How to Learn Any Language in 3 Months

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/01/20/learning-language/

by fogus • 17 years ago

37 42 17 years ago

fourhourworkweek.com

nopassrecover• 17 years ago

Anyone have any links to develop on this idea?

toisanji• 17 years ago

http://sanbit.com/blog/what-does-it-mean-to-be-fluent-in-a-f...

callmeed2• 17 years ago

Or move to a country where said language is spoken for 3 months ...

patio114• 17 years ago

I know many, many people who have lived in Japan for 3+ years who struggle at basic conversations, to say nothing of common goals like being able to read a newspaper, function in an office environment, or achieve fluency.

(Cards on the table: I think "fluency" is a poor goal because it is confoundingly difficult to measure. I tend to advice folks to phrase goals for language learning in terms of tasks they cannot currently accomplish which they wish to be able to accomplish in the future. "Am I fluent?" is hard to answer, "Did I understand the Deployment Instructions well enough to actually boot the server?" is easy.)

dcurtis• 17 years ago

I think Japanese is a bad example.

If you spoke English and moved to Spain for three months, and you spent an hour or more a day actively attempting to learn the language, you would catch on very quickly.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

So, how would you grade your own Japanese ?

callmeed2• 17 years ago

So, do you think this article would work for an American learning Japanese?

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

I second that, but only for countries where the language and culture are somewhat related to your own.

Two decades ago I lived in Poland for a while, and it took me significantly more than three months to get the hang of it. Compare that to Spanish, which I've never spoken, nor spent any extended time in a Spanish speaking country and yet I can read a Spanish newspaper without too much trouble, borrowing a bit here and there from French and Latin to keep going.

But when confronted with some Spanish tourist I don't stand a chance unless they slow down and are willing to use lots of finger pointing and pantomime.

xtho• 17 years ago

I wonder what the author means by "learning a language". Learning to read simple documents within 3 months isn't that difficult.

randy• 17 years ago

Although I think everyone should keep a healthy sense of skepticism toward Tim Ferris since he is above all a brilliant self promoter, I must say I was impressed by his command of Mandarin as seen here http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/category/random/ (Not that he's saying anything especially difficult, but his tones and fluency seem very solid).

c00p3r2• 17 years ago

The languages are different. Try to learn Tibetan, for example, or try to map Japanese writing system to English, without knowledge of how to read Japanese =)

Making and sorting lists is an essence of almost any science, so, making a list of most commonly used words, sort them and then try to memorize will lead you to know some words, but not an language.

mahmud• 17 years ago

map Japanese writing system to English

Don't do that. As a polyglot, I recommend you stop transmapping languages; instead, learn each on it's own, mapping it only to your own mental meaning. Hard to explain, but it's better to learn grammar implicitly; remember the exceptions (e.g. irregular verbs) individually and whenever you need to conjugate a new verb, go with your gut feeling and see if it's similar to one of the common rules or one of the exceptions you have learned.

For acquiring vocabulary, learn the meaning of the word (internal mental meaning) and its dictionary description in the new language. You will be using the language itself to describe its vocabulary. That way, if you forget the word, you can rewrite the phrase in your mind and expand the description in-place (e.g. "I need to call my father's brother" is still a correct sentence, even if you forget the word "uncle".)

For newbie language learners, it's the single words that are hard to remember, since they might resemble other words, while descriptive phrases are easy to remember since they're long string sequences and whence easy to match in your head.

P.S. Also, if you have a buddy who speaks English (preferably very little of it) try to troll him by generating sentences and let him correct you. It's not as tiring to him as it might seem at first, most people are amused by bad grammar and you will be a town pub favorite. Absorb all the corrections and try to use them immediately, generating other similar sentences.

mark_h• 17 years ago

I recommend you stop transmapping languages; instead, learn each on it's own, mapping it only to your own mental meaning.

Second that. I spent a year in Japan, and got to the point where I could have fairly comfortable conversations, even in both languages if you were at a party with both native speakers. What really stressed out the mental faculties was having to translate, because you had to do the whole mental re-mapping, which you didn't have to go through for a single-language conversation (or even for two separate conversations in different languages).

c00p3r2• 17 years ago

Thank you, sir, for this detailed reply. It's really useful, especially these parts about 'mental meaning'(each man have his own mental picture of the word dog') and about descriptions in the new language. Yes, oxford's dictionary of synonyms is enough for practicing English. And of course, personal communication is the key. But some times it is very difficult to pass trough a communication border. For example, I have many Nepali friends who speaks some subset of English (very similar to that I'm speaking) but it's impossible for me to start learning Nepali language from them, because of limitedness of our English.

jbellis4• 17 years ago

> making a list of most commonly used words, sort them and then try to memorize will lead you to know some words, but not an language.

