According to this video, I could have learnt a new language:
See Fluent in 3 months
Whilst this is an enormous claim, it sounds like it could be like a 21st century L.A.M.P. We used LAMP to learn Spanish over a year, and I it really works because the goal is communication, so you start talking to real people about real things from day one.
Having said that I take my hat off to people we visited in Asia who are learning a language that has tones and doesn't use Roman script. To not only talk, but read and write that takes years - a real commitment from people who want to contribute long-term to a group of people.
Have you learnt a new language? Do you have any language hacking tips?
6 comments:
wow, that guy is pretty amazing. Reminds me of having meals with people overseas - they would speak in three different languages throughout the course of the meal!
One of my takeaways from international travel is how much two people from different countries 'can' communicate with each other despite different languages.
Dobar dan!
This reminds me of how I learned Chinese:
http://china.myadventures.org/?filename=how-i-learned-chinese
L&P was here. :)
I was born in Quebec, so I'm french Canadian, I speak french fluently.
When I was fifteen years old I moved out west and had to learn English which i now am fluent.
The trick to learning a new language is to immerse yourself into it. Move where people only speak that other language, you will pick it up quicker than any other ways.
I do have some tips.
First - if the other language is kind of a dialect of your own, it is easier.
English is both a Latin and a Germanic dialect. All my really functional languages are so too - that is either Germanic or Latin. I started off with "purely" Germanic, learning Swedish and German as a child. This tricked me into thinking learning English would be easy - and with two visits age nine and ten and reading books all along, it was. The Latin vocabulary of English got me started with French and Latin.
So, Swedish, German, Danish, a bit Dutch (if read or spoken slowly), reading Icelandic or Old English is part of my capacity of the Germanic language.
So is English, but it is also part of my Latin language capacity, as is Classic and Medieval Latin, as are French and a bit of Spanish and Italian.
I envy this man for speaking Gaelic and - fluent! - Portuguese.
Post a Comment