For phonetic languages with different scripts (Arabic, Russian, Greek, Thai, Korean) this post I wrote may help: http://www.fluentin3months.com/phonetic-script-can-be-learned-quickly/. Told myself I want to visit Brazil and possibly travel a bit more this year so learning a new language is key. Incidentally, my experience with Chinese bears out Tims dictum that _what_ you learn is more important than how you learn it. 1. While the same scale is not used, you can also get tested in a similar way in Chinese and Japanese. Benny is always the most outgoing guy at every conference Ive seen him at I think that (talking to EVERYONE, especially in a foreign country) helps a lot too! Tim Ferriss Scam! Practical Tactics for Dealing with Haters Matt will help you out a lot. 200-2232 Marine Drive, West Vancouver, BC, Canada V7V 1K4, Website For Tim Ferriss' 12 Sentences To Deconstruct A New Language. Was really fun adventure that I would have never been able to have if I did not speak Polish. When I was writing my book, I interviewed fellow polyglot Luca who is very effective in adapting a convincing accent in his target languages. Most traditional approaches or language systems dont work this way, and I think thats where they let their students down. There is only a general downward trend in language acquisition in adults, which is probably more dependent on environmental factors that can be changed (e.g. And they were happy to speak to me in French. You can take it offline and see about language related meet-ups in your city through The Polyglot Club, or the meet-ups pages on Couchsurfing, meetup.com, and Internations. I moved to France with my family a few years ago and I now do business in the French language on a daily basic. For example, on italki, if youre a native speaker, or proficient in a language, you can also apply to be a teacher. Benny always has great insight on learning languages. (Wishing you lots of success!). Last year I read an intriguing article by the author and self-proclaimed life hacker Tim Ferris titled How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour. Ive written about how I learned to speak, read, and write Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish. Just watched your full Skype chat video. That is so awesome. As for my experiences with language, gosh so many. Photo: Josh Estey. Timwould you consider doing a blog post elaborating on your system for tandem practice, including your complete list of useful questions and phrases? Would such a blog be monetizable Is the idea of making money off a spiritual blog distasteful? And also, it was a low exposure environment and all they had to do was learn one new grammar rule. A solid guy indeed when it comes to how to learn a foreign language. Armas de titanes Aujourdhui, 9ans aprs ma dernire leon de Jap, les Kanji sont quasiment tous oublis (jtais cens en connatre quasiment 350), par contre quand je les vois je sais que je les ai appris autrefois. For instance, if you really listen to it, the word France sounds different in I want to go to France (downward intonation) and France is a beautiful country (intonation raising upwards). (I have 19 tabs open!). Children are better at language learning. I always carry a pair I had made to my ears years back but extras are always good to have and the carry case is cool. Ive always done better typing than speaking, even in my native language, can I go on Skype, Interpals, and other places, while still studying and type more than speak and still be successful? LingQ Languages Ltd. I spend at least 20 hours a week reading, listening, and studying. An upgrade (with more features) is available for 9 USD / month. Im a Spanish teacher, and have learned several other languages as well. Starting a language from scratch is essentially impossible because of the vast amount of words you know already through cognates. You can even reference Google Translate or a dictionary for that language while you chat, so you can learn new words as you go, when you need them. Fortunately thats changing with the new generation and how they learn. Oh well, such a great problem to have. Thats all well and good for European languages, but what about more distant ones?. Here are the top newspapers in Europe, South America and Asia. So whats your next language on your to learn list?!! Thank you for all of this information and the links. Im definitely looking to applying these steps and reading your book! Oops, trust an English teacher to have typos in his post. An L1 English child will have acquired all of these meanings by the age of 5, will be able to comprehend and produce them without thinking about it, whereas an English L2 learner will have problems, even after 5 or 10 years of learning the language. What is much more important, but often overlooked, is intonationthe pitch, rise, fall, and stress of your words. WebSentences are from the user-curated database Tatoeba and not all of them are written and checked by native speakers. These things are not wanted here. You guys are amazing. Dont forget that despite lack of direct linguistic relationships, Finnish is still definitely influenced by other European languages, through religious vocabulary that would have come via Latin over the ages for instance, as well as modern words related to technology that may be borrowed from English. (2003). [2] Go live in the foreign country whose language you are trying to learn. Also, Benny, Tim what do you think about InnovativeLanguages tools, like Chinese101, ThaiPod101 and others? An excellent post. For this, intonation is pivotal. Thats what I was saying: as far as I can remember, you _speak_ Hany; you _study_ Zhongwen. I know this because its what happened to me when I first moved to Spain. We use those words a lot, and thats the case in every other language as well. And now this post has given me a fabulous boost. Telling me that when a direct object takes an indirect object, but only after the subject, but not before a preposition is when you use the X case doesn't help. you can read a very very in depth review on his website , http://www.fluentin3months.com/lingq-review/. What we WILL have within 5 years, is an effective digital replacement for touristy and extremely limited Q&A under ideal conditions (with very little background noise etc.). So it was