Ryanware

About two weeks ago I described what I believe to be the real way to learn a language. I came across a very interesting (and wonderfully geeky) post today about how to not only learn a language, but how to pick a language to learn. Tim Ferriss claims you can learn a language (but not master it) in 1 hour.

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.
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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.

I really shouldn’t claim to have even tried learning them, but I have learned a very few basics about Italian and French. I’m now really curious about which one would be easier for me to learn. So I’m going to try deconstructing them, along with several other languages, and go from there.

Most language learning resources I’ve seen make the same mistake: They start out teaching you how to say things like “hombre,” “mujer,” “Hola, cómo estás?” and “Dónde está el baño?” This is fine if you plan on going on vacation to Spain and just want to get around for a week or two. But if you want to actually, say, learn Spanish? It’s a good way to start out with a poor foundation. Really, how often do you really need to say “I am a man, you are a woman” in your daily conversations? Is that really the first thing you should learn?

It would be interesting if truth in advertising was actually enforced. Instead of “Learn Spanish in 15 minutes a day” you’d see things like “Learn how to say ‘I am a man, you are a woman’ in Spanish in 10 days!”

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At 15 minutes a day it’ll take you approximately 32 years to learn a new language.

Good luck with that.

I will talk more about this in a later post.