How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour (Plus: A Favor)

hey! i have a friend in norway .i want to learn the language ,people use to.can anyone help me to learn the some .i ‘ll be very thankfull to u.

This may have been said already but another very helpful technique I’ve found for many of the latin-based languages helped immensely with my Spanish, and I’ve applied it since to Italian, French, and Portugese.

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!

McNeill Hall is learning french, japanese, and english all at once so wish her good luck!

Sincerely,

McNeill

I come from China.And I can speak chinese and russian.Nice to meet you?I hope you become a Friend.

Yes, this is helpful. No, it isn’t too dense. Yes, I’d like you to write more about this topic. Thanks for asking and thanks for sharing!

Quite an interesting article.

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.

I’m curious, what other sentences have you used to help you in your deconstruction of languages? I’m trying to find out how to develop a career in linguistics, specifically gathering information from a wide array of languages and am looking for information on how to realize this dream of mine.

Thanks.

Tristan

The point that seems to be overlooked here is that all people learn differently.

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.

Well, some good ideas for deconstruction but this doesn’t have anything at all to do with the actual language learning.

More please. This is gold!

As a linguist and language teacher I’m very impressed with your grasp of the principles of language. I’m also interested by the method you propose – no beating round the bush with pedagogical niceties, just straight onto academic concepts. While I personally like this approach, my experience suggests that it would not be suitable for the majority of learners.

Hi Tim,

While I didn’t get to read your article completely, I must say that while scanning through it just there it seemed to be really interesting and innovative and I shall be reading it over the weekend.

It would be useful is someone could create a ‘dependency chart’ for native English speakers to suggest which languages to learn in what order. This could mitigate the risk for example of someone mixing up languages thinking that ‘Portuguese is just slower Spanish with a few different words’.

~~Shane H.

This is great! I’m in the middle of expanding my Japanese vocabulary and have considered other languages (ie. Korean, re-vitalizing my Spanish, Hebrew, German, etc.) This is a great approach. I will keep this article in mind.

Cheers.

P.S. any websites on language learning (especially the ones mentioned) that are easy enough to use this approach? Cheers!

Thanks Tim. Try Dzongkha – Bhutan’s national language.

Converse in Japanese with me on Skype for even a few minutes (in Japanese) and I’ll believe you.

I just wanted to say that I find it so cool that a blog post can live so long and remain so lively. That’s testimony to how interesting and well-written it is.

Neat stuff. Loved this article and of course “The 4-Hour Workweek.”

Interesting explanation of modern Arabic, Sofian Rahmani. Could you comment further, on the following? I ask, because I suspect that the magnitude of effort required to learn Arabic has been underestimated in the west. Further, westerners do not understand that most Arabs use Arabic principally as a written form of communication, but speak face to face in local languages, that are usually mutually unintelligible with each other, as well as Arabic. Arabic is nowhere near an international language in the sense that English is. A speaker of English can easily communicate in spoken or written form, with any American, Canadian, or Australian, as well as the English, the Scots, Irish and most Scandinavians. Not to forget a more limited ability to communicate with the Philippines, Singapore, and other oriental countries were English is used as a second language.

On the other hand, a knowledge of Arabic might not give someone a similar capability to understand all written and spoken communications, across the entire Arab world.

If I can believe what I read in the history books, Latin served the same purpose in Europe, before modern languages emerged, after the year 1500 A.D., approximately. At that period in history, the printing press and the Protestant Reformation led to the development of national languages, from local languages. For example, Italian developed from the regional language of the city of Florence, not Rome.

So… at one time, in the distant past, your hypothetical example of an Italian needing to learn Latin was actual fact. Further, before the year 1500 A.D., the principal way Christian scholars and clergymen could communicate, across the vast territory of Christendom, was to learn to read and write Latin.

To give a factual example, by about 1600, English was established as a national language, through the works of Shakespeare and others. However, as late as 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published his universal theory of gravitation in Latin, not English, doubtlessly for the widest distribution of his ideas.

On the other hand, I wonder how often Latin was actually spoken, in face to face conversations, outside of the Pope’s territory. I doubt that Isaac Newton actually spoke Latin in a face to face conversation, but I cannot find any information on that.

You mentioned that Modern Standard Arabic is rarely spoken, out loud. When Arabs speak, face to face, do they usually use a local language, their primary language, learned from their parents? Is that the case?