a big mission there me looking at a map, talking Polish to the driver, he was talking over radio to other truck drivers if they did spot my friends car or not. The nice thing is, you really dont need any background in the language at all, so you could start doing this immediately. Not aware of research that makes this concrete however. (this book references tons of research on the critical period, especially in phonology and syntax), Lenneberg, E. (1967 ). Tim Ferriss and decided to see how much Italian I could learn in three weeks with very little free time to study. YES! [4] Learn Spanish through Salsa, French by cooking and such. Tim Ferriss has a list of I think nine or 12 sentences that he uses in order to deconstruct a language. To watch the language consistently, see whats trending on Youtube in that country right now. Especially number 2. Tim Ferriss Biography Having fun should be a more popular goal while learning. Aiming higher for a smaller number is always better. I really like your approach of speaking from day 1. [TIM: I actually view part of my role as that of comedian or court jesterto make native speakers chuckle at my Tarzan speak. It wouldnt surprise me, though, if the research showed that adults are better at learning languages the way that adults ordinarily go about acquiring a second language. Tim Ferriss Story of Childhood Sexual Abuse Was Incredibly Now that youre armed with Though he was born prematurely and there was a danger of him falling gravely sick, he survived. For each Question of the Day: What tools or approaches have you used for learning languages? The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes. Love the post Benny. Ich mchte es ihr geben. Hopefully after this year-long book tour I can finally check it out! The short version is, I reached out to people like Benny for advice and everyone kept saying that I needed to do more. Website For Tim Ferriss' 12 Sentences To Deconstruct A Ne - LingQ No joke, this was absolutely the best blog hell, best ANYTHING Ive read on language learning. You can chat with them via text, voice recording, calls, video calls and doodles. It turns out that there are lots of immigrants from French Africa, Haiti, and France in NYC. Ill be back in Berlin in June. Thanks so much for buying my book! TESOL Quarterly. Bennythanks for this comprehensive post, Ive passed it around to several friends! Perhaps I should have chosen Spanish. Nothing gives you satisfaction like getting a joke in the language you are learning. Tim Ferriss ha entrevistado a personajes de todo tipo y aqu, en su ltimo libro, destila y prueba las ideas clave y consejos de estos atletas de lite, aventureros, empresarios y ejecutivos, pensadores creativos, investigadores y un largo etctera, para ayudar a los lectores a aprender a ser ms ricos, sabios y estar ms sanos. Some of the computer-generated sentences are so absurd you cannot possibly forget them, and who knows, one day I may need to say I have a snake in my shoe in Italian. Tim Ferris' '12 Golden Sentences' have become a staple in many language learners' 'go to' tool kit when approaching a new language. Im recommending your book to everyone here in Tokyo who feels stuck. Thanks for the encouragement. In any decent beginner course, the gramatical concepts of those 12 sentences are introduced fairly early on in with better context and with better deconstruction for better retention. Yeah, I always felt that the "12 sentence" bit by Ferris is the weirdest bit of hokum on the language scene. 3) I give John the apple. This is most noticeable is phonology, for example the Henry Kissinger and Joseph Conrad effects. I recently discovered Duolingo and love it. This is one of the best posts on this blog yet! What a linguistic sponge that Benny guy! I know I just need to make this my No. I want to start a blog for people who are Spiritual But Not Religious. Gonna forward him this as I am sure it will be a valuable resource. Huh thats weird. The apple is red. Ive used Mango Languages, an language learning program available as an online resource from many libraries. Just wanted to add that for example the first-rank American sinologist Victor Mair at Penn is against learning/teaching Hanji at the beginning: http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2012/03/02/more-on-how-to-argue-for-foreign-language-instruction/, Its a tragedy that so many young Americans spend years stuffing their heads with hundreds of Chinese characters, gaining no usable proficiency, and then forgetting them all by the time theyre 25. Mair thinks that if the Chinese would wake up and permit pinyin to function as part of a genuine digraphia, then I would say it might make sense for maybe 2 percent of the population to learn up to third-year level of Mandarinstrictly romanized, mind you. The little Spanish I do know I picked up listening to locals and trying to interact with them, which I thoroughly enjoy. WebChildhood & Early Life. One thing Benny left out, is the website http://www.lingq.com which is designed to quickly build up your vocabulary and reading/listening skills. Glad you got to see me and Tim join forces again! It requires a little creativity at times but the best part is, if you get it wrong, you have something to laugh with people about . Great article! (1979). WebSome business school professor will probably be rude enough to bring up the fact that if 225 million orangutans had engaged in a similar exercise, the results would be much the same215 egotistical orangutans with 20 straight winning flips. Your post has inspired me and given me confidence. This concept is not limited to songs. Each language with a non-Roman alphabet can be processed differently, but quickly. If your interested in the prepositions, check out The Semantics of English Prepositions by Andrea Tyler. However I did not expect it to have so much impact on the rest of my life, I ended up buying your books simply because they are worth every cent! Anki, as mentioned above. This approach really works for me, but there is no one best language-learning approach. Pick a definite point in the not too distant future (summer vacation, your birthday, when a family member will visit), aim to reach your target by this time, and work your ass off to make it happen. Which strategy would you follow? Especially if