
Wow 🙂 You went to Princeton. Been a dream always.
Hey Tim. Great post. When you hear a foreign language being spoken that you're learning are you mentaly trying to translate it into English, or do you try to convert the foreign language directly into meaning?
hey this article is great. i find it very useful. and i would like to request if you could send me the notes on your japanese please. if not that is cool. but anyway nice article.
Deconstructing makes a lot of sense. I like your language related posts. I speak Mandarin and English and started to learn Spanish.
"this neglected deconstruction step surfaced as one of the distinguishing habits of the fastest language learners…" 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-being-green-isnt-easy-its-essential.html?partner=rss Excuse me, if this sounded rude, I just wondered.
Oh oh. I read "about" now.
Have you tried Icelandic? I suppose that's the ultimate test!
Way cool and clear. That's how I learned English (I'm from Romania) and how I'm learning other languages now. And to reply to Julia: I've found it easier to get exposed to the full structures of a language and analyze them than to construct structures without a certain grasp on their rules. Very tiring, very frustrating. The other way around, the structure just embedded itself in time and I could construct much more easily after having it already in my head. I still can't explain exactly how I can tell if an English sentence is correct or not, it just "sounds" or "looks" that way. Success with your (psycho)linguistic pursuits, all!
Hi Alexandra ! 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 😉
thanks for the article, it seems very useful. I speak English and Cantonese but I've spent years learning Mandarin without success. part of that is to blame on the Hanyu Pinyin, which never really worked for me. I never learnt about Gwoyeu Romatzyh until your article, GR seems much more easier for English speakers. thanks again!
what about sign language? Id love to hear your thoughts on that
What I find even more fascinating than your ability to create brilliant content over and over again such as this– 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
Deconstruct all you want. Probably a good idea if you are searching for a language / languages to learn. Maybe problematic with japanese – don't know. Have you thought about Swahili and probably the majority of African languages where they put their grammatical add-ons as prefixes, not as suffixes. 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.
I wonder a bit how this article actually helps to LEARN a language that fast. It merely helps to DECIDE which language you could pick up quickly if you wanted to try.
I'm learning a lot from you! If you have broken down the Vietnamese language could you send it to me. I'm here in Vietnam for awhile and haven't been able to "get it". Thanks! Amy
Tim, 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, ????????
Hello Tim and others, 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 just had a stab at "the apple is red" in Russian and hey! You're right. You can learn a surprising amount from those innocent-looking little sentences.
Great article, I'm interested in Korean. My wife is from Korea but she came the US when she was 11 and has forgotten all of her Korean. Her mother is here now (for a couple of weeks) but this is the first time they have seen each other since my wife's adoption. Her mother only speaks Korean. My wife and I would love to become fluent in Korean as quick as possible. Can you help? Right now all we have is Rosetta Stone.
Tim: 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.
Hello! 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_calp.php 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!
"lograr" means "to accomplish"
Great, Thank you Steve, I completely agree with you. In fact I am going to use your advice to other subjects like mathematics.