But today, in the Islamic world, I gather that Arabic does serve as a common language, permitting communication across a wide territory. But as you pointed out, Modern Standard Arabic is very difficult, leading Arabs to many mistakes and confusion in printed media.

I ask, from the standpoint of learning Modern Standard Arabic. In the west, I suspect that the difficulty of teaching and learning Arabic has been underestimated. It just ain’t as easy as learning to speak French, Italian, or German, for example, languages with relatively clear and standardized styles of speaking and writing, and a large population that uses the language for both spoken and written communication.

Please explain further, if you can, concerning that mysterious language, Arabic. Is Modern Standard Arabic used in a similar manner, as was Latin, some 600 years ago? Instead of the broader manner in which English is used, in the 21st century?

love this post and find it useful, inspiring and definitely not ‘too dense’

Casey,

The amount of effort required to learn Arabic is not really that much different from that required to learn another case-intensive language, such as German. Of course, for native English speakers, learning German would be much easier since both languages are Germanic, and since both share the same alphabet. Here, this might be of interest:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/german/the-awful-german-language.html

Now the trickiest thing about Arabic is the “harakaat”, or the diacritic marks. These are not written, most of the time, and when learners try to read unmarked text (and even native speakers), it is *extremely* difficult to get them all right. Consider this:

I see the man.

(Anaa) 2ara ‘r-rajula. (my note about transliteration in the previous post applies here)

(Anaa) –> I. This is optional (like in Spanish) and sounds quite odd if used.

2ara –> imperfective first-person singular form of triliteral root ra-alif-ya

‘r-rajula –> the man. Notice how the “a” in “al” (the definite article) assimilates into the vowel preceding it, and how the “l” is not pronounced, but rather the consonant following it is geminated (sun and moon letters). And notice how the final vowel is “a”.

Now let’s flip the roles:

The man sees me.

Ar-rajulu yaraanee.

Notice how the root ra-alif-ya is conjugated. Conjugation is extremely complex in Arabic and I have encountered many, many Arabs (including a few teachers) who mixed up their masculine and feminine verb conjugations.

Okay, now notice how the final vowel in “Ar-rajulu” is “u”. Now this may be extremely frustrating for learners since there’s absolutely no way of knowing which case-ending to use (or to assume is being used when you’re reading a text) unless you analyze the position of the word in the sentence carefully. The example I gave is rather straightforward, but sometimes it can get unbelievably complicated.

So yes, Arabic grammar is *extremely* difficult to learn, but it’s not really much more difficult than, say, Finnish or Japanese. (Finnish grammar is devilish!!)

That aside, I don’t think it would really be accurate to say that Arabs speak mutually-unintelligible “local languages” among themselves. An analogy might be drawn within the Anglosphere, where everyone can speak, understand and write in standard English, but the dialects different people speak may sometimes be mutually unintelligible. Of course, it’s much more… err, polarized, so to speak, in the Arab world, but when was the last time you had any clue what the heck Sean Paul was singing about? Some Scottish sitcoms are even subtitled when broadcast on American TV. Though you wouldn’t say that they’re speaking a different language, would you? And you could always communicate with them using Standard English (unless they’re really uneducated). This might be of interest:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1711

So basically, this is what it’s like in the Arab World:

Everyone understands everyone else most of the time but most Arabs have a hard time trying to understand Maghrebi (Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan) Arabic. Communication is possible most of the time among educated speakers (though, interestingly, I was attending a lecture about Ottoman art last year—given in Arabic—and I was surprised to see that after the lecture was over, all the Arabs that were there: Syrians, Iraqis, Moroccans, Lebanese… they were all speaking with each other in French!! I think that’s because French would allow them to express themselves more freely in intellectual terms and using Classical Arabic would simply be too cumbersome. Dialectal Arabic in this case is hopeless).