True, but prioritizing common vocabulary _as part of_ a broader system of practice will be a lot more useful when starting a new language than picking words more or less at random.

gruseom• 17 years ago

What a crock. The first sentence:

Principles of cognitive neuroscience and time management can be applied to attain conversational fluency (here defined as 95%+ comprehension and 100% expressive abilities) in 1-3 months.

(a) is bullshit; (b) isn't even given an attempt at substantiation; (c) is barely connected to the gobbledygook of the rest of the post.

kentosi• 17 years ago

I take his idea of "fluency" with a grain of salt because he hasn't actually posted any videos of him speaking the language.

Fluency is about "nativeness" (if I can create my own word here). It's being able to think in the language (rather than translating), about being able to express yourself in slang/sayings/expressions that you don't learn in textbooks, about the accent you speak in, and so on. In this respect I REALLY doubt he reached fluency.

The reason why many people fail to learn a language is because they use textbooks, which mean well, but are never enough. With Japanese, it always seems to be the same where each chapter is about: - Vocab list - A passage to read - Grammar explanation - Exercises By the time you finish the chapter you would have understood a bit. The next chapter would do the same, but without refering to EVERY SINGLE vocab you learnt in the last chapter. Repeat this process and you're upto chapter 10 but can't remember most of what you've learnt from chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7.

The reason why living in the country works best is because you're constantly surrounded by everything you're learning. The chapter isn't finished, it's constantly being rehearsed.

tienshiao• 17 years ago

If you watch some of his "Random" videos with Kevin Rose (especially the ones related to their trip to China), you can hear Tim speak/use Chinese. In Episode 6, he interacts with their waitress and places a customized order.

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/category/random/

I'm impressed with his Chinese speaking abilities. And I'd guess that Chinese is a more difficult spoken language than Japanese since Chinese is a tonal language.

Chinese is my first language, but I was raised in the US. I'd guess within a couple of days my pronunciation would be better than Tim's, but he probably has a better vocabulary.

codexon2• 17 years ago

Searching online, I found it interesting that the author supposedly knows 6 different languages and made his fortune when he sold his completely dietary supplement company that he started during the dotcom boom.

http://www.brainquicken.com/

codexon2• 17 years ago

Typo correction: "completely dietary" -> "completely outsourced dietary"

ErrantX• 17 years ago

This is complete rubbish. I speak a couple of languages and I seriously doubt even now I could pick up another in 3 months (unless it was very similar to one I currently know).

vixen99• 17 years ago

Am I wrong or does the anti-copy-and-paste on his site tell you something about his zeal to spread the word about his exciting discoveries? Bit petty isn't it?

billswift• 17 years ago

What "anti-copy-and-paste"? I copy and pasted the text of the article into notepad without any problems. I was actually expecting problems since numbered lists frequently get mangled going from HTML to plain text, but even that didn't happen.

jrnkntl• 17 years ago

After such a disappointing article like this I feel a bit stupid that I've just ordered his book (four hour work week) two days ago.

robfitz• 17 years ago

I found the book worth the time. His business morals aren't quite what I would strive to emulate, but it's a quick read and there's some interesting stuff in terms of time & money management.

MikeMacMan• 17 years ago

A more apt title might be 'How to Learn Enough Japanese to get the Basic Gist of a Martial Arts Book in 90 Days'

This article is all kinds of wrong. You don't learn language by making lists of words. Think of a word like 'but'. In Japanese, there could be 5 different words that 'translate' into 'but'. But you can also use tone of voice or draw out the end of a sentence to convey the meaning of 'but'. In other contexts, you might not want to say 'but' at all.

This all boils down to the author's definition of 'learn' and indeed 'knowing'. If after 90 days, the author is able to say that he 'knows' Japanese, then his bar for 'knowing' is a lot lower than mine.

sschueller• 17 years ago

I don't believe it. Same goes for his 4 hours a month work out. If you are going to make claims like that at least provide details so we can try it.

How to Learn Any Language in 3 Months

Related Stories