youre going to be selling it in book form. Ive been trying to learn Spanish, because my husband is Colombian, and after almost 2 years living there my Spanish still sucks. Thanks again for the brilliant compilation and thanks for sharing! In Hong Kong youll never hear students say I am studying Hanyu always I am studying Zhongwen. Many languages also have words that share a common (Greek/Latin or other) root, which can be spelled slightly differently, but that youd have to try hard not to recognize, such as exemple, hlicoptre (Fr), porto, capitano (Italian) astronoma, and Saturno (Spanish). Its about relating to your fellow man, making friends and understanding different cultures better. This is a excellent post. Japanese is a mixed boat because it has three phonetic scripts (one of which is Romanized), so you learn Kana first to give you a huge boost in the language. I am interested in getting a Masters in linguistics myself, Im about to graduate with a bachelors in Asian studies. You know you are doing something right, when other experienced learners agree they would share the same links. You feel like you belong. Verdammtes Schnitzel German is tough, maybe one of the toughest languages I tried. We tend to have New Years Resolutions along the lines of Learn Spanish, but how do you know when youve succeeded? But wait, theres more. Like Benny said, just learn a few words for a situation, where you are going or just a conversation, in a restaurant, taxi, words to the kids and the wife and go for it. He showed me an example when I interviewed him about how he learns languages in the below video. There are only few language learners who dazzle me, and Benny Lewis is one of them. etc.). Forvo is great too. I also failed Gaeilge miserably, but in my mid-20s went to the Gaeltacht for the first time to learn it properly and it wasnt bad at all. There are a whole lot of them! Thanks for post this, Tim. Tim Ferriss There are loads of online communities were you can practise your language skills by writing. Devoured all of Tims books and LOVED your book Benny. The aforementioned italki is great for language exchanges and lessons, but My Language Exchange and Interpals are two other options. Also, the program was almost $100. I live in China, firstly Beijing and now Wenzhou (they also speak a different language than Mandarin), as a I say a few words here and there at the stores or in the street, the locals now speak to me in Chinese only, Ok I dont understand it all, or very little but catch a few words so get the idea (sometimes). Just put in the facts and keep the encouragement bit . I like it when ANYONE regardless of age learns a language . Ive got friends who have been successful using this. This might seem like a wet blanket statement, but it didnt work for me. I became fluent at understanding German at about 6months of immersed daily conversations living in Germany. A learner has to distinguish the 13 or so different meanings of over, for example the picture is over the wall, the cat jumped over the gate, the class is over, you have to be over 18 to buy alcohol, you were driving over the speed limit, the fence fell over. The BBCs La Mappa Misteriosa. Your techniques sound like the best approach for rebooting my skills, so I can get my schnitzel and not the verdammtes geschnitzeltes. Ive read many of his posts and taken much of his advice. Lots of practice and study to improve those spoken sessions tends to get me to lower intermediate (B1) level, which means I can understand the other person speaking to me fine as long as they are willing to speak clearly and adjust to my level and mistakes. Personally, I believe that the main factor stopping people from embracing a new language is FEAR. Slang has also been inspired by English, and new words have come into the language: televisio (telkkari), media, radio, turbulenssi, banaani, tomaatti, etc. Tim Ferriss is the bestselling author of the 4-Hour Workweek and his blog boasts over 2M+ unique readers every month. Hope to see you again sometime (doesnt have to be an Indian place in Berlin though ;)). OP has a valid point. WebWith a million members of over 100+ different languages, HelloTalk helps the community learn any language through language partners. Best of luck with your language learning project! WebA number of Tim Ferriss books have remained on the New York Times best-seller list for many years. The way I reach spoken fluency quickly is to get a hell of a lot of spoken practice. You will be forgiven for this directness, because its always obvious that you are a learner. One of the best things you can do in the initial stages is not to try to get everything perfect, but to embrace making mistakes. Italian is -zione and Portuguese is -o. Great breakdown Benny. Webnews. Im quietly sitting on the sidelines hoping Tim can change the world, yet again, and Evidence highly contradicts this concept. The transformation was incredible! I eased myself into Spanish by watching Los Simpson, and since I knew the episode from memory, I could focus on hearing what they were saying. All you need are a few sentences translated from English into your target language. la mela di John. OK, this was an interesting post with some really good advice, but number #6 Realize that adults are actually better language learners than kids is just delusional. Im a big fan of Benny. I WANT TO #YOLO ON DIFFERENT CONTINENTS IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES! After lots of exercises to tidy up my mistakes at the B1 level, I find that I can break into B2. Jag ger John pplet. I think you can stack the deck in your favor. One thing I find helpful in developing my intermediate Nihongo here in Japan is daily approach of attractive women wherever I find myself. I eat the 66.1K subscribers. So when adults (at least in the English speaking world) fail at language learning, its not because they dont have the right genes or other such nonsense. Though Ive reached the C2 stage myself in French, Spanish and am close to it in other languages, realistically I only really need to be socially equivalent in a language I want to communicate in. Yes, provided that. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page. This 1 minute video sums it all up: http://bit.ly/1c45FYr. If anything it raises a smile if right or wrong.