So basically, it boils down to this:

Advantages of learning Classical Arabic:

– you get to read written Arabic

– communication is possible 90% of the time, unless the person you’re speaking to is uneducated

– everyone understands it, but not everyone can speak it fluently

– you can convey more complex concepts

– lots of learning resources (thanks to the huge worldwide Muslim community)

Disadvantages:

– frustratingly difficult to learn

– you would not understand dialectal Arabic. This means you won’t understand what people say amongst themselves, you won’t understand most songs, and you won’t understand what is being said on certain TV and radio channels

Advantages of learning one of the many dialects of Arabic:

– you’d be able to communicate with the speakers of that dialect more freely

– you’d be able to understand songs and common people’s conversations

– if you learn Egyptian or Lebanese Arabic, everyone should be able to understand you (though you might have a tough time trying to understand others)

– they’re much, much, much, much, much (this cannot be overstated) easier than Classical Arabic

Disadvantages:

– written Arabic would be all but inaccessible to you. (though you could learn both Classical Arabic and one of the dialects, and many people do this)

– understanding other Arabs might be pretty hard at times

– you can’t write it down; there’s no standardized orthographic system. This means fewer resources for learning

Now, if you wish to live in the Arab World, you *should* learn Arabic, since not that many people speak English or French, and those that do may not be sufficiently proficient in the language for you to be able to have meaningful and deep conversations with. And, if you learn Classical Arabic, I daresay that 90% of the time, you’ll have very little trouble communicating with Arabs, no matter where they come from. Thanks to the pan-Arab policies our governments adopt, people are exposed to CA a lot, and communication shouldn’t really be all that difficult. A bit awkward at first, perhaps, but for all intents and purposes, assuming you’re good enough at the language, communication is possible with most (80-90%) Arabs.

When Arabs speak with each other, they usually use their own dialect, which most of the time is understood by the other person. EXCEPT Maghrebi Arabs, such as myself, who quite often happen to find themselves in the precarious situation of having to speak Arabic with a person can’t speak French or English, and who thinks they can’t speak Arabic at all and who doesn’t understand their dialect (it’s really frustrating how most Arabs actually believe Maghrebi Arabs speak “Frenchified” Arabic or Berber, and how they don’t realize that the only reason we understand them is because of their popular TV shows, not because their dialects are any more “Arabic” than ours are).

So when we DO speak with other Arabs, we either use our own dialect just to spite them, or try to imitate their dialect (conversations of this sort are hilarious at times) or, for Maghrebis who live in the Gulf, use a form of Levantine Arabic that pretty much everyone understands. I’ve been mistaken for a Lebanese many a time, and I’m starting to think I should just speak in my own Eastern Algerian dialect whether or not people understand it, as a sort of cultural statement.

As for your last question, well, that’s kind of hard to answer. I’d say Arabic neither acts as a liturgical, written language that no one speaks (like Latin in the 15th Century), nor as a spoken language with certain mutually-unintelligible dialects (like English). It’s somewhere in between.

I think, though, that the really great thing about learning Arabic is being able to read and listen to poetry in the language. Arabic is known for its poetry that can move men to tears even if they don’t understand what is being said. There’s just something about the structure of Arabic that makes it so… emotional, so emphatic. Research it.

Anyway, hope this helped!

Your ideas are very interesting, and I’d really like to learn more. I’ve been playing around with something similar to this to learn Spanish and French…basically learning the grammar of the languages first, because vocabulary comes pretty easy after that, but you’re lightyears beyond where I am. I’d be VERY interested if you chose to elaborate on your methods and techniques…in a new book or learning product perhaps? 🙂

Thanks for “The Four Hour Work Week”. Although I don’t really plan to ever work only 4 hours per week, your book has helped me to see a lot of possibilities I may have otherwise missed, and helped me to put into words an idea that has nagged at me for almost 15 years – the idea of making a living as an entrpreneur. By that, I meant learning about and putting into practice those things that REALLY interest me, and by the way, making a few bucks while I’m at it. I tried explaining this once to someone, and that person thought that I was saying that I didn’t want to “hold down a job” and “work for a living”. In a sense I suppose that person was right, But, while it’s true that I don’t want to “hold down a job” or “work for a living” in the futile, meaningless sense that most people mean it, I actually LOVE working, which is why I doubt I’ll ever have a four hour work week. What your book has done is to help me see how I can spend my work hours doing things that actually MEAN something, to me, and to others as well. Thank you for that.

Hi, I found this page very interesting!

Being born in an english-speaking country despite being a native Macedonian speaker. I started Spanish this year and we were comparing the different forms of ‘the’ (el, la) to other languages. I was asked what the word for ‘the’ was in Macedonian, I had to repeat phrases such as the chair and the apple before I realised like Russian, there isn’t one but instead is represented as a suffix depending if on its size, associated gender, possesion etc.

Your post helped me understand grammar in languages which I have never fully understand (only today did I find out what a adverb, pronoun or a adjective is)

Thanks!

After star

Hey Tim,

just briefly, I’ve just begun learning Mandarin and have spent a considerable amount of time searching for a good learning tool to approach the Gwoyeu Romatzyh method. What is your recommendation as to the best method to learn GR? The internet has proven illusive in giving me anything significantly easy to identify with and understand.

And as you hear from everybody else, the blog and book is simply fantastic. Looking forward to hearing from you!

All the best,

Ryan

I don’t quite see how this post tells anyone how to learn in one hour? It seems vague.

It would be great if there was something written that said one should learn a, then b, then c, to memorize this and that – so that it’s not just a leap in the dark all the time.

Hello Tim,

Thank you for your ideas. They get me on my track. I do sense that what you have given is only the bare skeleton of your process. And I do suspect that the time you suggest for the learning is very shortened from what it will really take, although I do believe that you will save a lot of time.

But what I think you missed or have not got to yet on this page, is in my mind a major step; get the list of the most commonly used words/ ideas for 1. your own language, 2. the general average of languages, 3. the language you are working on. – And then learn them as the most urgent words! Well learn the ones of top level urgency first, and then the next level urgency, and the next and so on.

I suppose that this is a step after the above steps, and in that case, great. And since I came from Swedish, with a natural love for, even if ignorance of Finnish, which I have only touched on learning, now I can use this developed idea for that, because I am sure that I still haven’t covered those words of urgency.

By the way, when you learn Finnish you realize that cases is only an attached form of prepositions (/postfixings). (Prepositions in all languages are very hard to learn to accurately use.) So what is the problem with cases, well in Finnish they have a complicated sound harmony system, which is not just spoken as in English but written as well (in English t becomes d between vowels, in Finnish k disappears altogether, and much more). The complications of cases in German (and probably Russian) is that being a form of preposition, the language(/s) do/es/n’t need the cases any more, so the cases become like the Spots on a peacocks tail, mainly just something fancy, and complex for no reason.

So the sound harmony is what complicates cases/affixed post positions in Finnish, and unnecessary decoration is what complicates the cases in German (and probably Russian)

But somehow prepositions are also very complex, in their meanings, so I suspect that this is an element that adds to the complexity of cases, as in you cannot always be sure which case to use, of 20 or more.

If life were only as simple as Papua New Guinea pidgin, with two prepositions, long and blong (the first more abstract and the second more concrete).

language as sport, eh?

then I’m wrestling with portuguese (because I married a brasileira) and it’s undefeated.

but with your helpful info, maybe I can get a takedown and score some points.

muito obrigado!

Hello Stefan, re your article nov 14th, 2007.

No, No suggestions. They do not exist. People do not waste their time on halfhearted language learning. To learn a language you jump in boots and all, or you don’t. Then you either drop it or keep jumping in. Teachers and course makers of other kinds ONLY worry about those who would jump in boots and all because that is what they assume in a learner. Vocabulary is your task, your mountain. The grammatical structures and pronunciation, as whispy as clouds, are so minimal in the task of learning a language that nobody would create a course book in solely the structures and in ENGLISH for another language?

Other than ME of course, I suggest you read especially Steve Kaufmann’s comments. He seems to know it right. I waffle and carry on unsystematically, but he knows, and seems to be able to explain!

He mentions listening, vocabulary and fun. I can’t help thinking that he also would have mentioned somewhere to hear the language all day everyday if at all possible. VOCABULARY. And revise it. And revise it. And revise it. And revise it. That is the only way. The structure happens nearly by itself. That’s how kids get it right. They just learn words! The rest happens …

When I worked in Elizabeth, NJ, where there’s a large population of Portuguese speaking people, I learned Portuguese in 2 months. I spent 2 years in Germany and I learned the language fairly well. So I speak Spanish, English, Portuguese, and German–but I am afraid to try a language with a different alphabet. Maybe I’ll give it a try and deconstruct it first.

Here’s my contribution, as a native French speaker.

The apple is red. La pomme est rouge.

It is John’s apple. C’est la pomme de John.

I give John the apple. Je donne la pomme à John.

We give him the apple. Nous lui donnons la pomme.

He gives it to John. Il la donne à John.

She gives it to him. Elle la lui donne.

I must give it to him. Je dois la lui donner.

I want to give it to her. Je veux la lui donner.